make to improve city life and urban education for a larger number of our citizens. In the majority of our large cities-if not all of them there exist areas of cultural deprivation. These depressed areas usually can be identified as the places where the newcomers to the city first settle. It is almost an axiom that new families tend to settle in the most economically depressed neighborhoods. The new families many times change the ethnic composition of the neighborhood. This change, in turn, affects the churches, schools, clubs, service centers, hospitals, and other organizations in the area. These institutions may require major changes if they are to be used by newcomers. Increasingly, citizens need to see that schools are not for children alone. Those adults need to develop visions of a better life not only for themselves but also for their peers. The need to provide "fill the gap" cultural and educational opportunities for this growing group of American citizens should be of paramount importance in any wellorganized adult education program.

HUMAN RELATIONS IN THE CITY

The urban city dweller has split the atom and hurled men into space, but we have not learned to live together as one family of man, even in our cities. Now we are seeking systematically for intelligent life on other planets, even as we go on bombing the houses of people next door, insisting on restrictive covenants and smearing swastikas on their places of worship. The historian, Toynbee, has pointed out that there have been 20 great civilizations of the past, each one of which came to its height of power and glory proudly confident that it would last forever. But nearly all of them have gone down and disappeared into the dusty pages of history, because new conditions of life produced new challenges that they could not or would not meet.

As citizens in our urban areas we must admit that we have problems of intergroup relationships. Just because we may not have open tensions and clashes such as occurred in Oxford, Miss., racial riots, are we going to be seduced into civic celibacy, stoutly asserting by word or deed that education has no responsibility for improving the quality of living in the community and in the school itself? Unfortunately some teachers, some administrators, take that position in some places. We clearly must recognize intergroup relations as the No. 1 human problem in our cities today.

Adult education's role is not that of trying to solve all the problems of the community. All of the schools can't do that; certainly they can't do it alone. But adult education can teach citizens a critical awareness of the great gulf between our democratic ideals and our somewhat primitive human relationships.

Bonaro Overstreet wrote some lines which are apropos to the individual in a teeming city:

You say the little efforts that I make

Will do no good.

They will never prevail,

To tip the hovering scale

Where Justice hangs in the balance.

I don't think

I ever thought they would

But I am prejudiced beyond debate

In favor of my right to choose which side

Shall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.

With courage we can succeed in making our cities beautiful with devotion and great fortitude we shall have courage and if we have courage we shall not lose hope.

CHAPTER II

TRENDS IN ADULT EDUCATION: FOR WHOM AND FOR WHAT?

On January 29, 1963, the late President John F. Kennedy in his message on education said:

For the Nation, increasing the quality and availability of education is vital to both our national security and our domestic well-being. A free nation can rise no higher than the standard of excellence set in its schools and colleges. Ignorance and illiteracy, unskilled workers and school dropouts-these and other failures of our educational system breed failures in our social and economie system: delinquency, unemployment, chronic dependence, a waste of human resources, a loss of productive power and purchasing power, and an increase in tax-supported benefits. The loss of only 1 year's income due to unemployment is more than the total cost of 12 years of education through high school. Failure to improve educational performance is thus not only poor social policy, it is poor economics.

At the turn of the century, only 10 percent of our adults had a high school or college education. Today such an education has become a requirement for an increasing number of jobs. Yet nearly 40 percent of our youths are dropping out before graduating from high school, only 43 percent of our adults have completed high school, only 8 percent of adults have completed college, and only 16 percent of our young people are presently completing college.

It is a precarious undertaking to attempt to plot trends in anything, and particularly so when we are concerned with such fluid and unstable things as the needs and desires of modern man-especially modern American man. But that is precisely the problem we are faced with when we consider trends in adult education. For adult education must stem from the needs and desires of the adult.

THE POPULATION TO BE SERVED

Why are the adults needing education, and what changes are taking place among them which will, or should, drastically influence the trends in the amount, kind, and quality of education provided them? 1. The young adult

Of the approximately 110 million adults in the population, about 8 million are from 18 to 20 years of age. Nearly one-half of these, or 3 million, are working and are not in school. About 114 million are neither working nor in school. Only about 1 million are in school. It is estimated that by 1965 there will be about 10 million young adults 18 to 20 years of age. How many will be working and how many will be continuing their education is, of course, anybody's guess. If present trends are reliable, we should expect a much larger proportion than at present engaging in some kind of educational pursuit. If we should add to the 18 to 20 group, the 16- and 17-yearolds-who are also the concern of adult educators-we should have a huge population group that would present a real challenge to adult. education.

