ADULT EDUCATION AND CULTURE IN THE INTERWAR ROMANIA: THE EXAMPLES OF NICOLAE IORGA AND DIMITRIE GUSTI
ADULT EDUCATION AND CULTURE IN THE INTERWAR ROMANIA: THE EXAMPLES OF NICOLAE IORGA AND DIMITRIE GUSTI

Summary/Abstract: After the European Union 2007 enlargement, the time has come to reconsider the place of some valuable local adult education traditions in Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, I have chosen the examples of two outstanding personalities of interwar Romania: Nicolae Iorga and Dimitrie Gusti, whose activity in the field of adult education still requires a thorough analysis for a full understanding of its historical meaning and importance. Therefore, the present paper attempts to explore the path they chose to become adult educators, and thus, accounts for key elements of their professional background, for the theoretical and practical knowledge of adult education they both had at that time, as well as for their ways to transform ideas into institutions in the above-mentioned field. As a result of the analysis of what Iorga and Gusti explicitly or implicitly asserted concerning adult education, one could find at least five distinct features, which I intend to present as clues for a future more detailed perspective of their understanding on adult education. In their views, adult education was intimately linked to the politics of culture – being in fact, an important part of the second one; adult education was conceived differently from school pedagogy; furthermore, it was thought that there are important differences between them; in interwar theorists’ and practitioners’ minds, there was a peculiar difference between andragogy as theory (i.e. encompassing and emphasizing the principles of adult education) and as practice of adult education; accordingly, adult education did not identify itself – as both process and result – with the bare assimilation of some disciplines, theories or formal principles, no matter how important they were seen per se; adult education did not mean the mere mechanical adoption of what had been done in other countries; on the contrary, the stake of its successful implementation was the making of the inland experience compatible with that of the outland one, by stimulating the innovation, initiative and self-responsibility. As I did on different occasions (see Isac, 2003, chapter 3.3., p. 67–86; Isac, 2004), to the end of the paper I propose a brief discussion about the meanings of this impressive cultural and educational inheritance for nowadays Romanian adult education in European context

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