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Reading policy texts: lifelonglearning as metaphorKatherine Nicoll & Richard EdwardsPublished online: 11 Nov 2010.

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INT. J. OF LIFELONG EDUCATION, VOL. 19, NO. 5 (SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2000), 459–469

Reading policy texts: lifelong learning asmetaphor

KATHERINE NICOLLInstitute of Educational Technology, Open University, UK

and RICHARD EDWARDSSchool of Education, Open University, UK

As lifelong learning becomes a greater focus for policy at local, national and supranational levels,a question emerges as to how to engage in policy analysis. This is a debate, which is already takingplace in relation to policy analysis in other sectors of education. However, this has had littlein� uence on policy studies in lifelong learning. This paper reviews the wider debates and arguesfor the productiveness of a discursive approach to policy analysis. In particular, it argues that thenotion of metaphor can be deployed in such analysis to good e¶ ect. This is illustrated through aninitial analysis of the UK government’s 1998 Green Paper, The Learning Age : a Renaissance for aNew Britain.

Introduction

In recent years there has been much discussion of the problematic nature of policy

analysis and the methods appropriate to researching this area. Analysts of policy have

tended to adopt a realist stance, focusing on the ways in which policy descriptions of the

world ‘match up’ with empirical evidence or ideologically mystify the ‘ real world’, and

the ways in which policy proposals � ow ‘naturally ’ and ‘ rationally ’ from descriptions

of the identi� ed reality. In focusing attention on descriptions of the world in this way,

language is assumed to denote, represent or re� ect reality unproblematically. This is the

case also for those who provide ideological critiques of policy, for what is suggested is

that reality has been described wrongly to suit particular interests and needs to be

represented more truthfully. This kind of focus has been ‘natural ’ in the sense that it

draws upon particular ‘ common sense’ views of the world, and of language, based upon

certain epistemological and ontological assumptions. However, in the process, attention

has been taken away from considerations of how policy language acts to build up

representations of reality through connotation (Potter 1996), and from the problematic

nature of language and its performativity, something which has fuelled much debate in

social theory since at least World War II.

We feel the increased interest in discourse and discourse analysis as an approach to

policy in recent years has done much to open up fresh avenues of investigation and

understanding (Taylor 1997). However, with some notable exceptions, it has often

lacked depth in its understandings of how language is deployed in the attempt to

produce certain meanings and e¶ ects. This involves studying discourse as social action

Katherine Nicoll is at the Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, UK; and Richard Edwards isat the School of Education, Open University, UK.

International Journal of Lifelong Education ISSN 0260-137 0 print}ISSN 1464-519 X online ’ 2000 Taylor and Francis Ltdhttp:}}www.tandf.co.uk}journals

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460 katherine nicoll and richard edwards

rather than as mental representation wherein ‘telling stories is discursive action doing

discursive business ’ (Edwards, D. 1997: 277). The representation of reality has been

problematized through discourse analysis, but on the whole the practices through which

such representations are produced have not been pursued in much detail. The

possibility of deploying such resources opens up further spaces of investigation.

It is to an exploration of these issues that this article is addressed. This paper suggests

the usefulness of a discursive approach to policy analysis. In particular, this paper will

explore this in the context of emerging policies for ‘ lifelong learning’. The latter has

become a major focus of policy attention in recent years at national and international

levels and is articulated not only in the realms of government, but in the economy and

academy as well (Edwards, R. 1997). While there have been some attempts to examine

‘ the kinds of language ’ (Tight 1998: 474) used in the policy texts of lifelong learning,

most readings have engaged in conventional and unsystematized forms of ideology

critique. We want to suggest that a discursive approach to the policy texts of lifelong

learning can open up the mobilizations of meaning at play in policy in a more systematic

and productive way. In particular, we wish to argue that lifelong learning can

productively be thought of as a metaphor and examined as to the work it does in this

light. The article therefore works a double move, for it both argues for a discursive

approach to policy analysis and illuminates such an approach through a brief

examination of lifelong learning.

This article is in four parts. First, are outlined some of the debates surrounding the

study of policy in education. Second, this paper argues that it is both necessary and

desirable to adopt a discursive approach to policy analysis. In particular, and for the

purposes of this paper, the importance of metaphor to such analysis is emphasized.

Third, this paper explores some of the metaphorical work of lifelong learning in policy.

