Part 1.

The Promise and the Future

Adult and continuing education continues to move toward the vision of a better society through education, although the field is not yet organized.

Has Adult and Continuing Education Fulfilled Its Early Promise? William S. Griffith

Adult education as a field of practice has had its share of visionaries who have provided education for adults in the belief that it is the primary means of improving the quality of a person’s life. In the United States and Canada, pioneers who have regarded education as a way to a fuller, more abundant life have struggled to realize their dreams but typically have not considered themselves to be adult educators. Instead, they have sought to improve some aspect of life through education and have been successful despite their lack of formal preparation in adult education as a field of study. Without the camaraderie and support of a professional association, they have performed intuitively, enthusiastically, and charismatically.

A critical distinction can be made between educators of adults and adult educators. Educators of adults have focused goals that typically address pressing problems in a single sector of the field of adult educa- tion, while adult educators have broad aspirations for the entire field. Adult educators have a high regard for professionalism, specialized aca- demic preparation for their work, and a concern for the coordination of the entire field, while educators of adults mainly have practical concerns and less grandiose ambitions and typically address single programmatic

New lhrrcrions for Continuing Education. no 44 San Francisco Jouey-Bass, Winter 1989 5 B A Quiglry (ed ) FulfrNmg the Pmmue of Adulf and conlmumg Lfucakm

issues through education. In examining the extent to which adult and continuing education has fulfilled its early promise, we must keep this distinction in mind. W. H. Stacy, one of the first two educators of adults to earn a doctorate

in the academic field of adult education, was convinced that integrating and coordinating adult education was essential to the orderly develop- ment of the field and to the efficient provision of learning opportunities for adults. He argued for the establishment of adult education councils in urban areas and on a statewide basis, though he recognized that only as people understand one another’s motives and philosophies can they truly cooperate. This would require adult educators to see and appreciate a more inclusive whole (Stacy, 1935). He recognized the difficulty of getting people to accept this vision. “Described in general terms an inte- grated adult education program may appear to be a vague unreality” (p. 107). Fifty-four years later the vision of an integrated adult education field remains a “vague unreality” to the majority of practitioners in educational work with adults, although the professionalizing element continues to strive for the realization of that vision.

Adult Education as a Social Movement

At least as early as the eighteenth century, educators of adults were attempting to use education to improve the conditions of human life, spiritually if not physically, by teaching illiterate adults to read the Scrip- tures. Other educators have addressed the conditions of life of those lack- ing political influence and have attempted to empower them through various educational programs. Still others have aimed to enrich the lives of those who were already quite comfortable financially, by stimulating them to become acquainted with the humanities.

In this century leaders of organizations of adult educators began their work with a commitment to nonvocational adult education, assuming that the vocational needs of the adult population were already being given adequate attention. Educators of adults in the 1930s focused on the use of education to cope with the problems of the depression. The Anti- gonish movement in Nova Scotia exemplifies the desire of socially aware educators of adults to improve the conditions of life for the poor by educating them about cooperatives. The leaders had a vision of a better life for their learners through education and action.

Today the demographic situation and different employment oppor- tunities have focused attention on education for the workplace. In each generation educators of adults have addressed social problems through education for action. Such efforts have usually involved new educators rather than those who have been a part of established, professionally oriented institutions and associations.

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Assessing the contributions of Eduard C. Lindeman to the develop- ment of adult education in America, David Stewart (1987) has identified Lindeman’s positions on adult education. Lindeman advocated that socie- tal problems should trigger associated adult education programs. Possibly the most important societal test of the value of education for adults is the extent to which new programs are developed to deal rationally with emerging social problems. Whether or not this development is part of a coordinated adult education movement is less important.

Currently the United States and Canada are troubled with issues such as drug use, abortion, and human rights. Partisans of polarized views are unable to accept information that conflicts with the conclusions they have already reached. Some have suggested that the time for rationality has passed and that the only approach to take is confrontation. While the strident zealots on each side can be heard repeating mindless slogans, the absence of an organized educational effort to deal with these troubling issues suggests that adult educators are either unaware of the educational need or unprepared to face the hostility of those whose position is founded largely on emotion. If adult education is to be of value in con- fronting the most trying challenges of society, then those who call them- selves adult educators ought to address the questions and introduce an element of rationality into the debates. In fact, without an educational approach and the cultivation of a willingness to examine the issues afresh (with due consideration to the complexity of the problem), there is little hope that these problems can be resolved.

