Problems of Content and Methods in Adult Education

Adult education out of school is now being differentiated as to content and methods. The problems involved can be followed in three sections of adult education, namely adult education at state schools without the adult part-time students leaving their employment, adult education at works schools and courses organized by factories and offices according to their needs for their employees, and, finally, out-of-school education covering a wide range of needs and interests, which is the section dealt with in this article. It distinguishes the central motivation of content from local and district practices. It shows how the methods used are dependent on content. It makes a distinction between pedagogically motivated and propaganda motivated adult education. As regards concrete instances of the dependence of methods of out-of-school adult education on its content, it mentions e. g. the dependence on the amount of educational content, the dependence on its structure, the dependence on the state of didactic elaboration of the content as well as on the existing traditions. In the two aspects of out-of-school adult education, namely content and methods, influences meet and mix on the level of the general state of cultural and educational work, on the level of the territorial unit in question, and on the level of organizational care.