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pillars of education

 Four pillars of education

The ‘Four Pillars of Education’ were originally set out in a report for UNESCO by the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century chaired by Jacques Delors (UNESCO, 1996). These pillars underline the very breadth and depth of UNESCO’s vision of education within and beyond schooling. Education, the report holds, must be organized around four fundamental types of learning throughout a person’s life:

  1. Learning to know,
  2. Learning to do,
  3. Learning to live together, and
  4. Learning to be.

Although they can be defined separately, they form an integrated whole and should ideally be present in all pedagogical encounters and the curriculum as a whole (Scatolini, 2010). The Four Pillars are programmatic and can be summed up as follows:

Learning to know: ‘Learning to know’ lays the foundations of learning throughout life. This pillar refers to the basic knowledge that we need to be able to understand our environment and to live in dignity. It is also about arousing curiosity, allowing us to experience the pleasures of research and discovery. It faces us with the challenge of combining a sufficiently broad education with the in-depth investigation of selected subjects. Learning to know implies learning how to learn by developing one’s concentration, memory skills and ability to think.

Learning to do: ‘Learning to do’ refers to the acquisition of practical skills, but also to an aptitude for teamwork and initiative, and a readiness to take risks. As such, this pillar is about the competence of putting what we have learned into practice so as to act creatively on our environment. A variety of situations, often unforeseeable, is bound to arise. Learning to do enables us to turn our knowledge into effective innovations.

Learning to live together: ‘Learning to live together’ is the pillar that the UNESCO Commission emphasizes more than any other. It refers first of all to developing an understanding of others through dialogue leading to empathy, respect, and appreciation. Yet if we are to understand others, we must first know ourselves. ‘Learning to live together’ is also about recognizing our growing interdependence, about experiencing shared purposes, and about implementing common projects and a joint future. Only then will it be possible to manage the inevitable conflicts in a peaceful way.

Learning to be: ‘Learning to be’ is founded on the fundamental principle that education needs to contribute to the all-round development of each individual. This pillar deals with the broadening of care for each aspect of the personality. It deals with giving us the freedom of thought, feeling, and imagination that we need to act more independently, with more insight, more critically, and more responsibly. The end of education is to discover and open the talents which are hidden like a treasure within every person. As a means of personality training, education should be a highly individualized process and at the same time an interactive social experience.

By speaking of learning to know rather than of knowing, UNESCO indicates that this is a never-ending process that is both personal and shared. Education is not only about know-what, but also about know-why, know-how and know-what for. Said otherwise, learners are not called to merely become experts in their field, but also coworkers in knowledge production processes and managers of meaningful, responsible and sustainable development (Burgoyne & Reynolds, 2002)

 

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