This book provides the background to the movement of lifelong learning and is a practical guide to focusing the needs and motivations of the individual learner. The guide recognizes that progress is made through the development of individual personal potential and examines the new roles of education, government, and business organizations, and of society itself, in that development process. In declaring the 21st century a "learning century," this book gives a glimpse of the potential for a more stable and harmonious future. Discussion includes development of lifelong learning in elementary through adult education across the globe; global paradigms changes for a lifelong learning age, environmental imperatives, and new global power structures); trends for enabling lifelong learning; ten principles of a lifelong learning school; lifelong learning and the development of the workplace; characteristics of a learning organization and an illustrative case study; challenges to teacher education; challenges for higher education; and the learning community and fifty ideas for promoting lifelong learning. A final chapter provides a list of 15 actions which everyone can take to mobilize people, organizations, and even nations, into a more fulfilling lifelong learning role, for themselves and others. Appended are a lifelong learning "Action Agenda" for the 21st century; the World Initiative on Lifelong Learning; and a description of the "Odyssey of the Mind" problem-solving tournament. (Contains 57 references.) (AEF)