Continuous Education, by C. Susanne, Free University
of Brussels
Concept of continuous education (CE)
The continuous technological evolution
and scientific progress implies that in all sectors of activities and of
course also in biology continuous education (CE) is an absolute necessity.
Universities have to take their responsibilities in this kind of teaching
for
As we can see from this (long) list, the concept of CE itself is heterogeneous
even if CE is often seen as a tool of professionalisation and a way to collaborate
with industries.
The EU documents for instance, if they express their interests for education
at large insist always on the need to collaboration with enterprises. It
is necessary to employ considerable effort to stimulate the integration
of technological and industrial innovations. "The concept of CE has
become one of the leading ideas in social change. It is as much a response
to demands for continuous adjustments to skills and attitudes in a rapidly
changing society as to the democratic requirement for equality of opportunity
and social cohesion" (Education, Training, Youth Studies 2. The outlook
for higher education in the European Community).
Structures at CE level.
A large commercial market for CE exists already and higher education
(H.E.) institutions form only a small part of it. Commercialisation is rampant
in commercial "schools", self-financing in HE institutions. Financial
competition would be mostly in favour of H.E. but very often the public
relations systems of commercial schools is better. They answer also more
rapidly to the demands of business organisations, H.E. expressing on the
contrary a more conservative response but also more criticisms about commercialisation.
Private CE is often offering over-vocational courses to the detriment of
general cultivation of the mind: improved access for adults should develop
latent potential, it should also spread the "European dimension".
H.E. should consider adult education just as important as initial training.
This could be a kind of "cultural revolution" for our universities,
if we were to receive the financial support so that we do not have to sacrifice
our classical initial training. In the absence of financial help, CE often
plays only a marginal role and is seldom included in the institution's development
strategies.
H.E. implies liberation and dissemination of knowledge while in enterprises
knowledge is often a competitive feature. A risk exists, at least in the
minds of academics, of an increasing dependence of H.E. on income from contracts
of economic partners leading to some influence on the priorities in the
work of universities. The same kind of difficulties arise from the short-term
visions of the commercial sector of their needs where H.E. tends to operate
on a larger time-scale. The idea of stimuli for partnership is however clearly
present in the Comett programme and in most of the EU programmes.
In the discussion on the Memorandum on H.E. in the EU, the majority of the
countries agreed however that CE could not be limited to retraining of the
work-force but has a wider role to play, providing for instance a "second
chance" education or helping people to cope with a changing environment,
and a wider European cultural perspective.
It is important that the systems of CE should not always be identical and
should be able to adapt to specific demands:
The organisation requires sufficient flexibility because it must offer a
range of courses taking into account a wide variety of levels.
CE centres could be created as a kind of inter-faculty structure creating
initiatives in training, advice and guidance and conducting relevant research.
Recognition
The active involvement of society
Global goals
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About biology ?
There is currently an increasing demand for CE in biology and the general
opinion of industry and the public sector seems to point especially towards
molecular biology and environmental sciences. Industry and the public sector
should clarify their needs and invest in this education, bearing in mind
that the cost of ignorance is always greater than that of ongoing education.
Material could be developed through an "open university" system
but the generation and acquisition of ideas have to be linked with personal
relationships between students and between students and professors. Books
and didactic material must not replace the importance of social relationships,
even if these have financial implications.
We should limit ourselves to education or to training in a broader sense
not limiting ourselves only to information but, stimulating ability to think
actively, to analyse problems, to learn from experience, to come up with
research solutions. Research and development are areas in which CE co-operation
with industries could be stimulated, because the costs of research in the
university will be cheaper than in enterprises themselves. Somehow the task
has to be financed. If industries can not be counted upon for financial
support, should the universities still continue CE training programmes or
should they concentrate on what they are doing best, their traditional B.Sc.,
M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biology ?
The EU encourages in all their programmes collaboration with industries,
but the EU needs to be clearer in its goals. Is it only an utilitarian goal?
Is it training or education? At which level is the EU still defending basic
teaching and basic research, this teaching and this research which will
never be of interest to enterprises. This dilemma arises particularly for
many biological topics.
If we are going back to the past, 2500 years ago with Aristotle, freedom
meant expression and judgement and was part of the education of the (free)
citizens. Specific skills, in contrast, were left to slaves: these were
artisans needing no understanding of the world at large. But, are these
ideas really of the past? Basic education in biology might still be important
also for the freedom of citizenship, in terms of bioethics for instance,
where specific skills in biology are of importance for man as producer.
Is it not the role of the university to offer the education that cultivates
the mind rather than to develop tools and skills? It is also relevant to
the goals of CE that we bring about such as Montaigne called it, "une
tête bien faite" and not "une tête bien pleine"
(approximately in English "teach them how to think rather than what
to think").
For biology, we have to define
Needs, processes and tools are needed to develop a critical mind, leading
to freedom. In other words, universities should continue to provide CE for
long-term progress, for personal achievement and for initiative service.
Today, our universities are already open and flexible for innovation and
for CE initiatives. Many efforts have been made already and the remaining
difficulty is perhaps ignorance of these initiatives and dispersal of the
efforts. We have to develop a bank of courses, ideas, methods of CE in biology
and to develop new teaching material. But, the major issue remains the identification
of the tasks of universities in CE and its contents, methods and operations
within H.E.
More specifically about environment.
Environmental perspectives are absent from many disciplines, except
from biology perhaps. But, even in biology, there is a multidisciplinary
approach and integrated courses are necessary.
Probably the best solution remains to keep to a good B.Sc. level in one
of the basic disciplines and to use CE for the interdisciplinary approach
bringing the scientific world in contact with the industrial and the commercial
one, integrating all these concepts in environmental impact assessment for
instance, or environmental audits, product life cycle analysis, integrated
pollution control,....
Teaching objectives could be the acquisition of attitudes, of working methods
and of knowledge and should take into account ethical and social values.
Projects of CE could be:
Questions
Your opinion.
On the questions of which public would we contact by priority for CE,
the way(s) CE would occur and which topics would be envisaged by priority,
the answers were as following
| 1. Priorities | |
| teachers secondary schools | 52% |
| researchers / Ph. D | 22% |
| large public | 14% |
| teachers primary schools | 10% |
| others (staff, professionals in law, politics, journalism, health professions, etc) | 2% |
| 2. Way CE would occur | |
| intensive courses (national) | 32% |
| intensive courses (international) | 20% |
| open university | 20% |
| packages with didactic material | 18% |
| conferences | 8% |
| others: media / | 2% |
| computer based learning | |
| 3. Topics | |
| Ecology/environmental sciences | 19% |
| (molecular) Genetics | 13% |
| Bioethics | 9% |
| Molecular biology | 9% |
| Anthropology | 6% |
| Human ecology | 6% |
| Neurobiology | 6% |
| Population genetics | 6% |
| Health (AIDS, drugs,...) | 5% |
| Biotechnology | 4% |
| Biodiversity | 4% |
| Biostatistics | 3% |
| Cell biology | 3% |
| Microbiology | 3% |
| Evolution/ Origin of life | 3% |
| Molecular aspects of development | 1% |
| Immunology | |
| Economy and Ecology | |