ABSTRACT
Most of patterns of employment, and certainly all methods of communicating and learning, are called into question by the offspring of transistors, of laser technology, and of fibre optics. Post-compulsory education is the first stage of adult education, and all previous schooling must be a preparation for that: indeed, that stage itself is also pivotal to a future of lifelong self-education. The key challenge lies in the whole notion of educating an entire population for a life of continuous, self-managed change in a network of re-learning such has never existed. Demographic changes in most industrial countries have already introduced a fall in the total 16–20 age-group and are likely to bring about at least 10 percent-30 percent fall in the potential young adult workforce. The whole of education’s relationship with society and work in industrialised communities is on a moving frontier.
