Lifelong Learning. A Symposium on Continuing Education

175 Pages·1969·8.943 MB·English

by  F.W. Jessup

LIFELONG LEARNING
A SYMPOSIUM ON
CONTINUING EDUCATION
EDITED BY
F. W. JESSUP
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Copyright (g) 1969 Pergamon Press Ltd.
First edition 1969
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 68-57170
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FOREWORD
AT THE December 1965 meeting of the Unesco International
Committee for the Advancement of Adult Education, the
Secretariat submitted for consideration a paper on Education
Permanente, or Continuing Education, an expanded version of which
has now been published, under the name of the author, Monsieur
Paul Lengrand, by Peuple et Culture. The committee accepted the
main arguments contained in the memorandum, and recommended
that:
Unesco should endorse the principle of 'lifelong education*. . . which
may be defined briefly as 'the animating principle of the whole process
of education, regarded as continuing throughout an individual's life
from his earliest childhood to the end of his days, and therefore calling
for integrated organization. The necessary integration should be achieved
both vertically, throughout the duration of life, and horizontally to
cover all the various aspects of the life of individuals and societies.'
It is easy to assent to this principle as an abstract proposition.
It is more difficult to foresee what would be the consequences of
putting it into practice. Whilst it is possible to debate the general
principle in a forum such as Unesco provides, its practical impli-
cations can usefully be discussed only in the limited context of the
educational arrangements of one country or a small group of similar
countries. Thanks to the financial support of the Kellogg Found-
ation it was possible to bring together at Rewley House, Oxford, for
five days in October, 1967 a group of men and women concerned
with education in one way or another to discuss some of the conse-
quences, in this country, of taking the idea of Viducation permanente
seriously. Nearly all the participants in the conference wrote in
advance papers which formed the basis of the week's discussion.
The papers varied in length and in style, in degree of pragmatism
or abstraction.
A list of those taking part in the conference, not all of them for
vii
Vlll FOREWORD
the whole period, is given at the end of this book. Their names are
a guarantee of a high level of discussion, and there was a sufficient
preponderance of practitioners that the conference was not allowed
to ignore the basic facts of educational life. Lively and relevant
discussion, with prepared papers that were both informative and
stimulating, produced a conference that was so successful in analy-
sing and synthesizing ideas that it was generally agreed that we
should attempt to make the results available to a wider circle of
people than those who were able to be present at Rewley House.
Originally it had seemed that it might be sufficient to publish, as
a collection, the prepared papers, perhaps modified in the light of the
discussion of them. However, they were found to be too divergent
to make a coherent collection, and I was commissioned to select from
amongst them, to suggest to the authors possible editorial amend-
ments, and to put the papers into a form suitable for publication.
That is the genesis of this book. It is a matter for regret that some
of the papers, excellent in themselves, have had to be excluded
because they did not fit the shape which the book finally assumed.
Perhaps a word about the shape and contents of the book would
be useful. It begins with a clarion call by Professor Sir George
Pickering, which has not been muted by any editorial meddling.
The first chapter, on the idea of lifelong learning, bears my name as
the author, but incorporates other people's concepts, and sometimes
their phrases also. The important chapter on the implications of
the idea of lifelong learning for our formal educational institutions
was specially written by Mr. Elliott, HMI, to bring together the
contents of several prepared papers and a large part of two days'
discussion. The chapter on Professional Education consists of two
parts: first, Professor Houle of Chicago University considers the
subject in general terms, which, although they are American, aptly
fit our situation also: then Mr. Lofts looks at particular aspects of
professional education in this country. Similarly, the chapter on
Industrial Education is in two parts, first some reflections by an
academic, Mr. Hutchings, and secondly, the views of one who is
practically engaged in management training, Mr. Goldring, of the
Glacier Metal Company Ltd. The crucial subject of the media of
FOREWORD IX
mass communication is handled by Mr. Scupham, who also,
incidentally, contributed greatly to the success of the conference by
an exercise of chairmanship which was always sensitive yet never
allowed sense of direction to be lost. Whether museums and lib-
raries should lead joint or separate lives is a warm topical question,
so it may have seemed foolhardy to attempt to bring them together
in one chapter; we have the more reason for being grateful to Miss
Cook and Mr. Gerard for their collaboration in Chapter 6. Canon
Appleton and Mr. Bellchambers discuss the question whether the
great voluntary associations, whose ends are not primarily educa-
tional, nevertheless should think of themselves as having some
responsibility for helping their members to achieve lifelong learning,
and in Chapter 8, which follows, Mr. Chenevix-Trench deals with
the responsibility which rests on public bodies. Professor Vaizey,
who wrote a paper for the conference but was prevented from
attending, shows in Chapter 9 that however good may be our
intentions in a general way, the desired results may prove elusive,
in this as in other attempts to achieve a fuller measure of social
justice.
