Lifelong education and adult education — the state of the theory

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Abstract
Some years ago when the concept of lifelong education was in vogue and when there was a constant flow of literature about it being published by a core of writers gravitating around or employed by UNESCO, the constant warning was not to confuse the concept of lifelong education with adult education because this would unduly limit the concept and distort the educational philosophy it represented. This warning has not, generally, been heeded by writers and the expression ‘lifelong education’ has consequently lost the distinctive meaning writers like Dave, Cropley, Gelpi and Lengrand tried to give it in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1979 Cropley edited a book called Lifelong Education: A Stocktaking which, in fact, tried to take stock of the state of the theory and to identify the problems with its promotion. Gelpi took up the latter task in some detail in a subsequent article but failed to address certain problems with the concept of lifelong education itself, raised earlier by Lawson. This paper goes over all this ground and then tries to clarify some confusions with the concept of lifelong education by examining two different interpretations or views of lifelong education, the ‘maximalist’ and the ‘minimalist’, which have evolved through the literature of the subject, identifying the former with the core of writers mentioned above. It then examines the role of adult education within the two interpretations, arguing that the ‘maximalist’ view has largely disappeared to the detriment of adult education, and reproposing it anew to adult education writers and practitioners.

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