ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that an ideology of adult education is constituted by ideas of needs, access and provision. In fact it is quite useful to compare problems of developing a theory of adult education with problems in the area of social policy and administration. The ideology of adult education is much more likely to reflect the organisation and administrative concerns of full-time professional workers rather than the philosophical aims of the kind that schoolteachers may or may not profess. The tradition of education theory includes the philosophical or conceptual analysis of the concept. As aims of education, autonomy, individuality and equality are very recognisable, and the failure of education systems to achieve them in practice is extremely well documented. Curriculum approaches postulate the content of learning as fundamental to the educational process, upon which philosophical views of aims or ideological views of needs are only a gloss.
