ADULT EDUCATION IN AMERICA
When the European universities were established in the late
Middle Ages, they were not, like our modern American colleges,
super-high-schools. It was not their primary purpose to give to
undergraduates and aspiring professional students a maximum fund
of information during a brief period of residence. There were many
thousands of such students, but the college or university was in a real
sense an institution for adult education. It was a place of residence
for mature scholars, a center where such men could pursue their
studies and live the life of education, just as in the monasteries men
could live the “religious” life. The teaching which went on in these
universities was in a sense a secondary activity.
Among the many changes which have occurred in life and education
since the thirteenth century, that represented by Goethe’s “Faust”
has special interest for us. The modern man attempts to live the life
of the spirit outside the cloister. In this respect we are, as I have
said, more like the ancient Athenians who formed themselves into little
groups and attached themselves as disciples to their teacher for an
indefinite period of time. We may easily imagine the students and
friends of Socrates continuing with him for years their philosophical
inquiries, while at the same time engaged in the conduct of their
duties as citizens and householders. Both Plato and Aristotle, as we
have seen, thought of education in this way. It was an interest which
as a matter of course extended into adult life. This continued emphasis
upon the education of the mature mind is important, for it is in
contrast with much modern thought on the subject. Modern educators are
chiefly interested in the problems of teaching children.
But there is a still more significant fact about such adult education
as we may have today which necessarily differentiates it from both the
thirteenth century and the ancients. The average mature individual,
is not like the ancient Greek student, a member of the leisure class,
nor may he like the mediæval scholar retreat to a cloister. He must
earn his living and seek education during his leisure time. To be
sure, the formal and professional education of our time has still the
advantages of a certain privilege and seclusion. Adult education must
necessarily proceed without these valuable aids to learning. In earlier
ages it was generally believed that education could not be achieved
without these advantages. Modern men insist that the spiritual values
of life be realized not in contemplative aloofness but in the life of
activity. They also demand a satisfactory existence for as many people
as possible; hence all are to have opportunity to share in the cultural
goods of civilization. Education is made universal and, below a certain
age, compulsory. But it is obvious that unless education is to remain
the privilege of a few professionally trained scholars, large numbers
of people must be given the facilities for continued study after school
or college days are passed.
In other words, the aim of adult education is the cultivated amateur.
I have tried to show that this is precisely the aim of all liberal
education. Learning which is discontinued when one leaves school has
been for the most part wasted effort. Education is not culture unless
outside college halls it is a permanent and wide-spread interest
which makes a difference in the tastes and habits of thought of the
community. We have seen that Huxley deplored the fact that much of the
intellectual leadership of Victorian England was found outside the
university faculties. While this may have been a just criticism of
the universities, it was a sign of intellectual vigor in the nation.
Education may be said to be achieving its purposes in a nation to the
extent that quiet reflection supplants superficial cleverness, and that
minds with patience and grace and breadth of outlook, with indifference
to fads and catchwords and with respect for excellence, supplant the
“go-getter,” the “movie-fan,” the worshipper of Mammon, the sensation
monger and the narrow sectarian.
The extent to which our education is a reality in the life of this
Republic is almost daily brought to our attention. A very small
percentage of the population spends four years at college, during which
time most of it retains very much the same general habit patterns
and beliefs and outlook on life that it had when it entered. After
graduation, students bring home little cultural interest or added civic
virtue. They for the most part vote the regular party ticket, support a
church in which they happen to have been brought up, play golf, dance
to jazz music, talk prohibition and drink synthetic gin, repeat the
shibboleths of the group in which they grew to maturity, and make money.
A small minority of students attend post-graduate schools, become
research scholars, and within the radius of their special branch of
study often reach high proficiency and unequalled scholarship. In the
universities of New York City are gathered many of the most eminent
scholars in America. But it must be said that very little educational
influence passes over the chasm which separates our professionalized
education from the man in the street. Today a mob is moved to tears of
a patriotic fervor and to murderous indignation at the sight of a woman
removing from the front of her property some faded red, white and blue
bunting which had been hung up by a tenant for the occasion of a street
festival some days previous; tomorrow an empty-pated multitude tries to
break into an undertaker’s establishment and tramples hysterical women
under foot in the effort to view the body of a deceased motion picture
actor; and anon half the city runs oggling and open-mouthed after a
young woman who can swim across the English Channel.
