There Are No Hard-to-Serve Learners, Only Ill-Served Ones

Adult learners who face barriers such as incarceration, homelessness, and low levels of English, are often classified as hard-to-serve, but the author of this paper suggests that the term creates an invidious comparison with an imagined group of easy-to-serve learners. Moreover, the term is “tautological” in nature, as the purpose of adult education programs is precisely to serve people with barriers of this type. Although the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act (WIOA) effectively describes all the barriers facing these learners, it fails to explain why these learners are harder-to-serve than others. Highlighting the disability rights movement, the author expounds on how the term hard-to-serve distracts from systemic adult education issues, such as incarceration and homelessness. The article further suggests that WIOA’s focus on the learner as the issue, rather than the learner’s environment, is problematic. He suggests that an overall change in terminology from hard-to-serve to ill-served, would help not only to place these barriers in a larger context, but also to prioritize the importance of systemic change. To be effective in their work, adult educators need to pay attention to the particular oppressions learners may face. (Stephanie Depauw for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

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