Global Lifelong Learning Toward a Free Palestine

• In Event: Higher Education and Technology: Tools for Mobilization of Political Action

Proposal

This literature review of lifelong learning across the globe is less concerned with reviewing literature and more directly focused on education’s role in working toward a free Palestine. While critically engaging dominant framings of lifelong learning through a loosely structured literature review of global lifelong learning, this conceptual paper thus examines how a different understanding of the notion of lifelong learning might contribute to radical educational praxis. Specifically, the paper aims to think with and learn from the life, praxis, and impact of Aaron Bushnell as an example of public-facing, internationalist education as solidarity work. In doing so, the paper also broadly aims to explore education’s role in liberation movements. Given the conceptual nature of the paper, there are no specific data sources or research methodologies. At the same time, reviewing dominant framings of global lifelong learning, firsthand and journalistic accounts of Aaron Bushnell’s life, and radical pedagogical theories all inform the paper.

Looking at projects like the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, the notion of lifelong learning is something internal, individuated, and outcome-based. UNESCO articulates lifelong learning as an “endeavour that takes place in formal, non-formal and informal settings with the ultimate goal of ensuring that adults can participate fully in society and the world of work” (UNESCO, 2024). This framing is often attributed to outside-of-school and adult education projects grounded in developing new knowledge or cultivating skills. When this understanding of lifelong learning moves beyond the individual attainment of individual skills, it remains dominated by neoliberal capitalist logics (Akther, 2020). The idea here is that global capitalism, focused on the Global South, demands the cultivation of specific skills to fulfill production needs. In effect, lifelong learning becomes another market (Milana, Klatt, & Vatrella, 2020).

From a different perspective, lifelong learning is not the development of individual skills serving capitalist ends but a collective project that moves outward into the world and makes many other worlds possible. This understanding of lifelong learning is directly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and liberatory. Where dominant framings of lifelong learning see skills as things to acquire and knowledge as something to possess, this other perspective sees how lifelong learning is shared and expressed, part of an ongoing global political project of living life educationally. In other words, lifelong learning might be less about the pursuit and capture of discrete skills and more about how we dedicate our lives, learning and living through and for one another. As an example, consider the life of Aaron Bushnell. On February 25th, 2024, Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy. He died screaming the words “free Palestine!” Bushnell grew up in right wing Christian communities. He did not attend college and joined the military. Yet, according to friends and Bushnell’s publicly available social media posts, a general commitment to lifelong learning moved Bushnell toward anarchism. For Bushnell, working in solidarity toward a free Palestine became a project of lifelong learning.

A reconceptualized understanding of lifelong learning suggests that Bushnell’s individual knowledge and skills are not the focus of his educational life. It is rather a matter of how he learned in community and how he expressed his learning through acts of solidarity and sacrifice. At the same time, knowledge and skills can generate useful tactics in the global project of lifelong learning. Writing about Bushnell’s self-immolation, poet Wendy Trevino writes, “It was important for the uniform/It was important to speak clearly. It/Was important to set the phone down/Just right.” That is, Aaron Bushnell deployed individualized learning to make his actions clear and effective. He studied and learned how his life might have an impact. The question, though, is how these knowledges and skills move and what purpose they serve. Bushnell’s lifelong learning worked not for individual improvement but, through his “extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people” (in his words), to make other worlds possible.

This paper does not aim to romanticize Bushnell’s death or to center white, U.S. folks in the global project of Palestinian liberation. It is also not to suggest that Bushnell’s “extreme act” is some kind of life lesson. Rather, the paper’s significance is found in how it configures education as an ongoing, lifelong project born of collective praxis and focused on global solidarity. Lifelong learning is here enacted across formalized and nonformalized spaces, including, as this year’s CIES theme suggests, digital spaces that generate opportunities to engage in liberatory acts of lifelong learning. It connects to the radical tradition where, to paraphrase folks like Fred Hampton (1969), people theorize and practice, make adjustments, and continue practicing. Placed in internationalist education terms, the idea here is that we are always learning, unlearning, and studying and struggling toward freedom. As memorials or streets in Palestine with Bushnell’s name attest, this notion of lifelong learning suggests that learning makes more learning.

Author

• Jordan Corson, Stockton University