9 quotes
Adult education more accurately defined begins where vocational education leaves off. Its purpose is to put meaning into the whole of life.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
Vocational education is designed to equip students with the proper means for arriving at their selected goals. Adult education goes beyond the means and demands new sanctions, new vindications of ends.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
In conventional education the student is required to adjust himself to an established curriculum; in adult education the curriculum is built around the student's needs and interests.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
Intelligence is goodness in the sense that one cannot purposefully or positively experience the good unless conscious experimentation in the realm of values accompanies activity. Habitual goodness lacks dynamic qualities—is in fact not goodness in any real or living sense.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
Education within the vicious circle becomes not a joyous enterprise but rather something to be endured because it leads to a satisfying end. But there can be no genuine joy in the end if means are irritating, painful.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
Too much of learning consists of vicarious substitution of some one else's experience and knowledge. Psychology is teaching us, however, that we learn what we do, and that therefore all genuine education will keep doing and thinking together.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
Education is life—not a mere preparation for an unknown kind of future living. Consequently all static concepts of education which relegate the learning process to the period of youth are abandoned. The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no endings.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
Intelligence is not merely the capacity which enables us to profit by experience; it is the function of personality which gives experience its past, present and future meaning. Habits belong to existence, intelligence to living. Life becomes a creative venture in proportion to the amount and quality of intelligence which accompanies conduct.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)
Education conceived as preparation for life locks the learning process within a vicious circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas and taught to think of learning as a process which ends when real life begins will make no better use of intelligence than the elders who prescribe the system. Brief and rebellious moments occur when youth sees this fallacy clearly, but alas, the pressure of adult civilization is too great; in the end young people fit into the pattern, succumb to the tradition of their elders—indeed, become elderly-minded before their time.
The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)