Adult Education: An Overview

Abstract

SINCE Spence's summary (37) of evidences of growing pubilc interest in adult education up to and including 1949, Overstreet's Mature Mind (33) has had wide popular as well as professional reading. This has been both a practical demonstration of public interest and a contributing factor to it, for it undoubtedly made an impression on adults of the nation that maturing in adulthood called for continuing study of one's self and his cultural relationships. In Chapter VII of this issue of the REVIEW, Houle points out that only a modest beginning has been made in adult education in the collection of basic data from which generalizations may be made about growth, either in quantity or quality of participation. However, during the period under review some studies of a statistical nature have appeared together with some less exact estimates, which make it safe to generalize-both over long and short periods-that public interest in most areas of adult education is increasing. Essert's study (17) of the growth trends in all specializations over the past quarter of a century is helpful, tho based upon a synthesis of statistical and nonstatistical data. This study estimated an increase of adult participants in all forms of adult education, from approximately 14 million in 1924 to 30 million in 1950, or over 100 percent increase. Essert concluded that wars, depressions, inflations, and other political and social events produced no serious changes in the general upward trend of numbers of adults participating, but rather resulted in shifts in sources of control and support, and changes in interests of participants and uses of the learning experience. A much more reliable study of growth in participation on a national scale, tho limited to urban public-school and junior-college adult education, was that of the NEA Division of Adult Education Service (31). This study estimated that in 1951 there were over 5 million people enrolled in adult-education offerings of public schools and public junior colleges. During the five-year period 1947 thru 1951 this represented an increase of 51.2 percent in the public schools, while the junior-college enrolments in adult education more than doubled during the same period. Studies of other agencies and areas of specialization more concerned with qualitative than with quantitative analyses of trends have sometimes included some statistical data applicable to the period under review, or have generalized that interest has increased without giving statistical documentation. Some studies of this nature include reports by Lyle and Kehm (29) on trends in education for family living; Prendergast and Kessel (34) in the recreational fields; Kerrison (26) in labor education