The problem of defining lifelong education

Abstract

The development of society as a whole, driven by the scientific- technological revolution, has placed before education new requirements. Traditional education, cocooned within the school system, is not in tune with the totality of socio-cultural changes within contemporary society but has ended up with a quantitative expansion, lacking the necessary qualitative changes. In the wake of the exhausted system of traditional education a new conception of lifelong education, encompassing all people, throughout their lives and in all living situations, has made its appearance. In relation to its traditional antecedent it does not signify only more education. Lifelong education is a better and wholly different education within a new, educated society, whose essence is no longer to prepare for life but amounts to a new mode of life for contemporary man.Alongside the development of the conception of lifelong education there have appeared mistaken notions that it is nothing more than continuing education, the education of grownups, or a new system of education. In a similar vein, it is frequently reduced to the utilitarian dimension of the educative process whose function is to adequately function within the productive mechanism of society.These conceptual dilemas have produced terminological irregularities. Of the many terms which have been mistakenly equated with "lifelong education“ only “education throughout one's life" is its synonim, while the terms “a learning society“ or “educated society" target only the social aspect of the term permanent education. All these conceptual-terminological differences are reflected in the definition of lifelong education. By systematizing existing definitions the author shows that it is not possible to give lifelong education a succinct descriptive definition. Its complexity and dynamics demand a broader explication which would do justice to its content.