Adult Education
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.
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.
Modem 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.
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 US in Philadelphia in 1727.
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.