| Education for the
21st Century
India Country Report on the Delors Commission Report
March 1998
Indian National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO
In the past few years there have been two major futuristic,
landmark reports offering visions of emerging challenges in education from UNESCO. The
first one, Learning to Be, was prepared in 1973 by a commission under the chairmanship of
Edgar Faure. This report was extensively discussed and debated the world over and it
shaped the education discourse of the seventies and eighties. The Indian National
Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO played an active role in disseminating this report
in our country.
Its successor is the recently published report Learning:
The Treasure Within, prepared by the International Commission on Education for the
Twenty-first Century under the chairmanship of Jacques Delors. The report is a majestic
survey of the emerging world and the sweeping technological, economic and social change
and the multiple tensions arising from this shift. The Commission has reinterpreted the
philosophical and pedagogic principles of education to meet the emerging scenario.
Further, the report neatly balances the economic, cultural and social aspects of
education. The Commission has laid great emphasis on life-long learning and commended that
education in the future should be based on four pillars—learning to know, learning to
do, learning to be, and learning to live together.
The Delors Report has become a matter of deep interest and
public debate in our country as we plan for education in the twenty first century.
Focusing equally on the four pillars of education, we hope to effectively face the
challenges of a changing world, where ethical concerns and democratic values demand much
more attention than the conventional ‘three Rs’.
Again, as with the earlier report, The Indian National
Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO has undertaken the task of producing and
distributing material to facilitate discussion of the principal ideas contained in the
Delors Report.
India’s educational ethos needs major reforms in the
context of the changes that are sweeping our country. The transformation that society is
going through warrants a rejuvenation in the way we teach and what we teach. The way we
structure our educational institutions and determine the content of our curricula can by
themselves help us move towards a culture of peace and non-violence.
The objective of this country paper is to encourage an
assimilation of the principal ideas in the Delors report by summing up past developments
in education and by fostering reflection and debate on future steps required.
For further information contact:
Indian National Commission for Co-operation with UNESCO
Ministry of Human Resource Development
Department of Education
Room 203, "C" Wing , Shastri Bhavan
NEW DELHI 110 001
Tel : (91-11) 338.4863 (Sec.) / (91-11) 338.4589 / 338.4442 (Secretariat)
Fax : (91-11) 338.1355
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