A Research On Strategies Of Lifelong Learning In International Metropolises

Since 1960s, lifelong education, as the main principle in reforming the current education system, makes it clear that education should go through the whole life span of a person and cover every aspect of his growth at the same time. By contrast, lifelong learning, being indispensable in people's lives, emphasizes more on a learner's own learning will so as to help provide supports to his self-improvement by using all possible resources with educational functions.This kind of connotation expressing by lifelong learning has been reflected more or less in both policies and practices of Tokyo and New York City. For example, under the guidance of policies adopted by the metropolitan government, Tokyo has taken great efforts to discover the educational potential of its public infrastructures such as kominkan, libraries and pays more attention to the integration of schools,families and communities. As to New York City, its development of adult and vocational education has set a good start for the development of lifelong learning. Besides, the city's abundant libraries,museums and other public resources also do justice to themselves and launch a great deal of newly-invented projects so as to strengthen their service in lifelong learning as much as possible. However ,since the two cities have their own unique histories,cultures and education backgrounds, the strategies taken by each city in lifelong learning could have inner-built differences. Especially, in the early stage of lifelong learning development, the state education objectives and values could exert considerable influence.As regards the structure of this paper, firstly, it presents a brief introduction about the development of lifelong learning theory in both cities (countries) . Secondly , starting from their own features, the paper analyzes the key roles these public resources like museums,libraries and other organizations have played in the thriving of lifelong learning theory. In the end, based on the previous elaboration, grate emphasis has been put on the common and different features of the development of lifelong learning in Tokyo and New York City and some reasons as well. Apart from these, it's necessary to have self-reflection of the present situation of lifelong learning in China, especially in big and modern cities, and to use the valuable lifelong learning experience in both Tokyo and New York City as sources of reference.