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.