Thus, in these few remarks, I should like to propose as an introduction to our discussion this morning a vision of education that is both humanistic and utilitarian, that looks upon solidarity and cohesion as an essential feature of educational reform, that views education and learning as a public good, to be encouraged and made as widely available as possible to all, throughout life, and that seeks to be a force for excellence and the advancement of knowledge to meet the challenges of the coming years.

Reflections on the need to prepare for change are not new. In fact, they recur through most of written history. These discussions have seem, however, to have taken on a particular intensity during the last few years. Globalisation of the economy is both welcomed and feared, depending on where we sit, but everywhere recognised as being the motor for profound transformation. The fall of Communism, hailed as a triumph, brought with it initial euphoria, but also a hefty share of problems. Legitimate demands for recognition by cultural, linguistic, and religious groups have in their perverted forms resulted in inter-ethnic and inter-group violence on a new and frightening scale. Changes in the structure of the family, urbanization, the growing influence of mass media led to disquiet about the ways in which young generations develop their outlook on society and their place in it. The role and influence of religion is also changing: sometimes more militant and pervasive in everyday life, sometimes suffering a decline in its capacity to federate communities around agreed-upon values. As the wealthier economies lead the way towards knowledge-based societies, we are seeing far-reaching changes in the nature and duration of work, as well as in the competencies required for it.

All these features lead, sooner or later, to a look at education. There will scarcely be a politician or commentator on the problems of unemployment who will not invoke education as a major part of the solution. We dream that with better education, the natural progress of humanity will result in fewer people killing one another. We hope that education, both in and out of school, can compensate for the inadequacies of other institutions in passing on to young people the prevailing values of the society. We look upon education, particularly higher education, to continue to be the motor for the advancement of knowledge.

We can legitimately wonder whether organized learning will be able to meet these new challenges. We can wonder even more how organized learning might anticipate change, the better to prepare everyone, and especially young people, for it. We may even suggest, again legitimately, that organized learning can act as more of a brake than an accelerator to change and adaptation to new economic and social realities. And, we may say that lofty ideals are far from the daily realities of classroom teachers.

Thus, both hopes and criticisms related to education are in the air everywhere. The faith in education as a force for progress, for social good, and for the advancement of culture, has been unwavering for thousands of years, and with reason. Yet, we always feel more could and must be achieved, equally with reason. Of course, education, even wonderfully conceived, cannot solve all the problems of society. But without it the problems of society cannot be solved. It is an indispensable, but not sufficient, condition for positive change.

The report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century is not an attempt to supply answers to these questions or a blueprint to meet these challenges. The diversity of situations, the vastly different cultural, social and historical contexts, made it impossible to contemplate providing global analyses or global solutions. Rather, the Commission tried to position education in the modern world by stating some principles and aims and suggesting some ways by which one might move towards them.

Learning: the Treasure Within emerged after many types of consultation, of individuals and groups, of the hopes and challenges facing us. The result is a vision of learning as a central feature of human activity, throughout life. The Commission proposed that education be based on four pillars, that is learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together. Giving equal weight to each of these pillars would substantially reorganize the priorities of what and how we teach throughout the school and educational systems. Giving equal weight to each of these pillars is, I believe, also the best way to prepare people to face the future with confidence.

Learning to know   is the most clearly traditional function of education, and for most of our contemporary history has been based on the passing on of knowledge from master to pupil. It is only recently that the exponential increase in the amount of knowledge available has focused this process, in principle, more on the tools for seeking and processing knowledge than on knowledge itself. Yet, in many schools, and in many systems, the central feature of learning to know is based on learning and repeating facts. These facts, as we all know, will be often either forgotten or useless because they are out of date. While the effort involved in learning is never lost, we know that associating curiosity, a critical sense and questioning with it makes the process meaningful and imparts skills that are important all throughout life. In addition, with the explosion in the availability and the sources of knowledge, the ability to exercise critical judgement, to find the appropriate authority to validate information, are taking on an even greater importance than in the past.

