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International Journal of Lifelong
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‘In and against’ lifelong learning:
flexibility and the corrosion of
character
JIM CROWTHER
a
a
University of Edinburgh, UK
Available online: 07 Aug 2006
To cite this article: JIM CROWTHER (2004): ‘In and against’ lifelong learning: flexibility and the
corrosion of character, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 23:2, 125-136
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DOI: 10.1080/0260137042000184174
INT. J. OF LIFELONG EDUCATION, VOL. 23, NO. 2 (MARCH–APRIL 2004), 125–136
Jim Crowther is a lecturer in Adult and Community Education in the Department of Higher and
Community Education, University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Campus, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
‘In and against’ lifelong learning: flexibility
and the corrosion of character
JIM CROWTHER
University of Edinburgh, UK
This paper argues against the dominant discourse of lifelong learning. It is primarily a
mode of social control that acts as a new disciplinary technology to make people more
compliant and adaptable for work in the era of flexible capitalism. Whilst the main
reference point is trends in the UK, the argument has a wider resonance. Lifelong
learning diminishes the public sphere, undermines educational activity, introduces new
mechanisms of self-surveillance and reinforces the view that failure to succeed is a
personal responsibility. It is ultimately a ‘deficit discourse’, which locates the responsibility
of economic and political failure at the level of the individual, rather than at the level of
systemic problems.
Introduction
The word ‘flexibility’ entered the English language in the fifteenth century.
Its meaning originally derived from the simple observation that though a tree
may bend in the wind, its branches spring back to their original position.
‘Flexibility’ names the tree’s capacity both to yield and to recover, both the
testing and the restoration of its form. Ideally, flexible human behaviour
ought to have the same tensile strength: adaptable to changing circumstances
yet not broken by them . . . The practices of flexibility, however, focus mostly
on the forces bending people. (Sennett 1998: 46)
The promotion of ‘flexibility’ is fundamental to government policy for the
economy because it is seen as essential for business success, prosperity and
employment (DTI 1998). Flexibility is associated with a virile and dynamic
economy, which lifelong learning primarily supports (DfEE 1998). But it is a
mistake to describe the role of flexibility and lifelong learning in such narrow
terms. In Sennett’s (1998) insightful analysis of corporate capitalism, flexibility is
also corroding character because it is transforming the meaning of work. The role
of lifelong learning in this process is the focus of this article.
Flexibility involves the reorganization of work to adapt it to short-term trends
in the market so that firms can respond rapidly to its fluctuations. According to
Sennett, this process has wider ramifications, in that it is changing our
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126 J. CROWTHER
expectations so that fewer people see themselves as undertaking the same type of
job for life. In addition, we no longer seem to be able to count on acquiring
skills for employment that are long lasting. ‘Downsizing’, ‘right sizing’, redun-
dancy, ‘supernumerary to requirements’ and other euphemisms for insecurity
and job loss have entered our vocabulary and experience of work. ‘Flexploita-
tion’, as Bourdieu characterizes it, is a new mode of domination ‘based on the
creation of a generalised and permanent state of insecurity aimed at forcing
workers into submission, into the acceptance of exploitation’ (1998: 85).
Uncertainty and insecurity of employment also effects welfare provision, which is
increasingly regarded as a time-limited intervention in people’s lives with the
emphasis on people acquiring work rather than welfare. The result is that
human character, (by which Sennett primarily means the ethical nature of our
aspirations and dealings with others) is undermined and aspirations for a more
humane and socially just society sidelined.
Flexibility claims to be innovative and freeing people from the limits and
constraints of outmoded work practices. In contrast, the prior meaning of work
that embodied a narrative of predictability and continuity is now a fetter on
capitalism’s ability to reproduce itself. If instead people are more versatile and
flexible, the claim is that they will have some real control and responsibility for
ordering their lives. This new trend in capitalism is apparent in particular
occupational areas (e.g. information technologies) and in specific national
economies (e.g. the USA) but it is also recognizable in the UK and Europe,
although in the latter it is contested terrain between state, employers and unions
(Coffield 2002). Flexibility is not, however, simply a feature of high-tech
industries and well-paid jobs. It is evident also in increasing numbers of
temporary, low-paid and insecure forms of employment in manufacturing and
service industries.
