Universität und Volksbildung. Anmerkungen zu einem spannungsreichen Verhältnis

Is the university the antithesis of popular education? This article attempts to answer this question by describing the relationship between the university and popular education in a historical context. Academic knowledge had been the preserve of a small elite group of society for hundreds of years until the university in Austria opened up in 1895. Academic lectures were then offered to a non-academic lay public as well; popular education introduced methodological and didactic considerations and placed demands on the quality of lectures. Soon the first "people‘s university" arose in Vienna, today the Volkshochschule Ottakring (Adult Education Centre Ottakring). It had excellent instructors, a good laboratory infrastructure, open forms of teaching and learning and opportunities for democratic participation. The flowering of academic oriented adult education practice between the wars was followed by the driving out of a general sense of reason during the Nazi regime; subsequently great changes occurred in the relationship between the university and popular education, their areas of responsibility and the challenges facing them. Adult education has moved away from its former focus on imparting profound knowledge and conducting lay research; academic and scientific knowledge is becoming more and more complex and less comprehensible. According to the author, the relationship and transfer between science and adult education should become closer again given the current social situation. (Ed.)