Adult Education in a global society: An historical point of view

Resumo

In the light of this preliminary reflection, we can therefore assert that even
today, at the beginning of the Third Millennium and in the full-time of information technology and complete realization of the global village, in short,
in the area of diffused knowledge, the Adult Education, both as a scientific
discipline and as institutionalized activity, retains the essential and original
double meaning, on the one hand, of reflection/intervention to help the
adult literacy to recover a deficit of alphabetization caused by the increasing
technological complexity and knowledge of the contemporary world, and on the other hand, to care for the needs of self-education, cultural and spiritual growth of each person in the whole course of his life.
Just at the time when Adult Education is becoming more and more the character
of an utilitarian, instrumental intervention required by the exigencies of technological upgrading of production world and signs of serious employment
crisis in all sectors, it must also preserve the other function, that of activity meeting the most intimate needs, of more intense spirituality and
freedom of the individual.