Lifelong learning, mindfulness and the affective domain of education

Abstract

Recent discussions of trends in lifelong learning (Field and Leicester 2000; Aspin 2007) have been concerned to mark the differences between an older tradition of adult/continuing education which was holistic, idealistic and all-embracing and newer perspectives which are narrower and more utilitarian (Hyland 1999). The differences are well brought out in the contrast between, for instance, the 1972 UNESCO report Learning to Be (Faure et al. 1972) influenced by Lindeman’s notion that the purpose of education is ‘to put meaning into the whole of life’ (1926/1989, p. 5) and the 1998 Department for Education and Employment Report The Learning Age which saw learning as the ‘key to prosperity’ since ‘investment in human capital will be the foundation of success in the knowledge-based global economy of the twenty-first century’ (DfEE 1998, p. 7). The contrast is between a humanistic conception of lifelong learning which incorporates social, moral and aesthetic features of educational development and a predominantly economistic model in which education is concerned mainly with industry and employment.