The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., January 01, 1926, Page 15, Image 15

JANUARY 1926
Page Fifteen
under severe handicaps. The University of Califor
nia, through its Extension Division, has carried on a
program second to none. A university, however,
without the assistance and guidance of the people to
be educated labors under a tremendous handicap.
Professors and instructors in the universities are
largely research students and this is as it should be.
It is necessary for our future that we have scholars
and scientists discovering and opening up new fields
of knowledge. It does not always happen, however
that the discoverers of knowledge are those best fit­
ted to interpret it to the uneducated. Science de­
mands of its priests a seeking after truth as far re­
moved as possible from human prejudice and influence
and, consequently, it is often difficult for the uni-
versity professor to understand people sufficiently tc
adapt his teaching to those who have had little or no
previous educational experience. Some day we will
be intelligent enough to provide in our universities
chairs of research which require very little teaching
and to have teaching done by those with a fine appre­
ciation of human nature. We can not, therefore
hope to find in our universities at present enough
teachers skilled in the interpretation of knowledge to
serve the needs of the man in the street.
THE UNITED AMERICAN
politics should be studied after thirty and philosophy
after fifty. If we are to develop social engineers as
efficient as engineers and scientists dealing with the
physical aspects of the world, we must provide educa­
tion for our people at the time of life when they can
think most effectively about such questions. Unles
this is done, our enormous scientific development may
be our undoing. We have built a machine which we
can not control.
It is not only for society, however, that we need
adult education. In a highly mechanistic age such as
ours, the life of the individual workman is often ex­
ceedingly meager. For the man who works all day in
a factory where specialization has been carried out to
the last degree and each person performs a single task
with no understanding or interest in the ultimate
product, there is no opportunity for self-expression
or satisfaction to the instinct of workmanship. When
the working hours are spent in pushing a piece of tin
into a machine in the midst of a deafening roar and
hubbub, and the leisure hours in sitting in complete
inactivity looking at a moving picture, there is little
opportunity for growth and development on the part
of the individual. Mass production is probably a per­
manent aspect of our civilization. Even great leaders
like Gandhi in somewhat remote parts of the world
find insurmountable difficulties in returning to hand­
craft. If the working hours are to become more and
more unproductive for the individual, it will be neces­
sary to find in leisure something for the enrichment
of life of the millions of our workers.
At present in California, although there are large
numbers of adults attending classes, there is little of
unified purpose in the agencies offering these classes
and almost no contacts which are stimulating enough
to encourage a man or woman after a hard day’s
work to seek a liberal education. The whole university
idea was based upon the theory that most of the
education of the students did not come from the work
in classes, but from the association with one another.
It was for this purpose that residential colleges were
established. Some substitute for the residential col­
lege must be found if our education for adults is to
be anything but the amassing of facts. Where a
man or woman goes into a class in history, sees no
one, meets no one except the members of his own
class and sees them only as they sit about the room
listening to a lecture, there is little to encourage
further study. If the students in the history class
felt themselves a group which could talk over con­
troversial questions which come up in the course of
their formal work and could make contacts with
other groups studying psychology, literature and
similar subjects, there would be greater stimulation.
Ultimately, therefore, we should establish in every
community in the state centers for adult education,
with adequate reading rooms and meeting places
where social contacts could be made in addition tc
classroom study.
There are three important public agencies dealing
with the education of the adult in California today.
There is at present, however, no coordination of the
work of these agencies and each one, while making
tremendous effort to broaden its program, still labors
Our public schools have made tremendous strides
in extending their work into night school classes for
adults. Nevertheless, the schools are still bound by
adherence to curriculum and courses of study planned
for children and adolescents. It is a difficult concep­
tion for the average educator that maturity and ex­
perience make it possible for the adult man to grapple
with subject matter of university grade without hav­
ing gone through all the steps in the educational
process.
Our evening schools, therefore, are concerned
largely with three types of classes—vocational
classes, classes for those handicapped by a lack of
elementary education, such as illiterates and those
unable to speak English, and classes for high school
students who have barely completed their four-year
course and wish the credits required for graduation.
There must be considerable broadening of our even­
ing high school program if they are to become an
agency for liberal adult education.
The public library is more flexible than either ot
the other two educational institutions. They have
pointed the way by establishing a national program
of adult education. Librarians are tireless in assist­
ing readers in finding books and in directing the in­
terests of their clientele. Endless reading withou
adequate interpretation may create a bias in the-
minds of the readers. Libraries are, therefore, in
need of someone who can analyze the interests oi
their regular readers and direct them into classes
provided for the satisfaction of those interests. Pri­
vate initiative has supplied us with useful examples
of adult education. Women’s clubs and other ergani
zations have been establishing study classes for their
members» and calling upon the public agencies fo
their help. These give us some hope that a wider
distribution of interest in education can be found in
our communities if we search for it.