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ROLE OF HOUSEHOLDS IN MAINTAINING THE PROCESSES OF LIFELONG EDUCATION
L. D. Tyulicheva
Individual needs and opportunities of individuals are not the only factor that determines the engagement of people in lifelong learning. The education system interacts with a system of households.
According to the 2002 census, there are almost 53 million private households of 142.8 million people in Russia. This means that the overwhelming majority of the total Russian population (98 percent) are members of private households and 2 percent are members of collective households (those who permanently reside in social or medical institutions, barracks, penal institutions, religious organizations, etc.).
The main type of household, a family household, organically integrates the economic and social functions in its daily activities. "Household" implies that it performs financial and operational functions and "family" indicates that it performs social and spiritual functions (see Table 1).
Table 1
Family household as an element of the economic and social spaces
Household Family
Definition An economic unit involving pooling and sharing of the income of its members A social group based on marriage or blood kinship which provides biological and social reproduction of people
Immanent space Economic Social
Functions in the immanent space Procurement, production, savings, consumption Social reproduction; recreation; regulation; felicitological function
Roles in the immanent space - supplier of resources to society, mainly labor resources; - producer of goods and services; - participant in the exchange of products of its activities with other human communities; - accumulator of material wealth, passing it on to heirs; - key participant of the savings process; - consumer of goods and services - reproducer of humans in a certain social capacity and organizer of the transmission of experience from one generation to another; - regulator and adjustor of human social behavior; - accumulator of status-related social benefits, passing them on to heirs; - rejuvenator of energy spent outside the household; - source of strong positive emotions, providing the feeling of happiness
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Acting both in the social and economic spaces, a family household determines the engagement of its members in lifelong learning. In the economic space, a household acts as a family household. But a modern family household is by no means a synonym of joint production. Members of a household collaborate in solving household tasks: create and administer a joint budget on a collaborative basis, buy everything necessary for life, and perform relatively simple household chores (cook, repair and clean their housing premises, etc.). As a rule, a household member earns an income to contribute to the joint budget on his or her own and spends it together with the other members. The economic aspect of the influence of a household on the engagement of family members in lifelong learning involves allocations made by the family, as a holder of the joint budget, for direct or indirect spending on the education of both its children and adults.
An analysis of the economic behaviors of modern Russian family households enables us to make the following conclusions: (a) investment in human capital in the form of investments in the professional education of children is a fairly widespread form of family investment; (b) the investments are made under the conditions of high uncertainty regarding the labor market demand for particular professions and qualifications; therefore, when selecting a field of training, the criterion of whether a particular profession will be in demand in the future is, in most cases, substituted with the criterion of whether one training institution or another is affordable taking into account the household's financial resources and the family's social connections; (c) family households actively use the "aboveboard" market for educational services, paying the official tuition fees, paying for dorm accommodation, graduation exams and diplomas; (d) family households may use the "semi-legal" market for private tutoring and consulting services; (e) family households may use the "black" market for educational services, paying bribes for admission to an education institution, in the course of the study and for graduation exams, and also fees to other people for the completion of various academic tasks; (f) prices for educational and related services are very different between regions both on the "above-board,” "semi-legal" and "black" markets; (g) educational institutions in Russia are unevenly distributed between regions; therefore, a considerable percentage of households have to incur significant additional expenses associated with accommodation of their members away from the family home at their places of education; (e) the most widespread strategy for entering a higher educational institution in Russia is for the children to
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learn for the entry exams while their parents use money and/or connections to secure admission.
As a social entity, a family acts in the social space and influences the engagement of family members in the lifelong education system through at least two channels: first, by relying on the family culture (the family's focus of interest, status ambitions, the place of personal growth and education in the family's system of values); and second, by using the family’s social connections that may be helpful in making arrangements for lifelong learning.
In conclusion, it should be noted that influence of a family household on the commitment of its family members to lifelong learning may be conditioned by the duration of the processes in which such influences operate (see Table 2).
Table 2
Temporal characteristics of the economic and social processes influencing the engagement of family household members in lifelong education
Household Family
Long-term influence
Achieving a certain level of wealth; building financial resources as a source of investment in the human capital of a household Creating, through socialization, a sustainable motivation towards lifelong learning by developing a need for continuing personal growth
Propagating a focus on investment in human capital in the family, and acting on it Integrating into social networks that may be helpful in making arrangements for lifelong education
Situational influence
Providing financial support for individual processes of entering and studying in a particular educational institution Providing information support for entering and studying in a particular educational institution
Providing financial support for learning household members by paying their living expenses Using family members' social connections to secure admission to, and study in the educational institution of choice
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