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The Context and the Challenge
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I thought it would be advisable very briefly just to reflect on why there is a need for lifelong learning at this time as a summary preparation for the workshop sessions tomorrow. The extent of societal changes have been very deep indeed. Several times we have spoken about the globalisation of the economy and all its manifestations: the capital and mobility of labour; the very increase in competitiveness of the market economy internationally and so on. This globalisation has been affected by the revolution in information and communication technologies which in turn is impacting on the accelerated pace of science and technology development. Again and again one thing is affecting another, there are variegated changes in: employment patterns; the nature of the employment force and workforce; the type of jobs available; the changing character of work itself; the kind of qualities and skills that are required in the modern workforce. Demographic trends of various kinds have, of course, their own consequences and multiculturalism is a huge issue within the educational challenges facing many countries at the moment. The issue of social inclusion or exclusion is of fundamental significance for our society and for the future. We have to operate within this great global economy and free market, but also we must operate in such a way that environmental sustainability, civil culture and a range of other things that make the quality of life in society, can be protected. In short, how can we help citizens in the future to cope with these various and sometimes contradictory forces coming upon them? We are entering a period of greater uncertainty, great change and great flux. How we should cope and prepare for this has drawn the analysis of many governments and international groupings, for example, the OECD and the EU, in the 1990's. This work has drawn a unanimous conclusion that the only way forward, the only way we can respond to these kind of fundamental challenges to our society is through lifelong learning. New Era Essentially we are talking about the educational response to a new era in civilisation development. So let us ask ourselves what lifelong learning can do. It can provide us with the animating concept for education in the new century. It can elicit an enthusiasm and the sense of vision that quite frankly the circumstances of the day require. It is a concept that can be caught by most people. It is simple in its terms, it can also perhaps be a bit simplified at times, but nevertheless I do think it can give us the guiding concept for thinking about the filter through which we see all our education activities. It is the lens through which we can re-examine all our educational provision and I think that this comprehensive way is the way it needs to be looked at because it poses challenges to all aspects of the existing system, the formal education system and so on. I think it can act as a stimulus also for a new co-ordinating framework. As has been said by several speakers, we have to move out from the existing system. We have to promote co-operation between the formal system and the workplace and non-formal learning agencies in way that we have never done before. Social Partners We need to elicit new initiatives for fostering better relationships between the social partners. I think there have been many encouraging trends in the '90s in this area - for example, where employers and trade unions have began to look at new ways of learning in the workplace, and promoting the workplace as a learning environment, and in promoting learning and training opportunities for workers. The key here is to try to ensure opportunities for all citizens to be employable and to live fulfilled well-balanced lives. Now that is easier said than done, as has been pointed out today, and as the Baroness said in her opening address one of the first questions is 'How can we really reach out and get the operation going to the people who need it most?' This is undoubtedly one of the key challenges. Mechanisms The challenges are great but some of the tools that have come into our hands are unprecedented as well. One of the great tools we now have is information and communications technology with the mobility and flexibility to take learning anywhere at any time. This was never before the case in human history. The challenges of today can draw upon some of the mechanisms by which the challenges came into being to promote learning in many and varied locations. The reality of this is already happening around us. The UK Green Paper and the plans and the activities at the moment are pointing it out and so are initiatives in many countries. In fact, learning today can be so much more diversified in its mechanisms, its methods and its locations. One of the crucial things I think in winning the support and the interest of the people, and the kind of motivation of the people which is part of 'the selling job', is that lifelong learning is essentially a people-centred approach. It is a centrally humane approach to social and individual development and accordingly there are many things there that can be tapped into that can elicit responses from people, provided that they are handled well and perhaps less patronisingly than would sometimes be the case. We are involving and promoting human resource development in sustaining the capacities for employability and re-training, the kind of skills required for the flexibility and mobility and so on in the changing work situation. This is also and can be seen as very much an agency of social justice whereby many of the people who suffered for whatever reasons from inadequate education provision in the past can under this new ambit make a second chance become real. Linked into this are the sensitive and subtle areas of people motivation, the confidence building measures, the bridging that needs to take place to ensure this vision of justice becomes a reality. Of course we are preparing people for employability, but that need not be in contradiction to self realisation because their potential, the development of their potential and their skills becomes part of their employability. Indeed, by doing one, self development can also be leading to the other, because you are not talking about a narrow technical instrumentalist approach. Extablishing a Norm Obviously, improving the working environment and making it a learning environment is very central to the whole process, but so to is establishing lifelong learning as a norm for all of us. Many of us are lucky enough to have the skills to stay lifelong learners, but having it established as a norm within society at large can take away the stigma that sometimes, just sometimes, stays with aspects of adult education and its deficit model approach. If we are all adult learners and learners throughout