ADULT EDUCATION

News dispatches from New York announce the opening of the national headquarters of the "American Association for Adult Education" after two years of preparatory work by the Carnegie Foundation. The association has a twofold significance.

There are more than 3,000,000 men and women in the United States pursuing some kind of education after working hours. Heretofore, largely because of the lack of centralized organization, such as exists in England, there have developed all sorts of fake correspondence schools and extension courses which have been fit subject for Mencken and the Babbitt-baters. The new association, under the Presidency of a man like Dean Russell of Teachers College, Columbia, should be able to weed out the shysters and lend a guiding hand to this much abused but potentially excellent development in education.

In the second place this association, which specifically includes individual students as well as institutions, begin its active career at the same time the National Student Federation of America is in the act of transforming its paper existence into a formal organization. The adult student federation "has been formed to serve as a clearing house and guiding force for adult educational activities... it will arrange educational meetings and issue publications...it has already established active relations with similar bodies in Europe." These aims are strikingly parallel to those of the U. S. F. A., and as such they are to be commended. Furthermore an association which includes on its executive committee shoulder to shoulder, a Y. W. C. A. leader and a Milwaukee banker-philanthropist, a university president and a Chautauqua manager, a Standard Oil executive and a Trades Union League director, the secretary of the American Library Association and the Chairman of the Ford Ball Forum, inadvertently demonstrates the potential usefulness of organized educational cooperation in most striking fashion.