But in spite of all the chaos and confusion as to aims, adult education, when the initiative comes from people who are hungry for knowledge, even though they do not know what education is, shows more promise than when the initiative comes from the professional school teacher. In the former case, there is some likelihood that someone will stumble upon the meaning of a liberal education. As a form of protest against the established educational system, I think adult education is a wholesome movement. The school authorities frequently show an interest in this new thirst for knowledge which is met with suspicion. I do not wonder. They have not shown themselves so uniformly successful in the training of youth that they are justified in seeking to extend their machinery over adult efforts for knowledge. Much that school superintendents regard as adult education is really only elementary education, primary instruction offered to adults. _The surest way to defeat learning is to place it in charge of those whose own education has stopped._ Their influence is everywhere to divert this mature interest in learning to the only ends such professional educators know; service to the state, conformity and routine, material advancement and industrial efficiency, the uplift of the masses. In the words of a great educator of the nineteenth century, we should “inquire whether it is the masses alone who need a reformed and improved education.” Adult education is not something to be “given” to the masses, while college education may be kept for the sons of privilege. There is no such thing as “mass education.” Throughout the mass of mankind, college graduates included, there are scattered here and there persons who can learn something and have the desire to continue learning. It is as important for us to consider for whom adult educational opportunities should exist as it is to consider what education is. Such opportunities are for people who are worth educating.