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What are some of the needs and desires of these young adults? They have reached a period in their lives of real tension; when there is conflict between the forces of youth and adulthood. Their desires. and often their responsibilities, are of an adult nature. Yet, their experiences, and often the attitude of society, continually remind them of their youth.

These young adults are faced with the problems of choosing and preparing for an occupation, and of entering upon work. The complexity of our modern occupational life demands types of training, experience, and maturity which are not possessed by these young adults. In earlier days the simple tasks involved in the average job could be, and often were, performed by children. Today many employers are reluctant to hire workers younger than 18 or 19.

While these young adults are seeing the age of entering upon work increasing almost daily, their needs and desires, which require employment for their fulfillment, are also growing. It is during this period when their natural and wholesome interests in courtship and marriage should be nurtured and directed. But plans for home and family life can be made only on the basis of an assured and steady income.

The social and emotional qualities upon which civic interest and participation rest are beginning to flower during the period of young adulthood. It is during these years-between 16 and 21-when the citizenship potential of our population is perhaps the greatest. Yet, it is precisely during these years that the young people are most neglected. They exist in a kind of civic no man's land. Not being of voting age, the politician has no time for them. On the other hand, the civic-minded adult is too "busy" with his civic, social, and service club responsibilities to bother about them. They are too old to be Boy Scouts and too young to participate in the junior chamber of commerce. Since a majority of them are no longer in the church or in school they have very few ties with organized activities. Hence, they become civic, social, and often moral "floaters."

Because of the many problems indicated above, and of the forces operating during this development period, young adults become selfconscious, doubtful, skeptical, and sometimes cynical. This period becomes a kind of hiatus in their lives, when the constructive agencies of society have the least contact with, and hold upon, or appeal to them. It is not difficult to see how they can and do become easy prey to so many evil and destructive forces. This situation presents not only an opportunity to adult education; it presents a challenge and an obligation.

2. Older adults

One of the chief characteristics of American life is the aging of our population. Fifty years ago only 18 percent of our population was 45 years of age and over. In 1940, it has risen to 27 percent. It is estimated that by 1980 it will be 36 percent. The growing longevity of our population has caused an even more spectacular rise in the percentage of persons who are 65 years old and over. In 1900, persons in this age group constituted only 4 percent of the total population. In 1940, they constituted 7 percent. It is estimated to rise to 12 percent by 1980.

This tremendous increase in the proportion of older people is hav-. ing a significant impact upon all phases of society. It will influence general trends in needs, interests, and desires, and hence in the kind of education required to enable all to live a full, wholesome, responsible, and satisfying life.

The entire population needs to be informed concerning the present. situation and trends in regard to the aging, and the multiplicity and urgency of the problems created by the fact of aging. Older people themselves need help in making the required adjustment, and society in general needs help in changing its attitude toward aging and its consequent problems.

Among some of the problems posed by the aging process are (a) finding employment suitable to the physical and mental capacities of older people; (b) assisting them in understanding the biological process of aging; (c) helping older people to adjust to a retirement status; (d) providing assistance to older people in meeting family problems; (e) counseling them regarding their own continued intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth; (f) finding common problems and interests among the older people themselves; (g) discovering community enterprises to which older persons may contribute; (h) encouraging creative expression among the aged; (i) helping them find wholesome recreation suitable to their age and abilities; (j) assisting them to maintain a degree of physical and mental health consistent with their age, and to make a satisfactory adjustment to those disabilities which cannot be remedied; and (k) helping younger persons, employers, and the communities generally to change their attitudes toward aging and the aged.

3. Middle age group

Adults in the middle group (age 21 to 44) comprise about one-third of the population. Over the years their proportion to the total has remained fairly constant. This group requires adult education no less than the other two groups mentioned. In fact, because this is the period of greatest activity, and because of the complexity of the activities in which they engage, this group presents some of the most difficult problems which adult education is called upon to face. In general, this is the period of greatest production in all aspects of one's life, particularly in the fields of work, of citizenship, and of home and family living. What a person does during this period, and how he does it, depends largely on his preparation during young adulthood. And the success with which he meets the aging process depends on the extent to which he has prepared for it during this middle period.

Adult educators have a responsibility to identify the problems of the general adult population in a community; to help the community see and understand the nature of the problems; to give guidance to the community in its attempt to provide adult education opportunities; and to organize and conduct adult education programs suitable to the different groups to be served, and to the demands of a changing, complex society.

DEMAND FOR ADULT EDUCATION

It has been estimated that about 50 million adults want further education. In a recent Gallup poll it was found that approximately 20