ABSTRACT
The lifelong curriculum poses the issue of the precise nature of the functional relation between the knowledge-content of schooling and of adult learning. The content of the school curriculum, for purposes of lifelong evaluation, is conceptualised therefore in perfectly conventional knowledge terms as the mastery of specified learning goals and skills. Lifelong education encompasses a great variety of educational aspects and a wide spectrum of practical possibilities, only one of which is curriculum integration. One of the identifying characteristics of the idea of lifelong education as it has recently been developed by the UNESCO Institute for Education is a view of it as, in essence, a form of curriculum integration. Since the curricula of schooling are constructed in a cultural context of knowledge-definition though, a major issue arises in introducing 'concept characteristics' of a potentially transforming kind, such as democratisation and popular control.
