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Continuously reaffirmed, subtly accommodated, obviously missing and fallaciously critiqued: ideologies in UNESCO's lifelong learning policy

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02601370.2010.547619

1464-519X

Moosung Lee, Tom Friedrich,

International Development and Aid

Abstract Although the lifelong learning policy of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has had a unique impact on international discussions over the last four decades, little historical research has revealed the ideological influences at work within UNESCO's lifelong learning policy texts. With this in mind, this paper exposes the authoritative and marginal ideological influences within UNESCO's lifelong learning policy during the period between the 1990s and the early 2000s. Specifically, this research's analysis reveals that while social democratic liberalism as a dominant ideology was continuously reaffirmed in UNESCO's lifelong learning policy texts during the period, neoliberal stances were also subtly accommodated and radical social democrats' ideas missing in its recent lifelong learning policy texts. Furthermore, UNESCO's lifelong learning was fallaciously critiqued as being opposed to another global development agendum, education for all (EFA). Implications for realising good policy and global justice in conditions dominated by neoliberal capitalism are discussed in depth. Acknowledgements This article was the winner of the Adult Education Research Conference's (AERC) Graduate Student Paper Award in 2008; it also won the American Education Research Association's (AERA) Leadership for Social Justice Special Interest Group's Best Paper from an Emerging Scholar Award in 2009. It was originally prepared for the annual meeting of AERC, 2008 and AERA, 2009. The authors appreciate the insightful feedback of the anonymous reviewers for the International Journal of Lifelong Education. Notes 1. Other UN agencies such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) or International Labour Organisations have also engaged in this organisational field. However, because of their different organisational priorities, they have been relatively small players on the field, compared to those four international agencies aforementioned. 2. We borrowed the term 'profound humanism' from John Field (Citation2001: 13). In his comprehensive literature review on the historical development of lifelong education, he pointed out that UNESCO's lifelong education 'was surely subordinated to a profound humanism' during the 1970s. 3. However, the maximalists, in essence, support institutionalising all formats of learning and acknowledge the important role of schools under the heading of lifelong education, which is the main difference from de‐schoolers. According to Wain (Citation2004: 39), what is more important for the maximalists is 'not institutionalisation [of learning] but what kind of institutionalisation, and for what purpose'. 4. WCEFA's top priority (i.e., Educational for All) was the promotion of universal primary education, an emphasis reflective of the World Bank's logic of the rate of return; with the World Bank so positioned, UNESCO obtained an opportunity to restore its organisational legitimacy by taking on the role of a watch dog for monitoring the progress of education for all once WCEFA had concluded. 5. To explain, in 1993 the European Commission issued its important White Paper entitled Growth, Competitiveness, Employment (CEC Citation1993), which explicitly represented lifelong learning in the context of neoliberalist concerns about the European economy. Interestingly, this White Paper is also known as 'the Delors Paper' because Jacque Delors was the president of the European Commission at the time it was issued. Delors's European Commission needed to address the Europe‐wide issue of employment in the European economy of the 1980s and early 1990s, which was in decline compared to that of Japan and the US Consequently, the European Commission proposed a policy based solution based on the Maastricht Treaty that used lifelong learning as a key reform measure for education and vocational training systems (Commission of the European Communities [CEC] Citation1993, Lee, Thayer and Madyun Citation2008). Arguably, the Delors's UNESCO Commission may have referred to other policy texts such as the White Paper to reflect the flexibility of contemporary lived reality. Indeed, the Delors's UNESCO Commission targeted tensions facing the global village such as promises and risks associated with globalisation, challenges of the era of information technology, and increasingly global competition among national economies (UNESCO Citation1996: 17), concerns also addressed by the European Commission's White Paper. In this sense, it is understandable that the Delors Report may have borrowed from neoliberal policy discourse by acknowledging the challenge global economies presented education and thus linked lifelong learning to the world of work. 6. It should be recalled that the Faure Report is not particularly radical; in only a few spots is radical social democrats' ideology found in the Faure Report. This suggests that one likely explanation for this unbalanced ideological character of the Faure Report is the political background of Faure, who in his politics blended liberalism and socialism. For example, Faure's early political career was spent in the French Radical Party, which represented the French middle‐class centre‐left during the 1950s. However, he also later accepted the conservative de Gaulle's request that he become minister of education yet declined to serve as a part of the socialist Mitterand administration because Faure could not accept the political alliance of the socialist Mitterand administration with communists (Kavanagh Citation1998, New York Times Citation1998). 7. The stance on schooling of the Delors Report is, to some extent, parallel with that of the maximalist stance. For example, Gelpi (1984: 18) viewed schools 'perform a very relevant role in lifelong education' (cited from Wain Citation2004: 25). 8. Despite Watson's criticism, the value of the Delors Report remains important, given that it sparked more than 20 nation‐level debates for shaping educational futures in UNESCO's member countries (Lee Citation2007).