Educational planning should aim at meeting the educational needs
of the entire population of all age group. While the traditional structure of
education as a three layer hierarchy from the primary stage to the university
represents the core, we should not overlook the periphery which is equally
important. Under modern conditions, workers need to rewind, or renew their
enthusiasm, or strike out in a new direction, or improve their skills as much
as any university professor. The retired and the age have their needs as well.
Educational planning, in their words, should take care of the needs of
everyone.
Our structures of education have been built up on the
assumption that there is a terminal point to education. This basic defect has
become all the more harmful today. A UNESCO report entitled ‘learning to Be’
prepared by Edgar Faure and others in 1973 asserts that the education of
children must prepare the future adult for various forms of self – learning. A
viable education system of the future should consist of modules with different
kinds of functions serving a diversity of constituents. And performance, not
the period of study, should be the basis for credentials. The writing is
already on the wall.
In view of the fact that the significance of a commitment of
lifelong learning and lifetime education is being discussed only in recent years
even in educationally advanced countries, the possibility of the idea becoming
an integral part of educational thinking seems to be a far cry. For, to move in
that direction means such more than some simple rearrangement of the present
organization of education. But a good beginning can be made by developing Open
University programs for older learners of different categories and introducing
extension services in the conventional colleges and schools. Also these
institutions should learn to cooperate with the numerous community
organizations such as libraries. Museums, municipal recreational programs,
health services etc.
According to the author,
the concept of ‘lifetime education’ is
What are good parts of our civilization? First and fore-most there are
order and safety. If today I have a quarrel with another man, I do not get
beaten merely because I am physically weaker and he can knock me down. I go to
law and the law will decide as fairly as it can between the two of us. Thus in
disputes between man and man. Right has taken the place might. More-over, the
law protects me from robbery and violence. Nobody may came and break into my
house, steal my books or run off with my children. Of course, there are
burglars, but they are very rare and the law punishes them whenever it catches
them.
It is difficult for us to realize how much this safety means. Without
safety those higher activates of mankind which make up civilization could not
go on. The inventor could not invent, the scientist find out or the artist make
beautiful things. Hence, order and safety, although they are not themselves
civilization, are things without which civilization could be impossible. They
are as necessary to our civilization as the air we breathe is to us; and we
have grown so used to them that we do not notice them any more than we notice
the air.
In disputes between man and man:
