May 1947 — Vol. 28, No. 5 — Adult Education
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One of our greatest mistakes in
thinking of education is to put a period instead of a comma
after public school, high school or university. We set a mental
terminus to our learning.
Strangely enough, progressive in many other ways, we are
inclined to look upon adult education as something for those
who missed the chance to finish school in their youth. Instead,
it should be regarded as a stimulus for all minds that have
grown beyond the easy judgments and mechanical training of
youth. It might be said that not until the mind develops into
adulthood is education really possible.
"But," say some, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks."
If that is true, it is because the old dog doesn't want to
learn; not because he can't. It is too bad that such a saying
should be allowed to deprive people of the big and happy things
they could do.
The fact is that the average adult is more intelligent and
has more learning capacity than the academic world supposes.
Because of its nature and the standing of the adult in life,
his education is voluntary, with no more compulsion than the
person has within him. People study because they wish to,
and their wish arises from their needs, their interests and
their intellectual craving. It is no field for missionary
endeavours, nor for the imposing of ideals from above.
In an article in the Agricultural Institute Review, J. G.
Rayner, Director of Extension of the University of Saskatchewan,
remarks pungently: "I sometimes feel that I would like to
'mow down' the person who tells me I should read more books.
I like books, but I don't want some one else to guide my life
so far as reading is concerned." That was not Hitler's philosophy
of education. He compelled those who came under his power
to accept his doctrine, and his minions crammed books and
theories into people's heads.
Adult education in Canada takes for granted that men and
women have mental and spiritual resources capable of solving
their problems, and it is the function of the adult education
movement to make available the knowledge which will help bring
out their best. Education is not the pumping full of people's
minds. It would be possible to learn all that is in the largest
encyclopedia without being able to handle facts fruitfully.
Some adults are held back by self—consciousness from
taking part in group education. The "old dog" proverb has
injected a defeatist thought into their minds. Others are
disappointed after a short try, because they have been misled
by false hopes. Mere attendance at lectures will not perform
miracles in transforming a person from a wallflower into the
life of any party. Learning is not something absorbed by a
class from an incense—swinging lecturer. It starts inside
one, reaches out for whatever new ideas and facts it can obtain
from a lecturer, film, book or from neighbours, and goes on
from there. That is what makes learning fun: it would be quite
uninteresting if one absorbed it as one does all the good
things which come wrapped up in a doctor's pill.
School Isn't All
This thought of "reaching out" naturally leads to the conclusion
that it is silly to think of education ceasing at the end
of juvenile school days. Evelyn Waugh puts it this way: "Who
but the muddle—headed, mist—haunted races of Northern
Europe would ever commit the folly of glorifying incompleteness
and immaturity? For what is youth except a man or a woman
before it is ready or fit to be seen?" Education in these
days is too vast to be compressed within a few years of public
school, or high school or university attendance. Life is one
long process of learning. When Michelangelo was nearly 90,
and had lost his sight, he ran his sensitive fingers over
a statue and exclaimed: "I still learn! I still learn!"
It stands to sense that however diligent a pupil may be
in his studies, he is soon out of date if he quits learning
after high school. The economic, scientific and social information
he absorbed at 18 is not going to meet problems of his thirties.
The world is moving so fast that ideas and knowledge and thoughts
are out—dated in a year. Early schooling is only a baptism.
Nothing could be more depressing than to imagine one's self
launched upon a great decline at 18 or 19, at the end of formal
schooling. If that were so, then we should become poorer and
more miserable every minute we live. We know we don't. We
absorb education as we go along, whether by trying or by mere
exposure to something catching. The argument for adult education
is that we shall be much better if we gain the education knowingly,
desirefully and with a realization of what we are doing.
Every age has its own features. "Life is a string of beads",
as Emerson says: "As we pass through the train of moods they
prove to be many—coloured lenses which paint the world
their own hue and each shows only what lies in its focus."
It is not necessary, in order to approve adult education,
to scoff at that of youth. What we learned then was fit for
its time, and is necessary to what we learn later. But there
is an education appropriate to adults. If they excuse themselves
from it, they may do so on the plea that they are tired or
sleepy or in need of entertainment rather than improvement,
but they cannot plead out of it on the ground that they are
past the learning stage.
Comparisons do not mean very much, because in this of all
fields there is little accuracy in averages, but for what
it is worth educationalists have found that the best age for
learning in the sense of receiving the greatest returns per
unit of time spent is in the twenties. They have also found
that any age below 45 is better than the ages 10 to 14, and
that a man of 65 may expect to learn at least half as much
per hour as he could at 25 and more than he could at 8 to
10. Any normal adult, meaning a person between 21 and 75,
can learn what he needs to learn.