Learning to do: this type of learning involves the learning of skills, the linking of knowledge with practice, and is part of the training that is necessary for work. However, in the move towards a "knowledge" society, where the skills to be brought to work are becoming skills of the mind rather than skills of the hand, "learning to do" implies developing a wide variety of intellectual and social aptitudes in order to be able to perform work-related tasks. In fact, when employers are asked to describe what they hope to find in future employees, or what they mean by "trained", they typically put high, if not top of the list, such qualities as the ability to communicate, the ability to formulate, analyze and solve problems, the ability to describe the above, and the ability to acquire new skills. Firms that expect workers to demonstrate initiative, work in teams to solve problems, and continually upgrade their skills place a high value on the key competencies defined above and are willing to pay wage premiums to workers with these skills. Such firms, which are sometimes called high performance firms, tend to rely on the ideas of their workers to improve the products and services they produce. According to Levy and Murnane, there is some evidence that the percentage of firms organized to fit the high performance profile is growing.

Learning to be is essential for the development of the human personality and for the young person to become a complete adult. The title of the report to UNESCO of a commission on education in 1971, learning to be is the central focus of education: "mind and body, intelligence, sensitivity, aesthetic sense, personal responsibility and spiritual values". All human beings must be enabled to develop independent, critical thinking and form their own judgement, in order to determine for themselves what they believe they should do in the different circumstances of life." It means developing an understanding of one’s own multiple identities, as a member of a group, a place, a family. The challenge to educators is a great one, and goes far beyond what most establishments attempt today; yet, teachers throughout history, and everywhere today, when they are asked, are convinced that their role is as much to cultivate the character as the mind

Learning to live together is of course the crucial challenge of our time. There can be no illusion that education is doing its job unless it emphasizes and achieves progress in living together. Living together implies the absences of open conflict in the first instance. But it means more than that. It means learning that each other human being is equally worthy of respect, whether of the other sex, or of another ethnic, religious or cultural group. It means accepting that each human being has responsibility towards others. It means accepting difference, and perhaps even a lack of understanding, among people or groups, but an the resolution of difference by negotiation.

In line with the four pillars described above, the most important shift will be towards a vision of learning in which learning opportunities are available and sought throughout life.

Achieving learning throughout life will involve a new partnership between the economic sector, private individuals and governments. It will mean enabling each person to "save" learning opportunities and to draw on them, as on a bank account, as they are needed. That will, in turn, require both governments and the private sector to accept that, if continuous learning is a requirement for economic development as well as for individual self-realization, it will be necessary to collaborate to bring all possible actors together to make the most of all learning opportunities and to fulfil unmet needs. There has to be more recognition in the workplace of skills and capacities acquired outside formal education, and the possibility to re-enter formal learning on the basis of experience acquired outside.

Concurrently, as the educational offer expands and diversifies, there will be a new challenge related to the role of the state and of supranational bodies. Until now, states have generally defined their roles as guarantors of the equality and quality of provision of compulsory education, with an attempt to ensure access to higher education to all those who meet certain requirements of merit. The provision of education is being greatly diversified, and as the Internet becomes a tool of communications for all, we can expect an explosion – one that has already begun, particularly in the U.S.A. – in the offer of learning opportunities. Official bodies will, inevitably have new roles to play in providing information about educational provision to potential users, on the one hand, and in validating or at least providing a framework for the description of competencies acquired, on the other. That is not to say that governments will establish new regulatory bodies or create new constraints. However, they will have to reach beyond their traditional roles of guaranteeing the right to education and monitoring traditional educational provision to become information gatekeepers to some extent.

Secondly, we must not forget the need to ensure adequate research and information collection about education itself. All decision-makers are aware of a shortage of adequate information in many areas about the educational process and its outcomes. Little is known about private expenditure in learning, for example: this will certainly grow in the future, and lack of adequate information can hamper adequate policy formulation as to the levels of taxation, government support, and so on. Similarly, in spite of recognition of the importance of non-cognitive competencies in a great deal of human activity (including in the work place), hardly anything has been done to try to describe these non-cognitive qualities in operational terms or to describe and measure the role of education in fostering non-cognitive learning.

The capacities needed in every type of work are both technical and human; they involve both technique and understanding. The faster the pace of change, the more people must be able to deal with the unforeseen. Related to attitudes acquired through a variety of learning experiences and through example, the abilities to innovate, to adapt, to find creative solutions to new – and often urgent – problems, cannot be encapsulated in specific skills training. The capacities needed to live a full, participatory, and active life in society are acquired through a maturation of the mind and the personality that are very largely based in the fundamental education received when one is young. Even specialized tasks need to be adapted, relearned and even discarded with the advent of changes in technology.

