Lifelong Learning

Davies, W. Keith, Longworth, Norman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135363093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This text sets out to explain the issues and attributes of lifelong learning as well as outlining the many initiatives which are being taken to help understand the implications and new roles for many of our institutions.

Chapter 1

Returning to Learning: The Dawn of Understanding

‘By the year 2000 everyone will need to be educated to the standard of semi-literacy of the average college graduate. This is the minimum survival level of the human race.’

Arthur C Clarke, Prelude to Space, 1963

A place for lifelong learning

It seems to many people who have spent much of their lives in education (and that does not mean only professional educators) that there is suddenly an exciting new vision. An eminent person from the American Council on Education who worked on the preparation of the First Global Conference on Lifelong Learning held in Rome in 1994 was asked what he thought lifelong learning was and why it interested him so much. He thought for a few seconds and then said, ‘As to what it is, I cannot answer easily at this moment – but as to why, well it seems and feels to me that it is the culmination of my 40 years work in education – it is all coming together under the label of lifelong learning.’ It’s an interesting reply in that for him it was as much a feeling, or intuition, as it was a real, carefully worked out philosophy of education.

The UK branch of the European Lifelong Learning Initiative (UK ELLInet) recently held an event which it called a ‘hearing’ to discuss what lifelong learning meant. Business and industry, government, universities, schools and professional associations were invited; 90–100 people attended, some to listen, some to speak. Presentations were given about a wide diversity of lifelong learning topics – personal learning plans, learning passports, value systems, experiential learning. The proceedings of the day grew into an expression of cooperation, enthusiasm, exploration and real learning. A few quotations cannot capture the essence of a very moving (and learning) experience, but these are some of the things people said.

‘Society is in transformation and learning is a key process in that transformation. The concept of the learning organization is too limited; the transformation is too all-embracing.’

‘Learning is about taking risks, stepping outside your own box, pushing things forward on the run.’

‘Learning is the best way to grow. If you are in an environment which is not learning, the duck in front is not leading.’

‘Being sacked was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I take risks. I begin to understand myself better, I begin to say what I feel, not what I ought to say.’

One of the most surprising outcomes of the day was the number of people who mentioned the spiritual dimension – not necessarily from any religious viewpoint, but often as a humanistic concept. It was a thread that pervaded the hearing from beginning to end. This is not saying that lifelong learning is an evangelical concept. Its importance in the modern day is a very practical one, but it is perhaps a small indication that there is something more to the concept of lifelong learning than learning itself – or perhaps even lifelong – and that its extra dimensions are not always educational by origin.

The case for lifelong learning

The case for lifelong learning does not need to be strenuously argued to those who have a vision of a richer and more fulfilled future for individuals, for society and for humankind as a whole. For some, like Arthur C Clarke, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, and HG Wells, who expressed the belief that ‘human history is a constant race between education and catastrophe’, the main motivation for learning is the avoidance of apocalypse in the near future. As science fiction writers they have perhaps an interest in expressing their views in such terms. Nor is lifelong learning new. In 1609 Jan Comenius, a Bohemian exile living in Holland (his sin was to have preached moderation during a particularly nasty religious war) wrote in Pampaedia:

‘Just as the whole world is a school for the whole of the human race, from the beginning of time until the very end, so the whole of a person’s life is a school for every one of us, from the cradle to the grave. It is no longer enough to say with Seneca, “No age is too late to begin learning”. We must say, “Every age is destined for learning, nor is a person given other goals in learning than in life itself”.’

These words transcend the centuries and retain meaning in the contemporary world. The stimulus to embrace the concepts of lifelong learning comes from the opportunity to realize a true educational ideal of liberating the mind, and sometimes also the soul, from ignorance and doubt. Certainly there has recently been an exponential growth in the demand for non-vocational adult education in the developed world, and it is mirrored in the demand for formal courses of training.

Other learning philosophers, like Sir Christopher Ball of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), take an economic view of the worth of learning. He says, ‘Learning pays. Training (at its best) will make nations and their citizens wealthier, societies more effective and content, individuals freer and more able to determine their lives in the ways they choose.’ In his report to the RSA on this topic (1992) he shows how, in each sector of society, arguments can be developed to prove this thesis. It brings to mind the old saying that if we think education is expensive, it is certainly less expensive than the price of ignorance. Ball argues that the only barriers to better economic performance through learning are often cultural, and sometimes political.

