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New responsibility for older people. “Senior citizen trainers“ in the EFI Programme: training concept and fields of activity This article presents a continuing education strategy with which older people are prepared for voluntary work as senior citizen trainers. The six-week course was developed in the model programme “experiential knowledge for initiatives” (briefly: EFI), which was funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth over a five-year period,…
Voluntary Commitment and Learning. Results of a Survey on Volunteers by the Federal Government The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth’s (BMFSFJ) survey on volunteers, carried out in 1999 and 2004, shows that voluntary work is on the rise, especially in the area of work with young people and adult education. Learning motives play a major role in voluntary commitments. Technical expertise is also considered to be important, but more so by men than by women. O…
The notion of lifelong learning is reshaping the structural principle according to which learning is organised in the time structures of society. Long periods of time spent in schools are becoming more flexible, with shorter sections of ordered learning times being distributed throughout people’s lives and more flexible transitions taking place between work and learning. The three-phase scheme for working life – training, work and retirement – is becoming more flexible. The LLL concept can be s…
The author diagnoses the dynamics of acceleration in our society in three parts: technological acceleration, which results in a “destruction of space”, accelerated social change, which leads to a “shrinkage of the present”, and – as a result of both of these trends – an acceleration in the subjective perception of time. The “society on the move” creates a pressure to make use of as many options in life as possible. The author shows that only deciding not to exploit all these options can help e…
Competence profile of the “specialist in violence” The changing requirements and roles of soldiers 50 years after the first military draft, this article explores the requirements and roles of German Army soldiers over the period 1957 to 2007. The changing competencies and skills required of soldiers must be understood in connection with the profound changes which the German Army has undergone in its transformation from a defence-oriented force to an army actively involved in military missions…
From the “Göttinger 18” in the “Wyhler Wald”. The learning movement of a social movement beginning in 1957. 18 German nuclear physicists signed a declaration in 1957 in which they refused to take part in the production, testing and use of nuclear weapons. This “Göttinger Declaration” was the beginning of the anti-atomic energy movement, which subsequently developed into a self-organised educational scene. One symbol of this is the Wyhler Wald Adult Education Centre in Baden, which the article …
Traumatisation and national emergency semantics. Continuities in educational policy from Sputnik to the PISA shock The successful launch of the Soviet satellite “Sputnik” in the autumn of 1957 had a lasting impact on u.S. educational policy: expenditures on education and science skyrocketed in order to keep up in the technol-ogy race with the Soviet union. this article explores the conditions in which the launch of a satellite led to a profound shock while at the same time analysing the sema…
“The Ideal World of the Bildungbürger and Rural “Borderline Experiences” Programmes of German adult education centres in 1957 In this article course programmes of German adult education centres in 1957 are examined from the perspectives of four time-witnesses of German social history during the Cold War: (1) What memories are stimulated among time-witnesses as to what the courses were really like? (2) What approach is used in the cover text? (3) What differences can one find when comparing th…
