The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990.

Overview & Synopsis

This book traces the history of adult and continuing education in the United States from 1750 through 1990. The following topics are among those examined in the book's 12 chapters: literature, philosophy, and self-education in the 18th century; uses of knowledge in the antebellum period (law and learning, piety and learning, commerce and culture); strenuous learning and the diffusion of knowledge (self-, formal, and intermittent education); liberal and practical education of the industrial classes (useful arts, mechanics' institutes, land-grant colleges); the homely renaissance, 1870-1900 (critics of the public, gender and culture, women's clubs, cultural idealism); the decline of culture, 1890-1900 (university extension and the working class, libraries and the public, public libraries); shift from useful knowledge to job improvement, 1870-1930 (corporate revolution, correspondence schools); higher education and challenges of job improvement (evening law schools, emerging profession of business); education of the public, 1900-1925 (health/parent education, community development); new conceptions of liberal education and the "electric fire of thought" (humanization of knowledge, workers' education, folk schools); the art of living (leisure, adult education and the arts, vocation and avocation); and creation of a learning society (junior colleges, GI Bill, continuing education, knowledge industry, and adult education under siege). Included are 1,670 endnotes. (MN)