The consequences of flexibility are regressively distributed (Purcell et al. 1999).
The relatively privileged remain secure because they have resources to succeed
through the ups and downs of the labour market. Less powerful groups, on the
other hand, do not have these advantages or network of contacts to turn insecure
employment into a positive opportunity. Instead, the incessant reorganization of
work, reshuffling of jobs, short-term contracts and the serial changing of
employment weakens the bonds between workers. The bonds that create trust,
loyalty and mutual support between people can only be nurtured through
establishing long-term commitments. The failure to achieve this has important
consequences. The emphasis on self-reliance and work disparages the claims of the
needy and the dependent for resources and support. The homeless, poor,
unemployed, single parents, the elderly, refugees, asylum seekers, those in receipt
of welfare benefits, are all targeted in policy initiatives as either in need of
retraining, reskilling or remotivating back into the labour market—or back whence
they came.
As Thompson points out, lifelong learning ‘represents a late capitalist solution
to “investing in people”—in their human, cultural and social capital—as the key to
future employment, economic growth, mobility and cohesion’ (2000: 134). It is the
universal toolkit adaptable to all circumstances and problems. Despite being
broadly welcomed in adult education circles, there is a growing unease with lifelong
learning and an emerging body of work that is critical of both its purpose and
politics (see Griffin 1999a, 1999b, Martin 2001, 2003, Coffield 2002).
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FLEXIBILITY AND THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER 127
Flexibility and power
In the UK, flexibility has to be seen in terms of a neo-liberal economic agenda with
weakened trade union powers (after 20 years of systematic undermining by
successive Conservative governments from the 1980s onwards) and where
capitalism is the only ideological agenda on offer for managing the economy. In
this context, ‘lifelong learning is being used to socialise workers to the escalating
demands of employers, who use “empowerment” to disguise an intensification of
workloads via increased deregulation; “employability” to make an historic retreat
from the policy of full payment and periodic unemployment between jobs more
acceptable; and “flexibility” to cover a variety of strategies to reduce costs that
increase job insecurity’ (Coffield 2002: 185). Lifelong learning is part of a
hegemonic project where the only thing that matters is the economy which is, in
any case, more open, democratic and based on expanding people’s opportunities
and potential. If only!
Power in modern forms of flexibility has three elements according to Sennett:
‘discontinuous reinvention of institutions’; ‘flexible specialization of production’;
and ‘concentration of without centralization of power’ (1998: 47). By the
discontinuous reinvention of institutions, he means breaks with the pattern of past
practices by institutions that essentially reaffirm continuity with underlying
inequalities. Flexible specialization of production requires workers willing to acquire
new skills and work practices so firms can cut costs and respond to the market and
consumer demand. Concentration of without centralization of power involves delegating
responsibility and authority but does not change structures of power. It is about
incorporating people into an agenda that is already predetermined. All of these
new modes of control may provide a resembalance of freedom but the reality is that
people are subject ‘to new, top-down controls and surveillance’ (Sennett 1998:
59).
This article argues that lifelong learning is part of these new, less visible forms of
managing people. Flexibility generates a distinctly new purpose and organization of
adult learning, modelled along the lines of a more open, marketised and
decentralized system geared towards work and consumerism (Martin 1999). The
poverty of the dominant discourse of lifelong learning is not primarily its narrow
vocationalism but its hidden agenda of creating malleable, disconnected, transient,
disciplined workers and citizens. These developments need to be recognized before
they can be resisted. What we need, paradoxically, is less lifelong learning and more
adult education aimed at increasing the individual and collective autonomy of
communities. It is misleading to see the current fascination for lifelong learning as
a more popular form of lifelong education. Something new and more pernicious
is happening.
