What is Adult Education?

They Came to the Castle is a film about a group of people participating in a course on film making at a residential college for adult education. For a few years after the trauma of WWII, Lambton Castle Residential College for Adult Education was run under the auspices of Durham County Council Education Committee. Adult education as a whole reflects a specific philosophy about learning and teaching based on the assumption that adults are self-motivated to learn, that they are able and willing to take responsibility for the learning, and that the learning itself should respond to their needs.

In practice, adult education can take three basic forms. Structured learning typically takes place in an education or training institution. Non-formal learning opportunities may be provided through the activities of civil society organizations and groups. And informal learning goes on all the time in daily life through work, family, community or leisure activities. Of recent decades systematic and sustained self-education practice has been starved of time and resources. Residential colleges like Lambton Castle were used by

"Small groups of aspiring adults who desire to keep their minds fresh and vigorous; who begin to learn by confronting pertinent situations; who dig down into the reservoirs of their secondary facts; who are led in the discussion by teachers who are also seekers after wisdom and not oracles: this constitutes the setting for adult education the modern quest for life’s meaning." Eduard C. Lindeman 2The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)

Eduard C. Lindeman (May 9, 1885 – April 13, 1953) was born in St. Clair, Michigan, one of ten children of German immigrant parents, Frederick and Frederika (von Piper) Lindemann. Orphaned at an early age, Lindeman gained work experience through jobs as stable cleaner, nurseryman, gravedigger, brickyard worker, and deliverer of groceries while attending formal schooling only intermittently. At age 22, he gained admittance to Michigan State College with academic skills well below average in the areas of reading and writing abilities. Despite this, as an undergraduate he authored essays, poetry, editorials, and a four-act play. Lindeman also wrote one of the first books on community development, was an early explorer of group work, and worked to extend popular education. He was a pioneer on many interlocking fronts- a pioneer social scientist with an allegiance to both science and to society and its processes and also a pioneer in adult education and social philosophy.

"Adult education is a co-operative venture in non-authoritarian, informal learning the chief purpose of which is to discover the meaning of experience; a quest of the mind which digs down to the roots of the preconceptions which formulate our conduct; a technique of learning for adults which makes education coterminous with life, and hence elevates living itself to the level of an experiment."

What is Adult Education? (1925) p. 3

A purpose of adult education might be to not only sustain the democratic society, but to even challenge and improve its social structure. Presently, a common problem in adult education is the lack of professional development opportunities for adult educators. The course on film making at Lambton Castle College was tutored by veteran amateur film maker George Cummins, a member of Newcastle and District Amateur Cinematographers Association. Over the decades since the film was made, adult education, as defined by Lindeman and others, has faded right away. 'Education' has come to mean nothing more than training for paid employment on terms dictated by the corporate world.

"Adult education will become an agency of progress if its short-term goal of self-improvement can be made compatible with a long-term, experimental but resolute policy of changing the social order."

The Meaning of Adult Education (1926)

The Yorkshire (Adult) Educational Association seeks to assist social action groups in furthering that end. NOTE: Wikipedia on Adult Education was a useful source for this article. 

Note that the film They Came to a Castle can be seen via www.douglassocialcredit.com 

Also note that the film They Came to a Castle is made available by Yorkshire Film Archive.