life I believe that it opens up people's attitude much more significantly in this field. In the last two centuries we have been shaping what you might call a schooled society - extending primary education, universal primary, mass secondary education and now the era of mass higher education. As a result, the age group 6-22 have really benefited massively for various reasons. Now I think the emphasis in education provision will have to shift somewhat. There are other ages that have to be responded to, in particular, early childhood education. Securing the foundations and the whole area that the Baroness mentioned about childcare and provision of good nursery education are all becoming so important now in so many countries for a variety of reasons. Securing these foundations is so vital because as you all know prevention is so much important than cure. If you can get the basis right and well handled at the appropriate levels of children's ability and stages of development then very often later problems become more manageable and sometimes may not emerge at all. Within the education system, each sector has to re-think its role, its function in relation to lifelong learning. Quite simply, it is not an adult education business that does not affect a secondary school teacher or primary teacher; lifelong learning affects us all. If we do not move it into that direction it will stay peripheral. We must see it as a permeating force and as a key issue that everybody involved in education and training is conscious of and conscious of the links between it and their sectors. Our various plans and policies must address this issue in terms of, 'What am I doing in relation in relation to lifelong learning, what is my role, what is my plan, what do I intend to do, how do I interpret it?' In particular, one of the most vital things in the whole system is to use the lever of lifelong learning to do something we should be all doing anyway and that is promoting the importance of active constructivist learning. Learning to Learn We frequently draw attention to the importance of learning to learn and it is a grand phrase. How we can make that learning to learn motif realistic throughout most of the engagement of learning? Many people have become alienated from the system. Typically the past experience was very much of passive participation. How can we redirect and work in our methodologies at every level to ensure that we are getting active motivation and active learning focus so that people build on confidence rather than on failure? How can we ensure that it goes through and becomes the motivation for any type of learning in any kind of area, in the home, in the factory, in the workplace, in the football clubs, football stadiums or wherever the theme might be? There are many of these issues which I think the lifelong learning debate is bringing more to the surface. I would like to talk a little bit further of how partnerships can be built more, partnerships with parents in the systems, partnerships with employers, partnerships with higher education and how the present moves are probably more striking than we sometimes allow for. If you take a short span of 25 years and look at higher education now and what it was in the early 1970s, it has changed dramatically. I think it will change even more dramatically in the generation ahead. I think lifelong learning with its various dimensions will be a big factor in this future change. Obviously I think adult education will be more centre stage and the workplace as a learning environment will bring many great benefits. We all think there can be great value in an interchange of methodologies and approaches between the formal system and the workplace. It is not just one way traffic. I think the formal system can benefit a great deal from techniques and methodologies in adult education and sometimes in training away from the formal system. The formal system has stayed a bit too much aloof from a lot of very innovative work, but under this broader ambit of lifelong learning there can be more openness to the richness of interchange and interconnection between both. Obviously the usage of information and communications technologies, as I said earlier on, opens up tremendous opportunities for development. Lifelong learning can also open up the business of certification and accreditation, shifting them beyond the traditional institutions without at the same time undermining or underestimating the significance of standards and appropriate processes. It can stimulate criteria for evaluating work and living experience. This work perhaps needs further progression. And I will also put in a plea that the status and training of the adult educator ought to be improved, if we are going to achieve aspects of lifelong learning. Commitment I think lifelong learning as a strategy for policy can open up many new and invigorating possibilities over time and I think by so doing it will be keeping up with the genuine challenges faced by contemporary society. However, whether it is allowed to do so is another issue. I think that a lot depends on the quality and the sustainability of public commitment to this concept in policy terms. Now this is something that we will be discussing in study group D tomorrow throughout the day. I think it is crucial that the public awareness, the public commitment and the political backing needs to be there for it. We cannot foretell the future but we can plan for it, we can develop strategies and capacities to cope, and I suggest finally that there is some hope that this may come to pass in a way that was not quite a case in the '70s. One of the key things I see as a cause of hope is the remarkable convergence of viewpoint between the key players and the system on the importance and centrality of lifelong learning as the way forward. I think it is very amazing that in recent years you have individual governments, governments acting collectively within the EU and OECD, employer groups like the European roundtable of industrialists and others, trade union groups and educationalists, all coming to the same conclusion. I think that this is a rather rare phenomenon and it is this kind of convergence that could create the power to move this thing forward. This I think is the challenge of our times and the challenge of our generation. If we pass it by we will be letting down the previous generations who faced their challenges at their times. The challenge for us as we head into the new century is to be able to take it forward, realising that there is no panacea and there is no quick fix and these things do not happen overnight. The key thing is to establish a strategy for policy and to stick with it, work with it, establish pathways towards it and in that sense achieve it as we go along. So I will end with the final invocation as this: let what lifelong learning can do be done for the sake of humanity.
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