need a couple of days

Hello all
I need a couple of days away from the blog:  apartment hunting!
I should be back in a couple of days.

C

The Second Generation Conception(s) of LLL- one end of the continuum

The last posting summarized the UNESCO or first generation discourse on lifelong learning and described it as humanitarian.  Before summarizing the academic critique of the current dominant discourse in lifelong learning, today's posting will give a very brief introduction to the second generation discourse on lifelong learning.  This will set us up nicely to explore the criticisms that have been leveled against this discourse, which I will begin to post in 2 days. 

            What has been described as the second generation conceptualization of LLL (Rubenson, 2008) does not represent a static or united discourse. However, there are common themes that have developed since the 1980s within the discourses in the World Bank (WB), OECD and the European Union (EU), and these themes differ from those of the humanistic orientation.  Some would argue that the WB’s constructions have come to represent the dominant  view (e.g. See Jarvis, 2008b ) which includes  “taken for granted rules of ideas” (Rubenson, 2008, p?).  If we envision conceptualizations of LLL as positioned along a continuum, we might place the first generation humanistic orientation at one end of the continuum, and a strong economistic (Rubenson, 200?) orientation on the opposite end.  One would not be able to place the positions of the WB, OECD, and the EU in any one specific point along that continuum.  Each document from each organization  during any time might be interpreted differently by different readers. However, a trend emerged in the 1980s and 1990s among these three organizations to project conceptualizations that have been interpreted as much more strongly economistic.  Criticisms of the dominant discourse often presents it as though it eschewed a united and static vision.  Although this is not the case, there are trends which are more strongly or more weakly evident in different documents at different times, and it is at those trends that I understand the critique of the dominant discourse to be leveled.

During the 1980s and 1990s, many places in the world were becoming more economically polarized and wealth inequality was growing.  Human capital theory  was gaining prominence and education was increasingly seen as the route to economic prosperity. Concomitantly, growing neoliberal political orientations emphasized the free-market’s role in directing LLL (Cruikshank, 2008).  Neo-liberal economic organizations such as the WB looked increasingly at education as a solution to economic problems, and in the process, they were ascribing meaning to LLL (Rizvi, 2007). The OECD and EU similarly looked to education for solutions.  Rapid social and economic changes were seen as a product of changes in technology. Thus, improvements or expansion of education was not only seen as a way to deal with these changes but also expected to enhance innovation and productivity. Education was increasingly seen as a factor in production (Rubenson, 2004).   Increasingly discourse was redirected from traditional progressive ideologies toward a prevailing epistemology revolving around economic concerns (Bagnall, 2000).

At this point, I wish to highlight general themes/shifts that emerge in the post-1980s dominant discourse as it is represented by the WB, EU and OECD.  This is done to introduce the dominant discourse and  not to critique it.  Thus, the introduction will be brief.  More detail will be presented in the summary of the critiques of the discourse. 

One shift refocused the discourse toward  learning  instead of education. In its publication Educational Sector Statistics Update (ESSU), the WB (2005) claims a “…need for learning throughout the life cycle, based on learning needs rather than age, and aim to replace information-based teacher-directed methods with learning that develops the ability to create, apply, analyze and synthesize knowledge” (p. 59, as quoted in Rivera, 2008).  Critics of the dominant discourse address the implications of this shift.

The second generation also includes a vocational shift which aims to increase the overall employability of the labour market. LLL is seen as a way for workers to regain some of the control over their own futures that they have lost due to globalization [this term is taken here to suggest an increasingly globalized free-market economy and mobility of human and other resource capital] (Seager, 2007 as referenced in Jarvis, 2008b).  Individual employability and qualifications, and the collective employability and productivity of the labour force are areas of concern (Barr Griffen, 2007; Usher & Edwards, 2007; Wain, 2007).  Critics raise concerns about this shift.

Finally, there is a neoliberal shift toward a market-driven approach to economic and social policy.  With faith in the efficiency of the free market, the transactional language and rationality of the market is adopted  in matters of social and public policy such as education. The WB, for instance, assumes that “…the unrestricted market and competition can bring prosperity to developing nations” (Hyslop-Margison & Sears, 2006, p. 74 as quoted in Jarvis, 2008).   LLL, driven by and addressing market interests, is positioned to address economic concerns directly, and to address social concerns directly and indirectly through the prosperity that it promises.  Documents from the OECD, EU and even the WB all reference social issues that will be addressed by a market-driven vision of LLL.  Expansion and improvements in education and learning throughout the lifespan are presented as mechanisms for personal empowerment, social inclusion, cohesion and democracy.  Some critics (e.g. Bagnall, 2000) argue that attention to social issues in these discourses is nothing more than comforting surface dressing. 

In two days I will be posting an introduction to the academic crtitical response to this second generation. 

Historical and Contemporary Conceptualizations of LLL

What the heck is Lifelong Learning? 

 

For all the attention it gets, learning throughout the life-course is neither a new, nor a static, nor a simple uncontested concept.  It has been around, at least in some form, since at least the time of Plato (Rubenson, 2004). But in the 1960s and 1970s, LLL (called lifelong education at the time) became a “master concept and guiding principle for restructuring education” (Rubenson, 04, p. 29). It received substantial attention for a short time and then was resurrected with different character and under different forces years later (Rubenson, 04). Its character is dependent on its contexts: in different times, different organizations (and different interests within organizations) construct LLL in different ways (Biesta, 2006). Schuetze (2008) compares LLL to “… a chameleon whose colours are changing according to its environment thereby confusing the very concept” (Schuetze, 08, p. 376).  However, there are main features that are rather consistent across contemporary discourse: LLL is a) lifelong, b) life-wide, and c) focused on learning instead of education (Schuetze, 08).

