Eduard Christian Lindeman's Meaningful Quotes on Adult Learning

Surprise! The most meaningful quotes about educating adults do not come from the learning sciences or the education field. They come from an orphan boy of immigrant descent who worked several hard labor jobs through adolescence and was barely admitted to Michigan State College in 1907. Shortly after, he became a scholar Sociologist and was appointed as Michigan’s first state leader for the 4-H program. His name is Eduard Christian Lindeman (1885-1953) and in 1926, he published The Meaning of Adult Education. A seminal work often not recognized (as well as it should be) in the education literature. Here are some meaningful quotes that may help you reframe your learning strategies. Trust me, these are just a few, there are plenty more.

Teaching Children vs. Adults

In teaching children, it may be necessary to anticipate objective experience by uses of imagination but adult experience is already there waiting to be appropriated. Experience is the adult learner’s textbook

(p. 10).

Adult Intelligence

The person who knows what he is doing has take the first step toward intelligent behavior. The person that knows what he wants to do and why, is intelligent. But he cannot learn the how and why of conduct by rules and precepts of other persons’ experiences; he must experiment on his own behalf (p.24).

Learning Experience

One of the aspects of diversity in human beings which conventional education frequently overlooks is the variety of recreational or enjoyable experiences (p.58)

Adult educators will be alert to discover what activities give joy to particular students; they will be on the watch to uncover temperamental hobbies… (p.59).

Learning Creativity

The rigidities of adulthood need loosening before anything creative can happen in the sphere of social control. And we do not await the tide of numbers: a small group of adults in a single community seriously concerned about the values of creative living is sufficient to alter the quality of the total community process (pp. 92-93).

Fun in Learning

What is enjoyed registers itself in a psycho-physical process which is the foundation of individual personality. The shareable portions are new social products which may be called our enjoyments in the sense they are derivatives of discreet individual enjoyments (p.98).

Higher Ed Specialization

Limited specialization does not meet the demands of the present generation of college students; they want technical and “practical” courses which can be put to use (pp. 122-123).

On Degrees vs Skills

What they learn converges upon life, not upon commencement and diploma. The external tokens of education are removed so that the learning process may stand or fall on its intrinsic merits (p. 179).

Learning Through Action

We do not “think through problems”; we act through. Thinking carries us only so far, then action must follow or we become lost in the wilderness of verbalism (p.192).

Teach Situations, Not Subject Matter

The approach to adult education will be via the route of situations, not subjects. Our academic system has grown in reverse order: subjects and teachers constitute the starting point, students are secondary. Every adult person finds himself in specific situations with respect to his work, his recreation, his family life, his community life, et cetera – situations that call for adjustment. Adult education begins at this point (p.9).

Adult Teaching vs Discussion Facilitation

When discussion is used as a method of adult teaching; the teacher becomes group chairman; he no longer sets problems and often casts about with various kinds of bait until he gets back to his preconceived answer; nor is he the oracle which supplies answers which students carry off in their notebooks; his function is not to profess but to evoke…(p.188).

Wrap Up

My hope is that you have realized at this point that many of Lindeman’s thoughts still stand true and valid today. So, why haven’t you heard of him before? I don’t know, maybe go back to your college professors and ask them. Certainly, none of my college degrees mentioned his contributions and I found him by studying Dewey and Thorndike. I’ll leave you with the last sentence from the book.

“It is perhaps true that no single group in modern life stands in greater need of adult education than experts, specialists: those who continue to know ‘more and more about less and less’. 

This article is a super interesting record of Lindeman's character during his time on Earth.

Drop your comments and thoughts. Which quote resonated the most for you?

Alexander Salas is a US Navy veteran, award-winning Learning Experience Designer, Storyline expert and creator of StyleLearn Courses the online upskill academy for corporate learning professionals. Alex specializes in the integration of eLearning design with popular authoring tools, custom web design, game design, virtual and augmented realities for L&D purposes. Among his professional achievements, Alex is CTT+ and Agile Certified ScrumMaster. He's is a regular speaker and contributor at major ATD, eLearning Guild and Training Magazine conferences and publications.