ABSTRACT
Summary: Lifelong learning is an accepted concept in the United States, but recurrent education is not. Ideas associated with lifelong learning have been held and expressed from earliest times (eg Jefferson). Recurrent education is perceived as a European notion restricted primarily to work-oriented education supported by government policy. Continuing education is another concept receiving general acceptance in the United States, particularly that offered through universities, colleges, professional societies, and by management in both government and corporations.
While the notion of lifelong learning had been accepted and expressed in many forms before the debate at UNESCO concerning éducation permanente, the largest volume of scholarly writing about the concept, and about the allied notion of a learning society, has occurred over the past decade, spurred particularly by the passage of the Lifelong Learning Act sponsored by the former Senator, now Vice-President, Walter Mondale. The debate both before and after the passage of the Act has generated studies, reports, manifestoes and position papers of many kinds.
A typical definition of lifelong learning is ‘a conceptual framework for conceiving, planning, co-ordinating and implementing activities designed to facilitate learning by all Americans throughout their lives’. While the Act has not been funded, and therefore is not fully implemented, the process of study and debate continues.
To understand the passage of the Act, it is important to review the support that had been accorded earlier to a number of measures that provided wide access to education, such as agricultural extension, educational support for veterans and government employees, support for manpower needs, for workers and for the education of management personnel.
Attention is now being directed to conditions necessary to achieve a learning society, to ways of supporting and sustaining opportunities for continuing education for all, and to financial policies (such as educredit) which permit and encourage persons of lower income, or low educational attainment, to participate. There are increasing numbers of studies related to the improvement of learning skills of people of all ages and of measures to encourage self-initiated learning.
A new and significant social and educational problem is the appearance, in many states, of laws requiring the re-certification of health professionals, and making the renewal of a licence to practise conditional upon certain mandatory continuing education requirements. The desirability and validity of such practices is under debate.
