[Extract from: "Learning: The Treasure Within. UNESCO report on Education for the 21st Century"]

"The idea of life-long learning is one of the keys to the 21st century (...). It's perhaps important to point out at this juncture that this isn't a new concept. Indeed, earlier work carried out into educational issues also discovered the importance of getting adults back into the classroom. According to these findings, education made it easier for adults to cope with new professional and private situations. This need for education still exists and is growing. The only way of dealing with this issue is by teaching people how to learn. And that's not all; another need also exists. The far-reaching changes that are affecting traditional living patterns means that it's essential that we learn how to better understand other people and the world as a whole. If mutual understanding, peaceful exchange and, of course, harmony are required, it's a great shame that it's these very things that today's world misses the most.

Once the Commission had embraced this concept, it wanted to emphasize the importance of one of the four pillars, which it saw as providing a framework on which education should be based. This, the first pillar, is Learning to live together which involves developing an understanding for fellow people, for their history, traditions and spiritual values. This pillar enables people to develop a new awareness which - based on an understanding of our growing interdependence and a joint analysis of future risks and challenges - leads people into carrying out joint projects and solving insurmountable conflicts in an intelligent and peaceful way (...). The Commission has drawn up an understanding of what sort of education is needed to create and consolidate this new kind of awareness. And it is here that the significance of the other three pillars comes to the fore, given that it is these that provide the basis for learning how to live together.

The first of these remaining three pillars is learning how to acquire knowledge. Against a background in which technological changes are coming thick and fast and in which new economic and social patterns are forming, the main focus is on making sure that general education is as wide as possible and that people can go on to deepen their knowledge in selected subjects. Indeed, this kind of general education is the key to a life-long process of learning. It whets people's appetite to learn over a lifetime - while at the same time providing the foundations to do so.

The second pillar is learning to how to act. This pillar is not just about doing a job but, in general terms, about acquiring the skills to cope with different and often unforeseen situations and about learning how to work in a team. Indeed, it is these characteristics that current educational methods tend to neglect. In many cases it is easer for pupils and students to learn these competencies if they are given the opportunity to try out and develop their skills. It's about enabling people to get work experience and community work while they are still in education. Indeed, a great deal of importance should be attached to all methods that mix education with experience.

The last, but by no means weakest pillar is learning for life. This was the issue at the heart of the Edgar-Faure report called how we learn to live, which was part of the UNESCO report on the objectives and future of our education programs, published in 1972 by UNESCO. The recommendations of this report are still relevant today. Indeed, in the 21st century everyone will be required to demonstrate independence, judgment and more personal responsibility if common objectives are to be reached. Our report also underlines another requirement, namely that none of the talents lying dormant like hidden treasures in every individual should be allowed to go unused. These talents, to name but a few, include: memory, logical thought, imagination, physical ability, an aesthetic sense, the ability to communicate and the natural charisma of a group leader. In actual fact these abilities only serve in underlining the importance of more self-knowledge (...).

The "information revolution" is increasing ease of access to information and facts. This means that education should be striving to make it possible for everyone to collect and single out relevant information, to put it in context, to handle information and to use it. To this end, then, education should seek to adjust itself constantly to the changes going on in society; it must be able to pass on the acquisitions, the foundations and the richness of human experience."

[Learning: The Treasure Within. UNESCO report for Education for the 21st Century, published by the German UNESCO Commission. Neuwied; Kriftel; Berlin: Luchterhand, 1997, p. 18-19]

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