Lifelong Learning in Action

Transforming Education in the 21st Century

Norman Longworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135724306
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Since the concept of lifelong learning came to prominence much excellent work has been undertaken but, as Professor Longworth's new book shows, major change in some areas is still needed if the concept of learning from cradle to grave is to become a true reality. Using his unique vantage point from consulting with schools, universities, local, governmental and global authorities, Professor Longworth brings the development of lifelong learning bang up-to-date with a complete survey of the principles of lifelong learning including examples from around the world and crucial information on the impact of lifelong learning on 21st century schools.

Part 1

Key concepts of lifelong learning for the 21st century

A brief history of lifelong learning and its major features

Where we are now, where we are going to and why we are making the journey in lifelong learning. A map of the 12 major differences between education and training and the lifelong learning future with examples from places that are already implementing good practice.

Chapter 1

Learning is for people—an introduction

Visions

As the 21st century unfolds, humanity finds itself at a crossroads. The writer Dee Hock puts it thus:

As the old millennium departs and leaves behind a thousand years of conflict, ignorance, discord and division, we find ourselves at a crossroads in the development of human society.

Before us lies a beguiling vision of the regeneration of our unique individuality, of a precious liberty of thought and conscience, of unselfish contribution to the betterment of community and the life of others, and of a mature, open-minded sense of ethics more advanced than life on this planet has ever known.

The insights, the infrastructures and the tools to encourage learning throughout life, and to unlock the vast creative potential in each one of us, are now moving into place. They can help us to revitalize a new harmony with nature, with each other and with the concept of a divine intelligence, however we may define it.

In a sense, such visionary declarations articulate what many of us may want to believe about the times we live in: an image of a glorious future through lifelong learning; a rebirth of creativity, of culture, of imagination, of invention, of partnership; the notion that finally we have the tools and the vision to enable human beings to realize their own enormous potential for good. It is indeed a beguiling vision.

And it contrasts strongly with the evidence we see around us. The increasing violence in inner cities, the occasional acts of genocide when pathological dictatorship or tribal hatreds spill over into brutality, the abomination of the destruction of the New York twin towers, the growth of fundamentalist ignorance and suppression of rational thought in many religions—they all point to an unprecedented erosion of human values rendered all the more appalling by the use of ever more sophisticated weapons of communication and oppression.

But at least it presents a stark choice. Both scenarios are possible, as are a hundred more in between. And the only thing preventing the achievement of the desirable outcomes has to be rooted in the persistence of poverty and the chronic lack of education in more than half the world. It will not be solved by the manufacture and application of more weapons of destruction. H G Wells was correct when he said that ‘the whole of human history is a battle between education and catastrophe’. Those of us immersed in a lifelong learning culture can all sense that the new millennium brings with it the opportunity for a new beginning. But we can all see, as well, the scale of the task ahead just to make it happen, perhaps starting in our own communities and branching out from there with new understandings, new persuasions, new insights, new wisdom.

Thanks to inter-governmental organizations—UNESCO, OECD, APEC, the Council of Europe, The European Commission and others—and some of the more enlightened liberal democracies, the lifelong learning movement is now rampaging around the whole world, from Europe to South Africa and from North America to Japan, like a benign educational plague. It is the future—and it is not before time.

Why lifelong learning?

In Lifelong Learning, written nine years ago, Longworth and Davies suggested eight reasons why lifelong learning is particularly appropriate for this age. But nine years is a long time in a lifelong learning world. While some are still as relevant as on the day they were written, it is time to update the rest to take into account the changes in the meanwhile:

• Fundamental global demographics—in the rich developed world, ageing, more mobile, more multicultural and multi-ethnic societies which could release high inter-racial and inter-generational social tensions and a reduced investment in welfare programmes through a fall in working, and an increase in retired, populations. By contrast, in the poorer parts of the world a massive population growth exacerbating already chronic shortages of resource and education and condemning vast numbers of people to live at subsistence level and below unless ameliorative projects are initiated. To avoid the worst effects of both these scenarios, a high emphasis will need to be put on fundamental lifelong learning principles and a use of the new development and delivery technologies.

• The pervasive influence of television and the media on the development of peoples’ thoughts, ideas and perceptions. Television has an enormously powerful effect on people. Where it is in the hands of those who would use it as an instrument of propaganda, whether raw or subtle, as happens in both poor and rich countries, it can be used to foster hatred and intolerance. Where it is used purely as an instrument of entertainment, it can, through trivialization and ignorance of real issues, have an equally insidious effect on the ability of people to make informed choices. As an occasional, independent, instrument of education it could be used to transform nations into dynamic, well-educated and flexible lifelong learning societies.

• Environmental imperatives—the depletion of the world’s resources and the need for renewable energy, the destruction of ecosystems and the demand for sustainable development. There is a crucial need to educate continually all the world’s people in environmental matters as a basis for the survival of species on earth and to be inventive and innovative about how environmental information is kept constantly in the forefront of popular consciousness. In other words, the need for a lifelong learning approach to a lifelong survival issue.