It seems important to emphasize this point, because we are
all too ready to seize upon the excuse of age for failure
to learn. Many significant contributions have been made to
the world by men and women who started late. They have been
people who refused to allow life to develop into a routine
of tearing off the calendar's pages. Others fall too early
and too easily. They permit habits to become fixed, they grow
fussy, they seize upon the prospect of age as a reason for
relaxing.
Physically, it is only common sense to simplify life in
keeping with the waning of free energy. Mentally, no time
in life hinders the acquirement of new knowledge by one who
thinks it worth while to make the attempt.
There is great temptation to fill a page with proof from
real life that age is no genuine handicap to learning anything
you want to learn or need to learn. Simply by making the most
of the opportunities within reach we can get more out of our
fourth, fifth and sixth decades than out of any of the first.
Obstacles Can be Overcome
Lack of formal schooling is no obstacle. Edison went to
school for only three months in all his life. Some of the
best educations on record have been acquired by the old midnight
oil method at home.
Lack of time is no valid excuse. Everyone has some leisure,
and the use of it becomes a choice between this and that.
If you count up the hours in your year you will find they
total 8,760. Deduct 2,288 hours for working 5½ days a week;
2,920 hours for 8 hours a night sleep, and 2 hours a day for
dressing, shaving and walking the dog. You have 2,822 hours
left. Take off half of that for straight recreation, and what
you have left is 911 hours more than the University Arts student
uses in lectures in a year.
Difficulty of access to education does not stand in the
way. It is true that Thomas Campanella made learning extra
easy in his ideal state, the "City of the Sun." All the knowledge
of all the world was engraved upon the walls, so that citizens
learned as they walked. Since walking around all the present
world knowledge would be exhausting, it is fitting that there
are organizations which bring education by mail and radio,
and hold forums no farther away than your community hall.
Experience cannot take the whole place of education. The
amoeba, lowest form of life, floats around in a pond and draws
away from things it doesn't like, and absorbs the trifles
it does like, but who wants to be an amoeba? Life is not made
up of a series of neutral experiences. We need to pluck up
courage to throw out the window a lot of false slogans. Education
is always futuristic. If it looks to the past it must do so
with the idea of obtaining materials with which to build something
new to meet emerging needs.
Adult education, says Eduard C. Lindeman, professor of social
philosophy at the New York School of Social Work, in the Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, "bears
no relationship to the proud but fallacious doctrine of 'knowledge
for the sake of knowledge.' Adult education is education for
use. Its starting point is not history but rather the contemporary
situation. Its method is that of the device known to motion
pictures as the 'flash—back': it begins with the present
and then proceeds to discover the past out of which the present
situation arose...The purpose of adult education is to prevent
intellectual statics; the arrested development of individuals
who have been partially educated cannot be prevented otherwise."
Help Toward Broadmindedness
Greatest gift of adult education, because it is basic to
so many human activities, is straight thinking. The adult
who studies may not always arrive at certainty, but he is
better able to arrange in his mind the facts and opinions
he sees in the newspapers or hears on the radio. Straight
thinking helps toward making significant choices wisely. Choices
which are made calmly and based upon reasons are much more
likely to be good choices than those arrived at by bias, emotion,
prejudice and bigotry.
Everyone wants the reputation of being broadminded. It does
not only mean being a pleasant listener, but one who keeps
his mind open on a question until the evidence is all in,
and, moreover, insists on the best evidence. This is one of
the great arguments in favour of adult education. It is all
very well for reformers to urge us to do this and that to
help our fellow countrymen, and for internationalists to tell
us to love our neighbouring countries and seek fellowship
with all the peoples of the world. But how can we hold out
help intelligently if we do not know what causes the need?
Or how shall we love our neighbour understandingly if we do
not know him?
Looking at it from the learner's viewpoint (and that is
what counts), our approach to adult education requires answers
to the questions suggested by A. E. Wiggam in his excellent
book "The Marks of an Educated Man": (1) Do I really want
to know the truth about politics, business, science, religion,
morals and life, or do I merely want to prove that the notions
I already have about these things are correct? (2) Am I willing
to lay aside the convictions of a lifetime and all the traditions
and beliefs of history, and all the customs of my social class
when I come into the presence of a new fact, long enough to
find out whether or not this new fact ought to change my point
of view?
Adult Education in Canada
The Canadian Association for Adult Education was founded
in 1934. It is a national organization, with a council of
60 members representing all parts of Canada and all walks
of life. The Director, Dr. E. A. Corbett, was for 8 years
Director of Extension at the University of Alberta.
Hundreds of local associations are engaged in adult education,
and the Association has affiliated with it 42 national organizations
all active in the field of public welfare and education. It
is responsible for three national projects which have helped
in shaping the way of life of rural and urban people.