From lifelong education to lifelong learning
The acknowledgement of learning beyond compulsory schooling is to be welcomed
in the current policy discourse but we need to take care: ‘when governments
become interested in lifelong learning, it is as well to be cautious; when they add
active citizenship and social inclusion to the list, it may be time to be positively
sceptical—not to say suspicious’ (Martin 2001: 4). Separating lifelong learning
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128 J. CROWTHER
from lifelong education is a useful starting point to help clarify why government’s
now seem to embrace the type of concerns adult educators have long espoused.
During the 1960s and 1970s progressive educational debate in Europe was
dominated by discussion of lifelong education, promoted specifically by United
Nations Educational Science Cultural Organization (see Borg and Mayo 2002), and
inspired by the failure of post-World War II school reform to create a more socially
just and cohesive society. Lifelong education brought together an eclectic range of
interests and ideas concerned with moral and political issues about the nature of
society and the contribution of education to it in economic, political, social and
cultural terms. The student movement, educational deschoolers, ‘future-gazers’
and the communications revolution contributed to this trend (see Field 2000). The
debate fostered about lifelong education was tied to the idea of the ‘good society’
and how the structure and curriculum of education could be part of its making. Its
proponents stressed the importance of education arising from and contributing to
people’s lives in rounded terms. This was contested terrain but one primarily
influenced by a humanist ideology concerned with personal growth in an
increasingly consumer culture that emphasized having—one of the key reports by
Faure (1972) was titled Learning to Be! These concerns and interests are now
marginal to the current policy discourse of lifelong learning.
Lifelong learning benefited from the progressive agenda of lifelong education
by making it more acceptable to a wide range of conflicting ideological interests. At
times the two are used interchangeably despite important conceptual differences
and the difference of context in which they emerged. However, the cuckoo of
lifelong learning has well and truly kicked out of the policy discourse its adopted
sibling. As Griffin suggests, the movement from lifelong education to lifelong
learning indicates ‘a major shift in national and international policies for the
development of education and learning systems’ (1999a: 392). It is a mistake,
therefore, to assume lifelong learning is simply a recasting of the same ideas and
values in a new context—the mistake, as Martin (2003) points out, is to think of
lifelong learning in educational rather than political terms. It is more accurate to
see it as a mode of power wielded through the ‘discontinuous reinventing of
institutions’ and aimed at reproducing wider inequalities.
The popularity of lifelong learning in Europe was stimulated by the activities of the
European Union (and before it the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development) through a series of policy papers during the 1990s (see, for instance,
CEC 1994). The interest in lifelong learning, according to Murphy (1997), can be
traced back to the European Round Table of Industrialists but it was the creation
of the Single European Market in 1985 which really got things underway. The
Maastricht Treaty (1992) aided this because it enshrined in law a role for the
European Union in promoting the educational policies of member states (Tett
2002). These developments taken together spurred the interest in ‘human capital
theory’ set in the context of globalization, economic downturn and crises as well as
the growth of the so-called ‘Knowledge Society’ and the ‘Information Age’. Two
main influences began to shape European Union policy on lifelong learning. The
first was the drive for economic competitiveness in a world market dominated by
international capital units. These multinational firms, as Murphy points out, ‘in
order to take advantage of their new economies of scale, need a flexible and
adaptable workforce’ (1997: 364). European Union intervention in promoting
lifelong learning aims to sharpen this competitive edge. The second influence was
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FLEXIBILITY AND THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER 129
the crisis of welfare that European countries faced particularly at a time of
pronounced stress on social cohesion through rising unemployment and migra-
tion, amongst other things. The conclusion to be drawn from all this, as Murphy
suggests ‘is that the needs of the European capitalist class are the ones being met
by lifelong learning’ (1997: 364).
The linkage to the requirements of European capitalism is not the end of the
matter. Lifelong learning is also serving the interests of the new ‘market state’
(Bobbitt 2002), which is replacing the nation state. This new formation
(exemplified in the USA and UK) involves a fundamental reconstitution of the
legitimacy of the state because it can no longer guarantee the security of its citizens
or the general good of the community. In order to regain its legitimacy, the new
form of political administration has to shift people’s expectations of it. The
compact the ‘market state’ seeks to make with its people is that its role is a strategic
one of extending individual choice rather than providing goods and services.
