ABSTRACT
So far we have analysed the concept of adult education entirely in terms of its objectives. The education of adults is the attempt to foster the development of grown men and women as persons, and this, we have argued, consists essentially in the fostering of their continued growth as centres of awareness, as conscious selves who perceive, feel, imagine, judge, appreciate, and understand more fully, more sensitively, and more profoundly than ever before. To develop a man's awareness is to put him in closer and more meaningful touch with reality, to give him a surer and more comprehensive grasp of his condition and that of his fellows, and is thus best expressed in terms of deepening and extending his knowledge: a man's pursuit of education, we have claimed, is his pursuit of knowledge in all its principal forms, for in building up richer and more finely wrought structures of knowledge and understanding a man is building up his very being as a centre of awareness, as a mind. The dimensions of a man's mental development to which we have given special attention are his development as a rational being, capable of thinking clearly and consistently and with due regard to standards of intellectual honesty and objectivity, and his development as a moral being, capable of making balanced and discerning moral judgments and of finding his own way, by what we might call sage feeling, to the manifold moral realities which make their imperative demands upon him.
