This restriction of terminology, we feel, serves little purpose in justifying adult education, for it legitimates only a part of what is included under the ordinary usage of the term adult education in the United States. To call some things adult education and others the education of adults is to bring elitism and rationalist bias into the field of adult education which has developed along different lines in this country. In restricting the term adult education to liberal adult education, British analysts such as Peters, Lawson, and Paterson may be guilty of essentialism, claiming that words have an essential meaning that transcends all social contexts.