Internationally, lifelong education is defined as continuing education that is shared with life and extended to all aspects of society. Lifelong education is not a material existence, but an idea, which has aroused a series of concerns and research directions. It is an educational thought that transcends national boundaries, ideology, social form and race, and has a comprehensive and integral educational function. Its basic tasks are: learn to recognize, learn to do things, learn to live together, and learn to survive. Lifelong education is a continuous process (running through all stages of life, including six stages: baby, teenager, youth, prime of life, middle age and old age), holistic (facing all social members and continuously connecting all social organizations with educational functions) and complete (connecting all levels and types).

It can be seen that the lifelong education system is a complex system. It involves formal education and informal education, school education and non-school education, academic education and non-academic education, family education, community education, school education, social education and other educational types and learning places within grassroots organizations, involving preschool education, basic education, vocational education, higher education, continuing education and other educational levels. It involves full-time education, full-time education and part-time education, on-the-job education and on-the-job education, face-to-face education, classroom education, practical education, simulation education, distance open education, training, discussion, self-study and other educational methods and forms, and involves various teaching contents such as survival education, knowledge education, ability innovation education, personality development education and ideological education. Therefore, lifelong education includes all components and links in all educational nature, categories, forms, methods and contents; Moreover, lifelong education is not a simple superposition of all kinds of education, but to break the isolation between all kinds of education, coordinate their relations, make them closely cooperate, promote each other and develop together, so as to realize the fundamental purpose of education to promote people's all-round development and improve people's all-round quality. In short, the whole education system should be integrated into the lifelong education system, and lifelong education should run through the whole educational ideology at the same time.