This morning I was delighted to find Ferdinand von Prondzynski's blog entitled Diary of a University President. He called his June 9 entry "Learning for Life."
Von Prondzynski discusses the problem with terminology we've created in continuing education, "the promiscuity." I have struggled myself with the issue. We tend to use continuing education, adult education, lifelong learning and other terms interchangeably when the audience for each, the student base, is very different. von Prondzynski puts it this way:
One of the problems is that the whole concept of lifelong learning is an intellectually lazy one. There is no single idea behind it all; it could never be suggested that a middle manager doing an MBA, a human resources professional updating their knowledge, a retired person being admitted to a full-time undergraduate course, the 50-year old embarking upon a PhD, or a computer programmer doing an evening course in English literature are all generically the same. In fact, all of them are wholly different. ... The only thing that unites them is that someone decided a few years ago that they were all engaged in ‘lifelong learning.’
For me, lifelong learning is the easiest of the terms because it's an attitude, not a program. A child can have a sense of lifelong learning, of unending curiosity. If it isn't squelched, it will likely last a lifetime, that insatiable desire to know.
What about you? What do these terms mean to you?
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