  

Today, and in coming posts, I want to explore the changes in the  conceptualizations of LLL as evidenced by the discourse from major international agencies such as the OECD, World Bank and the EU.  One of the early "modern" conceptualizations of LLL came from UNESCO, so today, I want to start by describing, in very general terms, the UNESCO conceptualization.  This will set the stage for a comparision that I will make in the coming days. 

The UNESCO Conceptualization of LLL

Rubenson (2004) refers to orientations and generations of LLL policy discourse. The first generation, which he refers to as the Humanistic orientation, was typified by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s  (UNESCO) 1972 Fauré Report which called for nothing less than the “complete fulfillment of man [sic]” (p.?) . It outlined 21 guiding principles for implementing LLL (Ouane, 2008) and decried the unsettling impact of modernization on daily life.  I proposed LLL so people could “develop a scientific frame of mind in order to promote the sciences without being enslaved by them (p. xxvii, as quoted in Rubenson, 2008).

UNESCO has continued to promote LLL.  It has supported numerous studies and authored many reports including the 1996 Delors report, Learning: The Treasure Within, which aimed to preserve the values of education put forth in the Fauré Report in the face of globalization (Ouane, 2008) . In 2006, the UNESCO Institute for Education became the Institute for LLL [check] with a mandate to strengthen services supporting LLL, foster a holistic approach to LLL with special concern for those who are disadvantaged, and to network (Ouane, 2008). 

In the following section, I describe UNESCO’s conceptualization of LLL.  This description is not based on my own in-depth analysis of UNESCO publications, but rather on academic and critical discourse comparing the UNESCO vision with what is being called the dominant view of LLL.  

A Broad Conceptualization

The UNESCO documents present broad aims and visions of LLL which are

“…marked by a strong, explicitly stated, humanistic ideology, a political programme, and a philosophy of education in which the ideals and language of the European Enlightenment can be clearly read, with its global aspirations, its humanistic concerns, its emphasis on solidarity, and its faith in science and technology working together with education and democracy as tools for the global improvement and progress of humanity” (Wain, 2007, p. 46).

And the state is given “pronounced role in the mobilisation and maintenance” of learning (ibid, p. 46) in its various forms.  The Delors Report (1996) suggested 4 diverse pillars of learning:  Learning to do, Learning to be, Learning to know, and Learning to live together and it sought to “rethink and update the concept of LLL so as to reconcile 3 forces:” 1) competition which provides incentives, 2) cooperation which gives strength, and 3) solidarity which unites (Ouane, 2008, p. 307).

A Right and Value in Itself

The UNESCO vision is not overly pragmatic.  Since as far back as 1947, UNESCO saw education and learning as valuable pursuits in their own right, and as a right of every individual including adults (Ouane, 2008).  Learning is part of a process in ones continuing intellectual and cultural journey.  It is at the very heart of what it means to live a human  life.

Education is not an addendum to life imposed from the outside.  It is no more an asset to be gained than is culture. To use the language of philosophers, it lies not in the field of ‘having’ but in that of ‘being’! The being in a state of ‘becoming’ at each different stage and in varying circumstances is the true subject-matter of education. (Dave, 1976, p. 63-64, as quoted in Ouane, 2008)

Dave (1976) refers to it as a way of developing a “need for and interest in cultural values, because it makes life more colourful and more worthwhile. Thus, education helps to intensify our awareness of the values of life and so creates one form of human happiness” (p. 63, as quoted in Ouane, 2008).  As a feature of living itself, LLL cannot tie itself to a notions of learning as the transmission of static knowledge.  Learning is a part of life and knowledge is used in living.

[I]n any learning process the stress can no longer be on the necessarily limited and arbitrarily fixed content; it must bear upon the ability to understand, to assimilate and analyse; to put order in the knowledge acquired, to handle with ease the relationship between the abstract and concrete, between the general and the particular, to relate  action and to coordinate training and information.  In a setting of LLE this is tantamount to equipping the human being with a method which will be at his [sic] disposal throughout the entire length of his [sic] intellectual an cultural journey. (Lengrand, 1975, p. 55 as cited in Ouane, 2008)

UNESCO’s first director, Julian Huxley explained that LLL is 

…based upon the enlargement of knowledge, not only or even mainly in the natural sciences, but equally in the social sciences and humanities.  For those bits and pieces of new knowledge, now reality. And new understandings, man is capable of forming a new picture of himself, his place in nature, his relationships with the rest of the universe, his role in the universal cosmic process—in other words, his destiny; and on that turn, building new and more adequate beliefs…in becoming aware of his destiny, man has become aware of the entire evolutionary process on this planet; the two are inter[linked]” (p. 107)  (Ouane, 2008) 

Learning offers a way for people to enjoy themselves now and prepare for the future.  Lengrand (1989) says that each new learning experience is both “…a unique and valuable experience and a preparation for future states….lived to the full and should constitute experiences, pleasures and satisfactions…[where one] gradually comes to know himself or herself” (p. 7, as cited in Griffen, 2008).

            Themes of Emancipation, Equality and Democracy

Running throughout the documents and history of UNESCO are the themes of emancipation, equality and democracy.  At the time of the Fauré Report, Ettore Gelpi was the UNESCO’s Chief of Lifelong Education. He was highly influenced by Freire and sought deep transformations in education with a radical focus on helping the poor (Ouane, 2008).   In the Fauré Report itself, “democratisation is the main driver, and where the basic function of LLL lies in the combination of the personal and the democratic dimension” (Biesta, 2006, p. 174).  Lengrand (1975) described it in terms of global issues like human rights and social justice that transcend particular societies and Dave (1976, p. 63) explained that once LLL is available to all,  it will cease to be “…a factor in the formation of an elite and in the stabilization of its position….It is no longer described as a means of advancement in society, or because of the financial benefits it brings” (Ouane, 2008).  UNESCO remained committed to these themes. In the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V) in 1997, UNESCO expressed its desire for a learning society which was “committed to social justice and general well-being” (p. 31).  LLL was positioned to promote

·         “the capacity to deal with the transformations taking place in the economy, in culture and in society as a whole” (p. 30-31)

·         coexistence and tolerance, and

·         creative and active democratic participation.(Ouane, 2008).

