LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

abstract Peter Jarvis

Ethics and the Lifelong Learning Market:
a brief analysis of the European Commission lifelong learning policy.

Peter Jarvis
Professor, University of Surrey, UK
Honorary Adjunct Professor in Adult Education at the University of Georgia, USA

The aim of this paper is to contextualise lifelong education in a globalising society, understand the specific aims specified for lifelong education and then to examine some of the ethical implications of this process. The argument here is that education has always reproduced both the social structure and culture of whatever society it has been (Bourdieu, 1973), and that its reproductive functions are now being re-emphasised under the banner of lifelong learning. While the change in terminology from lifelong education to lifelong learning appears small, it is itself not insignificant since education is a social and institutionalised phenomenon whereas learning is an individual one. The emphasis is now on the individual and not the providers of education - but lifelong learning systems still function in the same manner as education in assisting individuals to fit into this liquid modern society and to reproduce its dominant culture. Consequently, the ethics of lifelong learning lies to a considerable extent with individual choice, although the ethics of the market is also a dominant underlying factor in lifelong learning provision. The paper itself has three parts: firstly, the creation and maintenance of liquid society (Bauman); secondly, the four aims of lifelong learning; finally, ethics and the learning market.

The presentation is going to be published in LLinE 4/2004