The learning society

There is a growing consensus that educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a learning society. This, of course, does not necessarily imply clarity about the criteria for the development of a learning society. In this article the author outlines five strategic issues: the need to broaden the definition of learning (education as a dimension of society); the need to redirect the goal of learning (growth towards completeness); the need to go beyond learning and instruction (increasing collective competence); the need to foster autonomy in learning (self‐education); and the need to stress a political approach to learning (the right to learn). These issues represent the challenges facing all advanced industrial nations.