Thus, this first generation version of LLL is painted as a radical, humanistic and broad model inclusive of many forms and objectives (including personal, economic and political aims), conceived of as a right with inherent value for all.  In the next posting, I will give a brief comparison of this model to that of the second generation, before beginning to summarize the critiques that have developed around this latter model.

apologies

I'm posting apologies for not posting a posting today.
But in doing so, I AM posting aren't I?

GRIN

I've been buried in studying for my comprehensive exams.
and thinking
always thinking!

I will give the briefest of descriptions today of what I've been considering.

In the 1960s and 1970s, LLL (called LLEducation, for the most part back then) started to take off.  It was best exemplified by the 1972 Faure Report out of UNESCO.  The vision that UNESCO had was very progressive and humanitarian:  it sought no less than the complete fulfillment of mankind!

Good looking machine, Orville, but do you think it will fly?

The vision was, according to many pundits, beautiful.  But it has been critiqued as vague, Utopian, and impractical.   So, although the vision hasn't gone away and UNESCO has similar visions today, it hasn't fared as "well" as another vision of LLL that started to develop in the 1980s and 1990s.

You remember those days?  Reagan, Thatcher, Neoliberal birth.  Economic "crisis", high unemployment....all that stuff.   International organizations such as the World Bank, OECD and European Union started to pay attention to education and LLL within a neoliberal and human capital theory framework.  This vision of LLL has become the dominant vision of LLL.  

What I've been doing recently is looking at the criticisms of this dominant flavour of LLL.  There are many.  Critics have been vocal.  But what could be wrong with LLL? you might ask.   In a nutshell, the major complaints aren't about LLL per se, but around a Neoliberal global capitalist framing of it.  Generally, it is argued that it front stages the economic at the expense of the social, it is a form of social control manipulating people to be and behave in certain ways that benefit capital, it is overly focused on narrow views of learning, learners, work and knowledge that marginalize other valuable versions, and that it fails to address systemic inequities (and in some cases even exacerbates them!).

What I'm looking at right now is this:  If this vision of LLL is so terrible, how has it become dominant?  And what other directions are possible? 


In two days i should be able to post another short summary of what I'm starting to think about these last two questions.   I'd love to hear your comments! 

in the meantime, back to a little more LLL for me!

Hi-Jacking the LLL Train?

Today I am summarizing from the 2008 Routledge International Handbook of Lifelong Learning (Edited by Peter Jarvis). Below I have summarized and commented on a piece by William H. Rivera entitled: 

The world Bank's View of Lifelong Learning: 

Hand-maiden to the market. 

If you want to know what this has to do with trains, you'll just have to wait until the end when the train pulls into the station!  *grin*

My reading of this piece suggests that Rivera is unhappy with the World Bank’s treatment of LLL. The title sets the stage for the blasting of the WB that follows.  He relies primarily on two documents:

• The 2003:  Lifelong Learning in the Global Knowledge Economy, and
• The 2005:Educatoin Sector Strategy Update (ESSU).

What ARE we talking about, anyway?

One of his arguments is that the WB is too unspecific when it speaks of LLL leaving us to wonder what it is specifically talking about.  He takes exception to the use of the term system when it says (WB, 2003, p. 57) that countries need to create:

High-performance, lifelong learning systems.

He says that in the ESSU document, LLL is mentioned over 30 times and shows us how it is positioned as a system, a strategy, a perspective, an attitude, and a model indiscriminately.  As a  “model” he suggests that they are not appreciating the varied contexts of each country and “bureaucratically adopting one answer to  situations that demand more than one ‘model”. (p. 282).

The complaint that Rivera has that is more related to the title, is that

“The implication for the concept of lifelong learning is reductive, referring primarily to work-oriented education. “ (p. 282).

in spite of the WB’s claim to the contrary:

“Lifelong learning” is an attitude.  It provides an opportunity to adopt an ideal, not an ideology.  Lifelong learning relates as strongly to citizenship education as to utilitarian education geared to market-oriented, market-driven development.

The Bank has developed numerous documents dealing with LLL, including documents on education policy, regional strategies, cross-sectoral strategies, and project papers—with the latter highlighted for Hungary, Romania, and Chile.  (WB, 2003), p. 109).

He claims that the vision of the WB is

“to maximize the impact of education on economic growth and poverty reduction.”  (no page given)

Rivera offers the following as an example of an anomaly in the Bank’s emphasis on work-oriented learning:

“The challenge of integrating education into labour market strategies implies the need to: identify and develop those skills that are most demanded in the global economy, while learning how to learn—rather than occupation –specific skills” (WB, 2005, p. 32).

He questions why learning to learn would be contrasted with occupation-specific learning.

When the ESSU document states that

Lifelong learning ‘systems’ recognize the need for learign throughtou the lifecycle, based on learning needs rther than age, and eaim to replace information-based, t3eacher-directed methods with leaig that deveoops the ability to create, appy, analyze, and synthesisze knowledge” (p. 59).

Rivera questions how LLL can recognize need or replace teacher-directed methods, suggesting that teachers in some capacity will always have a role to play. 

