ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s there has been a quantum leap in advocacy for ‘lifelong learning’ in most advanced capitalist societies. The increasingly pervasive general assumption is that people will have to intensify their learning efforts in order to keep up with the rapidly growing knowledge requirements of a new ‘knowledge economy’. This chapter will argue to the contrary that we are already living in a ‘knowledge society’ in which the collective learning achievements of adults far outpace the requirements of the economy as paid work is currently organized. The knowledge society dwarfs the knowledge economy. Lifelong learning is alive and well. It is the relative withering of good jobs with decent pay that is the central problem creating the education-jobs gap. Unprecedented levels of adult learning coexist with burgeoning underemployment of this knowledge in the workplace. The major focus of this chapter will be on documenting the extent of adult learning and underemployment with particular attention to Canada and the USA. But first it may be useful to try to unpack some of the multiple meanings attributed to ‘lifelong learning’.
