Adult Education 1.
Voluntary learning in organized courses by mature men and women is called adult
education. Such education is offered to make people able to enlarge and
interpret their experience as adults. Adults may want to study something which
they missed in earlier schooling, get new skills or job training, find out about
new technological developments, seek better self-understanding, or develop new
talents and skills. 2. This kind of education may be in the
form of self-study with proper guidance through the use of libraries,
correspondence courses, or broadcasting. It may also be acquired collectively in
schools and colleges, study groups, workshops, clubs and professional
associations. 3. Modern adult education for large numbers of
people started in the 18th and 19th centuries with the rise of the Industrial
Revolution. Great economic and social changes were taking place: people were
moving from rural areas to cities; new types of work were being created in an
expanding factory system. These and other factors produced a need for further
education and re-education of adults. 4. The earliest programs
of organized adult education arose in Great Britain in the 1790s, with the
founding of an adult school in Nottingham and a mechanics institution in
Glasgow. Benjamin Franklin and some friends found the earliest adult education
institution in the U.S. in Philadelphia in 1727. 5. People
recognize that continued learning is necessary for most forms of employment
today. For example, parts of the adult population in many countries find it
necessary to take part in retraining programs at work or even to learn
completely new jobs. Adult education programs are springing up constantly to
meet these and other needs. The earliest organized adult education originated in ______.