The WB in the 2003 document already pointed to 18 other publications in which the WB describe LLL as a priority.  However, in the same publication, it admits that it has not yet fully explored the implications of LLL.  Rivera does refer to many of the specific projects that the WB has facilitating to promote LLL in specific countries.  One example is an e-learning strategy in Jordan.  However, in spite of its talk of nations needing total LLL SYSTEMS, Rivera critiques the WB for only concerning itself with individual elements of that system in any of its projects rather than “seeing the overall framework and connections between these elements (WB, 2003, p. 108).  He presents that the WB claims that certain countries have taken the initiative to create such systems on their own (e.g. Chile, Mexico, and China), but indicates that these “systems” are really only training projects.

So, Rivera questions what “system” might mean.  He suggests that it may really means a lifelong ‘education’ system where educational opportunities are made more available throughout the life cycle. He offers us the OECD’s idea of recurrent education (see post Jan 21) as what that education system might look like.  But he berates the WB and other such documents for conflating ‘learning’ and ‘education’ and not making clear what they are talking about.

Learning or Education?

Much has been written about the difference between education and learning and the implications for policy. Rivera tells us that at a 1976 UNESCO conference, the terms were hotly debated.  It strikes me (and this is related to the previous blog on policy) that policy makers tend to want to have something that is enforceable and even associated with tangible and measurable actions and outcomes.  You can have an educational policy which will see the building of 5 new rural schools to increase participation by 10%. It is less comfortable to policy makers to discuss a policy for learning that will improve people’s ability to problem solve or lead to greater civic involvement.  The term ‘learning’ has the advantage of capturing all the valuable informal and non-formal, un-institutionalized ways of learning that are so important and ubiquitous.

Rivera gives us this example from the WB 203 document which conflates learning and education:

Lifelong learning is crucial to preparing workers to compete in the global economy (p. xvii).

Rivera suggests that it isn’t LL learning that is necessary, but rather access to lifelong education.  I think it is more complicated than that.  I would suggest that indeed, “learning” is what is needed.  By suggesting that it is education that is needed, I propose that Rivera is privileging only certain kinds of knowledge and skills and is perhaps caught up in ‘credentialism’. People learn very effectively and ubiquitously in the workplace through a variety of means, including through communities of practice and reflective praxis.  People also learn in the workplace through their experiences with create new knowledge.  By this I mean that practical wisdom can allow the reflective practitioner to think of new designs, procedures and theories that cannot be gotten through educational institutions that only redistribute what is already known.  “Education” doesn’t supply you with know how so much as it does with know that.  If we do want LL education/learning to prepare workers to compete in the global economy (and that’s another issue that I’m not convinced on), then it is indeed the learning that is important, gotten to through whatever formal/informal means.  Education can’t happen without learning.  But learning happens all the time without education.  You can toss a ball, but if no one is there to catch it, are you really playing ball?

Now to be clear, I would be in favour of LL education.  You can accomplish some great learning that way!  But since education is only one route to learning, having an education policy that is not framed as one part of a larger emphasis on learning, we are in danger of too narrowly setting our objectives and perpetuating inequities that currently privilege certain groups over others.

Attitude, Schmattitude

Rivera returns to the notion of lifelong learning as an attitude in the WB documents and compares this to Hinchliffe’s (2006) notion of a pedagogy of the self.  He explains that LLL as an attitude, it supports continued self-directed learning by encouraging a positive attitude toward education and learning.  While I do appreciate that lifelong education/learning is only going to be sustainable and effective if it is accompanied by certain attitudes, I have to describe what I see as a form of villainization of the individual.  There is an implication that if someone is not effectively participating in LL education/learning, they are to blame.  The only thing standing in their way to a better future is themselves.  I have visions of the supervisor commenting on a work-report-card:

Johnny would do much better if only he had a better attitude.

Where, in the vision of LLL as attitude, is there suggested a way of addressing the systemic issues that impede LLL?  The proportion of Indigenous Canadians to attend university is significantly lower than that of “white” Canadians.  Do they all just have a bad attitude toward learning?  I am not an indigenous scholar but I am lead to understand that learning throughout life (and even into the next) is a core concept in indigenous world views.  So why aren’t there more indigenous people on boards of directors of major corporations?  Is it attitude that is keeping single mothers out of educational opportunities?  Is it attitude that keeps service workers and those in SME’s (small and medium sized enterprises) out of paid-work-training programs that are offered in large organizations? Is it attitude that removes the person who has to work 70 hours a week at 2 minimum wage jobs in order to afford his 2 bedroom, 700 sf apartment in Vancouver? 

I would suggest that LLL is not an attitude but rather that attitude is one of the pre-requisite facilitating factors which contributes to the effectiveness of LLL.  In a previous blog, I argued that the current compulsory education system creates a bad attitude about learning for some students.  Some people might say that it does so for many students.  Either way, far too many students are leaving compulsory education and saying “I never want to do that again!”  It is too big a topic to delve into here.  But I do want to suggest that if attitude toward learning is important to LLL, then we have serious work to do in the compulsory education system to ensure that students are not turned off of learning before they are even adults. 

Bank Interest

It is unlikely to slip your attention that the world bank is, well….uh….it’s a bank.  It states that its interest in LLL is in support of a more skilled and educated world and it does so by focusing on projects to develop ‘human capital’ (although that’s a narrow definition of ‘educated’).  Rivera suggests that although the WB is “cognizant” (p. 286) of wider aims of education, their ultimate purpose of developing market economies “cannot be denied” (p. 286).  He argues that although it is “understandable” that a bank would have economic interests fore-staged, “one is justified” in expecting the WB to act on broader educational interests, even for its own ultimate purposes of developing market economies.  I believe Rivera’s argument is that you cannot have a stable market economy where there is no stable political economy.  Thus, the WB’s support of active citizenship and education for democracy would have long-term sustainability effects on education and the market economy. 