Without background or tradition other than folkway and a perishing
ancient dogma, and with quantity production methods devised to pamper
to its fancy, this multitude tends to cheapen the quality of everything
it comes near, while it parades its material prosperity before the
world as evidence of superior American virtue. Education has not
yet taken root in our soil. It is a potted plant, like those little
evergreen trees which may be seen growing in painted tubs on the stoops
of New York houses. Such ancestral systems for valuing experience and
controlling behavior as people brought to this country were mostly
cast aside in the process of Americanization; the swift tempo of
industrialism supplanted the slow process of spiritual maturing, and a
newspaper-fashioned public opinion became the dominant cultural force
for the country at large.
We do not know at present whether the alleged general interest in
adult education is evidence of a spontaneous and growing desire for
knowledge, or is something promoted, worked up by interests which
would “educate the masses” in order to attain certain economic ends,
individual or social. Nearly three million persons are said to be
annually enrolled for various courses of study outside the resident
classes of established institutions of learning. Undoubtedly a great
variety of motives prompts these hundreds of thousands of people
to take up the task of study. But wide-spread as this interest is,
popularization of knowledge is not the same as the humanization of
knowledge. We have seen how the values of religion may decline into
empty caricatures of the spiritual life amongst certain popular sects.
Those engaged in the work of adult education, often fear that the
movement may become standardized after the fashion of the public school
system. Is it possible to keep up the standards without resorting to
the mechanical uniformity we commonly call standardization? I think
this is possible only if we are guided by a philosophy of liberal
education. Lose sight of such a philosophy and adult education
becomes a confusion of tongues. In such confusion there is of course
freedom from uniformity, yet there may be much standardization; each
educational cult may easily degenerate into a doctrinaire, misguided
sect. If I am correct in holding that the aim of liberal education
is to produce the cultivated amateur, who possesses in general the
mental traits which in the preceding chapters of this book we have
seen to characterize the liberally educated mind, we have in the
pursuit of such a goal the very thing that will save adult education
from degenerating, like Protestantism, into a conflict of narrow
orthodoxies. Without such a goal, any passing fancy or popular
prejudice, however ungrounded in philosophy, may come to serve as a
dominant ideal of education. Adult education then becomes the means to
every sort of propaganda and personal ambition.
One educator of adults conducts short-time “institutes” for farmers
in which during a period of two or three weeks instruction is given
in such subjects as the fertilization of the soil, rotation of crops,
marketing, and the elements of bookkeeping. Others offer instruction to
industrial workers which will improve their efficiency and deepen their
loyalty to the company. Others teach various trades and professions.
Much of the Americanization propaganda which gave employment to
uplifters during the years following the war is now called adult
education. There is a group of very serious idealists who believe that
by means of adult education they may initiate working people into the
“proletarian culture of the future,” and arm the working class with
the necessary weapons for a social revolution. Others would conduct
schools in which young people may be trained to become professional
labor leaders. To still others the task of adult education is very
clear and simple: it is nothing else than the transformation of our
entire civilization by the method of leading people back to nature
and enabling them to express their emotions, to which end classes in
appreciation and self-expression are organized, and students are sent
out after two or three months of such training prepared to teach the
emotional awakening to others.
Adult education thus becomes a matter of slogans. Each educator is sure
he has it and can give the formula. It is that “every man be given
opportunity to think for himself,” or it is to give people “a new and
modern world view,” or to help people “get out of the ruts in which
they find themselves,” or to enable one to “evaluate his experience,”
or it is “an adventure in independence.”
Many of these things may be very desirable, but are they education?
Taken together, they reveal something of the confusion which always
results when men try to find their standards of value in the passing
interests of the hour. Adult education is a democratic movement and
hence tends to make the desires and ideals of the uneducated rather
than those of the educated its standards and aims. The idea sometimes
prevails in education, just as it has prevailed in religion and in
politics, that if only the masses may emancipate themselves from the
past and start all over again, setting up their own values, there will
necessarily be great improvement. Hence Labor, for instance, is to have
“its own education,” whatever that is. To be sure, every person, be he
a laborer or anyone else, must in the end educate himself, and perhaps
the masses in insisting upon their own values and ideals can make
no worse business of their education than when they are “given” the
education which someone equally uneducated and materialistic thinks is
good for them.
