Unprotected participation in lifelong learning and the politics of hope: a feminist reality check of discourses around flexibility, seamlessness and learner earners

Policy discourses over the past decade in most OECD nations have mobilised notions about lifelong learning as a new way of thinking about the relationship between work, education, training, family, and leisure (Delors 1996; Karmel 2004). The concept is not new, with its derivation in the 1960s referring to the interaction between work and formal education (e.g. apprenticeships), and then community-based non-formal education in the 1970s. Now the concept of lifelong learning (LLL), as utilised in policy, rhetorically captures formal and informal, non-formal, abstract and experiential learning in schools, universities, TAFE, communities, workplaces and homes. LLL is portrayed as the future way of living and learning for children, young people and adults, a ‘wonder drug’ (Coffield 1999). The implicit assumption is that we can learn something from any aspect of our daily lives that can inform how we do paid work more productively (Field 2000a).