The whole notion of training is undergoing a shift in vision and in emphasis. On the one hand, the whole notion of skills is being redefined to give a much larger place to those that enable each individual to learn in function of the requirements of the tasks to be carried out. Employers seek, and value, non-cognitive competencies as much if not more than specific job-related skills, that can often be learned on the job and in any event need to be constantly updated and renewed. The sheer explosion of information means that the acquisition of information, or even the ability to find information, is vastly less important than the ability to use it or transform it in solving problems.

Almost paradoxically, then, we are seeing the development of a demand for the acquisition of both broader and more specialized knowledge. Nowhere in the world can an individual expect to acquire a body of skills, whether in school or out of school, that will carry her or him throughout a working career. Vast transformations are underway in the uses of time: less hours worked over a lifetime, longer life spans, reorganization of the working day, week, or year. These changes can be expected to exercise a continual strong influence on the knowledge base needed for work, working styles, and the institutional relationships among working people. We are facing a world in which learning will of necessity break the bounds of space and time within which it has been confined for the past century, which poses major challenge for educators, and for education systems world-wide. Public authorities will have to meet these challenges for reasons of progress, competition, and, most of all equity. Education and training for new economic and social realities will be found by the privileged, within or without formal systems. But society as a whole must be able to count on quality education for all as a public good, an education that meets new challenges but continues to be universal.

Let me begin by being very clear. Education, in the true sense of the word, is never merely functional. Imparting specific skills through focused training is of course an important part of education. But an education that prepares individuals to live in a knowledge-based society, to be thinking, creative, flexible individuals and active citizens must be more than that to be complete. It must rest on solid foundations that can enable each person to go on learning. It must include solid basic skills acquired in early years, it must foster the capacities to reflect and analyse, it must be sufficiently diverse to bring forth the talents and abilities of each individual. Furthermore, every learning process that involves teacher and learner conveys a message about the nature of the knowledge or skills imparted, the authority of the teacher, and the relationship between the two. These implicit messages have important consequences for learning and for the development of attitude towards learning, that we should not ignore.

Education should, then, be viewed in the broadest possible sense, as a process intended, and designed, to encourage the full development of the diverse individual and social skills and capacities of each of us. If it is to be successful, education must, of course, meet some quite specific needs, teaching skills, preparing individuals for their economic roles. But an education at any level that focuses directly on narrow utilitarian aims will be sadly incomplete, and ultimately will fail to fulfil adequately even those utilitarian aims.

One hundred years ago John Dewey stated that "it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions." Thus, the only adequate preparation was that every pupil must be put "in complete possession of all his powers." True as this was then, it seems startlingly prophetic for today. In preparing our young people for the future, we are preparing them for a world we cannot begin to imagine. The intellectual tools they will have to live and work in that future cannot be too task-specific; they must be flexible tools, capable of a variety of uses, capable of being themselves adapted and added to according to need.

By the time it has been acquired, much knowledge is already incomplete, even obsolete. By the time they have been acquired, skills related to the carrying out of specific tasks are inappropriate. Task-related skills have become impermanent, sometimes dramatically so. There is scarcely an office-related skill learned twenty-five years ago that is of any use today: the methods of communication, of collecting and storing information, of producing knowledge rely on skills that people have learned entirely on the job, from the clerical level up. Repair work on modern automobiles relies very largely on computer diagnosis and trouble-shooting, carried out by mechanics that have learned on the job things completely unrelated to their original preparation. Interpersonal relations, one of the dominant skills required in the service industry, relies on basic human competencies and on learning a great deal about the functioning of a particular industry. Thus, the actual work skills will of necessity rely on a combination of what is learned in initial education, the training received while working, individual learning, and tacit knowledge which is acquired throughout life through observation, experience, and an understanding of one’s own culture and environment.