It is obvious that the _methods_ of adult education must be different
from those in common use in teaching children. The instructor cannot
compel attendance; he cannot require submission to his authority; he
must realize that he is among people who, though they have not his
special knowledge, have yet each his own experience, and he must see
the relations of his knowledge to such experience; and in fact he must
make himself a student with the others. Now because the methods differ
from those of formal education, people frequently infer that the _aim_
also is different. There are many things which would seem to lead to
such an inference.
In the first place, in all education, attention is focused almost
exclusively upon methods of teaching rather than upon the question,
“what is an educated person?” Again many of those who are interested in
adult education both as instructors or as students have grown up in an
environment of traditional education, they have seen the futility and
meaninglessness of much that passes for education in the schools and
colleges, and are often moved to protest against the system and all its
works. I have tried to show that the failure of formal education is the
result of the fact that educators frequently do not know what liberal
education is. But many people who are irritated with the school system
seem never to have raised the question whether what is taught in school
is liberal education. They assume that it is what it appears to be, and
hence, instead of seeking the meaning of liberal education, they turn
away and strive to set up a hastily considered educational aim of their
own.
Finally, adult students are sometimes very opinionated--especially
when they first come to class. Often they have violent prejudices and
are extremely “advanced.” Such minds are very much creatures of the
popular movement of the hour. The educator, if he is to keep his hold
upon these persons, must gain their favor and sustain their interest.
The easiest way to gain and keep a following is to make concession to
popular prejudice. Classes in adult education, like the reading public,
wish to be told what they would like to regard as true. One of the
great “truths” for which they often seek support is the belief that
the increasing or anticipated supremacy of the mass is “progress.”
Men wish adult education to be modern, to reflect current thought and
present-day tendencies. In an earlier chapter I tried to show how
much of the popular thought that men believe very advanced is really
unrecognized Rousseauism. Often the idea of a new start in education
is only a survival of Rousseau’s revolt against civilization. Since
the influence of Rousseau serves always to rationalize any plebeian
wish-fancy whatsoever, it is not surprising that it should sometimes
appear to set the goal of adult education. To the degree that the
desire for education is genuine and spontaneous, the demand will
naturally be for what people think, is education.
But in spite of all the chaos and confusion as to aims, adult
education, when the initiative comes from people who are hungry for
knowledge, even though they do not know what education is, shows more
promise than when the initiative comes from the professional school
teacher. In the former case, there is some likelihood that someone will
stumble upon the meaning of a liberal education. As a form of protest
against the established educational system, I think adult education
is a wholesome movement. The school authorities frequently show an
interest in this new thirst for knowledge which is met with suspicion.
I do not wonder. They have not shown themselves so uniformly successful
in the training of youth that they are justified in seeking to extend
their machinery over adult efforts for knowledge. Much that school
superintendents regard as adult education is really only elementary
education, primary instruction offered to adults. _The surest way to
defeat learning is to place it in charge of those whose own education
has stopped._ Their influence is everywhere to divert this mature
interest in learning to the only ends such professional educators know;
service to the state, conformity and routine, material advancement and
industrial efficiency, the uplift of the masses.
In the words of a great educator of the nineteenth century, we should
“inquire whether it is the masses alone who need a reformed and
improved education.” Adult education is not something to be “given”
to the masses, while college education may be kept for the sons of
privilege. There is no such thing as “mass education.” Throughout
the mass of mankind, college graduates included, there are scattered
here and there persons who can learn something and have the desire
to continue learning. It is as important for us to consider for whom
adult educational opportunities should exist as it is to consider what
education is. Such opportunities are for people who are worth educating.
Adult education is selective. Its aim is not to provide a slight
increase of information and a few noble sentiments for the rank and
file, but to select out of the undifferentiated mass those who are
naturally capable of becoming something more than automatons. These
need no credits or examinations or promise of diplomas to spur them
to intellectual effort. They would gain wisdom if there were no
educational institutions, or classes, or lectures. But they need advice
and the fellowship of other studious minds, for they are often lonely.
Very few even professional students can easily carry on their studies
when isolated from their kind. Hence the existence of universities.
The rush and racket of our industrial civilization are so great that
there is need to establish for those whose minds can rise above it, an
environment where thought is leisurely and where people may be found
who have had learning long enough to be at home with it. The isolated
student, like the person learning to swim, makes much needless effort.
