ABSTRACT
Summary: Recurrent education and the affiliated policy concepts of éducation permanente and lifelong education are now coming of age. They have been presented as remedies for all the shortcomings and ailments of education, but beyond that they have also been welcomed as policies that would make an end to the isolation of schools and universities from socio-cultural and economic life, and to their poor responsiveness to people's real needs.
Over time, the original concepts have undergone change and interpretation. They were all initiated by international organizations. Depending upon the degree of homogeneity and heterogeneity in their member countries' philosophies they were formulated in more general or in more specific terms and later elaborated in lesser or more general policy terms: the UNESCO concept of ‘lifelong education’ has remained a Pandora's box in which every country discovers policy implications that suit its own philosophy. The ‘recurrent education’ concept of the OECD has been divested of its radical overtones and has become one of the preferential policy instruments for combating the economic and social crisis that the OECD member countries are facing. The Council of Europe concept of éducation permanente has, in line with this organization's vocation, been translated in terms of a coherent socio-cultural policy concept in which education in the larger sense of the word is given a pivotal function.
