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.

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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