Here it is not attempting an exhaustive analysis of the policy texts available, as that

would take many a book. It is wished, merely, to illustrate the potential for the approach

adopted for the study of lifelong learning, with illustrative examination of the UK

government’s 1998 Green Paper, The Learning Age: A Renaissance for a New Britain

(Secretary of State for Education and Employment 1998). In particular, we will focus

on the location of lifelong learning within contending metaphorical systems of social

Darwinism and renewal. Finally, we o¶ er some re� exive comments on our argument

and the apparent paradox of arguing for a non-realist view of language as more

‘ truthful’ and the possibilities emerging for the examination of this text itself as a

contribution to the mediations of signs, discourses, texts through which the real is

mediated (Lemert 1997).

Studying policy

There has been much debate in the last ten years as to the methods most appropriate for

the study of policy and the need for more ‘useful ’ methods than have hitherto been to

the fore. Underlying this has been on the one hand concerns about the validity of

existing approaches – what makes it more than opinion? – and on the other hand

concerns over the lack of impact on policy makers and making of such analyses. These

debates have taken place largely outside the realms of those concerned with the

education of adults. However, with the increased attention given to lifelong learning in

policy, there emerges a question as to how best to engage in policy analysis in this area.

Discussion of the nature of policy analysis arises from dissatisfaction with scienti� c

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reading policy texts : lifelong learning as metaphor 461

and critical – Marxist and neo-Marxist – approaches. Much traditional policy work is

taken to be ‘positivist ’ and unable to work outside pre-existing relations of power within

the social formation (Marshall and Anderson 1994). Positivist policy work maintains

social order by aiming to improve what is already existing : ‘analysing and under-

standing its problems and discovering and devising the best solutions or, at least,

ameliorizations ’ (Scheurich 1994: 299). In these approaches, the fundamental

inequalities and exercises of power within the social formation are un-addressed.

However, Scheurich argues that while alternative critical approaches to policy aim to

oppose such relations of power, the work they do acts to symbolize ‘ latent public

concerns ’ (ibid.), enabling accommodation within the dominant policy practices of

liberal democracy. The e¶ ect of critical policy analysis is in ‘maintaining or destabilizing

the social order that might have been threatened if the ‘‘ latent concerns ’’ were not given

voice through policies ’ (ibid.). In other words, the challenge of such approaches works

within the accomodationist logic of the liberal pluralist state.

Policy theorists have argued for the adoption of particular methods and perspectives

to address the perceived weaknesses of policy study. For example, Evers (1988) suggests

an approach using particular scienti� c epistemological frameworks and methodologies

for the analysis of values. Others argue for a greater focus on system improvement as an

outcome of policy studies and the strengthening of linkages between di¶ erent policy

arenas. Many contributors to the debate suggest a refocussing (Power 1992), or use of

additional strategies of analysis (Codd 1988, Scheurich 1994). The diversifying of

opinion on suitable approaches to policy analysis led Hatcher and Troyna (1994: 161)

to question the coherence within the � eld : ‘what meta-theory is necessary to achieve a

non-reductionist , totalising theoretical coherence? ’.

However, Ball (1994) argues for the relinquishing of notions of any one unifying

grand theory in favour of plural, poststructura l and postmodern approaches. Rather

than seeking scienti� c truth or uncovering ideology and power, policy analysis examines

the workings of power-knowledge through the meanings fabricated through and around

policy texts and discourses. Ball argues that the importance given to notions of ‘ clarity ’

in the determination of policy meanings actually works against an appropriate analysis

of policy : ‘For me, much rests on the meaning or possible meanings that we give to

policy ; it a¶ ects ‘‘how’’ we research and how we interpret what we � nd ’ (Ball 1994:

15). This approach both draws upon and promotes the linguistic turn in social theory

which foregrounds the discursive work at play in policy and the fabrication of certain

issues as problems and speci� c responses as solutions. This is examined through

approaches drawing on discourse analysis wherein it is not simply policy texts

themselves, but also the realm of policy analysis itself which becomes an object of study,

as the ‘ truths ’ of policy are held to be inscribed by particular approaches to the study

of policy.

