National Launch of Adult Learners’ Week 2005

Monday 5 September 2005

Most people coming into workforce now can expect six to eight major changes in career in their working life. Lifelong learning is now the norm. Maybe the whole term adult learning needs to be mainstreamed to reflect economic reality.

Learning keeps your mind alive too. With longer lives has also come the problem of what to do with all that extra time. New mind-mapping technology shows quite clearly that minds that are worked out can come back from patterns of decline and decay.

I have to admit I'm just a bit impatient about the whole idea of putting adult education in a box. It really should just be accepted as part of what we all do. If you have not learned something today, I suggest you should.

Human potential is the last frontier. It is territory we have only started to really understand and develop. While I applaud adult education week, my own take is that it should be a year round, lifelong event.