Education at the crossroads

Abstract

The scientific-technological revolution lias brought about great changes in today’s society prompting die transformation of man’s entire life. The crucial pedagogical consequence of the scientific technological revolution is die expansion and the superannuation of knowledge. Traditional modes of education have not been successful in adjusting to the new conditions because they have remained within the relations of their own qualitative expansion (the linear expansion of learning) ending up in encycopediaism and its own contradiction - the expansion which has produced the boom but at the same time the very crisis of education. The crisis of traditional education has instigated the development of a new conception of lifelong education which is better able to cater to the needs of man in contemporary society. Lifelong education addressed all men, throughout their lives and in all circumstances of life. It does not only mean more education of the traditional sort but a qualitatively wholly different sort of education: instead of the passive institutionalized form of education according to the traditional model of teaching-reproduction, lifelong education instigates man’s continuous learning within a socialized educational setting, that is within a deschooled society wherein the learning of how to learn becomes the basic postulate of human life and work. Selfactualizing himself through lifelong education, contemporary man creates the conditions for a better future. At the dawn of the third millenium, lifelong education is becoming an inevitable feature of contemporary developments.