These are the responsibility of individuals to achieve for themselves through market
transactions. In this context, lifelong learning contributes to redefining citizens as
consumers in the market place rather than political actors in the public arena. To
meet these challenges, public services are being reorganized along the lines of the
private sector and market-driven systems of performance. In the UK context, with
its ‘neo-liberal welfare reform policy approach’ (Griffin 1999b: 432), government
is less willing to fund education policy and is, instead, shifting the costs of learning
onto learners. Lifelong learning, Griffin argues, is disguising the dismantling of the
welfare state. Instead of trying to control the outcomes of policy, which
characterized old-style policy making, the emphasis is now on government strategy
tailored to people’s lifestyle choices, economic interests and cultural preferences.
The creation of a market for learning has important implications. It reduces
the public sphere because education is a legitimate object of public debate
whereas the system of lifelong learning is aligned with a discourse of consumer
choice. The moral and political questions about society that education should
contribute to are ruled off the agenda in this process. Markets do not simply
empower the learner as ‘consumer’. This view assumes markets are free, neutral
and passive; the reality is they are structured by powerful interests, serve to
reinforce them and are active in this process of construction. Rather than
minimizing social controls the market achieves the same but in a different way.
Ranson puts the point forcefully:
The market is formally neutral but substantively interested. Individuals (or
institutions) come together in competitive exchange to acquire possession of
scarce goods and services. Within the marketplace all are free and equal, only
differentiated by the capacity to calculate their self-interest. Yet of course the
market masks its social bias. It elides but also reproduces the inequalities
which consumers bring to the marketplace. Under the guise of neutrality, the
institution of the market actively confirms and reproduces the pre-existing
social order of wealth, privilege and prejudice. (1992: 72)
Whilst lifelong learning may seem to free people up, it does so at the expense of a
more collective conception of society (Edwards 2000). As Marx might have said,
‘consumers make choices but not always in circumstances of their own choosing’.
The process of marketization also reduces the role of the educator in the learning
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130 J. CROWTHER
process and increases their responsibility for its administration and management.
On the one hand, the educator’s involvement in the curriculum is simplified to that
of a facilitator of the learning process. On the other, they are being driven towards
managing accreditation and certification of learning because of its perceived
significance in securing employment and because it attracts resources. In order to
avoid becoming the supernumerary of the economic order, individuals are in
competition with each other to acquire more and more proof (certificates of
educational attainment) of their learning commitment.
The seductive nature of lifelong learning is its recognition of learning beyond
schooling. It is a mistake, however, to see it as aimed at the type of change for
individuals and collectivities that inspired proponents of lifelong education.
Running the two together simply muddies the waters and obscures the decisive
shifts taking place in the politics of learning. Lifelong learning is shifting the
responsibility for learning to individuals, undermining welfare, disguising the
reduction of the democratic public sphere, and working on people as objects of
policy to ensure their compliance with the brave new world of flexible
capitalism.
‘Learning to learn’: making flexible workers
In a high technology knowledge society . . . learners must become proactive
and more autonomous, prepared to renew their knowledge continuously and
to respond constructively to changing constellations of problems and
contexts. (European Commission 1999, cited in Field 2000: 136)
Flexible specialization demands new types of malleable workers, willing to train and
retrain, to meet the changing demands of the labour process. The politics of
control in the workplace, which was primarily a struggle between organized labour
and capital, is being redrawn to include lifelong learning. In this ‘politics of
learning’, the site of struggle is one of convincing people to see themselves as
regular and responsible learners. They have to acquire new outlooks, attitudes and
values that recognize the need to constantly update knowledge and skills. Creating
the identity of active learners, particularly when it is not highly valued, is not an easy
task as the literature on non-participation in adult education shows (see McGivney
2001). The importance of learning how to learn is that it seeks to instil a new
identity for workers and citizens as active learners.
Whilst ‘learning to learn’ underpins lifelong learning policy it has received little
direct attention and, when it has done so, this has largely come from its advocates.
