Sydney Community College

Is there learning after work?

Work is important. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) put a particular emphasis on its 2006 Communiqué on Health and Education:

’Good health underpins the wellbeing and quality of life of Australians. Preventing ill health and improving physical and mental health helps people to participate in work and makes them more productive when they do so.’

The communiqué also stated that:

’Reducing the incidence of chronic disease (such as diabetes, cancer and mental illness) means fewer people not working due to illness, injury and disability.’

And…

’Skills development helps realise the potential of citizens, and of the nation.
Continuous and lifelong learning gives more people the tools to participate in work and underpins more successful and rewarding careers when they do so.’

It is interesting that COAG linked education and health with productivity in the workplace but said little of the wider benefits of learning to the Australian society.
In 2004 in the UK, at a time when education was in danger of being narrowly regarded as an instrument of economic growth, Schuller et al, published “The Benefits of Learning:?The impact of education on health, family life and social capital”

The book explores the interaction between learning and people’s physical and psychological well-being, the way learning impacts on family life and communication between generations and the effect on people’s ability and motivation to take part in civic and community life. The book is based on extensive interviews and illustrates how learning affects among other things, health and family life.
Other commentators such as Daniel Donahoo writing in “Online Opinion”, an e-journal of social and political debate, put a slightly different slant to our relationship to work:

“While economists and politicians fawn over evidenced-based research on skill shortages and workforce population decline, they are ignoring the deep sighs of a workforce that’s sick of the stress. The demands on the Australian labour market have been constant for two decades – and workers want a smoko.”

Donahoo argues that we are working more because of fear and uncertainty yet we are living un-sustainable lifestyles.

Productivity is important. However, productivity demands consumption and consumption is only supported by income or debt. Sustainability and productivity growth will be a very difficult formula to perfect in the coming years. It therefore seems to me that a national learning strategy in Australia needs to go beyond the relationship of learning to productivity in the workplace.

Learning is important to build communities, to build understanding and help us live sustainable creative and peaceful lives. It always has been and always must remain, more than a utilitarian adjunct to the workplace.

Without doubt, work for many of us (myself included) is an essential part of who we are and largely we identified by what we do. For those of us who spend much of our time at work, our identity is largely constructed by our job and the relationships we foster to allow us to do that job. When we meet people socially for the first time quickly the conversation turns to what people do for a living. Even stating that we are now retired is homage to the workplace.

For some of us, work is an engulfing passion and for others it is a means to end. We work, we partner, we settle, we reproduce and we try to make a life better for our children as our parents did for us. Very few of us plan where we end up. We have a general idea about where we are going and, if we are lucky, we find something we like doing and stick at it.

For me, as I can now see the top of the hill, my attention to my identity as I coast over the ridge is occupying me more than I thought it would. After work, what will I have to talk about? After work, what will I have to get passionate about? Will letting go be a wrenching experience or will I gladly slip off the harness as I close the door behind me. What I hope, more than anything, is that by that time we will have expanded our view of the importance of learning beyond the important but narrow context of the workplace.