The Faure Report and the Western and Soviet Concepts of Lifelong Education

• In Event: UNESCO’s "Faure report" – 50 years on

Proposal

By the time the Faure report was published in 1972, the Soviet Union already had a robust and holistic cradle-to-grave and lifewide, lifelong education (LLE) system. Some of this system and ideology was reflected in the Faure report, thanks in large part to the contribution of one of the commissioners and authors, Arthur Petrovsky. However, despite claiming to be a document for all UNESCO countries, presenting both socialist and capitalist educational practices, the Faure report constructs an LLE model grounded in the Western intellectual tradition and mostly reflects the capitalist world’s challenges and conflicts, neglecting much of the USSR’s system at that time. This paper helps fill the gap of academic knowledge concerning the USSR’s role in the development of LLE and examines the bidirectional relationship between the Soviet Union and the Faure Report.

Authors

• Jude Walker, University of British Columbia

• Elena Ignatovich, University of British Columbia