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Why economic and financial sustainability matter for lifelong learning

This post courtesy of Anne Taylor-Vaisey: From the March 2005 issue of the European Journal of Education:

Wurzburg

G. Why economic and financial sustainability matter for lifelong learning. European Journal of Education 2005; 40(1):69-91.

Excerpt: Lifelong learning has been a familiar concept in some of the Nordic countries for more than a century. It acquired wider recognition in the 1970s under the guise of recurrent education as an extension of the explosion of participation in initial education following the Second World War. Arguments for lifelong learning acquired greatest urgency towards the end of the 20th century as an educational response to the emergence of the knowledge society.

Though the term lif! elong learning has wider currency as a concept and value than it has ever enjoyed, its meaning and appearance vary widely across different countries and communities depending on educational attainment levels and learning traditions. But there is one common denominator in virtually all stated strategies for lifelong learning and that is the ambition of universality. Though no country has achieved that, lifelong learning policies consistently embrace the idea of reaching all learners.

It is an appropriate ambition. The knowledge society, while not always neatly defined, has concrete observable consequences in terms of the distribution of employment and unemployment, earnings and standards of living. Sooner or later those individuals who do not have the skills, competences, knowledge and qualifications needed to function in the knowledge society will find themselves on the wrong side of the knowledge and learning divide.

This post courtesy of Anne Taylor-Vaisey: From the March 2005 issue of the European Journal of Education:

Wurzburg

G. Why economic and financial sustainability matter for lifelong learning . European Journal of Education 2005; 40(1):69-91.

Excerpt: Lifelong learning has been a familiar concept in some of the Nordic countries for more than a century. It acquired wider recognition in the 1970s under the guise of recurrent education as an extension of the explosion of participation in initial education following the Second World War. Arguments for lifelong learning acquired greatest urgency towards the end of the 20th century as an educational response to the emergence of the knowledge society.

Though the term lif! elong learning has wider currency as a concept and value than it has ever enjoyed, its meaning and appearance vary widely across different countries and communities depending on educational attainment levels and learning traditions. But there is one common denominator in virtually all stated strategies for lifelong learning and that is the ambition of universality. Though no country has achieved that, lifelong learning policies consistently embrace the idea of reaching all learners.

It is an appropriate ambition. The knowledge society, while not always neatly defined, has concrete observable consequences in terms of the distribution of employment and unemployment, earnings and standards of living. Sooner or later those individuals who do not have the skills, competences, knowledge and qualifications needed to function in the knowledge society will find themselves on the wrong side of the knowledge and learning divide.
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