The conference was deliberately restricted to lifelong education in
this country. Mr. Miller, recently returned from a four-year Unesco
assignment in India, provided a salutary reminder that it is dangerous
to think in such insular terms. Professor Pickering begins with an
alarm, Mr. Miller ends with one. Prima facie his essay seems
irrelevant in this company; ultima facie it is uncomfortably relevant.
It is a pleasure to record the gratitude of all the participants to
Miss Hilary Lewis for her invaluable help in the organisation of
the conference and in the preparation of this book for publication.
Rewley House, F.W.J.
June 1968
PROLOGUE:
Education for
Tomorrow: A Biologist's View
SIR GEORGE PICKERING
AT MEETINGS such as this you hear addresses by educationists,
psychologists, economists, and social scientists. You rarely hear from
a physician, and yet medicine bears a close relationship to education.
Each is concerned with human beings, and the success of each
depends on an understanding of how human beings behave; each
represents a specialized application of biological science; each has
an ancient store of tradition and prejudice; each is becoming a more
precise, versatile and powerful instrument as the knowledge on
which it is based improves.
The revolution in medicine began with the revolution in thought
initiated by the essays of Darwin and Wallace a httle over a century
ago. These outlined a concept for the origin of species by evolution
from simpler forms through the agency of natural selection. Man
was seen not as a separate creation but as a member of the animal
kingdom, closely related to the primates, more distantly to others.
He represents the present stage of a long series of evolutionary
changes, just as do the horse, the dog, the kangaroo, the flea, the
louse, and, indeed, all animals and plants at present inhabiting the
earth.
This was not a new idea. What was new was the concept of
mechanism and the vast array of evidence put forward, par-
ticularly by Darwin. This evidence and the evangelism of T. H.
Huxley carried conviction. Briefly, the concept is this: All animals
and plants tend to reproduce themselves on such a scale that if all
I
2 LIFELONG LEARNING
offspring survived a full life span each species would outrun its food
supply, and indeed in time the space available for it on the earth.
Thus there is a struggle for existence in which only the fittest survive.
The test of fitness is the degree to which the animal or plant is
adapted to the environment in which it lives. Since offspring
resemble their parents, the characters that proved favourable to the
surviving parents will tend to be repeated in the children. So takes
place a steady change by which characters having survival value
tend to develop progressively.
Since it was first presented, the general hypothesis has proved
increasingly in accord with facts and more and more helpful in
explaining new data. It has required modification in detail. The
chief modification is that heritable change probably always involves
a mutation, that is to say, an abrupt change in the chemical sequence
in the molecules of DNA that constitute the germ plasm. Favourable
mutations will survive, unfavourable ones will tend to perish. But
the concepts of struggle for existence, survival of the fittest and fitness
implying adaptation to environment have proved "true" in the scien-
tific sense, that is to say, they have not yet been refuted by evidence.
The concepts of survival of the fittest and adaptation to environ-
ment apply not only to individuals within populations, they also
apply to the different populations that inhabit the earth.
Man is without doubt the most successful animal in our universe
as judged by the usual criteria such as total weight or volume. He
owes his success to three characteristics. First, his upper limbs are
unspecialized, they are much more like those of the frog and other
primitive animals than they are like those of the horse, the seal, or
the bird. His thumb is so mobile that he can grasp objects between it
and his fingers. Thus he can manipulate accurately objects in his
environment. He has binocular vision and so can focus his gaze on a
specific object and follow it in three dimensional space as it moves.
Finally, he has a large brain and is thus able to learn from experience
more quickly and in much more complicated detail than any other
animal. With these three characteristics he has learned to make tools
and, later, machines, which enormously improve the range and
precision with which he can control his environment.
PROLOGUE: EDUCATION FOR TOMORROW 3
But perhaps his most valuable asset has been speech and its
written equivalent, writing. Most higher animals communicate with
one another. Man is unique in the complexity and precision of the
information he conveys to his fellows. All these fortunate charac-
teristics are amplified hugely through man's being a social animal.
