‘The planet will not survive if it’s not a learning planet’: sustainable development within learning through life

Abstract

This review analyses the report Learning through Life from the point of view of the sustainable development theme and from a ‘South‘ perspective. The review recognises that the report is written to influence UK policy‐makers and practitioners; it has captured the results of a broad‐based inquiry, and it therefore has had to proceed within that remit. It introduces some refreshing and innovative ideas to shift the terms in which lifelong learning is considered to be more integrated across the lifespan in the UK. It has located the discussions broadly within the national and global financial and environmental crises and has offered suggestions for ways to encourage individual and collective engagement with lifelong learning as integral to a form of sustainable development. It has implicitly offered a ‘critique’ of the current provision of lifelong learning within the contemporary economic and political conditions rather than a ‘critical’ analysis that explicitly advocates radically different ways of being and doing business in the UK and globally. Given the extraordinary times within which we are living and the heightened awareness of the need for bold planetary responses to the economic, political and environmental conditions around the world, the report does not offer ‘a great leap forward’ but rather offers what have been referred to as ‘momentary palliatives for immediate pain’ that are not in themselves ‘steps towards creating the new successor system that we want’. However, these are not to be sneered at, but to be worked with alongside deep engagement in both debates and experimentation in the search for alternatives that can produce a more democratic, egalitarian learning planet, which can sustain life for centuries to come.