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From Lifelong Education to Lifelong Learning: Reneging on the Social Contract

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Lifelong Learning, Global Social Justice, and Sustainability

Abstract

This chapter traces the concept’s trajectory from an expansive notion as promoted by UNESCO, to the adoption of the term Lifelong Education, to its transmutation in the hands of the OECD and the EU, among others, to the reductive notion of Lifelong Learning where the primary emphasis is on personal rather than social responsibility and the main preoccupation is with employability which does not necessarily mean employment. In the initial part, light is shed on the work and ideas of a group of writers gravitating around UNESCO, some being utopian in tenor, while others, such as Ettore Gelpi, being more pragmatic in approach. The main part of the chapter focuses on the EU and its ICT and employability policy discourse centering on the notion of developing a Knowledge-Based Economy. We also note a return to a more holistic notion of Lifelong Learning as propounded by the UN with respect to the Sustainable Development Goals. We argue that for these goals to be realized, the LLL concept must be stripped of its 1990s+ baggage to become holistic in scope.

This chapter develops out of the following publication: Mayo, P. (2013) Revising Lifelong Learning. 13 Years after the Memorandum. In J. Baldacchino, S. Galea and D. Mercieca (Eds.) My Teaching, My Philosophy: Kenneth Wain and the Lifelong Engagement with Education, Peter Lang. Permission to republish in revised form granted by Peter Lang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Adult Education, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

    Leona M. English

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Peter Mayo

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  1. Leona M. English
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  2. Peter Mayo
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English, L.M., Mayo, P. (2021). From Lifelong Education to Lifelong Learning: Reneging on the Social Contract. In: Lifelong Learning, Global Social Justice, and Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65778-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65778-9_2

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