ABSTRACT
Lifelong learning is the flavour of the times, beloved of governments, policy makers and corporations. In a foreword to a Green Paper, The Learning Age: A Renaissance for a New Britain (DfEE 1998), the then Secretary of State for Education and Employment in England suggested that lifelong learning offered the means, no less, to a new renaissance, for a new century. Lifelong learning, the argument proceeded, represented the acquisition of knowledge and skills over the life cycle, encouraging the creativity and imagination of all people. The vision and values, on the surface at least, appeared to be more than narrowly utilitarian and vocational: there was talk of learning for citizenship while the Fryer Report (Fryer 1997) on lifelong learning noted the significance it had for spiritual as well as democratic health.
