From Adult Education to the Lifelong Education of Youths and Adults. A tour on declarative transformations of the concept

Abstract

The Education of Adults is an integral part of the complex world of education. Nowadays, it plays a decisive role in the contemporary world, since it is regarded as a human right, a path that leads to personal, social and economic, development, as well as a means to ensure fair and equal opportunities for all people. Accordingly, different strategies and lines of action have been discussed, which facilitate interpretation of the educational scenario, and at the same time serve as a basis from where to understand it in its complex and historically situated natural dialectic, and explain it from a clearer and more specific perspective. In the quest for a definition of education of adults, this concept has suffered several declarative transformations, and it has been given different names, in an attempt to provide an answer, in the beginning of this century, to the question of what education of adults is. These names have emerged from the legal frameworks provided by national policies regarding education,, and from the final reports of the six international conferences held in different countries. A long road has been covered, with its advances and setbacks, in search of a definition for the education received by adults, but, despite the great efforts made to give it greater attention, substantial differences across regions and countries that have failed to move “from rhetoric to action" as was established by the last conference, still prevail.