The conference method of adult education is an effective
way to keep people's minds active. As long as men have had
others with whom to talk they have engaged in debate and the
exchange of ideas. The virtue about today's adult education
conferences or forums is that the talk does not dribble into
inane conversation. The people who attend them are there to
learn, and they carry away with them clearer ideas of the
issues they choose to debate.
Passive curiosity has small place in a forum, which calls
for the principles of democratic assembly, deliberation, and
a pooling of ideas and counsel. John Dewey in his book "How
We Think" gives a formula which might apply: There must be
a felt difficulty, it must be located and defined, there must
be a suggestion of possible solutions, these must be reasoned
out by exchange of ideas, and further observation and experiment
will lead to acceptance or rejection of a proposed solution.
To these it might be added that the topic needs to be within
the experience of the group members, interesting and alive
to all.
The forums must espouse no programmes of action, political
or sectarian, nor should they organize citizens into "pressure
groups." When he wrote on the subject "Liberalism and Adult
Civic Education" for the Annals of November 1935, John W.
Studebaker, United States Commissioner of Education, said
this: "Action groups we have in plenty, in which citizens
may band themselves together to work for whatever improvements
they choose. But of educational machinery for these broader
purposes of social improvement we have little enough, and
that little should not be prostituted to any other purpose
than the honest discussion and exchange of ideas, the development
of tolerance and open—mindedness, and the encouragement
of habits of critical thinking."
Lighted Schoolhouses
Adult education has its place in community projects, and
should be one of the main features provided for in every community
centre. There is a wealth of topics to be discussed, covering
every possible interest in life. Donald Cameron, Director
of the Department of Extension, the University of Alberta,
suggests these:
citizenship, international affairs, science, health, psychology,
home beautification, crafts, town planning, libraries, and
many others. When Kitchener and Waterloo launched an experiment
in adult education, a "People's College" sponsored by the
Y. M. C. A. and by Waterloo College, they were swamped with
applications for participation, and membership had to be limited
in many classes.
Mr. Cameron is strongly of the opinion that wherever it
is practical to do so the community centre should be developed
as an integral part of the school plant. "This," he says,
"is particularly true of rural and village or small town high
schools." The national conference on building community programmes
had a commission under chairmanship of Alex Sire, which recommended:
"That this conference request the C. N. E. A. to urge through
provincial departments of education that school buildings
and facilities be made available for community programmes
and that plans for new school buildings provide adequate accommodation
for varied programmes including those at the adult level."
In "Food for Thought" in February there is an item headed
"One More Lighted School." It tells how a Home and School
Association has organized a series of night courses conducted
in a high school.
In addition to forums, conferences, courses and radio there
are books. The person who does not read cannot keep mentally
alive. People who write books have, for the most part, had
peculiar opportunities for acquiring the knowledge. Their
work is not to be disregarded: indeed, the great men of our
past did not overlook what had been discovered and printed
before their time. Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Dante, Milton
and Bach all received gladly what their predecessors had to
offer them. They may not have agreed with the author in every
case, but his finishing place gave them a starting place.
It is remarked in the Report of the Survey Committee of
the Canada and Newfoundland Education Association (no article
touching on education can refrain from quoting that excellent
report): "Formal education, however liberally supported and
skilfully administered, is futile unless it is continued by
a lifelong use of books engendered in childhood, fostered
in youth and built into an adult habit." The report goes on
to tell the advantages which would accrue to adult education
from a generous use of public funds to make library provision
possible where it is now lacking.
There is a wide choice of materials available to those who
wish to study -pamphlets, study courses, films, filmstrips,
radio programmes, records, posters, displays, pictures, handicraft
materials and so on. The Canadian Association for Adult Education
and its associates release bulletins and pamphlets on current
problems at the rate of about 20,000 a week. "There would
be little difficulty," says Dr. Corbett, "in expanding such
an activity to include hundreds of thousands of people if
a little more money were made available for research, organization,
and publication costs."
That is the case for adult education: there remains the
question which will be asked by practically everyone - "What
would I get out of it?" Much of this article has tried to
show the spiritual and practical benefits. Adult education
covers every field of human interest, as Dr. M. M. Coady,
Director of Extension of St. Francis Xavier University, says,
from "the simple material things that are vital to human living"
up to "the more cultural and refining activities that make
life whole and complete."
A man does not get all of his education out of something
connected with his work or the management of his home. It
isn't enough for most of us to know how to tighten bolt number
979 and loosen nut number 841 as a way to earn our daily bread,
and to keep a budget in balance so as to run our family affairs
satisfactorily. Even the humblest of us has aspirations beyond
the purely necessary things of life. Here is where liberal
education comes in, to teach us to enjoy life. The millennium
to which utopians look forward - and most ordinary people
too, if we would only admit it - is a world filled with educated
people, people who not only know about, but live, lives of
liberty, tolerance, sympathy and beauty.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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