Abstract
The society is in permanent development and the general tendencies of this development mirror in some way in all the fields of life. The events do not take place in an empty room - politics, culture and economy are closely connected to each other. The rapid changes in society have brought along changes in the environment, where children grow up; in the way of life; in culture and communication between people. These changes and their disharmonious nature create a certain fear, which could provide a possibility for moving on, developing, if only a person is able and willing to use it. One of the problems of the years to come is the issue of coping with life - how can people orientate in this constantly changing world, how does their everyday life and way of thinking change when new understanding, values and desires emerge, how does the "modernisation" of the society and the change in traditional way of life influence people's behaviour and activity, how do these changes influence people's ability to adapt and to change themselves, to learn and to cope.
One way for coping is to learn. Learning and its results are regulated by the previous experience which either fosters or hinders further learning. Negative experiences about learning create negative attitude towards it, contradictory behaviour, unwillingness to make an intellectual effort or to be active. Positive experiences about learning, on the contrary, have a central role in development, which support and foster it.
What kind of a role do educational institutions have in a modern society? The constantly growing amount of information and knowledge is impossible to manage; any school, university, educational firm has great difficulties in deciding, what to teach, how much and how. The situation demands changes in managing the educational institutions, in the process of learning and teaching, in the organisation of their work, methods of educating. Despite the changes in the society, in learning environment, conceptions about learning, the teachers' and professors' have often maintained the traditional attitude towards the role of the context and situation of learning. The people learning, on the other hand, do not feel the situation of learning, their role, behaviour, responsibility in it, a need to self-guidance and are orientated to getting knowledge instead of obtaining it. In the process of obtaining knowledge the person learning is not guided by the teacher but by the need to accomplish something, by the aspiration towards competence, ability to reflect, personal interest, activity, ability to "process" information.
Modern society favours learners who guide themselves and who see and value themselves as learners, who are able to define their needs for learning, to set aims for it and find purposeful strategies for learning (Jarvis P., Mezirov J., Koro J.). To cope with the changes people have to be able to orientate in the situations, to decide competently, act sensibly, and evaluate the results objectively. To act like this one has to be able to learn a subject of one's own development, who values the necessity for continuous learning. This includes the desire and ability of an individual to widen and modernise one's personal life and professional competence. Learning is not only connected with people's personal lives but with the economic development of an organisation or a firm. We are standing before the questions now of how to create readiness to tackle with the constant changes; how to make the continuous development a norm; how to create readiness for constant learning and how to change the work of educational institutions so that people would acquire an ability to learn independently, how to educate people so as not to be late in this process. The question in the heading is difficult and needs thinking through. But before trying to answer it everyone should think about and find answers to the following questions - what is learning, what does it mean to have success in it, how should one learn, how to turn learning in an inner need or how to learn to love learning.