Thoughts on Adult Learning

	When Learning Stops, The Mind Atrophies
	It's perfectly all right for a schoolchild to say, "I have finished with my schooling." But is it all right for an adult to say "I have finished with my adult learning" unless he is also willing to say, "I am done with my life?" Mortimer Adler
	How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization Open Court Publishing Company (2000). This book is an edited set of transcripts from 52 public-television programs Adler broadcast in the early 1950s. Some of his comments on lifelong learning are here below, with some editing by Saul Haffner (LLI).
	The distinction between learning in school and adult learning is that learning in school takes place for a specific and limited period of time. Adult learning, on the other hand, is interminable. It goes on without end. One reason that adult learning must go on throughout the whole life is that it aims at wisdom. And wisdom is hard to come by. Not much of it can be acquired short of a whole lifetime of pursuing it. The other reason is that to live is to grow. As soon as we stop growing we begin to die. The human body, when it stops growing really begins to die, begins to decline. The mind, however, can keep on growing past the point where the body stops growing -- but only on condition that we go on learning. When we stop learning, the mind also ceases to grow and begins to die. It begins to atrophy just the way the body does. Everyone understands that they must give their body daily sustenance if it is to stay healthy and strong. They know they must exercise their body to keep their muscles from becoming flabby. And what applies to the care of the body applies equally to the care of the mind. You can't keep your mind alive and growing on last year's learning and reading. Let's talk about the role of teachers. We mostly think of them as classroom teachers or as lecturers -- but that is the wrong image for adult learners. A better image is a group of adults talking to one another, discussing some basic problem or issue, and each of them teaching the others and learning from the others. For in the republic of adult learning, the most important thing is that each adult is both a teacher and a learner.