Despite the fact that Canadians have been innovative creators of adult education forms and movements and imaginative adaptors of received open, the field of Canadian adult educational history is seriously underdeveloped. One will search in vain for serious debates about the meaning of our past.

Knowledge for the People seeks to assist in the recovery and understanding of our adult education traditions. Whether it be the innovative laborer-teacher concept of Frontier College, or the Antigonish Movement in Nova Scotia, or the creative use of radio, film, and theatre for purposes of education and citizenship, or the adaption to the Canadian scene of such British imports as the Workers' Educational Association and the Mechanics' Institutes, the topics covered in the nine essays in this volume testify to the breadth and depth of this rich heritage.

Adult educators/students and practitioners as well as those interested in the social and intellectual history of Canada will find in this book an attempt to recover a past we can keep faith with, and an endeavour to provide a context and depth for the current discourse on the social purpose of adult education in the final decades of the twentieth century.

Michael R. Welton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education of Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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