Supervisors info:
Χρήστος Λυριντζής, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Δημόσιας Διοίκησης, ΕΚΠΑ.
Μιχάλης Σπουρδαλάκης, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Δημόσιας Διοίκησης, ΕΚΠΑ.
Γεώργιος Θεοδωρίδης, Λέκτωρ, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Δημόσιας Διοίκησης, ΕΚΠΑ.
Summary:
In this paper, we attempt to critically review the strategic framework of the National Lifelong Learning Program (2013- 2015), utilizing the critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough, developed in the context of social constructionism. The main but not sole purpose of our analysis is the identification policies that are guided by the employability strategy or that of social cohesion.
The study of the project as well as of the analytical category "social cohesion" leads to its description, as to the ability of societies and social groups operating within their framework, to lead social change in a peaceful and inclusive way, while at the same time promoting the individual and collective rights and freedoms, with the aim of forming autonomous individuals claiming their emancipation from social heteronomy.
Comparison and collation of the views of Castoriadis, social - political theorist and psychoanalyst, and Mezirow, adult education theorist (conceptualization adult transformative learning), on the other hand, reveals their common understanding of individual autonomy: the basic prerequisite for education and democracy. For both, individual autonomy, as the core of self-realisation, is the criterion for assessing the democratic social context and hence, social cohesion.
The critical discourse analysis of the National Lifelong Learning Program ( 2013- 2015 ) reveals and describes a neo- liberal discourse that contributes to the construction of social identities, social relationships and knowledge- understanding systems, aiming at economic competitiveness and the promotion of employability. The opportunistic reference and the lack of a strategy for the major issue of social cohesion move away from a society built for lifelong learning, in which self- reflecting and deliberative individuals are formed, who are not ontologically defined as status-given but as individuals- processes promoting change, as autonomous individuals.
Knowledge in the National Lifelong Learning Program becomes instrumental, as one learns what is useful for his profession. It remains a value, but an economic one, as one learns to market him/herself and consume, something that destroys the individual autonomy as the prerequisite logic of lifelong learning: Individuals are commercialised by representing investment as human resources.
Keywords:
Lifelong Learning, employability, social cohesion, autonomy / autonomy of the individual
