I’m Mad About This
Look, I’ve been in this education racket for over two decades. Twenty-three years, to be exact. I’ve seen trends come and go, policies rise and fall, and I’m telling you, we’re missing something huge. We’re so focused on K-12, then college, then careers, that we’re forgetting something right in the middle: adult education.
It’s not sexy. It doesn’t have the shiny appeal of coding bootcamps or the urgency of early childhood education. But it’s vital. And we’re failing at it.
My Wake-Up Call
About three months ago, I was at a conference in Austin. Not one of those fancy ones with free swag and keynotes from celebrities. Just a regular, old education conference. I was talking to a woman named Lisa—let’s call her Lisa, because that’s her name—who runs a community education program in Ohio. She told me something that stuck with me.
“We had a student,” she said, “a guy in his 40s learning English. He’d been here for 15 years, never learned a word. Then he walks into our class, and within a year, he’s speaking conversational English. Changed his life. Changed his family’s life.”
I asked her why she thought adult education wasn’t getting more attention. She looked at me like I was crazy. “Because it’s not about the kids,” she said. Which… yeah. Fair enough.
Where’s the Love?
We throw money at early education. We throw money at higher education. But adult education? Crickets. I mean, look at the numbers. According to some study I read last Tuesday—honestly, I can’t remember which one, there are so many—only about 214 million adults in the U.S. have what we’d call “basic literacy skills.” That’s not great. And it’s not getting better.
And it’s not just literacy. It’s everything. Financial literacy. Digital literacy. Health literacy. We’re expecting adults to figure it out on their own, and that’s not working. It’s like we’re saying, “You had your chance in school, now you’re on your own.” That’s not how life works.
My Friend Marcus
Let me tell you about my friend Marcus. He’s 36, works in a warehouse. He’s smart, but he never finished high school. He wants to, but he can’t afford to take time off work. He can’t afford classes. He can’t afford the childcare he’d need to go to classes. So he’s stuck. And he’s not alone.
I talked to him last week. “I just wanna better myself,” he said. “But it’s like the system’s set up for me to fail.” And you know what? He’s right. It is.
What Can We Do?
First, we need to stop thinking of education as a one-and-done thing. It’s not. It’s lifelong. And we need to start acting like it. That means funding. It means access. It means making it okay for adults to say, “I don’t know this, and I need help.”
And look, I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying we have all the answers. But we need to start asking the questions. We need to start caring. Because right now, we’re failing a huge chunk of our population. And that’s not okay.
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A Tangent: The Myth of the Self-Made Man
You know what really grinds my gears? This whole “self-made” thing. “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps,” blah blah blah. Newsflash: nobody does it alone. We all need help. We all need education. We all need a little boost now and then. So let’s stop acting like asking for help is a sign of weakness. It’s not. It’s a sign of strength.
And on that note, I’m gonna wrap this up. I could go on for hours, but I won’t. You’re welcome.
About the Author
I’m Sarah, a senior editor with a passion for education and a deep-seated belief that we can always do better. I’ve been writing about education for 23 years, and I’m still learning. I live in Chicago with my cat, Mr. Whiskers, and a collection of half-finished books. You can find me on Twitter @sarah_ednews, where I rant about education policy and share cat pictures.
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