Lifelong learning for social responsibility: Exploring the significance of aesthetic reflectivity for adult education

We have just concluded a three year study project called ‘adult education for social responsibility: reconciling the irreconcilable?'(Wildemeersch et al. 1998) In it, we have argued that a major function for adult education today is the reinforcement and facilitation of public debate and action with respect to different social, political and economic scenarios for the future. We invited colleagues to investigate how far adult education can contribute to tuning local and personal concerns to a sense of collective and global responsibility for the ‘common good’. We took into account the de-institutionahzation and privatization of adult education, and the concomitant pluralization and diversification of learning needs and desires. But our main question was whether the fragmentation and the self-actualizing life-styles that are the hallmark of postmodern culture, still allow educational scenarios for social responsibility.