Strengths of Brown's Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education

I got a chance to read Brown's Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education and thought about the strengths and weaknesses of his principles. He wrote these principles almost 100 years ago, how relevant are they today? I decided to look at two that seemed most relevant to my work and discuss the strength I saw; the staying power of the principles, the resilience of the principles to be relevant despite the era.



Basic Principle number four states, "the rapid changes within all fields of human endeavor make reeducation or continuous education essential." This article was written in 1932. If we believe in Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns (2001) even though the pace of "rapid changes" in 1932 may have been brisk, the early decades of the 21st Century, are exponentially greater and more rapid. These rapid changes, be they in 1932, or 2020, make "reeducation or continuous education" even more essential for success whether in the business world, education, technology, or in society in general.

At first glance, principle number three "the increasing complexity and subdivision of labor has decreased the demand for specific skills through the formal agencies of education" sounds like it may not be relevant in today's day and age. However, after applying it to my field of work, field safety and training for oil refining operations, it's easy to see how this principle is still quite applicable in that technology is supplanting the need for highly skilled workers. New and more automated machines are coming in and taking away the need for expertise from field workers who have decades of field experience. Companies are able to hire more workers for lower wages as technology and automation "has decreased the demand for specific skills."



I picked these two principles because it is easy to demonstrate their staying power through the years and illustrate the strengths of Brown's Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education, however, each of the 8 principles outlined is still relevant today.





Brown, F. J. (1932). Basic Principles Underlying Adult Education. Journal of Educational Sociology, 5(8),  463-47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2961482



Kurzweil, R. (2001). The Law of Accelerating Returns. Retrieved August 18, 2020, from

https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns