Education Through the Adult Life Span

Education has uses in every stage of the life cycle. For the most effective adult education, or lifelong education, it is useful to keep in mind two aspects—the instrumental and the expressive. Certain of the developmental tasks of adulthood require an instrumental kind of education, while other tasks are better assisted through expressive forms of education. The amount of time devoted by adults to education drops off after the age of 60, but it seems likely that participation in continuing education by people over 60 will increase during the remainder of the century, partly because people are now getting more formal education in their youth, and this predisposes them to continuation in the pursuit of lifelong learning.