Or one can take a pragmatic view and put the burden of choice upon the individual. Human beings and organizations on this planet have three major choices.

• They can choose the path of hopelessness or complacency, believing that they have no influence or nothing to contribute, or that there is nothing to change.

• They can take the path of fundamentalism, paranoid nationalism or xenophobia and help create intolerance, hatred, war, homelessness and disorder.

• Or they can invest in the road of lifelong learning and take control over their own destiny, combining the skills of learning with the power of knowledge and the joy of being human and alive.

A base for lifelong learning

Whatever the rationale there is little doubt that, as we approach the third millennium AD, the education and training paradigm is changing rapidly in favour of more, better and wider. More courses, better teaching (or, more appropriately, learning) and a wider range of key interests to enable people to function in an ever more complex world.

The utilitarian, socio-economic rationale of training to carry out a specific function, or education to minimum standards for future employment at a particular age, is giving way to a much more holistic and visionary view of education as a lifelong process. The old industrial society model of education, which tends to fragment and narrow it into predetermined patterns and outcomes, is changing to the information society model, which educates for a wider and more responsible role in a democratic society. As Charles Handy puts it, ‘Real learning is not what many of us grew up thinking it was. It is not simply memorizing facts, learning drills or soaking up traditional wisdom. While these activities may be important in learning, they constitute only a part of a larger process’ (Handy, 1992). He goes on to describe learning as a wheel in which questions lead to ideas, which lead to the testing of those ideas to produce reflections, which in turn lead to new questions.

At this level, learning is a continuous process carried out by individuals or groups of individuals, and not something imposed from above. Examples of a better public understanding of this wider vision can be seen in the vast range of courses offered by such organizations as the University of the Third Age to those who are no longer considered to be economically useful; one can hear it expressed in the groundswell of discontent against cuts in adult education; one can feel it intuitively in the aggregation of thousands of studies, debates and conversations; one can sense it as an idea whose time has finally arrived. Suddenly, lifelong learning is the subject of high-level conferences, media attention and government encouragement.

To a certain extent the movement to longer-term thinking is provoked by events in the world outside education and training. The ongoing debate on environment and sustainable development gives new insights into the need for holism and completeness. A similar trend is demonstrated in such newly developing subjects as the management of technology, in which the attempt to bring together hitherto separate engineering and management disciplines into a philosophical and technological coherence is rapidly gathering pace in the western world and Japan. Even in the sciences, by popular belief the most secular and factual of disciplines, the eminent physicist Fritjof Capra’s recognition that our understanding of physics becomes limited by the ignorance of our arrogance, and the arrogance of our ignorance, has led to the inclusion of the concept of ‘Tao’ into the physics curriculum of some major universities. This breaks down the limited vision imposed by convergent thinking in the subject and expands its boundaries towards infinity.

Such new paradigms in the evolution of our view of education and training have implications for all parts of the system – schools, higher education, formal and informal systems of adult education, industry and business, teacher education – and for society as a whole. They force the issues in the debate between those who recommend a slow evolutionary adjustment to existing practice and those who advocate a more revolutionary approach in which fundamental changes of method, content and infrastructure are preferred in order to accommodate the vision of a lifelong learning future.

The world – a space for lifelong learning

The broadening of personal horizons to encompass issues and events outside of mere self-interest is often one of the most difficult learning tasks, and yet to create this in people is also the major mission of learning. While creativity, imagination and inventiveness are not necessarily rare commodities, they are unfortunately often regarded with suspicion and therefore often underemployed.

One of the seven principles which the Rover Group displays in its factories is ‘Creativity and ingenuity are grossly underrated’. It is an interesting slogan for an industrial environment, and its significance will be explained in later chapters. The theme of creativity returns time and time again under the banner of lifelong learning, because it helps to stretch the mind, open up new horizons, persuading all individuals to confront the fact of their own unique potential and to develop it to its full. However, despite these new perceptions and values, the ideal, as usual, precedes the practice. Real obstacles to the achievement of a society committed to lifelong learning include the following.

• The forecast vast global population increase from a present five billion to an estimated eleven billion by the middle of the next century, which will put enormous strains on our planetary environmental, social, educational and political systems.

• The ‘poverty of aspiration’ (as Ernest Bevin called it) among a high proportion of people who remain disadvantaged economically and intellectually by the lack of mental stimulation and challenge.