Drawing on Foucault’s notion of archeology, Scheurich (1994: 297) suggests that

‘policy archaeology proposes that a grid of social regularities constitutes what is seen as

a problem, what is socially legitimized as a policy solution, and what policy studies itself

is ’. In other words, policy analysis is itself part of the object of study and not separate

from it. Policy analysis is part of practices through which policy is fabricated as an object

of study. It therefore needs to be discursively re� exive in the work it does, rather than

treating policy as independent of the practices through which it is studied. Without

these kinds of moves, for Scheurich, policy analysis is in danger of becoming trapped

within a theory}practice binary which separates the e¶ ects of analysis from the objects

and problems which it claims to objectively study. Policy analysis needs to ensure that

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462 katherine nicoll and richard edwards

its practices recognize their complicity in the constitution of policy objects and problems

in particular ways which powerfully shape both policy and, in the case here, lifelong

learning practices.

Discursive approaches to policy draw largely on the work of Foucault. We do not

intend to go into a full outline of the latter’s work as that has been done often elsewhere

(Ball 1990, Usher and Edwards 1994). However, a few key points are worth

highlighting. First, discourse is actively constitutive in a variety of ways rather than

simply representing a pre-existing reality – ‘discourse constitutes the objects of

knowledge, social subjects and forms of ‘‘ self ’’, social relationships, and conceptual

frameworks ’ (Fairclough 1992: 39). Second, there is an interdependency of discourse

and discursive practices as ‘texts always draw upon and transform other contemporary

and historically prior texts ’ (ibid.). In other words, discourses are ‘ interdiscursive’ and

texts are ‘ intertextual’ in property – ‘any given type of discourse practice is generated

out of combinations of others, and is de� ned by its relationship to others ’ (ibid.). Third,

discursive practices are exercises of power which constantly pervade all aspects of social

life and are successful in proportion to their ability to hide their own mechanisms.

‘Power does not work negatively by forcefully dominating those who are subject to it ;

it incorporates them, and is ‘‘productive ’’ in the sense that it shapes and ‘‘ retools ’’ them

to � t in with its needs ’ (Fairclough 1992: 50). A discursive approach to the study of

policy involves locating discursive practices as exercises of power and pointing to the

exercises of power within those practices. This is not an uncovering of ‘ truth’ however,

but itself an exercise of power, a discursive maneuvre. Within this approach, the

denigration of ‘spin-doctoring’ in politics is misplaced !

Agger (1992) suggests that it is possible to draw a distinction between a critical

poststructuralism and a literary poststructuralism. The former locates discursive

practices within a broader framework of the exercise of the power, while the latter does

not and is more akin to literary criticism. Crudely, it is approaches informed by the early

work of Foucault and that of Derrida which tend towards more literary approaches,

while it is the later work of Foucault which has been in� uential in critical

poststructuralism. However, we do not agree with such a crude distinction. We believe

there is a purposeful politics in the ‘ literary ’ approach which supports what Taylor

(1997: 32) suggests is necessary for a critical and political approach to policy analysis

which goes beyond commentary and ideology critique. While we are sympathetic to her

view that the ‘ � ne grade ’ analysis made possible by discursive approaches need to be

located in a broader context, the notion of context itself is problematic. Here we feel,

there is the desire for the return of the referent, an unmediated reality, which is precisely

what a discursive approach that takes language as performative questions. The

potential is therefore for a di¶ erent politics of language than that suggested by Taylor

wherein the literary is taken seriously.

Thus, while we feel discourse analysis to be helpful in opening up the policy domain

for study, we do not feel yet that there is suµ cient work to prescribe what might or might

not be appropriate. We wish to elaborate on this further by focusing on the notion of

metaphor and the contribution a metaphorical reading can make to the analysis of

policy, in this particular instance, policy on lifelong learning.

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reading policy texts : lifelong learning as metaphor 463

As if …

Much policy analysis assumes a realist epistemology. Even forms of ideology critique

have this assumption ; it is the uncovering of the real behind the ideological that is the

task of analysis. Indeed many of the attempts to draw upon discourse analysis still seek

the safe harbor of realism. In realist analyses, language is superstructural , re� ecting the

material world in a variety of ways. Descriptions in policy texts are taken as literal when

it is possible to examine them for the metaphorical work they do in fabricating and

representing ‘ the real ’, wherein language as a social rather than mental practice is taken

to be material.

