2. Adult education in America was built
on a premise that
“man is a creature who can be
improved if he makes the effort and
receives the proper and requisite
encouragement and assistance.”
(p. 8)
3. Primary emphasis on classic values:
Religion
Morals
Spirituality
Secular Knowledge
Secondary attention to:
Improved Economics
Standards for American Success
“Money Income” and
“Property Holdings”
4. Cotton Mather
Puritan
Authored Essays to Do Good
Proposed formation of neighborhood discussion groups
Offered group members points of consideration
Point #6 – “ Can any further methods be devised that
ignorance and wickedness may be chased from our
people in general . . . “ (p. 17)
5. Benjamin Franklin
Founding Father
Self-cultivation through private reading and study
Established the weekly JUNTO meetings
Topics and debates surrounded Morals, Politics and
Natural Philosophy
Members presented their own essays and engaged in
“clubbing” their books to a common library for their
collective benefit
Established a charter of libraries, “the mother of all the
North American subscription libraries “ (p. 19)
6. Timothy Claxton
English Mechanic
Conceived and formed The Boston Mechanics’ Institution
A society “to which a mechanic could resort, and hear
lectures on subjects calculated to aid him in his vocation.” (p.21)
Initially successful, but lost membership to similar societies
that sprung up to adopt similar measures
Eventually revamped and bolstered by financial resources to
strengthen “this intellectual and moral machinery” established
“in the capital of New England” (p.24)
7. Josiah Holbrook
Yale Graduate, Lecturer to Adults in Geology
Established Town Lyceums to diffuse useful knowledge
Voluntary associations of individuals to develop specific
local interests through meetings and other exercises
Dual purpose of improving average citizens and teachers
Goals were intertwined with improving district schools;
momentum shifted towards development of public schools
Advantage #2 – provide young people with
“books, apparatus, minerals, plants and other objects
calculated to acquaint them with the works and the laws of
their Creator” (p. 30)
8. John Lowell, Jr.
Boston Merchant
Established benefaction for the Lowell Institute
Promoted lectures for moral and intellectual improvement
Deeply committed to the Christian faith and insisted that
Christianity be a primary lecture topic
Other lecture topics included
Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology, Geology, Literature
and Language
Direction #2 – “. . . infidel opinions appear to me injurious
to society and easily to insinuate themselves into a man’s
dissertations on any subject . . . “ (p.39)
9. Edward Everett & George Ticknor
Distinguished Bostonians
Conceived of and collaborated in the management of the
Boston Public Library
Believed public libraries were the natural follow on to
public schooling
Everett, in making his case to the Mayor of Boston:
“ . . . those whose means do not allow them to purchase
books are too often debarred from them at the moment
when they would be most useful.“ (p.44)
10. Peter Cooper
Inventor and Philanthropist
Founded The Cooper Union
Institution for higher education devoted to Advancement of
Science and Art
Free to the working classes, admitted women and all races;
today all students are admitted on full scholarship
“ . . . neither my own religious opinions, nor the religious
opinions of any sect or party whatever, shall ever be made a
test or requirement, in any manner or form, of or for
admission to . . . the benefits of this institution.“ (p.56)
11. John H. Vincent
Methodist Bishop
Founder of the Chautauqua movement
Started as a residential summer instructional for Sunday-
school teachers, the Chautauqua Assembly
Believed that the true basis for education was religious, but
that secular knowledge would be useful to anyone who
chose to participate in a variety of subjects –
Science, Literature, Art, History, Languages
A popular, national program for reading, delivered by
mail, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
12. John H. Vincent
Methodist Bishop
Proposition #4 –
“While the training of the schools may discipline the
juvenile mind and thus give it an advantage as its powers
mature, the discipline of everyday life, in solving
problems of existence, support, and business, gives a
certain advantage to the so-called uneducated mind
during the middle period of life.“ (p. 73)
13. William Rainey Harper
Founder, University of Chicago
Disadvantages of education by correspondence – lacks
personal magnetism, lacks a class spirit, lacks the valuable
unconscious furnishing of information, temptation for
dishonesty, interruptions in student work
Advantages of education by correspondence – the habit
of exact statement, working at a slower, more thoughtful
pace, available to those who cannot attended oral classes
“The correspondence system would not, if it could, supplant
oral instruction, or be regarded as its substitute. There is a
field for each which the other cannot fill. Let each do its
proper work.” (p. 82)
14. Thomas Davidson
Scotsman, Private Teacher and Lecturer New York City
Authored The Education of Wage Earners
Believed intelligent citizenship is demanded of everyone
living in a democracy; promoted the idea of a “People’s” or
“Breadwinners” University following common school
Consist of two parts: A College for Culture, and
A Polytechnic Institute for Professional Training
“The higher education in this country is not given under
such circumstances that all can take advantage of it. . . .
