The European Union defines eight key competences for lifelong learning and provides a general definition of competence in the context of “Education and Training 2010”.

[…]

it is indispensable to study the Commission’s and the Council’s action programme on Lifelong Learning and the relevant papers – including the reasoning for the integration of key competences in this political context.

[…]

Arguments for the promotion of business and economic development, the labour market and employment prevail. The Commission itself set this course by giving reasons for the need of lifelong learning first and foremost in the context of the Lisbon strategy and, most importantly, in the “Education & Training 2010” work programme.

The shifting of the main focus from present knowledge transfer to transferable competences is intentional; the tendency of placing an economic value on knowledge is proceeding.

All mentions of key competences and lifelong learning being necessary for social cohesion and active citizenship are deduced from this priority of economic orientation.

(emphasis added)

“Most of what we have called formal education has been intended to imprint on the human mind all of the information we might need for a lifetime. Today…education needs to be geared toward the handling of data rather than the accumulation of data.”

Quote from 1975 by David Barlo, who also invented the S-M-C-R communication model

Which makes for another way of looking at my criticism of the institutional framing of learning to learn: learning is largely treated as stuff to remember – and because whatever we remember in our years of formal schooling will be outdated by the time we retire, we are now invited to make sure ourselves that we remember more and new stuff all life long.

All these projects have given me space and time to think critically about learning to learn, and all of them do take the time and reflection necessary to re-think learning to learn. If I ever had an issue with any of these projects, I would voice my criticism within those frameworks first, and not here on this blog.

My issue is not with any small nonformal L2L project, but much rather with the general approach towards and around L2L by mainstream educational research and practice and politics – schools and universities, programmes and structures, policy papers and frameworks.

So if you read this and are involved in a small nonformal L2L project – I am pretty certain that you have already given your own answer to the final question of my rant.