The Skills: A Chimera of Modern European Adult Education

Abstract

The chapter examines the main discourses of European educational policy in two texts, Memorandum on Lifelong Learning and Communication: Making Lifelong Learning in Europe a Reality, focusing on the skills approach and concept of basic skills. The two texts are critically analysed from several points of view: the way they affect lifelong learning’s conceptualisation in the EU, their limited capacity to help achieve the goal of Europe, as a knowledge-based society, and their basically pragmatic function oriented to productivity and employability. The analysis of the discourse was done through language analysis and examination of consistency, relevance, coherence and realism related to the goals set in the EU documents. The skills are criticised for their lack of integral character and artificial attempt to unite labour-oriented and citizen-oriented approach. It is argued that both goals of the Memorandum – promotion of active citizenship and promotion of employability – cannot be achieved by introducing basic skills as the main mechanism. Further on, their value-free and context-free nature is reflected. The concept of competencies was also critically discussed, for being perceived as kind of deus ex machina of modern European policy in adult education. The developments in the European policy in the time after these two documents were considered to prove the shift to the kind of neo-liberal orientation in educational policy that has its roots in these texts.