Adult Education as an Emerging Profession

Human beings have been educating one another from the beginning, but only in this century has the designation adult educator come to carry a special meaning. With the founding of a doctoral program in this field at Teachers College, Columbia University in the 1930s, the term began to take on a restricted meaning. The realization is slowly growing that there is a body of knowledge and specific skills useful to the effective practice of adult education. The vision of academically prepared adult educators has been around for at least sixty years, but clearly most adult education is still carried on by individuals who have not had the benefits of professional training. The education of adults continues with only a small portion of the effort being directed by those who are seeking to establish the adult education profession.

Conceptions of Adult Education Leadership

Today nearly 4,000 persons in the United States and Canada have earned doctoral degrees in adult education. Still, numerous skeptics believe that personal characteristics are more important in educating

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adults than any skills and insights acquired through systematic graduate study. Cyril Houle (1964) observed that it remains to be proven whether those who undergo a long period of formal academic preparation can exert as much influence as individuals who have based their teaching, administration, and leadership performance on their general education background and on their character and personality (pp. 69-83). Even today most deans and directors of university extension divisions rarely seek out those with graduate preparation in this field when they hire new staff-a situation that should concern the Commission of Professors of Adult Education, the group that provides leadership in the devel- opment, recognition, and improvement of such graduate programs. It is sometimes difficult for those who have been academically prepared within the field of adult education to accept that there have always been, and will likely continue to be, insightful, effective leaders among educa- tors of adults who do not regard their primary expertise as that of an adult educator.

Searching for Identity Through Associations

Those who attempt to discern the boundaries of the field are frequently perplexed by the absence of a dominant institutional form such as can be found in all other levels of education. They are further confused because there is no professional society of adult educators, since, in other fields lacking a common institutional form, members of a professional society define the limits of the field. The lack of a professional society of adult educators and of a dominant institutional form accounts for the difficulty that both academicians and practitioners encounter when they try to get a clear image of the adult eduction field [Griffith, 1970, p. 1711.

Sixty years after adult education was first accepted as a field of uni- versity study, the outlines of the field are popularly perceived as indis- tinct. The vision of an adequately defined field remains nearly as distant today as it was then.

Since 1926 three national associations of adult educators have at- tempted, in succession, to provide a unifying and coordinating influence on the education of adults in the United States. In 1926 the American Association for Adult Education (AAAE) was founded. It was succeeded in 1951 by the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A. (AEA), which in turn was followed in 1983 by the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE). The Canadian Association for Adult Education ( C U E ) was founded in 1935 and has not chosen to reorganize or change its name, which makes identifying it a bit easier for practicing adult educators, the public, and political leaders. Changes in names, the confusion attendant on the development of new constitutions, and the

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associated problems of identity have not helped to establish a clear identity for the field.

The AAAE chose not to adopt a formal definition of adult education, preferring instead to allow the field to emerge freely (Knowles, 1977). The decision to encourage flexibility even at the cost of confusing supporters and allies, some of whom were seeking a tidy, well-defined field, affects us even today in the widespread uncertainty over what makes a person an adult educator and what constitutes adult education. Fur- thermore, the appropriate constituents for a professional organization remains debatable.

The AAAE’s principal function was to make recommendations to the Carnegie Corporation, which planned and coordinated activities for other organizations and channeled resources to them. The corporation main- tained the view that the field could become self-aware if appropriate research studies were conducted and the results widely disseminated. As educators of adults began to recognize that they had common concerns, they would see the value in a national movement. This vision has yet to be realized.

The Carnegie Corporation emphasized the need for training adult education leaders, and it supported training programs in various institu- tions. In 1933 it provided a grant to Teachers College, Columbia Uni- versity for fellowships in adult education, followed by another grant in 1934-35 for appointing a professor to devote attention to the development and evaluation of adult education teacher training (Knowles, 1977). The corporation’s vision of professionally prepared adult educators providing leadership to the field bore fruit as the idea of graduate programs in adult education was adopted by universities across the United States and Canada.

