The subject of adult education has been chosen for this paper in order to provide a point of orientation for the discussion of certain related social problems of the western farming community. The conclusions are based upon field studies of several contrasting rural communities in Manitoba carried out under the direction of the Manitoba Royal Commission on Adult Education. Some characteristics of governmental institutions, farm movements, and farming conditions are peculiar to that province but basic similarities in the social structure of farming communities throughout the Prairie region mean that most of the findings have a wider application. It is necessary for reasons of space to treat ethnic communities only briefly, but this brevity may be partially justified on the grounds that the British-origin farming community represents the ideal type to which the ethnic communities are assimilating at various rates.

The difficulty of defining adult education may be avoided by noting briefly its place in the educational process. In complex societies the term “education” has commonly been used to apply to the explicit function of the formal institutions through which social groups prepare young candidates for adult participation. It is apparent that, in terms of this social function, education is part of the more inclusive processes of socialization and acculturation necessary to all social groups and carried out in many societies without benefit of formal institutions. To prepare the young for integration in social groups as adults it is necessary that they acquire and incorporate in their personalities at least a minimum of the normative behaviour patterns necessary to various social roles as well as learn such elements of the cultural tradition (systems of knowledge, techniques, value-patterns, language, art, and the other expressional forms) as the adults controlling the training deem desirable. Although an unprecedented amount of training is acquired within formal institutions in our society, these institutions provide only part of the training necessary for social participation as an adult.