Portrait of Alexandre Ginoyer
and
Patrick waeles
Can you introduce the CMA to us?
Alexandre Ginoyer: The World Committee for Lifelong Learning is an association created in 2005 by a team of people who worked in the bosom of UNESCO and some had contributed to the Delors report “Education, a hidden treasure inside". By working to define the concept of Lifelong Learning we have defined our object, that is to say to work so that everyone in the world can benefit from the easiest possible access to all learning which is necessary for his personal and professional development. Concerning our actions, we have created world forums, seminars, commissions, and are developing European projects, all in relation to the concept of lifelong learning. And finally for many years we have been interested in Learning Territories, Learning Cities, and Learning Organizations.
Why is Lifelong Learning a major issue for inclusion?
AG: First of all, I would like to point out that for us, putting “Learning (s)” in the plural is important because we take into account formal learning (academic and school knowledge) but also everything related to non-formal and informal, of which we are increasingly aware of the capital importance. It is also very important to decompartmentalize knowledge. Lifelong learning takes into account the whole person and, in our opinion, it is up to society to give citizens as many means as possible to facilitate the inclusion of each individual within this human society.
Patrick Waeles: I would add that inclusion is not "insertion" which is to find a place whether or not it is "assigned". It is not either "integration" which rather relates to an "obligation" to put oneself in dominant norms. “Inclusion” forces a reciprocal transformation. It calls for a meeting, a capacity that develops because we are in a common destiny, that it concerns us all… Posture at the same time of otherness, of recognition, of reciprocity and of solidarity, it implies that each one does " a step ”towards the other to co-operate.
Most often these terms are confused. This shows that we are not taking the measure of the paradigm shift to which this term of inclusion invites us.
Do you think that an approach by territories makes sense in lifelong learning?
PW: Lifelong learning is often done on the basis of social affiliations, life experiences, or the solicitations during which we build ourselves. As a result, learning takes place “in itself” in environments that are posited as such, even if we interact with them. However, the idea of a “learning territory” is, conversely, causing voluntary change in existing environments, in order to jointly find answers to societal and environmental challenges. The mobilization of the resources of each individual and of the territories, the “horizontal” way of working together and of linking ecosystems together in order to move forward, thus constitute singular and collective learning times. These learning times are the condition for the good end, whereas they are carried out “along the way”, individually and collectively, while they are always to be re-mobilized and put into play with each new project. In this sense, promoting a learning society means putting into action the conditions for empowerment and collective intelligence in order to reflect and produce together, in the face of an uncertain and “threatening” future. It is neither knowledge nor knowledge that will answer it, but the way in which each by himself and collectively, co-constructs a playable and desirable future.
AG: It's a territory that brings together individuals with a common goal in order to improve their own lives, it's a territory with a dynamic that will allow you to find things along the way that you did not have. imagined at the outset, to allow creativity and innovation. But for that you have to be ready to leave your bearings and put yourself in a dynamic of letting go and positivity, capacities that are learned very little in formal learning.
PW: We could also focus on the interest and scope of “local” and “proximity” in the learning dynamics aiming to co-construct responses in the territories. First of all, we are in “the concrete” (and in the capacity to do and end up). Then we are in "the whole" (the transversality of ecosystems, as opposed to functioning in silos). Finally we experience "complexity" in the sense of Edgar MORIN, (that is to say to be fully in the diversity of positions and contexts (that is to say of real life) , with the capacity to produce the “common” through the “dialogic”). With in addition an "anchoring" of belonging… ..
Through these actions, the “Politician” can also find himself in a dynamic of accompanying these transformations, more and more carried by “civil society” on its territory. There is therefore also (perhaps above all) a democratic stake with this approach to the territory with individual and collective emancipation to build tomorrow, together.
AG: And that leads to these questions about what makes a collective, a territory, want to transform? Who is behind such a project? How is it built? etc ... And we realize that when the project is the result of a political will, it does not work well or not for very long. But when it is the will of a large number of people who come together around the same great idea, the project endures beyond certain individualities. And the result will be all the richer when there is a diversity of actors.
PW: Basically, the dynamics of “learning territories” are both ambitious and achievable for, Together, in the Present, Inventing a Future that orients the Future.