The National Education Association (NEA) had established a Depart- ment of Immigrant Education in 1921 (later renamed the Department of Adult Education) to serve members in the public schools. The NEA department was to coordinate the study and solution of problems in the field of adult education (Knowles, 1977).

The AAAE emphasized the theory, philosophy, and national prestige of the adult education movement; the NEA department stressed practice, social action, and relationship building. The department devoted its publications to teaching techniques, proposals for legislation, and pro- fessional development, all of which addressed the perceived needs of practitioners (Knowles, 1977).

In 1951 members of the AAAE and the NEA department approved the dissolution of the two organizations and founded the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A. “The ‘field’ of adult education for which the new association was to perform a coordinative function was perceived as being a rather random, unsystematized scattering of individuals (it was

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not clear how organizations fitted into the picture) with certain common interests” (Knowles, 1977, p. 219). This perception of the field persists today despite the heroic efforts of adults educators and their associations to clarify the situation. The subsequent establishment of the AAACE, combining the AEA and the National Association for Public Continuing and Adult Education (NAPCAE) in 1983, has been the most recent attempt to bring these two groups of adult educators together.

Membership. The AAAE began with 192 charter members in 1926. The number of members grew slowly; by 1941 it had reached 1,500 (Knowles. 1977, p. 197). When the Camegie Corporation discontinued supporting the AAAE, the association increased its efforts to enlarge the membership. By 1946 membership had grown to 3,000, but this level could not be maintained; it declined to about 2,500 and remained there for the rest of the association’s existence (pp. 197-198).

The AEA inherited 2,160 members from the AAAE and the NEA Department of Adult Education. By June 1954 membership had increased to slightly over 5,000. Through a massive advertising effort underwritten by a grant from the Fund for Adult Education, the association conducted a major membership campaign, resulting in a total membership of 13,480 by June 1955. Despite joint membership plans with state associations, membership by the end of 1961 was down to about 3,100. The visions of the leaders had proved overly ambitious. The ability of the association to retain members was inadequate for maintaining the artificially induced growth that the fund had underwritten.

“In 1954-1955 a professional fund-raising firm was engaged to orga- nize a comprehensive contributions campaign, and after an intensive study of the situation it concluded that the AEA did not have either a type of membership that could be used for fund-raising or sufficiently challenging goals to attract large contributions” (Knowles, 1977, p. 243). It is unpleasant to note that even today the field of adult education is seriously underfunded, and the AAACE, with some 3,450 members, continues to face financial difficulties.

Many adult educators have found it useful to maintain membership in at least two kinds of associations and have had difficulty comprehend- ing what they have in common with those in other sectors that would serve as a basis for bringing the entire field together in an umbrella organization. Such an effort had been made in 1966 when an ad hoc committee of adult education organizations was formed to plan the 1969 Galaxy Conference. A total of 2,508 representatives of twenty organiza- tions (eight of which held joint annual meetings) attended the conference. They adopted a constitution for a new organization, the Coalition of Adult Education Organizations (CAEO), whose purposes included serv- ing as a base for cooperation and action in promoting adult and continu- ing education (Knowles, 1977).

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In February 1989 the CAEO issued a position paper directed to the president of the United States and the lOlst Congress advocating greatly expanded federal support for adult education programs. In that paper the CAEO claimed to represent twenty-seven national organizations, including elementary and secondary public schools, postsecondary insti- tutions, industry, business and labor, the volunteer sector, and the pop- ulation of adult learners, all sharing a common interest in enhancing educational opportunities for adult learners (Coalition . . . , 1989). Unfor- tunately the CAEO has not achieved a high level of visibility in its score of years and is not popularly regarded as the voice of adult education in the United States. The vision of a coordinating national organization has yet to be realized.

Linking Research and Practice

As the academic study of adult education has expanded, dissertation topics have tended to shift away from the practical problems of adult education administrators and teachers toward the more theoretical con- cerns within discipline-oriented investigations. Rather than addressing the apparent difficulties in the organization, administration, instruction, and evaluation of programs, the doctoral programs have emulated the approach of the social sciences, producing dissertations that primarily advance theoretical knowledge in the disciplines, even when the practical applicability of such inquiries may be nil. The response of practicing educators of adults and administrators of adult education programs has been to question the utility of such research. The early vision of research as the binding element for the field seems to have been abandoned as researchers concentrate on developing their sector of the field, assigning a concern for unification, coordination, and practical, operating-level matters to an inferior position on the list of research priorities.

