Review article

“LIFELONG LEARNING” – A NEW TERM FOR AN OLD IDEA? THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL ROOTS

Joachim H. Knoll ; University of Bochum (FRG)

Abstract

This article seeks to correct the assumption that “lifelong
learning” was only invented by educationists in the 1970s. In contrast to the numerous authors who regard E. Faure’s 1972 book “Learning to be” as the origin of “lifelong learning”, we refer back to Cyril O. Houle, and his remarkable publication of 1961, “The Inquiring Mind,” as the father of “lifelong learning” in the modern sense. Cyril O. Houle suggested that the roots of “lifelong learning” lay in ancient Judaism. The present article follows this guideline and marks out the main stages of this genealogy: ancient Judaism as a learning community, lifelong learning in the Torah and Talmud,
the Haskalah as the link with educational practice in Germany, and fi nally the function of the “houses of teaching” (Lehrhäuser) in the Weimar Republic (Buber, Rosenzweig, Simon) as places of lifelong learning in both its religious and its secular sense.

Keywords

lifelong learning; Judaism

Hrčak ID:

40004

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/40004

Publication date:

22.6.2009.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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