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????