Towards A Learning Society

Promotes a "learning society", which would create the conditions for motivation in the classroom. Ranson looks at the needs of education in a society undergoing great change, and argues that any education reform needs to build upon, and go beyond, the achievements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

This book critically assesses the learning that is required and provided within a learning society and gives a detailed sociological analysis of the emerging role of lifelong learning with examples from around the globe. Divided into three clear parts the book: looks at the development of the knowledge economy provides a critique of lifelong learning and the learning society focuses on the changing nature of research in the learning society. The author, well-known and highly respected in this field, examines how lifelong learning and the learning society have become social phenomena across the globe. He argues that the driving forces of globalisation are radically changing lifelong learning and shows that adult education/learning only gained mainstream status because of these global changes and as learning became more work orientated.

Issues relating to curriculum, teacher education, guidance, evaluation, education of the gifted, development of creative potential among school children, etc., should be clearly understood by the teacher. We talk today of a learning society. This implies that those who have been exposed to educational experience of some worth will continue to value learning and its outcome.

This text discusses the meaning of education through an examination of life paths, identities and significant learning experiences. Looking at education over three generations of war and scant education; of structural change and increasing educational opportunities; and of social well-being and wide educational choice the book examines a variety of questions.; The book demonstrates how the synthesis of social and cultural interpretations of education forms four groups: resource, status, conformity and individualism. The implications to education policy in late-modern or postmodern society are also discussed.

First published in 1999, this volume recognises that lifelong and continuing education is one of the main issues on the educational stage. In the United Kingdom it is a key feature of the government’s educational initiative as reflected in the Green Paper, ‘The Learning Age: a Renaissance for a New Britain’ [DfEE, 1988]. This book provides a range of contributions to the current debate from academic practitioners. It includes both theoretical discussions and empirically-based studies. Lifelong learning continues to raise important educational questions which are relevant in many countries. These include issues concerning how to enable individuals to reach their potential for self-fulfilment; how to ensure that educational opportunities are interesting and available to all; and how to ensure that a nation’s workforce is adaptable and well-educated. Each chapter explores a dimension of such fundamental questions.

This is a book with a difference: it produces a completely new perspective on lifelong learning and the learning society and locates them within humanity itself. Five themes run through this book: Humankind has always been aware of the imperfections of human society: as a consequence, it has looked back to a mythological past and forward to a utopian future that might be religious, political, economic or even educational to find something better. Lifelong learning as we currently see it is like two sides of the same coin: we learn in order to be workers who produce, and learn we have a need to consume. We then devour the commodities we have produced, whilst others take the profits! One of the greatest paradoxes of the human condition has been the place of the individual in the group/community, or conversely how the groups allow the individual to exist rather than stifle individuality Modernity is flawed and the type of society that we currently have, which we in the West call a learning society, is in need of an ethical overhaul in this late modern age. There is a need to bring a different perspective – both political and ethical – on lifelong learning and the learning society in order to try to understand what the good society and the good life might become. In Democracy, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society, the third volume of his trilogy on lifelong learning, Professor Jarvis expertly addresses the issues that arise from the vision of the learning society. The book concludes that since human beings continue to learn, so the learning society must be a process within the incomplete project of humanity. All three books in the trilogy will be essential reading for students in education, HRD and teaching and learning generally, in addition to academics and informed practitioners. The Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society Trilogy Volume 1: Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Human Learning Volume 2: Globalisation, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society Volume 3: Democracy, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society Peter Jarvis is an internationally renowned expert in the field of adult learning and continuing education. He is Professor of Continuing Education at the University of Surrey, UK, and honorary Adjunct Professor in Adult Education at the University of Georgia, USA.