The report, based on a six-month study as a participant-observer, discusses developments now under way in West Germany's Adult Education Centers movement. The article offers a comparative approach that takes account of trends in Europe and North America. It puts these developments into a philosophical framework, noting that Germany may provide a real-life example of the dangers of which such prophets of adult education as Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, and John Ohliger have been warning. There is a struggle to maintain balance between the liberal and the "practical." Interest in meeting economic needs has meant a move of the centers into consideration, planning, and some implementation of vocational training and professional upgrading. This, in turn, is having a deep influence on the climate of learning in more and more center classes. The trend in the German Adult Education Centers is clearly away from learning "as" experience and toward learning "from" experience. The latter is lauded as substantial and structured knowledge measurable as to the quality of standard achieved by the learner. Learning "as" experience in downgraded as dilettantism. The report is a questioning, disturbing account of what clearly is happening in Germany and of what could happen here. (Author/LH)