ADULT EDUCATION AND THE PHENOMENA OF SOCIAL CHANGE JACK LONDON

This paper has two purposes. The first is to underscore the relevance of historical events and social forces which influence the life experience of various cohorts of adults. To carry out this purpose, the study focuses on one particular cohort—a "cohort case study " as an example of how history and social forces shape the experiences as well as the educational needs of the adult population. The second purpose is to discuss some of the possible implications for adult education given these effects. The underlying assumption is that the more educators know about educational clientele—their social, historical, economic, and cultural pasts—the more successful will be the educational experiences. Recognizing that people do not arrive suddenly in adulthood and that adults are not empty vessels waiting to be filled, adult educators are becoming more cog-nizant of the process of human development as it takes place within the context of space and historical time. Erik Erikson (24) advanced the idea of &dquo;the historical movement&dquo; by pointing out the powerful psychological effects of life experiences in the formation of identity. More recently, Bernice Neugarten, Norman Ryder