Learning to Walk on Quicksand

Abstract

It took more than two millennia from the time the ancient Greek sages invented the notion of paidea for the idea of ‘lifelong education’ to turn from an oxymoron (a contradiction in terms) into a pleonasm (akin to a ‘buttery butter’ or ‘metallic iron’ …). That remarkable transformation occurred quite recently, in the last few decades, under the impact of the radically accelerated pace of change in the social setting in which both the principal actors of education the teachers and the learners alike – had to act.