Realist readings of policy are problematic in so far as :

factual and � ctional stories share many of the same kinds of textual devices for

constructing credible descriptions, building plausible or unusual event sequences,

attending to causes and consequences, agency and claim, character and

circumstance. (Edwards, D. 1997: 263)

For those interested in examining discourse as social action, it is the capacity for story

telling which is posited as central to human ontology. In telling tales, tales are told, some

of which are more telling than others. Thus, for instance, Potter (1996: 107) refers to a

discourse :

which is constructing versions of the world as solid and factual as reifying discourse.

Reifying means to turn something abstract into a material thing; and this is the

sense I wish to emphasize, although material should be understood very widely.

Fact construction can be seen as a process of attempting to ‘reify ’ the world as real and

solid through particular forms of discourse, something with which we are familiar in

policy documents which authoritatively state the problems to be addressed as ‘ facts ’

(Nicoll 1998). For Potter (1996: 181) ‘all discourse can be studied for its rhetorical and

constructive work’. This is as true for policy as it is for other areas (including the reading

of this text). A part of such a reading entails examining the way texts work though

metaphor.

A metaphor is a term from one � eld that is used in another, often to illuminate the

familiar in an unfamiliar way. The use of metaphor is a form of conceptual mapping

that is crucial to the synchronic fabrication and diachronic development of meaning.

Parts of such mappings are so entrenched in everyday thought and language that

we do not consciously notice them; other parts strike us as novel and creative. The

term metaphor is often applied to the latter, highlighting the literary and poetic

aspects of the phenomenon. (Fauconnier 1997 : 18)

To think of policy texts and discourses as literary and poetic may seem absurd, but, as

we have indicated, it is precisely through an exploration of their textuality and narrative

strategies that fresh insights can be developed. The reasons for this become clear when

we think of the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical and the implications

of reading policy as literal when it might be productively read as metaphorical. As

Potter (1996: 180) suggests ‘ literal descriptions may be just telling it how it is, while

metaphorical ones are doing something sneaky ’. The distinction is important as :

someone may discount a description as ‘only a metaphor ’ ; or build it up as ‘quite

literally ’ the case ; and this can be an important topic for study. Indeed the literal-

metaphorical distinction is hard to keep separate from the factual-� ctional

distinction. (Potter 1996: 181)

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464 katherine nicoll and richard edwards

What this suggests is that in the fabrication and reading of texts there are attempts to

deploy metaphorical and literal strategies to engender certain e¶ ects and meanings as

opposed to others. Partly, and depending on the reading, this is related to the

fabrication of ‘ facts ’. This is not to equate the literal with the factual or the metaphorical

with the � ctional in some common sense manner. Rather it forces us to consider the

textual strategies at play in constructing certain things as facts and others as � ctions.

The literal}metaphorical distinction is particularly important … it is employed,

for example, in drawing a distinction between serious and non-serious writing,

academic and colloquial language, research and poetry, where, in each case, the

former, truer, more referential medium is legitimized partly by the extent to which

it manages to exorcise metaphor from its modes of expression. (Parker 1997 : 84)

Here the most powerful metaphors might be those which hide their own work by

making metaphor appear to be an illegitimate part of a text. In this situation,

metaphorical readings become disruptive of the literality of texts.

Metaphor opens potentialities of understanding rather than � xing understanding

detrimentally and uniquely. A metaphor is permanently an opening for re-

reading, re-interpretation. (Parker 1997 : 84)

In particular this paper is interested in the use of metaphor both in establishing policy

contexts and solutions as facts and in troubling the factual status of certain notions

within policy. Here the notion of metaphor is being used as a strategy of analysis, as part

of a deconstructive rewriting of policy and displacement of realist assumptions which

tend to dominate both policy and policy analysis – ‘metaphor is itself a metaphor for the

meaning-displacing characteristics of deconstruction’ (Parker 1997: 84).

Metaphors are used powerfully and systematically within the political arena.

However, in considering lifelong learning in terms of the metaphorical work that it does,

it is important also to identify the complexes of metaphors that it may draw from or with

which it might be said to resonate. Metaphors do not operate on their own, but in

conjunction with others to fabricate a common metaphorical description of the world.

In the prior assumptions of the writers and readers of texts, there can be set assumptions

that predispose them towards accepting certain discursive positions and metaphorical

descriptions. Here there can be an inter-relationship between the e¶ ective and the

a¶ ective. The notion of lifelong learning may be elaborated in a range of metaphorical

complexes. However, and as illustrated in the next section, it is suggested that it is within

a social Darwinian metaphorical complex that it has been most forcefully elaborated in

many recent policy texts.

