Revisiting UNESCO’s 4-Pillars Of Education

Prior to entering the 21st Century, there was the Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs), providing eight objectives to serve as global focus for human development (2000 – 2015). Similarly, the United Nations’ Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) provided 4-point agenda for education and social development for the 21st century, applicable beyond 2015. The 4 goals became known as 4-pillars of education for the century. Briefly, the four pillars of modern education are ;learning to know; learning to be; learning to do, and learning to live together.
Learning to know includes practical learning experiences through daily interactions and also being able to absorb and turn such learning experiences into useful instruments for addressing challenges and problems of life. Such ability to transfer and apply learning experiences is known as educability. Learning to know demands a persistent urge to search and explore various issues and perplexities of life, to strive to find meanings and answers to questions of every-day encounters, and to place no limit on what can be known. Emphasis on learning to know should go beyond “stomach infrastructure” and mundane quests and hustling to get something for nothing.
A life-long learning urge does not depend on school as the place to learn to acquire experiences, but in life itself as the theatre of learning to know. Neither must the acquisition of certificates be the aim of learning to know. Nations that value certificates rather than practical competence and ability, soon produce a large pool of intellectuals with crippled heads and hands.
Learning to be, as UNESCO’s second pillar of education, has to do with educability and the fact that the educated person is one who has learned to discover and be himself, as unique individual. Educability is the extent which an individual is able to see himself as a part of a large human family, life or existence as a school, and able to benefit from all learning experiences, exposures and opportunities. It also includes how far an individual is able to integrate and use learning experiences as resources for further upbuilding and as instruments for addressing the challenges of life.
The pillar on learning to be, enjoins the individual to strive to be self-reliant, able to think and judge issues independently without being swayed by the hysterical clamours of the masses. It takes self-exertion to develop oneself to the optimum and to be able to fulfill the duties and obligations incumbent on the individual. A summary of learning to be, embraces: simplicity and clarity in thinking; having personal conviction, values and beliefs; freedom from any form of addiction; having no room for self-pity; being a patriotic citizen, with charity for all and malice towards none.
Other items included in the pillar of learning to be, call on the individual to take only what is necessary in life, rather than seek to own all the property in town; to imbibe an attitude of letting what is gone and past help, to be past grief or brooding about. The classification of Nigeria as one of the most stressful places to live on earth is because there are lots of human parasites and caterpillars of the commonwealth who are rarely themselves.
Learning to do, as the third pillar of UNESCO’s prescriptions for education in the modern era, calls on individuals to see learning as an open and continuing process involving the acquisition of skills, knowledge and increasing awareness. It demands the use of the head to think and reason intelligently and logically, and apply the hands in diligent and productive labour which does not involve shameful deeds. Since no prize is won without diligence and self-exertion, this item from the UNESCO, enjoins every individual to engage in continuous learning, of which formal education is a very small part of the whole process. Without condemning or ignoring school learning as irrelevant, the emphasis is that  learning is a continuous, lifelong activity; do it yourself!
To cease to learn and to exert oneself, is to cease to live, because, the duty and fun of life include engaging in activities, joyfully, as opposed to forced labour. Voltaire, a French satirist and author of Candide, would remind us that work banishes boredom, vice and poverty. Therefore, learning to do, includes forcing ourselves to overcome the temptation of sliding into the common pitfalls of life, which include myopia, indolence, idle comfort and degeneration.
We are also reminded that constant application of our limbs and the entire body in movements, exercises and labour are necessary for good health and longevity. Nature and its laws stipulate that resources, talents and abilities not utilised regularly and in productive activities, soon go into a state of atrophy. To learn to do also means to learn to choose aright, so that what is done would bear the tag of nobility.
UNESCO’s 4th Pillar of Learning to live together is a call on humanity to live in harmony with others, in spite of diversities arising from historical, environmental and cultural factors of life. Oneness of humanity does not imply uniformity, but the joy of diversities includes the opportunity to learn so see and absorb what is noble in different people. Learning to live together in harmony does not mean tolerating injustices and thereby fostering evil, but it entails providing the mirror for mutual self-examination. Indeed, the faults and annoying actions and behaviours we see in others, are messages that we ourselves are not far too different.
Justice as the pillar and essential condition of any sane environment, demands that people should learn to know what it entails to live together in harmony. Any society where justice is mistaken for indulgence and permissiveness, is a society that goes speedily into a state of corruption and eventual decay. Therefore, learning to live together is a task of learning to foster justice in interpersonal relationships. This demands pointing out breaches which demand sanctions, without resorting to violence, and without enthroning impunity as a sub-culture. Wrong deeds deserve penalties!
Learning to live together also requires recognising where there are weaknesses, lapses and deficiencies and then having the political will and resources to correct and check them, in the interest of the nation. Most vulnerable groups in society, including children and women must be given attention and protection. We live together in freedom, not bondage arising from tyranny and impunity!

By: Bright Amirize
Dr Amirize is a retired lecturer from the Rivers State University, Port Harcourt.