The Relevance of Early Educators' Ideas for Modern Teacher Educators.

This paper explores the ideas of six adult educators from the 1920s to determine the relevance of their thinking to modern adult educators. Three were chose from Britain: Albert Mansbridge, Basil Yeaxlee, and Richard Tawney. From the United States, three influential theorists in the area were Edward Thorndike, John Dewey, and Eduard Lindeman. During the period in which they produced their most visionary work, Britain found itself in a time of major economic decline while the United States was experiencing prosperity with credit, consumption, and production escalating. In educational terms, it was a period when theorists, who were well ahead of their time, realized that education was not restricted to children. Several of these "greats" in adult education recognized the social implications of encouraging the development of adults through further education. Each of them addressed the problem of adult education and individually and collectively produced many insights. Most of the ideas of these theorists are as relevant today as they were when they were first written and bear evidence of the pervasiveness of good theory and practice regardless of the period. For adult educators of the 1990s, their ideas provide guidelines for effective practice. (Contains approximately 30 references.) (Author/LL)