Lifelong Learning as a ‘Priceless Gift’ : Or Lifelong Learning as a Human Infrastructure for Society

In Japan and many other countries in the world, lifelong learning has become a political task. Behind this are the increasing globalization of economies, the rapid birthrate decline and the aging of societies. These changes correspond to the fact that society as we know it is shifting all over the world, from that of modern industrial states that need large labor forces and consumer markets to that of the fluid markets of information, finance, and services that satisfy the individual tastes of consumers. This may be paraphrased as follows: The way society transmits knowledge is changing from a school-centered society to a society where each individual uses such knowledge by modifying the way the knowledge is according to their own values, and thus produces his/her social values. In other words, knowledge is being modified from stock to flow. What attracts attention amidst such radical social changes is lifelong learning. Actually, the question we should ask here is the following: In which framework should we define lifelong learning, which was developed to face the shift of knowledge from stock to flow. What we intend to confirm in this paper is that the universal structure in the form of hands-on activities of education/leaning in lifelong learning is a cycle structure where overachievement resulting from the self-recognition retrospectively induced by education/learning drives both the learner and the teacher to a higher level of learning and, through this process, creates a human infrastructure, and leads to the creation of new social values. We have to find a way to guarantee lifelong learning that would help such cycling, but such a way should not be conceived in the dichotomy of public/private, social right/civil liberty, etc.論文/Thesi