What the breadwinners need is evening colleges and
evening polytechneums.“ (p. 99)
15. ASEUT
Ten Years Report of the
American Society for the Extension of University Teaching
For 26 years, this independent organization partially
subsidized and managed the courses and service of
University Extension for desirous adults who were unable
to attend a university
England - Oxford and Cambridge facilities
American – Harvard and University of Pennsylvania
An average 18,000 adults attended courses per year (p. 108);
The growth of libraries, library use, demand for travelling
libraries and higher standards for public lectures (p. 110)
16. Lester F. Ward
First President, American Sociological Society
Knowledge belongs to a social estate
All men are natural heirs to the estate of knowledge and
past achievements
Knowledge will always be increasing
Society’s duty to see that knowledge is assimilated by
more than a small fraction of its members
“A large part of the war and bloodshed in the world is over
matters that are already settled and may have been long
settled, but only in the minds of a select number who have
no means of placing the rest in possession of the
truth, which they possess.” (p.113)
17. Smith-Lever Act of 1914
Smith-Hughes Act of 1917
Nationalized vocational training specific to agriculture,
industry and the trades through grants to the states
For those who respond better to learning by doing
For education aimed at utility to take a dignified place
by the side of education for culture
Connect education with life by making it purposeful
Train vocational teachers and supplement their salaries
“Vocational education . . . is needed as a wise business
investment for this nation, because our National prosperity
and happiness are at stake, and our position in the markets
of the world cannot otherwise be maintained.” (p. 117)
18. Alexander Meiklejohn
Educator; President, Amherst College; Dean, Brown University
A proponent of democratic ideals and a liberal education, he
called for the ‘return to the book’ at that year’s annual
American Library Association (ALA) conference
“I want to see every agency . . . in America at work for the
education of our older people. We want the workmen
educated. We want parents educated. We want everybody
educated. Everything that can be done in America for the
education of our people must be done. And those who are in
charge of the books seem to me to be at the strategic point.”
(p.128)
Note: ALA’s Board on Library and Adult Education est. 1926
19. American Association for Adult Education (1925)
“. . . to promote the development and improvement of adult
education in the United States . . . . (p. 137)
President’s Commission on Higher Education (1947)
Colleges and universities are best equipped to continue the
education of the adult population due to their resources
Programs “. . . must be fitted in content, methods, and aims to
the adult student as he is, not as the college or the professor
thinks he should be.” (p. 132)
Adult Education Association of the U.S.A. (1951)
“. . . to further the concept of education as a process continuing
throughout life . . . “ (p. 138)
20. Oral Book Report by Doreen D’Amico
University of South Florida
ADE 6966 Final Master’s Seminar
Fall 2013
References
Editor's Notes
This book, published in 1959, is second in the Classics in Education series and provides a 250-year retrospective of thinking by Americans on the subject of adult education. The book is a collection of essays edited by C. Hartley Grattan. Grattan was a historian and free-lance writer in NYC for 30 years, published in magazines like Scribners and Harper’s, and finished his career as Professor Emeritus of History at the U of Texas, according to the school’s In Memoriam.
A common thread in the essays is that Adult . . . . The importance of this are the implications for an improved society, man being the root of bothAmerican institutions and a democratic society at large.
Emphasis on education in the 18th and 19th centuries was on classic values. Improved economics was a by-product of improving members of society through urgency of “the diffusion of knowledge.”
The themes of improvement and self-improvement spring from our Puritan beginnings.
Benjamin Franklin was the epitome of self-directed learning, believing in self-cultivation . . . but also one of the original adult educators . . .
Claxton took adult education in the direction of vocational interests . . .
As energy shifted towards the public school movement, the Lyceums drifted away . . . Holbrook enumerated 9 advantages of the town lyceum . . . . Number #2
John Lowell, Jr. left detailed instructions accompanying his will for the implementation of a formal lecture series for adults . . . Direction #2 is a prescription for appointing lecturers who unequivocally believed in the teachings of the Old and New Testaments.
EE and GT were highly educated and accomplished Bostonians . . .
Peter Cooper was highly motivated by his faith to infuse education with Christian values . . . but he strongly believed in freedom of religion, as in this quote.
As the movement grew, a popular reading program was launched so that people all over the country could participate in their own neighborhoods.
Harper is best known as the founder of U of Chicago, was a staff professor of Greek and Latin at Chautauqua and in a unique position to evaluate education by correspondence, what I think of as distance learning in the 19th century.
Davidson was born and educated in Scotland, came to the U.S. to live and work . . . . on the eve of the twentieth century he articulated what he called the “chief educational problem” facing America in the new century – that being the education of the working class.
The idea was borrowed from England, where Oxford and Cambridge lent their facilities . . . Harvard and U of Pennsylvania helped to accommodate the American program. Biggest challenges were finding competent teachers and ongoing funding.
Ward was also a professor of sociology at Brown University. He couches adult education in the broad-brush stroke of society’s responsibility towards its people.
The early twentieth century was a pivotal point in American education . . . . Building on the success of apprenticeships, Congress saw a significant need to promote vocational training . . . and the shift towards economic factors and away from moral, religious and cultural factors, took hold.