‘Learning to learn’ implies a body of knowledge and skills, primarily derived from
the study of cognitive and metacognitive skills of learning that can help individuals
better understand and process information more effectively (Cornford 2002).
Skilled learners can, therefore, control the effort and efficacy of learning. There
are at least two good reasons to be sceptical of this view. First, it implies that basic
learning processes are controlled by the individual who can, through ‘skill, will and
self-regulation’ (Cornford 2002: 359) improve their effectiveness. Learning is,
however, closely connected with experiences such as class, gender and ‘race’ that
are embedded in structural relations in society. Second, it depicts ‘empowerment’
as the neutral technical mastery of learning skills. It emphasizes learning as a form
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FLEXIBILITY AND THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER 131
of efficient information processing occurring in the head rather than a process of
interaction and understanding which occurs between people and their relations
with the wider world.
Another way of making sense of ‘learning-to-learn’ can be inferred from
Foucault’s analysis of power. He identifies a new ‘economy of power’, more humane
and effective because it does not rely on coercion: ‘that is to say, procedures which
allowed the effects of power to circulate in a manner at once continuous,
uninterrupted, adapted and “individualized” throughout the entire social body’
(Foucault 1985: 91). It is useful to see Foucault’s analysis of power in terms of
‘disciplinary power’ and ‘pastoral power’ (Edwards 1997). By the former he means
various practices used by the state to gain knowledge of people in order to position
them and regulate their behaviour. By the latter he refers to confessional practices
in which the self is constituted as the object for self-regulation. Disciplinary power
works on the individual from the outside whereas pastoral power works from the
inside by individuals internalizing desired patterns of behaviour. In this sense,
people become agents of their own self-surveillance by adjusting and adapting what
they do.
Self-discipline more readily implies that class exploitation and oppression have
been replaced with opportunity, freedom and job satisfaction because it lacks the
element of compulsion. In the industrial phase of capitalism, according to Marx,
the worker was a mere ‘appendage to the machine’ and unemployment and low
wages the means of disciplining workers. However, this metaphor was also
misleading as to the real type of work ethic capitalism required. Max Weber’s
‘protestant ethic’ was closer because it captured the sense of commitment, delayed
gratification and disciplined use of time that capitalism thrived on. This no longer
fits the new capitalism. As Coffield suggests ‘from an employer’s perspective, the
ideal “portfolio” workers of the future are those who quickly internalize the need
for employability, who willingly pay for their own continuous learning and who
flexibly offer genuine commitment to each job, no matter how short its duration or
how depressing its quality. There is more chance of Scotland winning the World
Cup’ (2002: 185–186). To attempt to ‘square this circle’, lifelong learning is part of
a hegemonic project to internalize compliance.
Gramsci’s (1971) insight that ‘all relationships of hegemony are educational
relationships’ is a useful reminder that what people learn is the ‘common sense’ of
a particular distribution of power. The redundancy of knowledge and skills is
constructed as a natural process with only one reasonable response—learn and
relearn. Thus, ‘learning to learn’ encourages the individual to act responsibly in
relation to this. In a situation of endemic insecurity, only the willingness to retrain
offers a measure of control and purchase on events. It can quite easily seem,
therefore, that even if new knowledge and skills are not empowering or
emancipating that ‘it is its absolute precondition’ (Field 2000: ix). But what
knowledge and what skills create this precondition? Are the skills for flexible
specialization and the underlying attitudes, values and responsibilities that go with
them ideologically neutral? If we fail to address the hidden curriculum of lifelong
learning are we simply sucked into its politics? A politics that, in the current neo-
liberal agenda, is about undermining collective organization and action that
historically informed workers’ reactions to insecurity. Instead of learning the
importance of this, lifelong learning is constructing security and control as an
individual cognitive propensity and responsibility.
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132 J. CROWTHER
Flexibility strips away the role of work in character formation and lifelong
learning sanitises this process to present it as an ‘opportunity’. Learning to learn is
part of the process of instilling self-discipline to turn the ‘opportunity’ into the
semblance of a reality. It also reaffirms it as an individual responsibility and not that
of the enterprise or the state.
