The perils of confusing lifelong learning with lifelong education

Abstract

This article proposes lifelong learning as a socio‐personal process and a personal fact. As such, it is conceptually distinct from an educational provision, which constitutes one kind of institutional fact. In making this distinction, this article seeks to elaborate a major flaw in the precepts for conceptualisation and enactment of the report Learning through Life, thereby proposing it as being ill‐informed, partial, of limited use and dangerous as it could lead to the misrepresentation, marginalisation and undermining of a broadly premised provision of adult learning. The emphasis on educational provisions rather than individuals’ learning and the diversity of settings in which individuals learn stand as major flaws that seemingly arise from the authors’ perspectives and stakeholder interests. Largely neglected throughout is the scholarship on adult learning and development across individuals’ life courses. Instead, miscellaneous and unhelpful sources inform the report. The overall recommendations reflect a view of human development that was abandoned decades ago as being unhelpful, and whose rejection is more now pertinent than ever. Moreover, it largely rehearses in educational discourse and unquestioningly the value of taught courses, ignoring the importance and ubiquity of learning experiences outside of courses. Across the report’s discussion, and shaping its recommendations, lifelong learning is presented as an institutional rather than a personal process. It is erroneously claimed to be something that social institutions do rather than individuals. In doing so, a misinformed and inaccurate account of lifelong learning emerges and a narrow conception of how learning might best be promoted and supported is advanced. The great threat within this document is to promote a form of learning support that lends itself to regulation and control. The peril here is that other circumstances and settings in which learning occurs will be ignored or marginalised. In all, not only is this report an opportunity lost, but it also represents a significant threat to an important and viable field of human and societal development.