HISTORIC AND SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND OF THE LIFELONG LEARNING CONCEPT

Abstract

The author specifies the tendencies of the modern society development, which are globalization, integration, internationalization and demographic instability. The tendencies require from a man, who lives in a fast changing world, an ability to find and make independent decisions, to take responsibility for the actions, to apply the necessary competences in the professional area for increasing own competitiveness. The paper pays attention to the necessity of developing lifelong learning, which is formulated and fixed in the National educational doctrine of the Russian Federation up to 2025, Concepts of long-term socioeconomic development of the Russian Federation up to 2020, and Concepts of the Federal law ”On education in the Russian Federation”, where necessity of conditions for “participation in lifelong learning” is specified and emphasized. Education is one of the social substructures and, therefore, it is considered as a social institution. The content of lifelong learning is a factor of society and its transfer from one stage to another one. Development and functioning of lifelong learning is determined by economic, political, social, cultural and other factors and conditions of the society. Generally, education is defined as formation of man in the image and likeness. The sources of the concept “education” go back to the early Middle Ages, they are connected with the concept “image”. Beginning with the Renaissance, when a man became a value, education has been considered as a way of a man’s self-development. Education combines teaching and up-bringing (self-education) as internalization of social values (standards, rules, traditions and commandments), shared by all its members. The connection of teaching and up-bringing is inseparable. “Both teaching and up-bringing are unbreakable, - L. N. Tolstoy pointed out, - it is impossible to bring up without imparting knowledge, and all the knowledge has upbringing influence” [1, p. 109]. Education (being, managed from outside by self-education, otherwise, by building the image of “I”) can be considered in three interrelated aspects, which assume educational system, educational process, and individual or collective result of the process (if we speak about the education of a concrete person, his/her accomplishments).