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Education

Other Schools

When did programs in adult education begin?

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (or the Freedmen’s Bureau) supported the first formally recognized adult education program in the United States in the post-Civil War period. Adult education for African Americans continued beyond this and concentrated in four areas: literacy, community education, continuing (or workplace) education, and academic or degree-granting programs. Perhaps the adult education program that is best known is that which was started in the early 1920s, and focused on helping adults lacking in basic skills.