Acquired skills, information, and attitudes or ideas are transmitted
and perfected through social intercourse. Because man's brain has
a large capacity for storage, and because of speech and writing,
skills, knowledge and ideas are transmitted to succeeding gen-
erations who perfect them. So develops what we call cultures or
civilizations. Some societies have been more successful or creative in
this way than others such as Ancient Egypt, China, Greece, Rome,
the medieval Italian city states, and our own civilization. These
societies have in their time led the world in their technologies, that
is to say the extent to which they have been able to control and use
for their own purposes the natural phenomena about them; they have
become rich and powerful; they have cultivated the arts and have led
the world in ideas. In short, they have been creative societies in
which it must have been and is intellectually exciting to live.
The biological success of these cultures was no doubt in part due
to the genes that they shared. But it is extremely unlikely that the ex-
tinction of Egyptian civilization was due entirely, or even mainly, to
genetic change. Human society is characterized by another kind of
inheritance, the inheritance of skills, knowledge, and attitudes, that
is to say of acquired behaviour. It seems extremely probable that the
success or otherwise of a human population or society is due to the
transmission from one generation to another of acquired behaviour
rather than of genes. Thus the fitness, in the biological sense, of
human societies is measured rather by acquired behaviour than by
genes.
LEARNING AND EDUCATION
The behaviour of the adult higher animals is made up of two
components; inborn or instinctive, and acquired or learned. In
general acquired behaviour is built onto, and into, instinctive behav-
4 LIFELONG LEARNING
iour. The interrelationship of these two components was clearly
displayed by the great Russian physiologist, Pavlov, who distin-
guished between unconditioned and conditioned reflexes. The
acquisition of new behaviour as a result of experience is termed
learning. This process is most active in the very young, but can
persist throughout life. The study of young children displays
clearly the master facts concerning learning. They are three. First,
children learn from what Pavlov called the investigatory or orienting
reflex. A new object or combination of objects, appreciated by eyes or
ears, is approached, inspected, touched, and tasted. If these investig-
ations are pleasant, its repetition attracts, if unpleasant, its repetition
repels; if neither, the object is neglected, that is to say, it does not
modify behaviour. This reflex and the series of actions that are set
in train we also know as curiosity. The urge to imitate also plays an
important part in learning in the young. It is from this above all that
the child gains his mastery of speech. Third in importance is play,
which may be defined as the pleasurable acquisition of skills or
knowledge. Konrad Lorenz once suggested that scientific research
represents play carried on into adult life. These three continue to
operate throughout life, but they diminish in intensity. Pedantry is
most successful in destroying the first and the last.
Education is a process by which learning is accelerated and dir-
ected. In both wild and domestic animals parents educate their
young utilizing curiosity, imitation, and play. Man differs only in
the speed and complexity of learning. Successful educators build
on the same inherent propensities of the child, curiosity, imitation
and play. In a general way the function of education is to prepare the
young to cope successfully with the hazards and opportunities of the
competitive existence of independent life as an adult.
THE FUNCTION OR PURPOSE OF EDUCATION
IN THE CONTEMPORARY SETTING
The first function of education in human society, in point of time,
is to direct and accelerate learning in such a way that the rising
generation will be well prepared for adult life. It is self-evident that
PROLOGUE: EDUCATION FOR TOMORROW 5
the design of an educational system should take into account changes
in the structure of society, in world conditions and in the relation-
ships of nations to one another. If this is done intelligently, then
education is likely to be good. If it is not done, or done badly, then the
educational system will fail adequately to prepare the young; it is
likely to be bad. To plan education intelligently for the needs of
today and tomorrow is the inescapable duty of your generation and
mine, to your children, my children and the children of our several
societies, these several societies being sovereign states who control
their own destinies.
IS OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM DESIGNED
FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW?
In The Challenge to Education (New Thinkers Library, C. A.
Watts, 1967) I have analysed briefly the changes in the structure of
society, the effects of the scientific and technical revolution, and the
changes in Britain's relationship to other countries, particularly the
transformation of a huge empire which called for administrators to a
self-governing commonwealth that needs instead scientists, teachers,
technocrats, technologists, technicians and wealth (capital). I have
analysed the outstanding features that an educational system should
have if it were to prepare the young of our society for the problems
that exist today and can be foreseen tomorrow. A comparison
between what should exist and what does exist is startling and
devastating. Nothing has been done to equip the young for the new
needs. Despite the scientific and technological revolution and our
need to create wealth we do not provide for the education of tech-
nocrats or business managers. In spite of the change from empire to
commonwealth we still produce the administrators and clerks who
are no longer needed.
My analysis led me to the inescapable conclusion that if the
educational system of Great Britain, and especially England and
Wales, has been designed at all (and, of course, it has not), it must
have been designed to eliminate Britain as a world power in the
second half of the twentieth century.