Lifelong Learning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Lifelong Learning - Essay ExampleH G Wells was correct when he said that the undivided of human history is a fight between education and catastrophe (cited in Fischer, 2000, p. 265). Those of us immersed in a womb-to-tomb skill culture flock on the whole sense that the new millennium brings with it the opportunity for a new beginning. But we can all see, as well, the scale of the task ahead just to put on it happen, perhaps starting in our throw communities and branching out from there with new understandings, new persuasions, new insights, new wisdom. Thanks to inter-governmental organizations-UNESCO, OECD, APEC, the Council of Europe, The European armorial bearing and others - and some of the more enlightened liberal democracies, the long learning movement is now rampaging around the whole world, from Europe to South Africa and from North America to Japan, like a benign educational plague. It is the future-and it is not before time.In Lifelong Learning, written 12 years ago, Longworth and Davies suggested eight reasons why lifelong learning is curiously appropriate for this age. But nine years is a long time in a lifelong learning world. While some are still as relevant as on the twenty-four hour period they were written, it is time to update the rest to take into account the changes in the meanwhile Fundamental global demographics-in the affluent developed world, ageing, more mobile, more multicultural and multi-ethnic societies which could release high inter-racial and inter-generational social tensions and a trim back investment in welfare programmes through a fall in working, and an increase in retired, populations. By contrast, in the worthlesser parts of the world a massive population growth exacerbating already continuing shortages of resource and education and condemning vast numbers of people to live at subsistence level and below... The permeant influence of television and the media on the development of peoples thoughts, ideas and perceptions. Television has an enormously powerful effect on people. Where it is in the hands of those who would use it as an legal document of propaganda, whether raw or subtle, as happens in both poor and rich countries, it can be used to foster hatred and intolerance. Where it is used purely as an instrument of entertainment, it can, through trivialization and ignorance of real issues, have an equally insidious effect on the ability of people to make informed choices. As an occasional, independent, instrument of education it could be used to transform nations into dynamic, well-educated and flexible lifelong learning societies (Marsick, 1998, p. 119). Environmental imperatives - the depletion of the worlds resources and the need for renewable energy, the destruction of ecosystems and the demand for sustainable development. There is a polar need to educate continually all the worlds people in environmental matters as a base for the survival of species on earth and to be inventi ve and innovative about how environmental information is unplowed constantly in the forefront of popular consciousness. In other words, the need for a lifelong learning approach to a lifelong survival issue (Swedburg & Ostiguy 1998, p. 27).These are issues affecting every society and they pass out a view of lifelong learning as a global phenomenon, entirely consonant with the worldly concern of governmental perceptions.