He tries to stuff his head with learning. He needs time to meditate
upon what he learns, talk about it, assimilate it, see its relations to
his knowledge and experience as a whole. I believe this to be the value
of group discussion, where there is a real meeting of minds. I do
not, however, as some seem to do, believe that a company of uninformed
people talking nonsense are necessarily engaged in a work of mutual
education. It is not as groups that men may attain wisdom. With all
the aid possible from others, education is necessarily an individual
achievement.
We need adult education not because it is a path to some Utopia,
or imaginary triumph of the masses, or because it will add to the
contentment of the poor, or improve their morals and their industrial
efficiency, or raise the tone of politics. We need adult education for
the same reason that we need any education at all. From the beginning
of time men of a certain type have sought such knowledge of the riddle
of existence as would make some measure of excellence possible to
man. The result of all their striving is a vast body of knowledge
which is the heritage of the men and women of our time. To share in
the possession of this knowledge and to work for its improvement and
increase is to men and women of a certain type simply to attain to
their true human estate. They desire education because that is the kind
of animal they happen to be. Such persons are different from the common
lot. It is not that they may possess some secret information which the
others may not have. They have a different _goal_.
Such decency and tolerance and good sense and genuine idealism as exist
in the midst of general human folly are largely the indirect results of
the efforts of these men and women for knowledge and wisdom. Society as
a whole is the gainer for their education. To the end that such minds
may find themselves, together with the work and the adventure which
are their destiny, the widest possible efforts at general education
should be made. It is because of what people are in themselves and may
become, not because of something they may get, that liberal education
is the duty of man. What Huxley said of England in 1868 is true for
America today:
“a few voices are lifted up in favour of the doctrine that the masses
should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited
capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true
now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge.”
THE END
_Announcing_
THE NEW SCIENCE SERIES
One of the most significant developments in our life today is that as
scientific knowledge almost daily advances, educated people are left
more and more in ignorance of its achievements. Scientists for the most
part write for each other and the general reader is forced to resort to
popularizers of science for his information. It is apparently forgotten
that many of the greatest scientists from Galileo and Copernicus to
Darwin and Huxley wrote largely for the public they wished to reach
with their ideas.
The publishers have this tradition in mind in offering THE NEW SCIENCE
SERIES which will present the latest scientific trends and discoveries
from all parts of the world in a series of books written by leading
scientists or those in close touch with their work. It is the aim of
this series to help modern men and women to know more about themselves
and their world, and to feel that they understand something of what it
is all about.
EDITED BY C. K. OGDEN
VOL. I. MYTH IN PRIMITIVE PSYCHOLOGY BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI, Ph.D.,
D.Sc.
VOL. II. SCIENCE AND POETRY I. A. RICHARDS, M.A.
VOL. III. FATALISM OR FREEDOM C. JUDSON HERRICK, Sc.D., Ph.D.
_Other Volumes in Preparation_
EACH VOLUME $1.00
_For descriptive catalogue, ask your bookseller or write
W · W · NORTON & COMPANY_
70 Fifth Avenue New York
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Spelling
was standardized except for quotes. Hyphenation was standardized where
appropriate.
The following changes were made:
Page 37: “Pavlow. A hungry dog” “Pavlov. A hungry dog”
Page 54: “information that anyone” “information than anyone”
Page 76: “in the early nineteeth” “in the early nineteenth”
Page 88: “Nietsche said that” “Nietzsche said that”
Page 123: “it not the social problem” “is not the social problem”
Page 130: “Max Sterner’s “Ego”” “Max Stirner’s “Ego””
Page 137: “it hestitated to carry” “it hesitated to carry”
Page 141: “organized soicalist locals” “organized socialist locals”
Page 142: “sort of convenant among” “sort of covenant among”
Page 176: “its value it not” “its value is not”
Page 176: “a philosophy it true” “a philosophy is true”
Page 198: “creation of Plato’s genuis” “creation of Plato’s genius”
Page 199: “to aquiescence to authority” “to acquiescence to authority”
Page 224: “Michaelangelo and Raphael” “Michelangelo and Raphael”
Page 224: “Melanchthon and Œcolampadus” “Melanchthon and Œcolampadius”
Page 239: “matched by his magnaminity” “matched by his magnanimity”
Page 253: “fire of Promethus” “fire of Prometheus”
Page 256: “believe there an be” “believe there can be”
Page 304: “system-makers and sytems” “system-makers and systems”
Page 304: “destiny then their friends” “destiny than their friends”
Page 306: “a covenient way” “a convenient way”