Rivera also brings up the important distinction between employability and employment.  I think of it this way:  Wave a magic wand so that now everyone instantly has a higher degree of education!  What’s changed?  Are the unemployed now employed?  No.  Increased employability does not mean that there is increased employment.  It might (emphasis on the uncertainty) mean that those who have jobs can do them more efficiently and lead their organizations to greater profits.  This discussion is presented under the title “The Bank’s primary interest” so I am trying to interpret a relationship between the Bank’s interest and employment.  I am having a difficult time.  It may simply be that he is suggesting that employment is not so much the interest of the WB as is increasing the productive power of those who already have jobs, so as to increase profits. 

Back to Basics and Beyond

In this section, Rivera returns to the idea of employment by asking what happens when the population of the earth is even larger, and mega-transnational corporations have operating budgets larger than the resources of many developing countries?  Rivera explains that in developing countries, food and agriculture are the industries that need development most significantly and that universities have a role in local development.

He also reiterates his argument that we should be aware of conflating education with learning.

He accepts that the WB should indeed invest in long term solutions for institutions, programs and facilitators for education and training, because that is its “functional business” (p. 288).  But he also explains

…that functional business should not suggest that functional education and training are the be-all and end-all of the process of lifelong learning. (p. 288).

This statement by Rivera is helping me to articulate the discomfort I have felt in reading so much of the discourse on LLL.  Let me offer this analogy.  LLL is not an attitude.  I’ve already argued that.  It is a tool.  It is a means to a variety of different ends. 

I think of it as a train-yard filled with locomotive engines.  It can take us to so many different places:  We can plot a course toward economic competitiveness, toward equitable civic participation, toward enhancing democracy, toward self-fulfillment.  Different historical, political, cultural contexts will give us different visions of where we want to go, as they have done in the past  .  In the 1970s when our collective concerns were on civil rights and peace, we had a vision for civil rights and peace and asked how LLL could help get us to that place. (I wish I could insert an audio clip of Cat Stevens singing “Peace train.”  In the 1980s and beyond, our vision for the future was more concerned with economic development, and so we asked how LLL would get us there.  LLL is a train that has the potential to take us to many different places.  But we ask that train to take us where we want to go.  A banker will want to go to the bank. A doctor will want to go to the hospital. The current zeitgeist is asking the train to take us to a land of competitive advantage and economic growth. 

Now, we have to acknowledge that the destination we have in mind might not be what we envisioned.  Whereas economists would have predicted that economic growth will result in greater equity and prosperity for all (“A rising tide floats all boats”) it may be that these are not the results of the course we are on.  Some are looking out the windows of the train and seeing that there is a widening gap between the rich and the poor and see that Africa isn’t doing so well.  These people are saying,

“hey!  This is not what the brochure advertised!  Slow down.  I want off.  I want to get on another train!”

But that’s fine. We don’t have to be concerned that the neoliberal Global Capitalist agenda has hijacked our train!  Because LLL is a train-yard full of locomotive engines!  They can ride their train and we can ride ours.  We can envision a different destination and lay the track in that direction.  We don’t have to all be on the same train.

However, few of us can fund the maintenance of our own track and train.  We do need the state and the public purse.  This is where we have to be careful.  We need to ensure that it is understood by all that LLL is capable (and should be ABLE to) take us to a variety of destinations.  We have to be politically active in ensuring that government expenditures and programs allow for the upkeep and laying of a variety of tracks.  If the neo-liberal agenda silences those who would request support for a variety of aims of LLL, then the tracks leading to personal and democratic growth will break down. 

So, I suggest that we stop bemoaning that the 1970s  train originally destined toward humanitarian objectives of LLL has been hi-jacked by neo-liberal global capitalist instrumentality.  Instead, we should recognize that those with economic primary interests, (like the WB) will use LLL to further economic interests, and seek to ensure that we support ways in which LLL can lead to other objectives. 

All abord????

EU LLL policy: The Threat and Defense of Employment and Citizenship

Today I continue with the second summary from the 2008 Routledge International Handbook of Lifelong Learning (Edited by Peter Jarvis).  I’m going to start summarizing the policy foci of some of the major trans-national organizations now, so I thought it would be good to start with Jarvis’ contribution entitled:

 

The European Union and lifelong Learning Policy

Jarvis first sets the stage by summarizing some of the development of the EU from its 6 ‘founding’ (developed and wealthy) countries, to what is now an association of 27 very diverse nations with diverse  histories, economics, values and contexts.  Thus, although the EU didn’t even have a LLL policy until 1995, when it DID start to talk about LLL, it came out of gate running and had 2 very clear aims that have been maintained ever since:

• 1.       Competitiveness for the region in the global market, and
• 2.      Citizenship within the E.U.

In a 2001 document entitled:

Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality

the European Commission (EC) identified 4 aims of LLL:

• ·         Personal fulfilment
• ·         Active citizenship
• ·         Social inclusion
• ·         Employability/adaptability (EC, 2001, p. 9)

The last of the 4 was clearly in greatest focus from the beginning, although criticism in a 2000 consultation process encouraged a wider emphasis.  The result was the inclusion in 2001 listed above.  However, still, personal fulfilment is allowed very little space in the documents and LLL for senior citizens was not even mentioned until 2006. 

Jarvis criticizes the EC’s blurring of the difference between higher education, education and training and lifelong learning, producing concomitant documents which focus on each of these areas without adequately exploring the differences and similarities between them. 

Globalization, Employability and Lifelong Learning

I have summarized Jarvis’ summary of the political and economic changes that set the context for the development of a globalized market economy in previous posts, so will not review here. But he does ask us to recall some of the key ideas that he has advanced regarding the relative position and power of those forces that control the capital and technology and the nation states.

