Education and Training: still distinguishable?

Abstract

Recently it has been proposed that the distinction between education and training is becoming obsolete. This paper disputes that conclusion, arguing that it is arrived at by failing to distinguish the Increasing sophistication of modern training, and the cognitive and social skills that tend to accompany this, from a broader, ‘liberal’ concept of education. This concept may find itself in an inconvenient tension with some of the requirements of the economy, the view previously stated, therefore, with its emphasis on consensus and identity of interest, is seen as being problematic in a context where the ‘goods’ of the citizen and of the worker may be radically divorced from one another. Alternative definitions of education and training are thus Identified and shown to generate correspondingly different analyses of the current situation, as well as alternative curricular proposals.