A new draft National Lifelong Learning Strategy for Malta has been placed in the public domain. The provision of such a draft document strikes me as being overdue, with earlier efforts in this regard being inexplicably prevented from public viewing by the government of the time.
Space restrictions prevent me from tracing the genealogy of the concept of lifelong education/ learning. All I would say briefly is that the concept owes its origin to Unesco when lifelong education was the term used. It was then expansive in conception and scope with a strong humanistic underpinning.
It was later promoted by OECD and the EU as lifelong learning with a major ideological difference. The overall orientation was unmistakably vocational. It became part of a strategy to render countries more competitive in what began to be projected as a ‘global knowledge economy’.
It evolved for some and degenerated for others into a concept that reinforces the notion of a market economy with education perceived by some as becoming more of a consumption than a public good. The EU funding structures, on which several of its members are dependant for their social and educational programmes, have helped solidify this process.
Of course, some countries, including Malta, were not prepared to relinquish the broader concept of lifelong education. There is a clear attempt at critically appropriating the EU discourse for this purpose. As a result, we have been witnessing programmes that, while being ostensibly EU-driven, highlighting ‘employability’ (this does not guarantee employment) strategies, still provide signposts for a more balanced approach to education, underlining the idea of education as having a strong social and ‘public good’ dimension.
The draft National Lifelong Learning Strategy document gives due importance to the preparation of adult educators
People are conceived as having a broader range of identities and citizenship attributes than simply those of producers-consumers.
The draft strategy document, produced by the Ministry of Education and Employment, is a case in point. A cursory reading would suggest that it follows other EU-driven documents, being economistic with the emphasis on competitivity and ‘employability’. This is reinforced by the fact that the ‘employability’ issue is foregrounded in the document.
Nevertheless, a more careful reading would indicate that it also highlights the social dimension of learning. It incorporates such issues as the overdue need to develop schools as community learning centres, making a multifunctional use of this resource in a small country.
The document gives due importance to the preparation of adult educators and argues for the urgent need to have a formalised university structure for this purpose. Courses from diploma (one in adult education and one in adult training and development) to Master’s degree level (first at M.Ed and now a MA level) have been organised since 1993.
The document recognises the sterling work of NGOs in this field, even arguing for further support in this area. It attaches due importance to the role local councils can play in this regard, even underlining the need for a participatory budget specifically for educational purposes.
It tackles the role that adult education can play in the context of immigration (it historically played an important role in Maltese emigration).
The document also applauds the university’s recent liberal arts and sciences public courses initiative. It also proposes turning one of the public broadcasting channels into an important outlet for adult and general public education.
Furthermore, and unlike many other Maltese policy documents, it sheds light on local research in the field, most of it published internationally, from books to papers in peer reviewed journals.
Hopefully, all these issues will feature in the debates generated by this draft strategy. This well-crafted document, with its provision of very revealing statistics (a boon for any researcher), is exemplary as regards policy-oriented documents.
Of course, the debate which should ensue will, hopefully, help develop some of these points. For instance, does the steep €180 fee for each university liberal arts and science course unit hinder the participation of people of certain socio-economic backgrounds? This would call for research on and analysis of the social composition of the class of participants.
Other ideas would concern such overlooked important sites as public libraries (surely our country deserves a very accessible and state-of-the art multimedia library system that reaches into various communities) and museums (the need for museum educators is an urgent one and maybe the Valletta 2018 deadline can help accelerate the processes of preparing and employing people for this purpose).
All told, this document is meant to stimulate a genuinely public debate in the area. It is now important to have the proper structures and outlets in place to render the debate as genuinely and inclusively public as possible.
Let the debate continue!
Peter Mayo is professor at the university’s faculty of education and coordinator of the MA Adult Education programme