In a nutshell:  those that control the capital and technology associated with the global capital markets are in control of the CORE.  This core is a substructure that runs through and influences (if not out-right controls) the actions of the super-structures.  The education systems, and indeed, the nation states themselves are in the super-structure.  Although he allows that nation states still have a place to play in the “not completely free, but extremely competitive, global market” (See Castells , 1996), he does argue that the state is losing some of its power to the core of the substructure. 

 

He also reminds us of the general nature of capitalist enterprise:

“An indication of the success of the capitalist enterprise is the ‘slimness’ of the organisation—hence there are often job redundancies in successful capitalist innovations and corporation mergers” (p. 273).

This trimming of the fat, so to speak has positive and negative effects:

• ·         New commodities and new more efficient processes
• ·         Resources will be acquired wherever and how ever is cheapest.
• ·         Job redundancies à a reserve of excess labourà lower wages.
• ·         Attack on trade unions which are seen to inflate wages.

So, he presents us with two connected processes:  First, competition will lead to lower wages and high unemployment.  But those that control the market processes are becoming increasingly more powerful and increasingly able to influence the laws and even military force that will serve their interests.  There is a potential to spiral out of control:

…for those who own or control the process, there is increased wealth; for those who contribute to the process (knowledge workers and managers), there is a reasonable although relatively decreasing salary; and for the poor who either supply the resources (often in third world countries) and the labour and for the unemployed, there are decreasing returns or welfare provision” p. 274.

That the system also exacerbates the poverty of the third world and in places fails to recognise their human rights, helping to create ‘the third world in the first’, is also undeniable (e.g Kortenk, 1995; Pilger, 2003).  But it also creates a comfortable standard of life for those who participate in the West

The EU policy documents, Jarvis claims, play down poverty outcomes.  Jarvis points to radical and moderate explanations as to why that may be. Habermas (in 2006, “Time of Transition”) suggests that governments are trying to keep up with global power of the core and to cushion it.  This is an idea to which I will return when I start theorizing a new lens for analyzing LLL policy discourse.

But a major point that Jarvis makes is that in spite of its claims for humanitarian aims, the policy documents of the EU to prioritize learning for employability.

..it ends to up to be work-life learning rather than lifespan learning. (p. 274).

Active Citizenship and LLL

Besides ecomomic competition, the other main aim of the EU policy documents on LLL focus on Citizenship.  Jarvis returns to the reduced relative power of the state by referencing Bauman, 1999 (p. 156):

Once the state recognizes the priority and superiority of the laws of the market over the laws of the polis, the citizen is transmuted into the consumer, and as consumer demands more and more protection while accepting less and less the need to participate in the running of the state”

He refers to the United States when he says that even though the substructure doesn’t have any “legitimate force” (e.g. military), the core exercises its influence on the state by controlling the politicians so that they defend the corporations’ interests even if it requires the use of force. 

Jarvis summarizes the 3 dimensions of citizenship as posed by Marshall in 1950:

·         Civil—freedoms and rights

·         Political—right to participate in the political process

·         Social—right to live at a standard of living and be supported if need be.

The problem posited by Jarvis is that these rights are granted and enforced by the nation state….a state whose power is being under-mined by the very forces that could threaten these rights. This threat is further exacerbated by the fact that the population sees itself now more as consumers than as citizens.  As such, they are apathetic about political engagement that could help to protect their rights. Furthermore, the concept of citizenship itself is morphing in the context of globalization, immigration, the EU and regionalization.

Though citizenship is a goal of LLL in the EU documents, earlier visions of citizenship as community are giving way to visions of citizenship as active participation.  The EU is addressing citizenship on both levels, but it does clearly make a case for active citizenship.  Jarvis points out that were citizenship as community is a right, active citizenship is a responsibility.

The relationship between active citizenship and employment is interesting.  The link itself is downplayed in the EU documents and there is an apparent attempt to keep the two aims separate.  However, the EC does say that the globalized market “…threatens to bring about greater inequalities and social exclusion” (2001, p. 6).  LLL, in the form of citizenship, is positioned as the solution to such inequity. Lifelong learning:

…is much more than economics.  It also promotes the goals and ambitions of the European Countries to become inclusive, tolerant and democratic. (p. 7).

In summary, it occurs to me that the EU sets the aims of LLL around the two ideas of citizenship and employment.  It seems to me that the spirit in which these aims are presented is one of promise:  as though LLL will bring us somewhere better than we are now. 

“Ahh! LLL!  Our promise for a sunny tomorrow!”

This positive positioning is just barely masking the reasons why we need to focus on citizenship and employment.  The market system in which we find ourselves is a threat to both employment/standard of living and to citizenship.  And yet, we are presented with this global condition not only as if it were inevitable, but also as though it is a wonderful thing.  Talk of growth and innovation and efficiency and improvements and mobility and continuous learning all sound so promising.  And yet Jarvis gives us reason to believe that it is the very threats that inherent in this global capitalist system as it is evolving (by direct political decisions, I might add.  Not by a teleos of progress!) that LLL is needed to defend against.

………………………………………………………………………

The next blog will be a summary of the contribution of William W. Rivera entitled: 

The World Bank’s View of Lifelong Learning:

Handmaiden to the Market

Lifelong Education Policy? or Lifelong Anti-Learning Policy?

 

Hello cherished readers!

Today I am going to start on a different book.  I am summarizing from the varied authors included in the 2008 Routledge International Handbook of Lifelong Learning (Edited by Peter Jarvis).

Now offered in a 2010  paperback edition

But before I do, I want to preview something that I will be doing and for which I will ask for your comments. 

As you know, there has been a great deal of critical discussion about policy trends in LLL which are instrumental in nature and aimed at economic outcomes as opposed to more humanistic outcomes.  I am all for emancipatory learning and personal development and strengthening democratic participation and all the rest.  Don’t get me wrong.

