This book, which focuses on how personality, societal values and politics have influenced the mission of adult education, contains 34 papers originally presented at a 2000 conference on the history of adult education. Following a Foreword (Poggeler) and Preface (Nemeth) the papers are: "The Globalization of Adult Education and the One World Concept: Aspects of Their History, Present and Future" (Poggeler); "Adult Education in a Voluntary Social Movement: the Education Work of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1959-94" (Fieldhouse); "Adult Education and Cooperation: The History of a Dutch Walden" (van Gent); "Questions of Value in Adult Education: A Theoretical-Scientific and Methodological Challenge in the History of Adult Education" (Theile); "Influence of Ideas and Institutions on the Culture and Adult Education in Hungary" (Felkai); "The Changes Of Folk ANF Worker's Universities in Slowenia Between 1945-1991" (Jug); "THR Folk High Schools From the View of Political and Social Problems of Poland" (Solarczyk); "Basic Conceptions and Aims in Some Theories of Adult Education Through History" (Popovic); "The Role of Scientific Positivism in European Popular Educational Movements: France and Radical Free Masonry" (Steele); "Samuel Smiles and the Ideology of Self-Help" (Cooke); "How Adult Education Participates in the Making of 'Active Society'" (Bouverne-De Bie); "Local and Global Experiences and Dimensions of German Adult Education" (Hinzen); "Adult Education and the Human Rights Movement: Toward a Global Research Agenda for the History of Adult Education" (Boucouvalas); "The Performance-Directed or Task-Oriented Approach as a Teaching and Learning Concept in Adult Education" (Paape); "The Assimilation Possibilities and Problems of East European Adult Education After the Political Change: The Example of Hungary" (Petho); "Ideological and Paradigmatic Changes in the History of a German Further Education Centre Based on the Centre of Further Education, Aachen" (Putz); "Struggle and Compromise: A History of South African Adult Education from 1960 to 1999" (Aitchison); "Idealists and Liberal Adult Education in the West of Scotland" (Turner); "Through a Glass Darkly: The Seduction of an Adult Education Social Movement" (Benn); "Adult Education and Social Movements: A Century of (Informal) Learning in Social Movements" (Dekeyser);"Grundtvig: From a European and Romanian Perspective" (Sacalis); "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Adult Education as an Ethical Issue" (Cser); "The Social-Historical Conditionality of the Constitution and Activities of Croatian People's and Workers' Universities" (Ceptic); "The Transformation of Adult Education from Culture to the World of Work" (Tosse); "Lloyd Ross and the Education of Australian Workers" (Morris); "From the Workers' Education to the Work Development: Historical Stages and Changing Interests in the Finnish Trade Union Education" (Tuomisto); "Social Based Adult Education: The Development of Workers' Education and Training in Pecs Hungary at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century" (Koltai, Nemeth); "Adult Education An Ideal of Modernity: The End of Adult Education as a Social Movement" (Jarvis); "The History of the Finnish Adult Education System" (Ropponen); "Advanced Teaching Movement in Croatia and Its Influence on National Education" (Lavrnja, Klapan); "Some Changes in the Sphere of Adult Education in Russia in the Transitional Period: Socio-Psychological Aspects" (Mryakina); "Adult Education in Romania in the Last Ten Years Requirements and Realities" (Sava); "Social-Educational Aims and Forms of Adult Education on Distance in the 1980s in Poland: TV Vocational Agricultural School and Radio-TV High School for Working People" (Gajda); "Dutch Andragology in Transformation" (Katus). Some of the papers contain figures and tables. All of the papers contain bibliographies, some of them substantial. (AJ)