Adult Education, Race, and Ethnicity

Every nation has developed forms of education for adults that reflect national characteristics and cultural influences. Not every group that has contributed to adult education in the United States and Canada, however, has had its contribution documented. In Canada the promise of a truly bilingual nation and the persistence of the Francophone presence in Quebec and New Brunswick have resulted in a greater awareness of the diversity of both the English- and French-based approaches than is found across the United States. Graduate students reading the history of adult education usually find that their texts have been written from the per- spective of a dominant white Anglo-Saxon culture. The best known comparative study of the influence of culture on the policy and practice

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of adult education was written by Hayden Roberts (1982) and remains the single scholarly reference in English. The field has just begun to recognize and appreciate the contributions of educators of adults who are not part of the establishment, and a great deal of work remains to document and disseminate the nature of these efforts.

Capacity to Dream

Knowles, writing in 1977, argued that the adult education field was in an early s t a g e of development, moving toward unity and coordination under a national organization that would be truly representative of the field’s components. While it is undoubtedly true that the field is still in an early stage of development, new educators and programs continue to emerge, though not as part of a master plan. Indeed, the concept of a unified field is more an expression of a cherished belief than an empiri- cally grounded idea. Further, no national organization has emerged that is able to attract a majority of practicing adult educators in their diverse agencies and programs. The national organization described here may be practically unattainable.

Many visions of adult education have been held by creative and exem- plary educators of adults in the history of the United States and Canada, but no single view has captured the hearts and minds of a majority of these educators. Those who have been given the appellation adult educa- tm either because of their academic preparation or because of their mem- bership in associations that honor this designation, are still only a small fraction of the number of individuals who are engaged today in the education of adults. If educators of adults as a whole fail to recognize that they are engaged in a common endeavor, it is unlikely that the field will ever acquire the characteristics of an established profession. Never- theless, so long as dedicated men and women devote their lives to the education of fellow citizens and so long as the mass of professionally prepared adult educators develops, there is hope that in due time both government and the public will come to appreciate and support the grand promise of lifelong education for all.

The Acts of the Apostles states, “your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (217). As more educators of adults perceive themselves as adult educators, there is every reason to be optimistic about the continuing progress of the field of adult and contin- uing education in fulfilling its promise. Little would indicate, however, that the gamut of adult education programs and the range of individuals engaged in the education of adults are likely to come together in a single organization. But as long as sensitive and enthusiastic individuals are free to mount programs of education for adults based on visions of a better life, and as long as there is room for visionaries to try new ideas

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without first satisfying arbitrary criteria for their qualifications, the edu- cation of adults will remain a lively, responsive, and socially useful activ- ity, with or without the maturation of an adult education profession.

References

Coalition of Adult Education Organizations Board of Directors. “An Action Agenda for the Administration and the lOlst Congress.” Washington, D.C.: Coalition of Adult Education Organizations, February 24, 1989.

Griffith, W. S. “Adult Education Institutions.” In R. M. Smith, G. E Aker, and J. R. Kidd (eds.), Handboo& of Adult Education. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Houle, C. “The Emergence of Graduate Study in Adult Education.” In Adult Education Association of the U.S.A., Adult Education: Outlines of an Emerging Field of University Study. Chicago: Adult Education Association of the U.S.A.,

Knowles, M. S. A History of the Adult Education Mouement in the United States. (Rev. ed.) Huntington, N.Y.: Krieger, 1977.

Roberts, H. Culture and Adult Education: A Study of Alberta and Quebec. Edmon- ton: University of Alberta Press, 1982.

Stacy, W. H. Integration of Adult Education: A Sociological Study. Columbia University Contributions to Education, Teachers College Series. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1935.

Stewart, D. W. Adult Learning in America Eduard Lindeman and His Agenda for Lifelong Education. Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 1987.

1964, pp. 69-83.

William S. Griffith is professor of adult education at the Uniuersity of British Columbia and has been elected presi&nt of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education for 1990-91.