The primary mission of adult education is to assist adults in acquiring further control of their current circumstances and future destinies, thereby enabling them to participate more intelligently and responsibly in the political, working, social, cultural, family, and religious aspects of society and to improve their quality of life. Instead of being regarded as a horizontal process in a linear lifespan, education should be viewed from above as a revolving wheel. When regarded in this manner, the several stages of education appear as spokes in the turning wheel of recurrent generations, all leading to the hub--the continuing education of adults. The evolution of education in our society might be viewed as passing through three stages--traditional, institutionalized, and knowledge based--with the current phase being somewhere between the second and third stages. The concept of adult education has recently undergone a rapid worldwide evolution, which will undoubtedly lead to changes in educational policies throughout the world. Concerns for functional literacy have expanded into comprehensive plans for lifelong learning. The importance of lifelong learning is especially great in light of certain mores and practices (reliance upon war, uncontrolled population growth, exhaustion of the planet's resources, and destruction of the Earth's biosphere) that lead to the degeneration of the quality of human life or perhaps even result in the extinction of the biosphere. (MN)