Adult education in the United States

No day passes in the United States without the invention of new kinds of adult education programmes, in which new subjects are taught to new audiences of American adults whose educational needs have been neglected. Moreover, the established programmes grow ever larger. These learning activities take such a profusion of forms that we are forced to use abstract terms such as ‘programmes’ or even ‘experiences’ to encompass them. The motives of the continuing learners, are equally diverse; they study almost any subject one could mention, from the minutely practical to the sublimely abstract. Even now, almost every significant agency and institution in American society is involved, somehow, in the provision of these programmes, since the formal education system, though ever more deeply involved in adult education, can never meet all the educational requirements of these millions of adults.