 

 

But something has not been sitting well with me as I read much of that criticism.  Something has seemed misplaced and I’ve not yet been able to put my finger on it.  So, I am theorizing some arguments which engage the following concepts:

• ·         Policy vs. strategy vs. vision (and you will see more about that in today’s post)
• ·         Relative roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders (governments, industry, individuals)
• ·         Aspin and Chapman’s concept of the triad of goals: economics, fulfillment, and democracy

I am hoping that by early February, I will have a coherent argument (or at least a theoretical lens) that will help me to articulate the reasons for my discomfort with some of the discourse.  I further hope that this lens might be one way of clarifying what we’ve been collectively calling LLL in a way that will allow us to move beyond what sometimes (just sometimes) strikes me as non-actionable whining.  (oooo!  Did I actually put the word “whining” in PRINT!? Ouch!)

But first, now, today’s posting:

A good place to start, I thought would be Colin Griffin’s contribution to the handbook entitled

Policy and Lifelong Learning

This article was the first time that I engaged with the differentiation between policy and provision as contrasting origins of LLL.  The idea is roughly that policy may be driven by practice and practicalities of provision, or, provision and practice may be driven by policy.  

Which is the horse and which is the cart?

Griffin puts it this way:

 “It has long been accepted that lifelong education or learning is as much an object of policy as it is a description of educational provision throughout a person’s lifetime.” p. 261

Griffin posits that the relationship of policy and practice at any one time is rooted in historical contexts. Any presumption of a political nature of policy assumes the power of the state.  However, that particular power has been changing, and the contexts in which it is changing, is, well, changing as well.  He lists and explains some of the more recent contextual changes that have been happening during the contemporary development of LLL policy:

• ·         Where finance and policy intersect, the differentiation between public and private is starting to blur.  Private interests are more strongly involving themselves in education, which has been traditionally seen as a public good.
• ·         Policy is experiencing a degree of subordination to global forces: economic ones, indeed, but others as well (e.g. human rights)
• ·         Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have changed the ways that policy can be formed, implemented and communicated.
• ·         ICTs also open up new opportunities for civil society, the public sphere, and resistance.

“Increasingly, policy is located in the interface between government authority and social movements of civil society” (p. 263).

• ·         Research in changing the nature of how we view policy.  In turn, policy is also influencing what research is done.

The claim that policy somehow reflects the ‘facts’ of society, rather than simply the ideological views of it, is more likely than ever before to feature now.  By the same token, of course, most social research is policy-driven too:  “ p. 263

• ·         Smaller political units:  regionalization
• ·         More international organizations and international legislation and concerns (e.g. environmental)

The author then takes us on a brief tour of the historical development of forms of “lifelong learning” and links each to historical and policy contexts of the time.

First, there was Liberal Adult Education.

• ·         Age specific:  adults (whatever that means)
• ·         Involved voluntary, academic or recreational pursuits.
• ·         Had a very humanistic focus:  it was all about personal development (this WAS the early 1970s, remember!)
• ·         Some learning situations took on the status of a social movement when involving literacy or community development
• ·         The role of policy was rather ambiguous. 
• Didn’t really distinguish between vocational and non-vocational activities
• Only when conceptualized as education for “workers” or “citizens” could it be incorporated into policy.  “Adult” education was absent from policy. 
• ·         The author suggests that this illustrates that policy discourse (e.g. the differentiation of ‘workers’ ends up driving practice distinctions)

Next, he describes Permanent Education

• ·         Still early 1970s but relatively short-lived. à didn’t really make it to policy and/or practice in any significant degree.
• ·         Suggested by the Council of Europe.
• ·         Suggested that education should be provided for your whole life concurrently integrated with other ways of learning (e.g. work). 
• ·         It combined liberal and vocational learning but had a very critical and political focus:

“…together with social work and community development, permanent education will include social action i.e. it must be an active force in social change” (Council of Europe, 1970: 469)

• ·         It encouraged a critical attitude toward technology that is absent in today’s policy.

Griffen then explains the concept of Continuing Education

• ·         This is the first genuine incorporation of something akin to LLL into policy.
• ·         1980s
• ·         Focus was on workforce formation and employability.
• ·         It was a strategy (note the word:  Strategy!) to deal with economic change of the 1980s.
• ·         Whereas liberal education couldn’t make it into the forum of policy, strategic labour-force learning can.

“It does not simply deny the distinction between liberal and vocational adult education but consigned the former to a policy limbo from which it has never returned.” P. 265

• ·         The relationship between policy and strategy is highlighted:  Learning and education need to be strategically aligned with some sort of demonstrable outcome (such as employment statistics) in order to be included in policy.

“These concepts [continuing education, recurrent education, adult education, etc.] are a function of policy rather than of theory and practice” (p. 265)

• ·         The remnants of Continuing Education live on in what is now called continuing professional development.

Recurrent Education:

• ·         A short lived and radical vision of the OECD (yeah, really.  Good old, radical OECD!) developed in the 1970s (oh. That explains it.  )
• ·         This involved intermittent lifelong involvement in educational experiences.
• ·         This is the first time the notions of informal, non-formal, and incidental learning start to prominently feature in the types of learning experiences one slots into their world.
• ·         Was short-lived too.  Was associated with discussions about paid educational leave.  So, its short life isn’t surprising.

Lifelong Education

• ·         This direction was fuelled by the expectation that the new world economic order required more skilled workers and a more competitive workforce. 
• ·         It was a utopian notion associated with notions of a learning society which left room for both vocational and liberal learning.
• Continuous learning is positioned as glue for economic, social and cultural solidarityI
• It should be available to everyone all the time.