These are issues affecting every society and they propagate a view of lifelong learning as a global phenomenon, entirely consonant with the reality of governmental perceptions. The efforts of international governmental agencies have offered some hope that it may be used to improve the lot of the developed and developing world alike, even though responses and actions will be very different. Other issues, mainly affecting the advanced industrial nations, include:

• New developments in all branches of science and technology, on the one hand offering a variety of new opportunities for organizational and personal growth and on the other stimulating a questioning of basic values. Both of these have important implications for lifelong learning. At one level, science and technology have helped to improve material standards of living in many parts of the world. Their spread into other communities, other societies, other countries in the developing world will help achieve growth and improve health and education, though there are fundamental environmental implications that need to be addressed in so doing. It augurs a massive increase in learning in order to understand and use technology wisely.

• The explosion of information and knowledge through the use of the Internet and communications technology. This has multiplied manyfold the information and knowledge available to us and transformed our way of living, working and communicating. At the same time the speed at which these changes have taken place has outstripped the capacity of many people to cope easily with it. The wealth of information and the technology of handling it have made possible greater personal decision making, and, paradoxically, through its sheer volume reduced the likelihood of this being informed and balanced. Technology can empower or enslave, and learning is the key to its benevolent use.

• The need for both industry and people to remain innovative and flexible in order to retain high employment—the migration of work in the advanced nations towards high-skill, high-technology, high-added-value service industries. This renders much semi-skilled and unskilled work obsolete, increases the need for lifelong education and training to a high standard in all sections of the population and promotes the development of innovative work-related programmes to offset potential social unrest.

• Increasing individualization and the breakdown in parts of Western society of religious and family structures which traditionally have provided meaning and fulfilment to most people. More focus on personal development in order to realize and release creative human potential leads to the need for the further development of educational structures based on understanding, tolerance and contribution to the community.

The individual and the community

It is perhaps the last of these that focused minds and mindsets on lifelong learning at the time. The ‘triumph of the individual’ was one of the key ideas behind Naisbitt’s ten ‘Megatrends’, first published in the 1980s and repeated for the 90s. It was a document to be found on the tables of many industrial leaders. But since that time raw individualism has become less fashionable. ‘There is no solitary learning: we can only create our worlds together’, say Ranson, Rikowski and Strain. ‘The unfolding capability of the self always grows out of interaction with others. It is inescapably a social interaction.’ And they are right. While the onus is still, and always will be, on the individual to decide on his/her learning, there has come to be a realization that other people and other organizations may have a key part to play too. The watchword for today is ‘community’ in every meaning of that word, whether it is a geographical entity as in a learning city or a learning region, or a community of people with a common sense of purpose or interest, as in a religious or a tribal community.

For Jan Visser, for example, the notion of a learning environment is much more than providing the tools to enable people to learn. ‘For learning communities to emerge and evolve,’ he says, ‘and for members of a learning community to participate in a flexible manner and to move between them, we need to conceive of more holistic concepts in which such restricted learning environments are only a part.’ He sets individuals into an integrated learning environment which includes the whole gamut of political, social, psychological, cultural, educational and environmental factors as both influences and resources from which they can draw. Whatever the scenario, it seems that cooperation is replacing competition in many walks of life, and the power of the new synergy of aspiration that it engenders will be demonstrated frequently in subsequent pages.

The growth of lifelong learning

There was, of course, already activity before the 1980s. UNESCO’s Fauré Commission Report, published in 1972, was considered by many to be one of the most important educational reform documents of the second half of the 20th century. Among many other things it proposed:

• the development of human skills and abilities as the primary objective of education at all levels;

• support for situation-specific learning in the context of everyday life and work so that individuals could understand, and be given the competency, creativity and confidence to cope with the urgent tasks and changes arising throughout a lifetime;

• the creation of the sort of learning society in which independent learning is supported and provides an essential part of the continuum of learning as people move into, and out of, education during their lives;

• the involvement of the community in the learning process and the wider social role of education in understanding conflict, violence, peace, the environment and how to reconcile differences.

Again we see an overall focus on individual responsibility for learning, albeit with a supportive role for the community. The concepts were further refined and developed in papers by Paul Lengrand and A J Cropley under the auspices of the UNESCO Institute of Education in Hamburg. In these, lifelong learning became a key concept for the survival of mankind, perhaps echoing Arthur C Clarke’s dictum in Prelude to Space, ‘Everyone will need to be educated to the level of semi-literacy of the average university graduate by the year 2000. This is the minimum survival level of the human race.’ Science fiction writers often show remarkable percipience about the future of mankind but have a tendency to underestimate the time-scales.

A similar theme was taken up by the Club of Rome report of 1979, ‘No Limits to Learning’. In this seminal document, following its ‘Limits to Growth’ report which took the world by storm in 1973, a broad-based mobilization of the creative talent inherent in all human beings was considered to be the only way to allow them to understand, adapt to, and make progress in an increasingly complex world.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), too, has long been a strong supporter of a lifelong learning approach, though initially under the name of ‘recurrent education’. Its own landmark report ‘Recurrent Education: A Strategy for Lifelong Learning. A Clarifying Report’, produced in 1973, was well received by governments, higher education and NGOs alike. Recurrent Education concerned itself principa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Sylvia Lee, President of World Initiative on Lifelong Learning
• Preface: a time for action
• Part 1 Key concepts of lifelong learning for the 21st century A brief history of lifelong learning and its major features
• Part 2 The impact of lifelong learning on schoolsin the 21st century
• Appendix 1 City-rings and the Pallace project — creating active links between cities andregions globally
• Appendix 2 The World Initiative on Lifelong Learning (WILL)
• References
• Index