• The propensity of governments to cut back on educational spending and to deprive schools particularly of the resources which would allow them to compete on equal terms with professional communicators.

• The shift to global religious fundamentalism and narrow nationalism which stifles individual thought, denies personal freedom and discourages the use of critical judgement.

All of these present formidable and powerful counter-currents in history’s flow towards the creation of lifelong learning cultures. They are international problems which can only be addressed through the creative use of new learning tools and techniques and combined international action.

More positively, the new world educational order is now more constantly affirming the essential virtues of continuing education and training in the workplace. The immensely powerful potential of the new information and communications technologies on the development and delivery of education and training, both individually and in the mass, is gaining credibility. A further impetus is given by the widening role of higher and further education in many countries and the renewed acknowledgement of the value of partnerships with industry, the opening up of opportunities for the many rather than the few and, not least, the recognized importance of international cooperation.

Even business and industry, traditionally wedded to a competitive ethos, are combining transnationally, through such programmes as EuroPACE and the National Technological University, to improve access for their employees to advanced level research and education via new satellite delivery techniques. From here it is but a small step to the delivery of mass education using global telecommunications and ISDN networks.

Globalization is a fact. Industries are expanding rapidly into areas of the world which they would not have touched in cold war days. Countries of the Pacific Rim are steaming full speed ahead in an education-led dash for growth, putting enormous pressure on the older democracies in Europe and North America to improve their own educational performance in order to remain competitive. Global television news channels bring world events into the living room. We are all experiencing the input of more and more information. The real challenge, however, is to our ability to cope with this new mental influx. Few of us have been given the skills and competencies to interpret this bombardment of ideas, facts, opinions and sensations wisely or to turn it into useful knowledge. Without this ability, the overload can have the effect of desensitizing instead of enriching us.

On the positive side, the use of telecommunications leads to the establishment of personal and electronic networks. Indeed, modern business could not survive in today’s competitive world without an effective and easy-to-use internal communications system. In addition, university networks are proliferating and building wall-less international faculties, such as the European Faculty of Engineering and the United Nations University, to supplement the increasing output of the open universities.

In some continents schools are also communicating eagerly across national boundaries through such networks as Computer Pals, an Australian-based initiative, CL4K in Europe and the European Schools Network based in the Netherlands. Teachers are remarking how strongly the motivation to learn increases, and how quickly negative stereotypes break down, when children communicate with each other across cultural and country boundaries. Lifelong learning is also being enhanced through a more recent and interesting development of linking retired third-age people to make experience, knowledge and skills available more widely.

Not all of these initiatives are, or will be, continuously successful, and the short history of educational networking has already collected several casualties. One of the major imperatives in the establishment of large international programmes is the necessity for effective and enlightened management, and this skill is often in short supply in the world of education and training. But collectively they offer a dramatic increase in exposure to the wider world of learning for many people.

Brief encounters for lifelong learning

The implications of the concepts and practice of lifelong learning on organizations and individuals are, by definition, pervasive. They extend well beyond the traditional formal education systems into the thousands of interest groups which influence the thoughts and actions of people in modern society. Since modern ideas of lifelong learning constitute a new and exhilarating mixture of educational philosophy, learning strategy, economic necessity and cultural psychology, they need to be explained – in cruder terms, promoted and marketed – as a personal and organizational survival strategy for the 21st century. This has to be directed at every organization in every sector, every nation, and to every individual.

What’s in it for business and industry?

Successful industry makes a large commitment to education as part of its survival strategy. It has a need constantly to train, retrain and redeploy many of its personnel in all areas and at all levels, including management and personal development, communications, technical, instructional and teaching skills, manufacturing, research and development, and marketing. Thus, concepts of the Learning Organization and worker empowerment, described in greater detail in Chapter 5, are rapidly pervading many multinational companies, though there is a long way to go in some countries and in smaller industries. In addition, educational audits are discovering new learning demands and a wish to expand horizons well beyond work-related topics. The education and training needs of all employees in a company for the foreseeable future will be provided through a combination of traditionally presented courses and the use of open and distance learning tools and techniques. Learning and personal growth for all will become incorporated into a company’s continuing management and career development structure.

In the past many large companies have met most of their training needs internally. However, such are the pressures on companies that they are beginning to realize that they can no longer afford to expand their education and training functions, in spite of the constant search for educational cost-effectiveness by a heavy use of information technology. Increasingly, industry is looking to ‘outsource’ many of its courses to more tradit...