Lifelong learning and the new educational order

Abstract

In this extended essay our first professor of lifelong learning, John Field,2 brings to his subject what the subject has long been crying out for: a comprehensive knowledge of the literature, old and new, primary and secondary, national and international;3 an understanding of the terrain that takes in both the larger structural features characteristic of the subject as a whole, together with the multitude of facts attaching to its many parts; and a measured judgement which manages to remain free of the cynicism which finds in lifelong learning nothing but an empty catch phrase, and free also of the insouciance found in those who see in lifelong learning a revolution set to usher in - if it hasn't already - a land of educational plenty.