General and Professional Education within the Conception of the Lifelong Learning.

Overview & Synopsis

General education and professional education are both important in a learning society. Pedagogy has devoted all its attention to developing general education while regarding professional education as a type of nonobligatory education. From the beginning, general education and professional education have been divided, with the former oriented toward acquisition of knowledge and values and the latter oriented toward acquisition of working skills and professional knowledge. This resignation toward professional education has not been intentional but rather a consequence of the wider context of social and historical development. Although the distinctions between general and professional education are useful and necessary, their opposition and division for any reason and with any aim are damaging and unnatural. This is especially true today, when the imperative of scientific-technical development is, more than ever before, introducing radical changes into the sphere of communal life and activity. The relationship between general and professional education must be reconsidered, with emphasis on the link between gaining knowledge and values and gaining vocational skills and appreciation for the important types of learning in a learning society. It is becoming increasingly clear that educated experts and specialists will be better able to follow technological and social changes if they have a sufficiently broad general education. (Contains 14 references.) (MN)