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LIFELONG EDUCATION AS A FACTOR OF SOCIALIZATION
O. Y. Konik
We can distinguish several attributes that allow us to get an integral idea of lifelong education as a factor of socialization.
1. Lifelong education as a stage and integral process.
Education can not be limited by a single age group or a scope of
knowledge,
even an extensive one, acquired once and forever. At the same time, continuity of education does not make it a purposeful factor of personal enhancement. The stages of an education become cultivating insofar as they, on the one hand, extend the sphere of available choice and, on the other hand, retain some elements of uncertainty for a person. If total uncertainty atrophy vital energy - an uncertain situation stimulates it. The contradictory combination of readiness to act and uncertainty, changeability of conditions, circumstances, and nature of activity itself create a problematic situation which becomes the subject of analysis, aiming at a search for means and ways of goal achievement. Thus, continuity of education as a factor of personal enhancement does not come to mechanical joining of stages (primary, secondary, higher education etc.), and does not regulate person's activity from outside, but is created by a problematic situation. It is based on a conflict between expanding choice under the influence of education and specificity of people's living conditions at different stages of their activity, in different social and occupational groups.
2. Spatial characteristic of lifelong education is the interaction of a person with different sources of information at each stage of his life. These are the goals and needs of people that turn usual consumption of information into an educational situation. Moreover, the components that cultivate personality or create conditions for self-development are its substantial elements. The intricate, sometimes even controversial world of knowledge and half-knowledge, reliable and not reliable information demands selectivity of a person. And only when a person has choice and is ready for it, various sources of information become a means of educational activity and the process of familiarization with knowledge sources turn into self-education. From this point of view, communication, professional activity, travelling, the mass media, etc. are as significant as traditional education. The degree of activity and selectivity of adults towards the knowledge they obtain from different sources of information and ways of
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contacts with them testify to the purposefulness of educational activity and define the "spatial continuity" of education.
3. Personal characteristics of lifelong education. A person is somehow involved into the information process with the help of the mass media, interpersonal communication, etc. But he or she becomes a subject of educational activity only having recognized the necessity of replenishing knowledge, and familiarization with the culture. Mainly this recognition is caused by the needs that, on the one hand, are based on understanding the disproportion between a person’s real scope of knowledge and the one which is needed for successful professional activity (in this case education serves as a means of maintenance of social status); on the other hand, it is connected with a person’s aspiration to comprehend the global matters that transcend his everyday life. However deeply a person is plunged into everyday life - he or she somehow "breaks out of the walls of his or her isolated ego" (E. Fromm) and ponders over a wide range of global questions connected with a person’s destiny in the ever-changing world. Also, the contradictions of self-reflective nature play a very important role. On the one hand, they are caused by a desire to better and deeper understand oneself. On the other hand, they are connected with the poorly developed mechanisms of reflexive control, with inability to cope with crises that a person faces in life.
All the aspects that define motivation for educational activity are closely interwoven in real life. However, some of them can become dominant in this or that situation. For example, motives connected with professional activity (possibility of employment, acquiring a new profession, etc.) stand out for a person who is looking for a job. For people of advanced age the possibility to familiarize themselves with cultural values, to make new acquaintances, and to supplement their knowledge of a healthy lifestyle will be of utmost importance. If the value of education is reduced to momentary, situational interests, if it does not enrich a personal picture of the world - its continuity comes to adoptive functions. A cultivating, individual effect of education is directly connected with its being "oversituational". The richer is the motivation for education, the deeper is recognition of its value and the more intensive is reconstruction of the whole system of ends and means of a person’s activity. This manifests itself in the formation of an individual lifestyle, where the combination of work and study is a condition of qualitative transformation and perfection of an individual, a condition of a shift to a higher and more advanced level of the world outlook, independent search of ways for self-cultivation, constant deepening and widening ties with the world.
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4. Structural characteristics of lifelong education. The dynamic and ever-changing world today raises a number of global problems (environmental, ethnic, anthropological, economic, etc.) for humanity and every human. The solutions can not be found with the help of narrow-focused thinking. Professional education can not rid a society of the danger of cultural degradation. At the same time, the existing trend in public education is far from implementation of the proclaimed humanistic principles; and elective courses, embedded into the system of higher education, are often of an informing nature. The necessity to enhance value focus of education at every stage of a person’s life, in all educational systems can be achieved by: a) overcoming the apartness of subjects, creating a holistic system, joining them around the challenges before the human; b) selecting the information that encourages personal enhancement; cultivating independent and critical thinking, which is necessary for creative perception of the world. Thus we eliminate the traditional contradiction of hard and soft sciences and make lifelong education a mighty impulse for personal enhancement.
The reviewed characteristics of lifelong education let us conclude that its socializing function consists in providing people with social and professional competence; raising their awareness of current processes in the society; strengthening people's faith in themselves; stimulating the formation of the social and professional unions at different stages of their life.
We believe that one of the main signs of successful socialization is people's attitude to education. On that ground two personality types can be distinguished. Representatives of the first type stand out for their indifferent attitude to educational institutes. They seem themselves to be accomplished specialists and do not feel like obtaining any new knowledge in other spheres of life. The value of education for these people comes down to its adaptive capacity. Representatives of the second type keep studying through their whole life. They stand out for their critical attitude to their background, and their feeling of its incompleteness.
Thus, lifelong education at the current stage of societal development is a significant factor of socialization for an individual. The tendency of growth in lifelong education is connected with the necessity of constant occupational retraining. During the retraining process a person does not only enrich his or her mental vocabulary, but also acquires the norms and values which are inherent to the institution of lifelong education, starts to follow them, develops plans and motives, a corresponding life strategy, and, in other words, undergoes the process of socialization.
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