EDUCATION FOR 21st CENTURY-THE FOUR PILLARS OF EDUCATION

The report argued that choices about education were determined by choices about what kind of society we wished to live in. Beyond education’s immediate functionality, it considered the formation of the whole person to be an essential part of education’s purpose. The Delor's Report was aligned closely with the moral therefore its analysis and recommendations were more humanistic and less instrumental and market-driven than other education reform studies of the time. One of the most influential concepts of the 1996 Delor's Report was that of the four pillars of learning. Formal education, the report argued, tends to emphasise certain types of knowledge to the detriment of others that are essential to sustaining human development.

1. Learning to know – a broad general knowledge with the opportunity to work in depth on a small number of subjects.

2. Learning to do – to acquire not only occupational skills but also the competence to deal with many situations and to work in teams.

3. Learning to be – to develop one’s personality and to be able to act with growing autonomy, judgement and personal responsibility.

4. Learning to live together – by developing an understanding of other people and an appreciation of interdependence.

The idea of the integrated approach to education reflected in the four pillars of learning has had significant influence on policy debates, teacher training and curriculum development in a range of countries worldwide.

Learning to know

This also means learning to learn so as to benefit from the opportunities education provides throughout life.

Learning to do

Knowledge, on the one hand – this is the word chosen by teachers – and qualification on the other hand this is the word chosen by entrepreneurs. But company bosses now understand that the concept of qualification has often been restrictive and that, if we leave word games to one side, ‘‘skills’’ is a better description of what you have to have nowadays to be self-confident and able to deal with the various challenges of working life. Please note that when I speak of skills – and the European Commission published a report on the learning society a few years ago 3 – I am not just talking about hard sciences. I am also talking about soft sciences, if I may put it that way. When businesses recruit staff, particular attention is paid to young men and women who have studied social sciences, because a good knowledge of social sciences makes people better able to understand the global environment and new kinds of management. This is why I believe we must not make a radical distinction between science and culture, even if it is true that Europe as a whole has much work to do in terms of innovation and discovery in the cognitive sciences.

Learning to live together

Immigration is becoming a sometimes explosive issue, and is being used by some unscrupulous politicians to divide society and build hatred. This is why learning to live together is an essential part of school education. It concerns the relationship between schools and communities. It is also the focus of fundamental subjects that tend to be sacrificed for economic reasons in some countries: history, geography and philosophy, and in particular, as I myself suggested at the time, the history of religion. What we need to do is not to convert people to religions, but to truly understand the heritage that underpins each one, so that we can learn to be tolerant.

Learning to be

 The lack of self-confidence is a central issue for dropouts. A lack of self-confidence is also a lack of self-esteem. This means that learning to be at school is about enabling people to understand themselves better, without sinking into despair or delusion. So it is important to underline the importance of both the family and schools in this respect. It amazes me that in some European countries, people blame schools when there are social crises, but schools cannot do everything. Schools are just one part of society. We are here to try to ask more of schools, but it would be futile to think that schools can single-highhandedly put society on the right track. UNESCO has also made great efforts in this area, as you will hear later in this conference.