But the workplace itself is being redefined: as more and more jobs will depend on entrepreneurial skills, the trend towards working at home or in loose networks increases, and frequent work changes will undoubtedly become more common. At the highest levels, it is already the case that the selection and analysis of facts and the ability to cross disciplines are essential attributes as new fields emerge and knowledge continues to expand. These changes will reward those who can adapt, learn and take initiatives. For education, such evolution will continue to challenge those responsible for planning the organization and content of learning for the coming years.

There is much to be proud of and much that has been achieved in educational provision and content. I also believe that : to paraphrase a turn of the century observer of education, "An education system is a living thing – the outcome of battles of long ago. It reflects, while seeking to remedy, the weaknesses of national character". Building on the successes, identifying those aspects that are clearly in urgent need of overhaul, achieving consensus among all interested parties (or, to use that overworked but useful word, "stakeholders"), are also consonant with what has been described here as the European social model. That is far from a call for complacency, rather an optimistic vision that change can be achieved without starting over.

I would, then put the policy challenges that I have hinted at in these remarks

areas, excellence, equality and cohesion, and diversity. This responds, I believe, to the general tenor of remarks about the European social model and our ambitions for it.

Excellence: We tend to be so overwhelmed by the role of information and knowledge, as by the prodigious pace at which knowledge can circulate, that we forget to lay sufficient emphasis on knowledge creation. Here I would like to raise, very quickly the issue of the sharing and circulation of knowledge, where I believe governments face redefinition of their roles. More and more private initiative and private money is involved in basic research, and in the creation of knowledge. Yet, governments and supranational bodies (whether the European bodies or international agencies of various kinds) have vast ethical responsibilities to fulfil, and these responsibilities are facing a necessary redefinition. That is to say, there are things we need to know about the human condition, about our universe, that do not translate into economic benefits in the immediate future, and where the long-term investment must be made by not-for-profit actors. One could mention diseases like malaria where research is insufficiently lucrative to attract private investment. One could talk of the development of methods for improving the productivity of natural resources where the threat of scarcity is too far away to encourage the market to invest in alternative methods of production. And so on. There must be a continued effort to find ways of using development assistance to create endogenous knowledge where it is needed, to share knowledge that may have an economic value higher than what users in the poorer parts of the world can pay. Private public partnerships must be able to do more in this area to enhance equal access to some kinds of knowledge and use of knowledge on the basis of need.

Cohesion has another, international face to it. As I said briefly earlier, the enormous gaps in the educational capacity between Europe and the poorer regions of the world, whether in schooling or higher education and research, are humanly shocking but ultimately dangerous. Thus, I believe that the pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of cohesion are two sides of the same issue: progressing and living together. Information and communications technology offers unprecedented ways of creating flows of information that don’t depend entirely on national infrastructures or on broad levels of economic development. Is this not an issue worth pursuing and putting on the agenda of intellectual cooperation in Europe?

Diversity: Formal education has always had an uneasy relationship with diversity. It is messy, difficult to manage, difficult to monitor, and can be seen as a way of diluting equal opportunity or quality assurance. But diversity will be, and must be, a primary feature of education in the future, and that will pose tremendous intellectual, financial and organizational challenges.

Diversity is needed, first of all, to ensure that the talents and capacities of each person can be brought out and encouraged to the fullest. No one contests such a notion, but it is difficult to realize. We still do not know what elements will sustain motivation of young people who begin to fail or become disenchanted. The sad reality is that even second chance education as it is practised today, does not, on the whole, manage to reach down to those who are on the way to exclusion. So, much reflection and thought still needs to go into diversifying the paths and bridges through formal and non-formal education that can permit broader interest in education for those who might drop by the wayside. These are both organizational and content issues.

Diversity is needed, also, to respond to the new needs for training. Although my remarks have focused on the need for solid general education, training for jobs, and professions continues to have a strong role to play. Yet, it is broadly recognized that, whatever the initial training, most people do not use the actual skills learned in initial job training for more than a few years. Subsequent skills are learned on the job, individually or through in-service training, or through periods of return to formal education. This will undoubtedly become increasingly the case, and must lead us to reflect on the length and character of initial professional training.

Diversity is needed, finally, to respond to new requirements of individuals who will not necessarily be able or willing to participate in full-time or part time education in a defined location. Although there has been much achieved in distance education, formal systems have been slow to accept the fact that they, too, will have to diversify their offer to respond to new needs and new trends elsewhere in work and society.