ANALYSING POLICY

Griffin proposes that notions associated with “learning” are too vague, compared to those associated with “education” to be able to incorporate into policy.  So, if you start with policy on “learning” it isn’t likely to turn into practice.  If you start with practice, it’s hard to convert it to policy.

“Education” on the other hand has a better chance of association with demonstrable and measurable outcomes. Thus, it’s more likely to be translated into funding structures and other products of policy.

He suggests that one can analyse policy in education from several different directions.  But where all analysis intersects is in differentiating between:

• ·         Learning vs. education, and
• ·         Vision vs. policy vs. strategy

He didn’t explain what he meant by vision, but he did explain what strategy was:

.  “A strategy is an instrumental means to a policy end” p. 268.  

·         Learning can be strategy, but it cannot be policy because it can’t be enforced. 

 ‘At the level of government strategy, people may be variously persuaded, cajoled, bribed, threatened or shamed into becoming active individual learners: their learning cannot be mandated” p. 268.

·         Education, however, as POLICY implies funding and structures and provision, and all sorts of actionable and mandate-able and controllable and measurable items.

CONCLUSION

The author concludes by referencing a 2006 European Commission Document entitled Adult Learning: It is never too late to Learn. 

The document reports on how LLL is doing:  What progress has been made in implementing policy for competitiveness, employability, social cohesion, active citizenship, and personal development? 

Bottom line:  not so good.  Implementation has been weak.

“This dichotomy between political discourse and reality is even more striking when wet against the background of the major challenges confronting the Union” (EC. 2006 p. 3)

Note:  I’ve not looked at the document myself.  But I wonder about the choice to report on the progress of implementation for policy goals as opposed to reporting on evidence of the attainment of any of the goals.  I suppose if implementation is weak, then attainment will be minimal.  And implementation can be addressed.  Attainment isn’t as easy to address, other that, by looking at the implementation.  If implementation had been strong and there was still no report on attainment, then I’d have bigger concerns.

The report, and subsequently Griffin, gives an account of some of the challenges facing implementation.  These include:

• ·         Aging population
• ·         Increasing immigration

It occurs to me that they are confusing implementation (by governments and agencies) with participation (by individuals).  It further occurs to me that such political positioning documents never seem to mention several reasons for non-participation that would be inconvenient for policy because they don’t associate with quick and easy fixes.

One reason in particular is the apathy with which many view further education. People are leaving their compulsory schooling without a passion for learning and without an appreciation for learning beyond the instrumental.  Indeed, more students than ever are attending post-compulsory education.  But continued participation in learning opportunities (i.e. formal education) is not sustainable if the reasons for participation are reactionary, instrumental, and perceived to be based on a need to instead of a want to. Without personal internal reasons linked to one’s inner most being, one will participate as long as they feel they have to in order to get by. 

I don’t disagree with Griffin that you can’t mandate learning, so education becomes the focus for policy discourse.  What I want to ensure to include in the conversation is that education is nothing (absolutely literally) without learning.  Learning will only happen (and education policy can only be effective) if the learner has a vested passion in what they are doing.  Instrumental interests, even personal ones such as the desire to get a good job, encourage learning only to levels of “adequacy” and lose their power to persuade when the needs of the market change and make their previous efforts obsolete. 

A similar problem is that of time. A number of studies have shown that people are experiencing unprecedented levels of work-life imbalance.  People are just burned out.  They are working longer hours and often under more stressful conditions.  Down-sizing and reorganization has left people either doing the work of more people, or left them to struggle to learn new skills while still doing their old jobs, or left then worried that they will soon be out of work.  The increasing number of working-poor have meant more people are taking on second jobs. Furthermore, the consumerist culture which has people demanding more/bigger/better stuff pushes people to work ever harder.  People are left with no time to engage in whatever opportunities might be “policied” into being. 

These are barriers to successful implementation (which leads to LEARNING) that don’t come with easy solutions.  Many of the solutions would be very uncomfortable for capital-interests.  Paid education leave never made it as a successful policy, did it?  The E.U. report makes suggestions for how to better implement policy in education.  Among them is

Lifting the barriers to participation

I find it hard to read that with a straight face.  It is akin to having the problem that your car isn’t going fast enough and posing “drive faster” as a solution.  One of the major problems is that there are massive barriers to participation, and much policy itself creates the conditions which support the barriers.

I agree with Griffin:  Indeed, you cannot “policy” learning the way you can “policy” education.  But the ways in which education (compulsory and post-compulsory) have been “policied” and implemented (and in association with other economic and social policies) have made it increasingly more difficult for potential learners to learn. 

Lifelong Education Policy has become Lifelong Anti-Learning Policy

Cap’n Kirk!  I’ve given ‘er all the di-lithium crystal policy that I can!  Boot she just won’t hit warp speed!

Ok, I’m just being silly there.  But the idea is valid and said in the old way:  “you can lead a horse……but if you have a policy of putting a lid on the trough, the horse ain’t gonna drink!”

Griffin posits that adult learning relates to strategy and not to policy. 

It is formed out of political goals such as competiveness and social cohesion. Education can have policy.  

 

Policy                                                              Goal

 I wanted the arrow between the words....but I can't figure how to do that! 

I suggest that

it is through education policy

that adult learning is engaged as a strategy

to achieve political goals.

 

                                             Goal

 and "Goal" should be written higher beside the red sign

And furthermore, that

Education and other policy

Has created barriers to learning

Impeding the strategy

from achieving the political goals.

The next blog, posted in 2 days will be from the same book.  I think it worthwhile to review what the policy has been in major organizations such as the EU, the OECD and the World Bank.  So, the next posting will be a summary of Peter Jarvis’ contribution entitled:

The European Union and lifelong Learning Policy

In this article, Jarvis will examine the notion of employability in a global context, and explore the EU’s citizenship policy and some of its programs.