“Education does not change the world. Education changes people. People transform the world.”
Paulo Freire
Lifelong Learning has become increasingly important, at an international level, for different bodies, such as the EU (European Union), UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
According to the UNESCO Report (GRALE III, 2016), 65% of the countries that participated in the survey (139) say that illiteracy is one of the factors that prevents citizens from participating in Lifelong Learning activities. Thus, we continue to aim to increase literacy levels and the effective rate of participation of our citizens in continuing education activities.
It is known that education and lifelong learning have a high impact for active citizenship, in diversity and tolerance, employment, health and well-being, that is, in a holistic way, they benefit social and community life.
For example, in international terms, more and more attention is being directed towards the correlation between lifelong learning and health and well-being. The association of the education indicator with life expectancy is new because, normally, correlations are made with ethnicity, level of development of a country, among others that do not include education as the main indicator. The attention given to this indicator makes it possible to make connections that go beyond health and well-being, namely: decreased health costs, lower absenteeism rate, greater capacity to adapt to aging and investment in more healthy lifestyles.
In an increasingly evident way, we begin to realize the importance of education in all spheres of life for any citizen: employment, leisure, health, family. That is why it is important to work so that there is an effective participation of citizens in lifelong education, to develop in students, skills that allow them this permanent search for updating, for learning.
It is our belief that the improvement of soft skills on students will culminate in more flexible grown-ups, capable of interchanging and adapting to new realities. The world is growing fast as well as the needs of the working market, and we need to evolve with it. We need lifelong learning to be a constant in our lives and that is the best tool we can provide our students with.
