Robert A. Heinlein : popular adult educator and philosopher of education

This qualitative study examines science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein and his writings in order to explore the ways in which they served as didactic vehicles for educating his reading audience. In addition, the study examines Heinlein's ideas about education for the purpose of relating them to taxonomies of educational ideologies and philosophies of adult education. The study also explores Heinlein's metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological perspectives. Primary data sources used were Heinlein's published writings and correspondence, interviews with Virginia Heinlein, and unpublished documents provided by Virginia Heinlein. The data were analyzed using item content analysis and thematic coding. Robert Heinlein was a lifelong learner who was in many respects an example of the learning characteristics he wished to promote in others. He promoted a fictional curriculum of freedom, openness to experience, the scientific method, space travel, ethics, politics, history, social relations, mathematics, languages, and General Semantics. His direct methods of teaching his readers included lectures, mentoring, and vicarious problem-solving. He promoted the use of distance, technology-assisted, accelerated, and nontraditional learning, including accelerated degree programs. Heinlein depicted characters who are confident and competent, self-directed, lifelong learners. Heinlein's educational effectiveness resulted from the following: a passion for his subjects, experience of people and persuasive skill developed out of his early political activism, wide-ranging knowledge, respect for his audience, and storytelling approach. Heinlein's shortcomings as an educator include his propensity for evoking feelings of inferiority and resentment in his readers through strongly worded beliefs regarding the intellectual value of particular subjects, his statements of contempt for people who did not live up to his ideals, and his propensity for alarming readers by advocating unusual social and sexual practices. A recommendation for research is to expand the use of imaginative literature for performing historical, sociological, philosophical, transformative learning, and "futuring" studies in adult and continuing education, and in adult education teaching.