Open Learning. Oskar Hansen’s Social Philosophy and the Concept of Lifelong Learning

Abstract

The idea of lifelong learning was very strongly emphasized in the so called Delors Report, prepared almost twenty years ago for the UNO. This report contains many hints concerning 21st century education and in particular underlines the importance of lifelong education. According to the authors of the Report education should be understood as a continuous process, open and changeable, adaptable to definite needs arising from man’s development. The purpose of this paper is to combine the idea of lifelong learning with the premises of Open Form, which are the basis of Oskar Hansen’s social philosophy. Extending the view of education – as an institutional and an extra-institutional structure – and of learning to include the premises of Hansen’s Open Form and Closed Form gives us a chance to better understand the meaning of the idea of lifelong learning in the conditions of sustained social change.