Here, it is only due to the readers prior acceptance of this view of the social that

lifelong learning is likely to be accepted as part of this complex of metaphors. Within

social Darwinism the social system and its parts are likened to a biological organism,

responding to changes within its environment, or habitat. The environment is the

‘natural ’ context within which organisms live. Through this separation the environment

is unin� uenced by humankind, and to a large extent uncontrollable. Any change within

it is thus equally unin� uencable and uncontrollable. This view leads to an under-

standing of a relationship between the environment and the organism where change in

the environment leads to physiological and behavioural ‘mis� t ’ between the organism

and the environment. Organisms who are able to react ‘appropriately ’ by changing

themselves or adapting so that they again ‘ � t ’ with the environment, survive to

reproduce, and the species as a whole survives. In this situation, lifelong learning thus

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reading policy texts : lifelong learning as metaphor 465

becomes an adaptive strategy that a¶ ords the individual organism the ability to respond

to unpredictable changes within the environment. The same might be said for the

adaptive strategies of organizations and the social system as a whole inscribed in the

associated metaphors of learning organizations and learning societies. Lifelong learning

is then the strategy required for survival. The common narrative logic drawn upon in

policy texts is that without lifelong learning individuals will not be able to respond to the

uncertain future environment. The point here is not to ask whether social Darwinism

represents reality ‘truthfully ’, but rather explore how a prior acceptance of being

positioned in this metaphorical space may predispose the reader to accept a requirement

for lifelong learning in this way and the need for action. Alternative formulations remain

possible of course, but depend upon di¶ erent metaphorical complexes and strategies for

producing alternative meanings. Critiques of a social Darwinian notion of lifelong

learning require not a rejection of the metaphorical, but the potential to situate it more

powerfully within an alternative metaphorical complex.

Potter (1996 : 99) suggests that prior acceptance of a metaphorical description leads

to what has been termed ‘vassalage ’. This notion has been used in relation to the work

of the researcher in the social sciences, but it might equally be drawn upon in relation

to realist readings of policy :

These sorts of tangles that result in vassalage are not restricted to work on scienti� c

facts, although they are vividly apparent with that topic. In any area where

factual versions of some group are taken as a start point for analysis the analyst

may end up as a vassal. (Potter 1996: 98–99)

In opening up policy analysis as a metaphorical space, we hope to counter such

vassalage, although aware that such readings also are possible of the arguments put

forward in this text and the metaphors through which it has been fabricated. We are

suggesting therefore that policy texts and policy analysis depend upon pre-existing

metaphors and metaphorical complexes through which their representations of reality

are fabricated. Study of the ways in which policy propositions and their critiques are

formed and rei� ed through such processes therefore become important, as any common

acceptance of metaphorical systems may circumscribe critical engagement. Re� exive

consideration of these issues may enable forms of critique which refuse or counter

practices of rei� cation by drawing deliberately upon alternative metaphorical

complexes. Here the politics of language is not about the uncovering of the truth behind

ideology, but the fabricating of alternative metaphorical complexes.

Lifelong learning as a policy metaphor

We have indicated in broad terms the argument for a discursive approach to the study

of policy and in particular the potential of metaphorical readings of policy and the use of

metaphor in the rhetoric of policy. This section brie� y illustrates this in relation to a

particular policy on lifelong learning published by the UK government in 1998. The

Learning Age : A Renaissance for a New Britain (Secretary of State for Education and

Employment 1998) is in many ways the most important policy statement for those

concerned with the education of adults in the UK for some considerable time. It has

been subject to much commentary and critique, much of it focused on the primacy of

human capital theory and the development of human capital as rationales for lifelong

learning, with consequences as to the particular proposals put forward.

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466 katherine nicoll and richard edwards

Rather than replicate such discussions and critiques, this paper wishes to examine

some of the metaphorical work surrounding the notion of lifelong learning at play

within this policy text. First, we wish to outline the work it does to trouble established

assumptions and patterns of provision. In this sense, lifelong learning might be said to

open a space. However, second, this is also a troubled space, for as this paper will

suggest, there is more than one set of metaphorical meanings at play within this

particular text. Here it will pick up again on the positioning of lifelong learning within

a system of social Darwinism, but also point to the coding of lifelong learning policy as

a rebirth, a notion inscribed in the use of the notion of ‘renaissance’ in the title of the

Green Paper. This suggests the policy is more geared towards renewal than reform.

