Eduard C. Lindeman - Educational Philosophy

Educational Philosophy

Lindeman drew much of his intellectual constructs from three principal sources: educational philosopher John Dewey; Danish philosopher/educator/theologian Nikolai Grundtvig; and writer/philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Being a friend and colleague of John Dewey, Lindeman shared with him a concern for social justice, a belief in the possibilities of education and human action, and a deep commitment to democracy. His key assumptions about adult learners were:

• Adults are motivated to learn as they experience needs and interests that learning will satisfy.
• Adults’ orientation to learning is life-centered.
• Experience is the richest source for adult’s learning.
• Adults have a deep need to be self-directing.
• Individual differences among people increase with age.

Lindeman’s vision for education was not bound by classrooms and formal curricula. It involved a concern for the educational possibilities of everyday life; non-vocational ideals; situations not subjects; and people’s experience. He viewed education as life. The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no ending. Lindeman felt our academic system to be in reverse order with subjects and teachers constituting the starting point and students secondary. In conventional education the student is required to adjust to an established curriculum; in adult education the curriculum is built around the students’ needs and interests. He believed:

• Education should be coterminous with life
• It should revolve around non-academic and non-vocational ideas
• It should start with the lives of the learners
• It should look to the learner's own experience as its most valuable resource

It is interesting to note that Lindeman did not dichotomize adult versus youth education, but rather adult versus "conventional" education. The implication is that youths might learn better, too, when their needs and interests, life situations, experiences, self concepts, and individual differences are taken into account. Lindeman further expressed his views by writing, "None but the humble become good teachers of adults. In an adult class the student’s experience counts for as much as the teacher’s knowledge...sometimes it is difficult to discover who is learning most, the teacher or the students."

At a testimonial dinner in 1953, the last year of Lindeman’s life, Malcolm Knowles’ tribute letter addressed Lindeman as the one elder statesman in the field to whom the younger organizers of the new Adult Education Association have consistently and confidently turned for inspiration, moral support, and wise guidance.