Personal comments

As I wrote this paper I found myself exploring some ideas which did not fit into any unit but which I wanted to include at some point. I am therefore taking that liberty here.

1. Recurrent education and lifelong learning are two concepts currently enjoying attention in adult education. As I understand these terms, we all learn throughout our lifetime as a basic human response to experience. The more we are able to integrate this learning as we move from birth, through childhood, school, adolescence, occupational training, work, marriage, parenthood and retirement to death; the better able we are to adapt to these changes.

Recurrent education includes the formal and informal learning activities an individual might engage in as a response to these changes. While lifelong learning is the responsibility of the individual learner, recurrent education can become the responsibility of various educational institutions.

If we understood the basic patterns of change which occur throughout different life styles, we would know more about the types of learning opportunities required by different groups of learners. For example, the woman who works, never has children, and remains in the same occupation from 25 to 65 requires different learning opportunities than the woman who works five years, marries, leaves the labour force to bear and rear children, then returns ten years later as a sole-support mother.

We need to know more about these life patterns of women and about the recurrent educational experiences which would enhance them.

2. Another concept currently in vogue is paid educational leaves of absence. Most of the discussion focuses on male workers and the economic benefits or liabilities involved for employers, governments, and workers. Any potential differences in how such leaves would affect men and women has yet to be explored. The concept appears to be similar in some respects to maternity leave for women. It is not clear therefore, just how women would be dealt with around educational leaves since their treatment in regard to maternity leave is so inconsistent.

I have some wild scenarios about educational leave and women:

• women will be able to get educational leaves or maternity leaves but not both.

• women will be able to get maternity leave but must attend educational programs at the same time. Such programs will deal with parenting, household management and time management

• women will be rewarded for bearing and rearing children with free access to educational programs (rather than family allowances) provided they are prepared to drop out of the labour force for the first ten years of a child's life. This would be a type of extended maternity leave.