Workers' education, a form of adult education, emphasized the study of economic and social problems from the workers' perspective. When the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) created its adult education program in 1933, workers' education classes were included. Between 1933 and 1943 thirty-six states participated in the federal experiment in workers' education. Seventeen of these states, including Indiana, were involved throughout the entire ten years of the program. With as many as two thousand teachers employed at one time, officials conservatively estimated that the program reached at least one million workers nation-wide.Three distinct phases of a federal workers' education program existed: FERA (1933-1935), Works Progress Administration (WPA--prior to separation from the other adult education programs, 1935-1939), and WPA Workers' Service Program (1939-1943). In separate chapters these phases of federal workers' education are examined from both the federal and state perspectives.FERA and WPA workers' education stimulated educational activities within the labor movement. For example, in Indiana this program was particularly popular among the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions. Federal workers' education activities also encouraged union-university cooperation and laid the foundation for labor education at Indiana University. In addition, the WPA Workers'' Service Program served as the model for a Federal Labor Extension Service, similar to the existing federal agricultural extension program, that, for reasons beyond the scope of this study, was never implemented.If nothing else, the FERA and WPA workers' education projects put thousands of unemployed people to work and helped the morale of both the relief recipients and the adults who attended classes. Never supported at levels necessary to reach a majority of the population, federal aid to workers' education was, at the very least, a sincere attempt by liberal relief administrators,educators, and labor leaders to serve the educational needs of American workers.Government documents, correspondence, and manuscript collections from the National Archives, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, and Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, constitute the basic sources for this paper.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/176573 |
| Date | 03 June 2011 |
| Creators | Hamilton, Donald Eugene |
| Contributors | Huston, Robert S. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | v, 204 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | n-us-in |
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