Lifelong Learning and Its Discontents

By Matt Reed. Is “lifelong learning” a good thing or a bad thing? I suspect the answer depends on the definition, and on what you do for a living.
I hear plenty of my fellow academics wax rhapsodic about the virtues of lifelong learning. They’re sincere in what they’re saying; many of them embody the idea themselves. They mean several different things by “lifelong learning,” though, which leads to some confusion.
My personal understanding of “lifelong learning” involves picking up the skills to be able to investigate and discover things on your own. That means a level of literacy and numeracy sufficient to navigate relatively complicated material without help, or at least without sustained or intensive help. Ideally, it also involves a lively curiosity. Without that, the skills are largely wasted. Sadly, higher education struggles as much with the curiosity piece as with the skill piece. Read more...