By Cherrylyn C. Panganiban, Teacher III, Vega NHS

Anytime, anywhere, things can change. Anytime, anywhere, everything can be taken away from
you.. Nothing is permanent and there is no forever. This might be an acceptable argument from the
perspective of materiality and physiological aspect of living. Houses and belongings can be washed away

by flood, burned by fire or stolen by bandits. Same as, we might be crippled through accident, self-
inflicted or caused by others. or we may acquire an illness despite being health conscious and having a

healthy lifestyle. BUT, as the wisdom of old folks, education, learning cannot be taken away from us.
It is therefore inevitable that learning must go on, defying the limits of age and other
circumstances that surrounds an individual. Moreover, lifelong learning, which most thinkers agreed is a
form of self-initiated education that givens emphasis in attitudinal and behavioral perspectives of human
development. Despite no standard technical definition of the term, it was more preferred to occur outside
of the classroom setting or any formal education.
Hence, Mayuga (2022) admonished that lifelong learning must be coupled with skills which are in
reality, are skills which can be integrated in the confides of teaching – learning process in the classroom.
These skills include critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, computer literacy, and
career and learning self-reliance. More specifically, the author included “student development in terms
of work attitudes and work skills and identified challenges in meeting TESDA standards” in the perspective
of TLE subjects. Results of the study based from 250 teachers and 136 school heads revealed that students
have moderately manifested these lifelong learning indicators in various TLE subjects. Further, it was
found he these indicators were significantly correlated with their knowledge, skills and competencies. This
meant that lifelong learning can be learned and acquired within the bounds of formal learning setting and
was integrative of learners’ skills, competency and knowledge.
Interestingly, these findings were of most significant to the teachers teaching TLE. The importance
underlies in the teachers’ competency itself especially that the teachers deal with multi-diverse group of
students nowadays. Sometimes, it was disheartening to note that there is a deteriorating path as per
learners’ lifelong learning acquisition. For instance, level of critical thinking is fast decreasing as younger
generation would just rely on pre-conceived judgments and conditions proliferated over the Internet.
Google, Wikipedia and other information generators have replaced the learners’ ability to construct
judgments and critics on their own. Youtube, Instagram and other image -based platforms were preferred
by the students rather than to create a product on their own originality and creativity. Worst is, instead
of collaboration, social media platform has driven the generation to a divide, igniting unhealthy
competitions, as in the case of the recent election word wards between the “Kakampinks” and opposing
groups. What is more frightening is the current trend of disorientation of the many between truth and
fake news. As PRRD recently uttered that the country is becoming a “Marites nation”, meaning that we
are adjudged to be just rumor-centered people.
All these instances were taken as significantly related to lifelong learning. There has to be a way
out, or another route, in order to enrich the younger generations’ attitudes towards embracing lifelong

learning. TLE can be a strong platform where students can be facilitated with lifelong learning epics, and
not just mere inculcation of cognitive and skill know how about specific technology which is beneficial to
making a living. A TLE teacher may resound to challenge the; learners as to re-composing their
personhood, as a requisite to being a good entrepreneur in the future. Simply to say, do not just teach the
learners how to make money out of the livelihood generating skills and knowledge they can take, but to
inspire them how to use money for the sake of larger member of society.