Lifelong learning inscribes a troubling dynamic in the framing of policy in the post-

school sector. Rather than focusing on reform of speci� c sectors of education and

training, the notion of lifelong learning subsumes all into the service of speci� c goals and

puts in question the existing interests and assumptions about institutional structures,

curricula and pedagogy. Thus, ‘ familiar certainties and old ways of doing things are

disappearing ’ (ibid.: 9). Existing practices are troubled through opening a space in

which speci� c questions are asked as to their e¶ ectiveness in achieving speci� c goals –

enhancing economic competitiveness, raising achievement, widening participation.

To continue to compete, we must equip ourselves to cope with the enormous

economic and social change we face, to make sense of the rapid transformation of

the world, and to encourage imagination and innovation. (ibid. : 10)

The inherent worthwhileness of ‘ the traditional ’ within education and training in

supporting lifelong learning is exposed to scrutiny. Lifelong learning in this sense is not

only a policy goal and policy arena but also works to trouble the spaces of educational

and training practices. The Green Paper demonstrates radical intent through its

attempts to renew post-school provision through reframing it as a space of lifelong

learning. However, this is not altogether successful, as the sector speci� c papers which

have been published alongside the Green Paper itself demonstrate. Post-school provision

is troubled by the work of lifelong learning, but also attempts to accommodate it within

the pre-existing sectoral and institutional narratives.

Rather than work on the basis of a ‘discourse of derision’, which Ball (1990) argued

was used as a basis for enabling reform of schooling in the 1980s in the UK, lifelong

learning is positioned to harness the desires and values of those working in the terrain

which it is used to trouble. How many educators working in the post-school sector would

not support lifelong learning? Like its linked metaphor of � exibility, it would be a

somewhat surprising position to espouse that one was against lifelong learning and

wanted to be in� exible (Edwards et al. 1999). This in itself is part of the power of the

metaphors in play. Thus, the appeal to the development of ‘ the human mind and

imagination ’ (Secretary of State for Education and Employment 1998: 9) as central to

lifelong learning is both inspirational and aspirational, appealing to the values of many

practitioners within the arena.

This in itself is not unambiguous, as the harnessing of support for change on this basis

sits alongside a largely social Darwinian metaphorical complex within the Green Paper.

The case for lifelong learning is worked up therefore from a rei� cation of the themes of

globalization, technological change and � exibility, which suggests that lifelong learning

is the solution to ‘ the facts ’ of the contemporary world. Here lifelong learning is posited

as a necessary adaptive response to the contemporary condition, without which

extinction or at least national, organizational and individual decline is an inevitable

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reading policy texts : lifelong learning as metaphor 467

consequence. ‘We are in a new age – the age of information and global competition …

we have no choice but to prepare for this new age ’ (ibid. : 9). As Tight (1998 : 484)

suggests, ‘ it is our fault if we have not participated to date. We risk social and economic

exclusion if we do not participate in the future ’. Lifelong learning is seen primarily, but

not only, as reactive to an already set context – an answer – rather than also being

proactive in relation to the desirability of that context – a question.

The changing of educational practices therefore is to produce lifelong learners

adaptive to the � xed facts of change. However, in a further twist the uncertainty

surrounding change requires adaptive strategies that are � exible rather than narrowly

functional. Thus, ‘ learning is the key to prosperity … investment in human capital will

the foundation of success in the knowledge-based global economy of the twenty-� rst

century ’ (Secretary of State for Education and Employment 1998: 7). Here, the goal is

not one of social engineering in a modernist systemic sense, but of enabling individuals

to look after themselves in conditions of uncertainty through a process of ‘self-

improvement’. ‘The Learning Age will be built on a renewed commitment to self-

improvement and a recognition of the enormous contribution learning makes to our

society ’ (ibid.: 8). There is thus a moral positioning of the individual and maybe even

imperative to be adaptable or � exible, wherein self-improvement is aligned with

renewal of educational practices and national prosperity. A historical resonance is given

to this through a reference back to an earlier period of ‘ self-improvement ’ and moral

rectitude, the era of industrial supremacy and empire at the end of the last century – ‘we

will succeed by transforming inventions into new wealth, just as we did a hundred years

ago’ (ibid.: 10). In reinscribing a historical fantasy into the future, this stance appeals

both to tradition and modernization, thereby exploiting the very ambiguity and

intertextuality of meaning, which was alluded to earlier.

