Education on Adult Level Demands More Attention

"Probably never before has a university-dominated group of educators presented a blue-print for education on all levels," hailed Benjamin Fine, of the New York Times, last week. In its final chapter, on its final level, the Committee Report discusses the inadequacies of postschool and out-of-school education of adults and young people in the American community.

"There is little doubt," the Committee declares, "that as much now turns on what happens out of school and after school as on what happens in the classrooms." Embarking from this point, the Report demonstrates the enormous effect of the community upon the postschool character, beliefs, and thought habits of the individual.

"If life in the community fails to illustrate the teaching of the schools, the individual is more apt to conform to the community mores than he is to hold fast to the teaching of his school or college," it is asserted. "And yet the salvation of the community depends upon those individuals whose education gives them the moral and intellectual strength to stand out when necessary against the majority."

Cut Break in Learning

Community-sponsored adult education, says the Committee, should make every attempt "to keep the break in learning between school and adult life as brief as possible," and it is recommended that the school itself "be the civic center for adult education."

"The great mass of those . . . in need of the awakening and diversification and development of their curiosities are untouched" by present adult education methods where they exist, it is maintained. "Humble people, especially, are often barred off . . . from chances which should be especially theirs. They need skillful encouragement of a sort which experienced teachers of adults know best how to give."

Ideally, the Report holds, graduates of our schools "would have been readied to conduct their own education throughout the rest of their lives for themselves." "Education is primarily self-teaching. But no realist will question that, as things are, relatively few adults left to their own devices will go far."

Recognizing that democracy demands the participation of an informed and intelligent electorate, the Committee urges on the U. S. Community a forceful program of postschool education but sees as "the bottleneck of adult education programs" a shortage of skillful human experts.