As I reflect on my views regarding adult education, it strikes me that I am obligated to confront an uncomfortable reality; namely, that I have rarely considered the subject deeply at all in the past, and certainly not as it warrants. I believe this is an ordinary lack, as so many of us equate adult education with only programs and courses necessitated by job demands or ambitions to gain the high school or college degree not possible earlier. I have then consistently failed to perceive adult education as, in fact, “real” education at all, seeing it more as a pragmatic measure removed from true learning. More importantly, this earlier dismissal of it by me now adds enormous dimension to the subject. Put another way, in considering adult education today, I feel I am moving towards a more true and valid idea of education itself, and the adult component only reinforces this expansive view.
To begin with, if I once associated adult education primarily with practical considerations, I was grossly undervaluing all education because the same considerations apply to childhood learning. That is, if the former is all about attending to social, economic, and cultural demands, so too is the latter, at least to an extent. We teach our children because, among other things, we expect them to take productive places in the world. We fully desire that, in this process, the child come to understand their own abilities and inclinations, as we want them to be guiding forces in their own development of learning. Nonetheless, there remain the powerful attachments of expectation and measurement. This being the case, there is less cause to stigmatize adult education, for it merely proceeds along the same lines. The key, I now believe, is to set aside these social parameters and attend to the inherent nature of the subject itself, and to definitively accept that education must be, first and foremost, a matter of personal learning and personal growth at any age.
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That in mind, I consider the import of the matter, and I am a little intimidated by the enormity of it. For the adult and the child, learning translates to something almost unfathomable: unlimited opportunity to expand the mind and the spirit. Once I embrace this as a reality, I am then permitted to reflect on actual differences between adult and child learning, and it seems to me that these differences do not diminish the potential in either. They are merely sides or dimensions of the same, essential process. For the child, there is the inevitable factor of learning as discovery, which then triggers interests and abilities not before realized. There is a kind of excitement in child education that belongs only to the sphere, for what is new can only be new once. Even the adult who enters into a world or field of learning previously unknown to them comes to it with life experience, and tools to better assimilate the learning. For the child, the process is more raw, or even explosive, and this then emphasizes the greater role of the teacher. Guidance must be given, but never at the cost of impeding natural inclinations. Structure must be taught in order to facilitate the learning, but this can never be allowed to overshadow the learning itself, or detract from its value. It is, as teachers of children know, a difficult task, as necessary form must cooperate with inspiration and the emergence of individual talents and directions.
For the adult learner, there seems to me a shifting of responsibility. The adult who reenters the arena of education comes, as noted, equipped with a history and the learning of life. Character is already formed, as are biases and preferences. This is, in plain terms, a very different animal than the child, in terms of receptivity to learning and a capability to attain discipline. No teacher, however skilled, can recreate in the adult the willingness to be taught that a child usually demonstrates. The responsibility to generate the effort, then, must come all the more from the adult student, for only that commitment can match the openness of the child. A good teacher here, then, must be prepared to “stand by,” in a sense, and guide based by the guidance provided by the adult. It is, in a word, a more cooperative process because it is, learning aside, one engaged in by adult peers. Trust is pivotal here. Trust is crucial with the child too, but in a different way: for the child, trust must arise from the sense that the teacher is invested in helping them develop and learn in ways that are new; for the adult, the trust must be based more on mutual respect, and something of a “contractual” understanding in that the adult is relying on the teacher to a less full extent. More exactly, I believe that the nature of adulthood alters the relationship simply because the adult learner lacks the innate vulnerability of the child, and the teacher must respond accordingly to this different stature.
All of this understood, it then seems to me that the adult and the child once again merge in the pursuit of learning. The differences acknowledged, the true nature of learning is then allowed to be explored and, just as with the child, the adult may be moved to explore ideas and studies never before entertained. My philosophy of adult education is, in fact, “childlike,” in that I insist on the potentials of learning to be just as expansive for all. As noted, there are practical reasons why many adults pursue education, but these are by no means obstacles to the greater learning then available. What matters is that an individual is attending school to develop further; once that circumstance is in place, the possibilities are truly immeasurable. If children are gifted with an enthusiasm prompted by the newness of learning, so too may an adult mind recapture that excitement, which arises when mind embraces learning. This is the core of the meaning of adult education as I see it. It equates to respecting the immense influence of learning itself, which ultimately is never restricted by age. It equates to teachers accepting that any mind may expand, and that the responsibility of the adult learner in making the effort to further their education is as valuable an instrument as the child’s innocence of learning. In a very real sense, adult education is nothing more than a variation on all learning, and as such is open to the incalculable opportunities all learning provides.