Disciplinary sanctions: prisoners of lifelong learning?
Penalties and sanctions reinforce the ‘regime of truth’ that lifelong learning
rather than collective organization is the route to security. As Field points out,
‘without anyone much noticing a great deal of professional development and
skills updating is carried out not because anyone wants to learn or is ready to
learn, but because they are required to learn’ (1999: 11). For example, the UK
government would like to encourage a ‘learning culture’ (see DfEE 1998) in
which individuals see learning as normal and routine behaviour. In the area of
adult literacy, for example, adults with low skills are seen as poorly motivated and
failing to address their learning needs. Training allowances for job seekers,
prisoner parole schemes, personnel in the military and public sector workers are
all identified as areas where more inducements and coercive expectations (e.g.
cutting allowances for trainees) are to be introduced to motivate adults and
induce them to undertake courses of learning (see David Blunket, former UK
Minister for Employment and Education Skills for Life, speaking on World Book
Day, March 2001).
Increasingly, participation in lifelong learning is less of an option and more of
a requirement and expectation. As Tight (1998) notes, embedding lifelong
learning in work has facilitated the part compulsion plays in its development.
Moreover, support for this is on the increase and from some unlikely quarters
too:
I find to my surprise that I have been thinking about compulsory adult
learning . . . In the information industries continuing learning is a necessary
precondition to keeping a job, and your capacity to keep on learning may
affect the job security of others. Learning is becoming compulsory. And if it
is true for people in some sectors of industry, why not for people who might
want to rejoin the labour force later? (Alan Tuckett, Director of the National
Institute for Adult Continuing Education, cited in Coffield 2002: 186)
One of the fundamental distinctions between adult education and the education of
children is that the former is voluntarily undertaken whereas schooling is
compulsory. In the context of lifelong learning, this relationship is markedly
changing. Of course, adults undertake courses of study of their own volition and
young people have to go to school. However, this dichotomy disguises a more
complex reality. There is a growing coercive expectation and demand that adults
should participate in specific areas of learning. Whilst the main emphasis is on
learning for work it might also include asylum seekers being required to learn the
language and culture of the host country, or the loss of welfare benefits for
individuals refusing to participate in literacy training. Lifelong learning, for some,
may be an unwelcome sentence!
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FLEXIBILITY AND THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER 133
‘Community’ and resistance
Sennett argues that one contradiction of flexibility is that people inevitably seek
more enduring narratives and these are more likely to be found where people live,
in communities, rather than in the transitory nature of work. The ambivalence of
‘community’ has, nevertheless, to be recognised before it can be a ‘resource for
hope’ (Williams 1989). If community is to be understood as a potential source of
resistance, we need at least to make the distinction between ‘community as policy’
and ‘community as politics’ (Shaw and Martin 2000). The former refers to the
increasing emphasis in policy to incorporate community into the implementation
of a top-down policy agenda. This is much more to do with the concentration of
power rather than its dispersal. ‘Community as politics’, however, suggests an
alternative source of values and ideas deriving from the experiences and concerns
of people outside of the formal politics of the state.
The danger is that ‘community as policy’ marginalizes ‘community as politics’ in
that lifelong learning is aligned with dominant policy imperatives. In the UK, the
public space of community is increasingly regulated by participatory mechanisms of
governance that undermine the possibility for the cultural politics of communities
to become a real resource for change. The theme of partnership is at the centre of
the UK government’s vision of the modernized welfare state (Riddell and Tett
2001). It is a vision that sees service users playing a significant role in shaping the
type of service they want and its mode of delivery. However, there is little evidence
that it is a genuine process of empowering people (Mayo 1997, Mordaunt 2001).
Instead, community as policy is tied to a re-moralizing agenda that seeks to redefine
public issues back into personal troubles. Lifelong learning gives a new twist to the
familiar strategy of ‘blaming the victim’. This is a strategy that is generally easier to
justify and cheaper to address. The history of community work, for example, is
replete with examples of communities used to endorse and legitimate top-down
policy initiatives that do little to make any genuine difference to people’s lives
(Shaw 2003).
