{"id":104,"date":"2007-09-29T09:12:14","date_gmt":"2007-09-29T16:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-wests.net\/rick\/2007\/09\/29\/104\/"},"modified":"2007-09-29T09:12:14","modified_gmt":"2007-09-29T16:12:14","slug":"104","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/2007\/09\/29\/104\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

For a course in Adult Education, I had the assignment of reviewing a movie where adult education\/learning is a major theme. I chose to watch and review The Pursuit of Happyness, which was a movie that my wife and I found very depressing for the first two hours, but then fully satisfying at the end. Overall, we very much enjoyed it, although as a warning to parents, the language I read was offensive at times. I wouldn’t know because we used our trusty ClearPlay DVD player <\/a>(love it!).<\/p>\n

Following is a brief summary of my review of the movie and how it portrays adult education, according to some of the research literature. I’m posting it here, because I liked the movie, and I liked some of the issues it raised!<\/p>\n

Link to the full paper<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

The movie, The Pursuit of Happyness<\/em>, speaks on the nature of adult education in American society as much by what is not shown in the movie as it does by what is shown. The movie tells an adaptation of the true story of Chris Gardner<\/a>, who struggles as a homeless single father while trying to complete an internship. This, he hopes, will bring the chance at a new life and \u201chappiness,\u201d which is spelled incorrectly at his child\u2019s daycare facility, exhibiting just how dire his situation has become that he can\u2019t afford decent day care. In my paper, I first discuss how the movie portrays Gardner as a nearly perfect example of both andragogy<\/a> and transformative learning <\/a>theories. I then argue that what the movie does not show is that adult education is not the cure for most people like Gardner, for most of the people in that homeless soup line with Gardner did not ever leave their degraded situations. Holford and Jarvis (2000, p. 655) acknowledge this to be the case, and write, \u201c But research shows that by and large adult and continuing education does not overcome patterns of inequality established in compulsory education. On the contrary, \u2018He or she who has gets more throughout his or her adult life.\u2019 (Quoting Belanger and Valdivielso, 1997, p. 166).\u201d The movie does a masterful job of showing the challenges facing adult education for poor, working adults, but it unfortunately ends up romaticizing the possibility of education solving all of their problems.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Belanger, P. & Valdivielso, S. (1997). Conclusion. in P. Belanger & S. Valdivielso (Eds.), The emergence of learning societies: Who participates in adult learning<\/em>. Oxford: Pergamon and UNESCO Institute for Education.<\/p>\n

Holford, J. & Jarvis, P. (2000). The Learning Society. In A. L. Wilson & E. R. Hayes (Eds.), Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education (pp. 643-659). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. <\/p>\n

Merriam, S. B. & Brockett, R. G. (1997). The profession and practice of adult education: An introduction. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.<\/p>\n

Muccino, Gabriele (Director). (2007). The pursuit of happyness [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group.<\/p>\n

Tags: adult education<\/a>, pursuit of happyness<\/a>, andragogy<\/a>, transformative learning<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

Powered by<\/em> Qumana<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a course in Adult Education, I had the assignment of reviewing a movie where adult education\/learning is a major theme. I chose to watch and review The Pursuit of Happyness, which was a movie that my wife and I found very depressing for the first two hours, but then fully satisfying at the end. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-open-learning","7":"category-personal-reflections","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}