So, tell me, is it completely inappropriate to talk about becoming dominant on the day of romance? *Grin*
Assumptions about the economy, knowledge, learners and the labour force on which the second generation discourse is based have not been historically true so should not be seen as inevitable or necessary, and yet that is exactly how the discourse positions its assumptions (Fejes, 2008). Simmons (1997, p. 85) calls it “…unmerciful unmerciful mater-of-factness; and [the] intellectually calculating economic egoism” (Jarvis, 2008). Griff (2008, p. 267) asks if market forces have reduced the analysis and questioning of such policies to a “spurious academic exercise”. Furthermore, with critique that essentially casts the second generation discourse on LLL as essentially as narrow, manipulative, inequitable, unjust, and socially-deaf, one might ask why this discourse became dominant.
The alternate conceptualization, that of UNESCO, was too vague, resistant to funding and not oriented to the practical (Griff, 2008; Rubenson, 2008). Thus, it was not heard strongly in policy circles. It was also anchored strongly in civil society and not in the relatively more powerful state or market. LLL didn’t become a focus for policy until the learner was conceptualized as a worker, an economic resource, and a tool for addressing an unknown future. Griff (2008, p. 265) says that contemporary discourse “…doesn’t simply deny the distinction between liberal and vocational adult education but consigns the former to a policy limbo from which it has never returned”.
“The discussion on lifelong education and lifelong learning became a strange mixture of global abstractions, utopian aspirations and narrow practical questions that often lost sight of the overall idea.” (Rubenson, 2004, p. 30).
When the 1980s saw economic downturns and high unemployment, UNESCO’s vision did not offer practical and decidedly economic solutions. Neoliberal sentiments were becoming more popular and they offered a way to link learning to economics. The European Roundtable of Industrialists complained that education was not producing the quality of human resources that were needed to increase their competitive advantage. They put pressure on policy makers to limit the private sector and to increase labour market flexibility, and to make education more related to the world of work (Rubenson, 2008).
Rubenson (2008) also notes the importance of international non-governmental organizations such as the WB and OECD during this time. “It is worth noting the fundamental influence of the intergovernmental organisations on the domestic discourse and how the concept of lifelong learning is part of cultural and economic globalisation processes” (Rubenson, p. 29). These organizations disseminate ideas, negotiate conventions, develop policy indicators, do research, prescribe strategies and priorities and work with each other to influence their common agenda (Rizvi, 2007). Nations may have ultimate responsibility for education policies in their realm, but they are increasingly affected by these international agencies whose scope of interests is narrower than that of the state. Biesta (2006, p. 170) says “there can be no doubt that the ideas generated by such organisations have a strong ‘agenda-setting’ impact and provide crucial reference points and yardsticks for the formation of policy and practice at national levels.”
Griffen (2008) attributes some of the persistence of the discourse to the blurring of the boundaries between private and public with respect to financing. He argues that policy direction and funding are becoming less public and more part of the market. Public policy is increasingly affected by global forces which include but are not limited to capital. Griffen also points to the large amount of research that is driven by global corporate capitalist and international organizations around LLL. Research normalizes certain conditions and subjectivities presenting its findings as facts about the world, not just refections of a particular ideology. Rizvi (2007) refers to Charles Taylor (2004) when he refers to it as a “social imaginary.” The corporate capitalist forces have the resources to engage in the kinds of research that will support their conceptualizations of LLL (Griffen). Performativity and the various conditions and identities supportive of the substructure manage to function as a metanarrative without appearing to be one. (Wain, 2007).
Jarvis (2008) similarly describes the influence of the global corporate capitalist substructure on the entire superstructure. Education, along with law, democracy and civil society in general, he argues, are all exposed to sources of influence other than the state. “Major corporations with their unelected directors and supranational organizations with their interest far removed from the level of daily and private life exercise as much and maybe more power over people than do elected governments” (Jarvis, p. 24). The power of the state to direct the course of civil matters such as education, is reduced.
Rizvi (2007) explains that the problem isn’t globalization per se but the imaginary of it that has developed and sustained this dominant view of LLL. Jarvis (2008) refers to it more as a culture which is learned and self-perpetuating. Soros (1998) referred to it as economic fundamentalism (Rizvi, 2007). Usher and Edwards (2007, p. 23) contend that it is a “simulacra” of hyper-reality where what we experience is not the world directly but rather representations of it: decontextualized signifiers which are not anchored in reality but rather are “generated by models of a real without an origin”. Electronic media is feeding us the simulacra and is compressing space and time enabling fast capitalism (Usher and Edwards, 2007). Fast capitalism enables consumerism where “consuming is a principal [sic] mode of self expression and the experience of social participation is often contingent on consumption” (Usher and Edwards, 2007, p. 25). People feel fulfilled in their consumerism and “…who needs rights?” (Jarvis, 2008, p. 102)
Finally, Griff (2008) suggests that the second generation of LLL policy discourse is persistent because it is not policy at all, but rather strategy. Policies are negotiated, examined and evaluated and are designed to meet the needs of the polis. But by shifting the focus from education to learning we exit the jurisdiction of policy. “Learning is something we attribute to people without being able to mandate it or secure it in the way that social policy must prescribe to some degree at least. Learning eludes social policy because it cannot like educational provision be directly controlled” (p. 268). And we are no longer focusing on the polis. Policy implies funding and provision. The discourse often does not engage these issues. Strategies, on the other hand, are a means to an end and there is no need for that end to be the betterment of the polis. The second generation of LLL “policy” discourse is a means to economic ends which support global corporate capitalism.
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