Abstract
This chapter focuses on the ways by which EU lifelong learning agenda, specifically the guidelines for basic skills, has been interpreted according to the Portuguese realities, at national and local levels. We suggest that basic skills for all, as intended in the framework of the European area of lifelong learning, have somewhat loose roots on the cultural and civic dimensions of education in a human and social development perspective. Competitiveness and social cohesion, the dual centrality of lifelong education and learning for Europe, stated in Lisbon Strategy, have been interpreted and translated in Portugal through a dynamic imbalanced agenda fed by two major strands: the prosecution of a social right for a long time in debt to adult population and a search for so-called employability and qualification, as a way to tackle Portuguese distance from European educational standards. According to these options that frame the EU agenda, this chapter also stresses the adults’ understandings of adult education which come out from the research findings presented later. The data analysis shows that these understandings are congruent with EU orientations; adults see adult education as a promise of a better life. Thus, given the inconsistency of lifelong learning, fulfilling this promise is a hard task to achieve.
This paper was written within the research project “EDUQUAL - Educar e Qualificar: o caso do Programa Novas Oportunidades” (PTDC/CPE-CED/105575/2008) funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCT - in Portuguese). In addtion, this article was developed with the support of Centre of Research in Education (in Portuguese CIEd), University of Minho, and also financed by National Funds by the FCT in the scope of the project Pest-OE/CED/UI1661/2011.
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Notes
- 1.
Adult education is probably the educational domain in which the Portuguese democracy has done less and most weakly since 1974. An adult education public policy and system were never built, although some trials were made in the last decades. This is very well expressed by the idea that adult education has had in Portugal (and this is all the more true today, August 2012) ‘a sinuous process’ and is ‘a blocked project’, as argued by Melo et al. (2001b). In 1998, this so-called relaunch promised to be a serious effort to build such a policy and system, as we shall see further. For more details, see ‘Relaunch of the programme ‘Project of Society: To Know+’ for adult education and training for lifelong learning’ (cf. Resolução do Conselho de Ministros 59/98, April 8th 1998). http://www.igf.min-financas.pt/inflegal/bd_igf/bd_legis_geral/Leg_geral_docs/RCM_059_98.htm. (Accessed 28 February 2012).
- 2.
This expression underlines an effort to understand the density of the sociohistorical and political Portuguese context, which makes this country the poorest country among the richest ones, in Europe and the world. This reality includes several aspects such as: (1) a democratic regime and a welfare State built after the 1970s within the economic crisis, when other welfare States were already in crisis; (2) around 1/3 of the population (five million) spread throughout the world as emigrants and which nowadays has half a million immigrants, mostly from former Portuguese colonies in Africa and Eastern European countries; (3) some health standards (e.g. child mortality) at the top of the richest and most developed countries in Europe and the world, with a public universal health system built after the 1980s; (4) the highest inequality indicators in wealth distribution in the EU; (5) one of the highest poverty rates of Europe; (6) the participation rates in higher education consistent with the EU average; and (7) an absolutely isolated negative situation in Europe on adult population rates, namely, people that completed secondary education, and young people’s secondary schooling attendance rates. That expression was consecrated in seminal works on educational policies by Stephen Stoer (1982, 1986), one of the most prominent Portuguese sociologists that for around 30 years (1978–2005) studied the Portuguese realities, specifically in what concerned education and social change.
- 3.
This ‘return’, in the EU context concerned new meanings given to ideas preferred by the UNESCO in the 1970s, such as lifelong education and learning; in the Portuguese context, it referred to a political pattern of intermittent adult education plans developed since 1974, when the Democratic Revolution occurred, whose programmes were abandoned almost as soon as they were implemented.
- 4.
Apart from these courses other provisions include the recognition, validation and certification of competences and modular training courses (cf. http://www.anq.gov.pt. Accessed 2 November 2011).
- 5.
Those over 18 years of age can attend these courses equivalent to years 4, 6, 9 and 12 of schooling. These courses provide a school certificate and in some cases a professional qualification and last for a minimum of 100 h and a maximum of 2,390 h (cf. http://www.anq.gov.pt. Accessed 2 November 2011).
- 6.
For more information see http://www.anq.gov.pt. Accessed 11 February 2011.
- 7.
This can be achieved by means of the module entitled Learn Autonomously (basic education level – 4, 6 or 9 years of schooling and in some cases a professional qualification) or by means of a Reflective Learning Portfolio (secondary education level and in some cases a professional qualification).
- 8.
This model was based on both a technical component which favoured the acquisition of a professional qualification as well as another that would lead to a school certificate. These components came about as ‘means to obtain essential requisites for a more successful integration in the workplace and in subsequent training opportunities’ (Decree Law nº 1083/2000, 20 November).
- 9.
As opposed to a ‘school culture’ that had school as a learning environment that was valued by society.
- 10.
Most of those interviewed had been out of work for over a year.
- 11.
Alias name for learner interviewee 1.
- 12.
Following a similar line of thought, recent studies into the New Opportunities Initiative (cf. Valente et al. 2011) point to the fact that ‘career progress or employment prospects did not occur’ in the case of those who had been granted certificates by the above-mentioned forms of educational provision. Moreover, this idea has already been referred to in previous studies (CIDEC 2007, among others).
- 13.
Alias name for learner interviewee 4.
- 14.
After the June 2011 elections and after the external troika (International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission) intervention initiated in May 2011, adult education and lifelong learning have been given an ostensive denial from the newly elected Portuguese government in charge.
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Guimarães, P., Antunes, F. (2014). An Inconsistent Policy: Lifelong Learning and Adult Education Policy Towards a Competitive Advantage. In: Zarifis, G., Gravani, M. (eds) Challenging the 'European Area of Lifelong Learning'. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7299-1_7
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