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Blog post: Adult education, a condition for hope
In my closing remarks to last week’s Inclusive Lifelong Learning Conference in Bali, I tried to capture the spirit of the work undertaken by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and its partners in shaping the conference and its outcome document, the Bali Manifesto. Reflecting on the moral and policy challenges of inclusive learning and education throughout life I recalled that adult learning and education has always been about hope: hope for each individual to be able to complete basic education successfully and, most importantly, to learn to read and write; hope for each adult to be able to learn what each person must know in order to fulfill their responsibilities, grow as a human being and engage in society and the world of work. In a sense, adult learning and education is a condition for hope.
That is especially true in societies in which knowledge and competencies are a necessary condition for personal and societal growth.
The Bali conference came at a critical juncture in the development of adult learning and education policy thinking. One year after CONFINTEA VII – the Seventh International Conference on Adult Education – and a few months after the Transforming Education Summit, the event looked forward to the SDGs Summit in September and the UN Summit of the Future, to be held in 2024. It was a key strategic moment to give impetus to the implementation of the Marrakech Framework for Action (MFA) – the outcome document of CONFINTEA VII – and, more generally, to strengthen the focus on adult learning and education in the major education policy debate that will define the agenda for the decades ahead.
