Adult Civic Education in Former Socialist Countries in the Transition Period

Abstract

In the period of transition former European socialist countries demonstrate a great number of contradictions resulting from specific social circumstances. The latter exert a crucial impact on educational opportunities for adults. Thus, in most of the examined countries adult education is undergoing an important crisis. Civic education and non-formal education, however, can contribute considerably towards overcoming the typical traits of this transitional period, especially its societal and psychological phenomena. In these countries has been recorded a huge need for civic education on one band, while on the other hand, the demand for it is relatively small. Moreover, civic education gets little or no societal support. Also, due to relatively negative experiences from the past period when it was compulsory for people to participate in civic education (termed sociopolitical education), and due to the fact that it was ideologically and politically directed, people are averse and resistant to any kind of education reminding them of the former socio-political one. Therefore, as a rule, they do not participate in it. The important role of adult education and andragogy is therefore to find a way out from this situation and to motivate people in view to get them actively involved in civic education. In our contribution we are dealing with some possibilities for that, using here our own research findings ('State of the Art' Study of Research on the Education of Adults).