The platform to P2P education

Why do I consider the institution of education of adults necessary and what do I propose for successful adaptation of an adult person to the changing circumstances of life?

A formed personality in the era of explosive technology development must face a range of challenges that may lead him to losing the social and economic connections, deprive him of a material base and, consequently, throw a person on the side of life. The adults’ education system should turn these challenges into opportunities, help the people to change and fit into a changed society as valuable members of progress instead of becoming outsiders.

· Forced vertical movements: new technologies, automation and robotics of uncreative, routine operations, the reduction of jobs for low-skilled employees lead to necessity of training, professional development.

· Forced horizontal movements: local conflicts, natural and ecological disasters, economic crisis, cut of production or change of the localization of production, obsolescence of technologies mastered by employees make individual re-training a condition for the survival in society.

· Voluntary horizontal and vertical movements: in the conditions of globalization, many professionals increasingly decide to live and work for some years abroad, often changing the field of their work to prevent professional burnout. Supporting the re-training of these people is one of the best investments that the society can make. These people are highly motivated, pro-active, they only need a little momentum to become themselves the drivers of development in their new country or in the new field.

Education of the adults should go beyond the simple transmission of information; it is intended to form the psychological readiness for change, helping to overcome the fear of the future, to develop ecological way of thinking, to promote responsible consumption.

My proposals for the concept of education of adults are based on the following principles that must be considered on my opinion. Life and technological progress are developing so vigorously today that the only viable educational stratify for tomorrow would be “to teach how to learn”. Which means:

As for the means of achieving the goals mentioned above, it should be new computer, social and cultural technologies. The first two goals may be achieved with the help of IT. Such forms as remote online training, webinars, video podcasts, educational and game programs allow to clothe knowledge in an accessible form and deliver information almost anywhere in the world.

It must be particularly underlined the importance of teaching of some informational hygiene, it is important to learn to focus on the relevant information to screen out unreliable and useless facts.

As for the third principle I’d like to mention that despite a steady decline in the number of illiterate people, it’s still not always possible to combat the functional ignorance when a person knows reading and writing but doesn’t fully understand the sense of what he reads and can’t convey his thoughts to the opponent. In the informational society we are living in this creates big troubles. It is necessary to provide the means for overcoming the functional illiteracy in this program.

According to the latest scientific research, it is possible to avoid the age-related cognitive decline, manifested, particularly, in functional illiteracy just keeping on training your intellect, being engaged in creative activities, and socializing, interacting, working in a group.

Reflections on this theme and on the connection between the generations, as well as conservation of traditional crafts and teaching it to the adults led me to the idea of creating a network for manual work education and collective creativity.

Bringing this idea from concept to concrete business plan, with the help of the network of experts and the access to specific literature and case studying is one of the objectives of my internship.

Unfortunately, in Russia the ideas of responsible consumption and wise management of natural resources have not taken root yet. Therefore, one of the principal goals of the education of adults is drawing the attention of the government to these issues. Within the case study of creating the craftsmanship network the popularization of the methods of recycling will be one of the most important issues.

The draft name of project is “Professional and amateurs” It will be able to solve some issues like

1. The experts could teach the students and choose the best of them to hire. It will help them to solve the HR and PR issues.

2. Students will get the opportunities:

2.1. The most hard-working and gifted students will earn money.

2.2. all students will have a chance to try something new,

2.3. the young mothers will get a part-time work.

2.4. The aged people will be busy with creative handcrafts and will maintain the sharpness of mind.

2.5. Middle-aged people will have entertainment and realization of their creative abilities. It will be an example of a method of knowledge sharing where all members will find something fruitful.