Envisioning a critical social pedagogy of learning and work in a contemporary culture of cyclical lifelong learning

Abstract

In Canada, current federal learning-and-work policy is focused on individual learner-worker development using an iteration of lifelong learning as cyclical. This policy aims to enhance the social as an effect of enhancing the economic. In this neoliberal milieu, cyclical lifelong learning has become not only a norm but also a culture and an attitude. Still, a current Canadian phenomenon indicates that increasing numbers of young adults are disengaging from participation in such learning that the federal government considers being a preventive measure. In discussing their withdrawal from what might be perceived as cyclical lifelong learning for control, I consider a particularly challenging case: the predicament of young adults in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. To help us think about adequately addressing the dislocation they experience in life and work, I offer a Freire-informed vision of a critical social pedagogy of learning and work. This pedagogy calls for re-engendering the social in lifelong learning by revitalizing critical social concerns with historical awareness, hope, possibility, ethics, justice, democratic vision, learner freedom, critique, and intervention.

Notes

1. Sir Cavendish Boyle wrote the Ode to Newfoundland as the national anthem of the former Dominion during his tenure as British Governor (1901–1904).

2. This is a reference to the moratorium placed on cod fishing in the early 1990s.

3. Alberta is Canada's oil- and resource-rich province, offering many opportunities for employment. Significant out-migration of Newfoundlanders from communities on the island portion of the province to oil-boom towns like Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie in Alberta have recast these western Canadian communities as little Newfoundlands. Meanwhile, island communities continue to decline.

4. Purity, a Newfoundland company that produces a variety of food products, makes peanut butter kisses and peppermint knobs. These candies are favorite local treats.