Social partnerships can be seen as a species of corporatism pursued to
compromise sectional interests (Meade and O’Donovan 2002). In the 1970s, in the
UK, for example, both government and trade unions signed up to social contracts
in order to achieve broad agreed goals. Corporatism was a way of sharing power, but
also reinforcing central controls. The government permitted unions some
influence over policy development in return for limiting their demands. In the
current context, corporatism in the UK has changed in at least three clear ways.
First, it is between the state and a variety of voluntary bodies (many with an interest
in education and learning) whereas organized labour in trade unions is marginal.
The new partners are less organized and less powerful than the state. Second, they
have few other options to pursue. They have less resources and are reliant on the
partnerships for survival and therefore less able to take an independent position.
Whilst involvement may offer some moderate influence over policy making and
implementation, the voluntary sector are mainly there to implement policy. Third,
social partnerships are set in the context of short-term policy interventions
measured against government targets and plans. This encourages a competitive
localism in the scrabble for scarce resources and the ‘moving of the goalpost’ away
from practical engagement with substantive issues into a continual process of
applying for short-term funding.
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134 J. CROWTHER
Lifelong learning in the above context reinforces the myth that local knowledge
is harnessed to identify problems and define solutions. It subtly but persistently
reinforces a deficit discourse of personal responsibility for failure. Moreover,
groups and communities outside partnerships are further marginalized and their
voices unheard. As Thompson points out in relation to the UK government’s
national strategy for neighbourhood renewal that the ‘focus on the deficiencies of
individuals and minority groups, however, well intentioned, distracts attention away
from the structural, social, political and economic circumstances and trends, which
give rise to social inequalities and which are largely outside of the control of those
who live in poor communities’ (2000: 33). Meanwhile, the state creates a fiction for
itself as a neutral partner, merely providing opportunities and choices for
communities to resolve their problems by themselves.
Conclusion: educating our way out
People are squeezed in the vice of a powerful economic system with consequences
for their sense of belonging, relations with others and long term mutual
commitments as capitalism seeks constantly to relocate, reshape and reinvent itself.
The insecurity it produces undermines ambition for change ‘by making the whole
future uncertain, it prevents all rational anticipation and, in particular, the basic
belief and hope in the future that one needs in order to rebel, especially
collectively, against present conditions, even the most intolerable’ (Bourdieu 1998:
82). Lifelong learning is part of this problem, rather than part of its solution.
As Martin (2001) points out, lifelong learning is an inherently vacuous term
but if it is to be worthwhile it should be about learning for living as distinct from
merely learning for a living. If this is the purpose it will require making
connections between the private lives of individuals and their public lives as
citizens. It will also require a curriculum for social change that creates the
opportunity for voice, dialogue and dissent in the public sphere. That is,
education plays a pivotal role in a genuine civil society in which common ground
between people—and their differences—are debated, understood and provide
the basis for democratic action based on principles of equality and social justice.
In this view, education should be both a resource and stimulus for individuals
and collectivities to take some control, over their personal and collective
circumstances (see Crowther et al. 1999).
Instead of more lifelong learning, people need to acquire a clear sense of how
education can help them make sense of their world and change it for the better.
This has always been the ground for a social purpose ‘adult education of
engagement’ (Jackson 1995). The contradictions of the current context create
some opportunities in this respect. The state’s crisis of legitimacy is a process and
the struggle over welfare is a key issue. ‘Community as policy’ and ‘community as
politics’ may offer opportunities for a form of dialectical engagement that seeks to
challenge top-down construction of problems and their solutions. Indeed, the crisis
of legitimacy is also recognized and reflected in the importance attached to
citizenship and democracy in the current policy context. These areas may provide
the potential for a critical adult education agenda to develop. In this sense, adult
and community workers will need to work in and against current versions of lifelong
learning.
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FLEXIBILITY AND THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER 135
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my colleagues Ian Martin, Mae Shaw and Lyn Tett for comments on an
earlier draft of this paper.
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