The above is suggestive of a social Darwinian reading of The Learning Age, but also

of the complexity of the work it does inasmuch as it does not propound a simple human

capital stance. As well as being a key to prosperity, lifelong learning also :

helps make ours a civilized society, develops the spiritual side of our lives and

promotes active citizenship … That is why we value learning for its own sake as

well as for the equality of opportunity it brings. (ibid.: 7)

Lifelong learning is positioned as contributing to a set of social as well as economic goals,

contributing to what others refer to as social as well as economic capital (Schuller 1998).

This is a powerful discourse, the evidence basis for which remains largely ‘ common-

sense ’ and thus unquestioned. It is in its rhetorical appeal to the a¶ ective and value

domains of those whom it addresses and the work that it does, with its view of ‘progress ’

through learning, that it proves itself, rather than in the ‘truthfulness ’ of its assertions.

In a sense, the discourse of The Learning Age seeks to promote the very thing which

is said to be lacking – a culture of lifelong learning. The new age of lifelong learning

therefore seems to be conducive to a type of new age discourse, wherein the harnessing

of emotions, attitudes and values is emphasized over the requirement for rigorous

argument, evidence and debate. A culturalist set of assertions on the desirability and

necessity for lifelong learning is posited as both the way forward and in a way which is

consistent with this aim, a position inscribed in the sub-title of the text – a renaissance

for a ‘new ’ Britain. Renewal rather than reform – there is no mention of the

Reformation! – provides a critical impetus for lifelong learning. This is perhaps

unsurprising, given wider signi� ers of renewal within the UK political scene, with both

the New Right and New Labour illustrating the power of forging ‘new’ positions.

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468 katherine nicoll and richard edwards

As well as the social Darwinism of the text therefore, The Learning Age also evokes

renewal and rebirth and a new age that echoes the Renaissance of arts and letters and

growth of humanism in parts of Europe between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries

The notions of renaissance can be said to perform in a number of ways within the text.

The sense of rebirth associated with it points to new age practices such as rebirthing and

the sense in which through lifelong learning one might be said to be continually being

immersed, renewed and rebirthed. The location of the Renaissance in continental

Europe points to and codes the European credentials of the policy at a time when policy

towards the European Union is fraught by division in the UK, when government wants

to be ‘good Europeans ’, but not to be seen to be ‘ too good’. The Renaissance was also

a rebirth of arts and letter, a challenge through culture to the absolutism of monarchy

and the orthodoxies of mediaeval church. It therefore points to the importance of

culture to lifelong learning, itself indicated in the desire to promote a culture of lifelong

learning. Re� exively, this also suggests the appropriateness of a literary and meta-

phorical reading of this text wherein renewal rather than reform are central to that

which is being promoted.

The a¶ ective dimensions to The Learning Age are not in themselves surprising, for as

Ball (1998: 124) suggests, ‘policies are both systems of values and symbolic systems …

policies are articulated both to achieve material e¶ ects and to manufacture support for

those e¶ ects ’. Thus, for example, we � nd assertions that :

learning o¶ ers excitement and the opportunity for discovery. It stimulates

enquiring minds and nourishes our souls … learning develops the intellectual

capital which is now at the centre of a nation’s competitive strength … learning

contributes to social cohesion and fosters a sense of belong, responsibility and

identity … learning is essential to a strong economy and inclusive society.

(Secretary of State for Education and Employment 1998: 10–11)

An e¶ ective policy would appear therefore to be one which is a¶ ective, and maybe even

infectious, given the current ‘policy epidemic’ (Levin 1998) of lifelong learning around

the globe. It is an appeal that is appealing to many educators, employers and others. In

reading The Learning Age metaphorically, we hope to have illustrated both some of the

ways in which these a¶ ects are e¶ ected and the worthwhileness of this approach to the

study of policy.

Re� exive tales

How telling the above tale is to readers we will await. We cannot escape the paradox

that our argument appears to re� ect the real of the metaphorical work of language in

the study of policy. We have both represented the reality of the work of metaphor in

policy and engaged in an initial and partial study drawing on the reality we have

represented. The reading of this text may be one which is realist and}or metaphorical ,

from which will emerge di¶ erent evaluations of that which we have attempted. In which

case, we may fall between two stools, and maybe will be in need of spin-doctors of our

own ….

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