Author Description

This paper reviews and analyzes adult educational activities in China from the late 1920s to the present. A brief historical overview and discussion of the Chinese definition and conceptualization of worker-peasant education is followed by an examination of worker-peasant educational organization, policies, and objectives. These major worker-peasant educational organizations are then described and analyzed: enterprises (worker education), the communes (peasant education), local government-sponsored adult education, mass organizations and adult education, and the mass media. These adult educational institutions and programs are described in terms of major clientele or target groups, program objectives, techniques for popularizing the program, general organization and administration, curriculum, instructional methods, teaching-learning materials, staffing, cost and financing, and monitoring and evaluating. The paper concludes with a discussion of general issues and lessons emerging from the Chinese experience in adult education, including use of group arrangements for promoting exchange of experience and technology, ability to mobilize unused and underutilized resources, and motivational techniques for promoting user participation. (Various materials relating to adult educational programs are appended.) (YLB)