ABSTRACT
‘Theories, Applications, Systems’ was an ambitious and successful international symposium. This symposium commenced with four days anchored in a common experience of learning together about the actual practice of the education of adults in Shanghai. The Chinese experience spanning pre- and post-1949, with both phases represented by architects of adult education either side of Liberation at the symposium, provided a means of connecting purposes and experiences from different regions of the world which tend to be seen as unconnected opposites. On the other hand it was confusing for radical adult educators from the West and the Third World to see the Chinese achieving the purposes for which they too were striving, through a State system of provision. On the other hand, the historical perspectives with which the formal symposium opened provided links between the early radicalism of the ‘liberal tradition’ in its context and the popular education of Latin America today.
