Make space for lifelong learning
In today’s workplace, one has to continuously learn new things in order to move up the corporate ladder. Aside from graduate studies, an employee must acquire other business and management skills in areas or disciplines like supply management and organization development. The School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPaCE) is De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde’s response to provide professionals with lifelong learning in key business management competencies.
Edgar Faure, a Unesco commission chair and once a minister of education of France, gave this definition of lifelong learning: “It is a philosophical-political vision to build a democratic and emancipatory system of learning possibilities independent of class, race, economic ability and learner age” (Holm, 2011). Simply, the writer puts it as “learning to be,” which incidentally is one of Unesco’s four pillars of learning (the other three are learning to know, learning to do, and learning to live together).
A World Bank report in 2003 characterized lifelong learning as “the education for the knowledge economy,” which includes formal, nonformal, and informal learning. It also includes continuing education, training within vocational education and workplace learning.
Claus Holm, chair of the Asia-Europe Meeting Education and Research Hub for Lifelong Learning, posits that lifelong learning be referred to as “learning to be productive and employable.” This definition represents what SPaCE is all about. The programs it offers augment and supplement what its participants have learned in their undergraduate courses. These programs are meant to increase their productivity and their ability to adapt to the new technologies and opportunities. According to Prof. Soong Hee Han of the National University of Korea, the present generation “seek[s] further education that relates to job opportunities” (Han, 2011) but it is the “worker’s skills that determine his or her ability to adapt to new technologies and opportunities” (King, 2011).
It has become imperative for one to update himself by continuously learning new things that will help him in his work. Globalization has made it mandatory to learn new skills, tools and technology for use not only in the local setting but also in other parts of the world. This requires a high level of self-motivation and tremendous desire for personal development in order to become more competitive and employable.
More than skills, Professor Han continues, the worker has to have a new way of perceiving the world, requiring new perspectives and paradigms. Developments in the global market, most especially in Europe, require us to learn ways to cope with these changes not only to survive them but also to understand them and to face the situation with a clearer and open mind necessary to weather the conditions.
Workplace learning is a good starting point to acquire additional and updated information about one’s job. Learning from peers can be effective at times. However, a more focused and structured learning program such as that offered in institutions like SPaCE provide better chances at making it big in the industry where one works in. The tools and the new learning demanded by current global economic conditions may be acquired in the workplace but should be supplemented and reinforced by educational institutions. For almost two decades, SPaCE has been providing young professionals with the tools and skills necessary to advance their careers, broaden their horizon of opportunity, and increase their competitive advantage in their respective professions.
SPaCE is both the venue and forum where they can interact with fellow professionals and leading industry experts who have been honed in their respective fields through time and experience both here and abroad. Guided by its tagline “learn for life,” SPaCE offers courses in supply chain, human capital, events, strategic marketing, real estate, and organization management.
This is the perspective and paradigm change that Professor Han proposes, and these changes do not apply only to the workers and professionals but also to higher education institutions. The schools have to continuously scan the horizon for new learning that the industries will require. Lifelong learning is a concept that deserves to be at the very heart of educational policy and practice, according to Prof. Dirk Van Damme, head of research and innovation in France. SPaCE continues to look for new areas of learning and partners with industry and industry organizations in the school’s quest to provide interest-based subjects and programs.
Lifelong learning is not just partaking of education and training such as those that educational institutions provide, but extending learning beyond the classrooms throughout one’s life under various conditions and situations. Learning is no longer confined within the four walls of a classroom; it extends to the workplace and places where one can interact and observe interactions. Thus, everyone must make space and give time for continuing and lifelong education.
Reynaldo A. Mones ([email protected]) is the dean of SPaCE at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. He is also an assistant professor at Benilde’s School of Hotel, Restaurant and Institution Management and executive director of Saint Brother Jaime Hilario Center.
