UNESCO's International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century was set up to promote an innovative approach to how education will be able to meet the challenges of the future. It is due to report in 1995. Its aims include: education and development; education and science; education and citizenship; education and culture; education and social cohesion; education and work.
The knowledge society demands a radical change from youth- centred educational systems to a lifelong learning community. Schools are be only one of the several teaching and learning institutions in which students will become their own instructors. Museums, libraries, gymnasiums, homes and especially business will work in partnership with reformed and community controlled learning centres to help each individual meet her/his own life goals. The "job" will become a continual learning process as shifts in knowledge require continual shifts in skills, tasks and organizations for a society of change.
Education is, finally, a process whereby unity or a sense of synthesis is cultivated. Young people in the future will be taught to think of themselves in relation to the group, to the family unit and to the nation in which their destiny has put them. They will also be taught to think in terms of world relationship and of their nation in relation to other nations. This covers training for citizenship, for parenthood, and for world understanding; it is basically psychological and should convey an understanding of humanity. When this type of training is given, we shall develop men and women who are both civilized and cultured and who will also possess the capacity to move forward (as life unfolds) into that world of meaning which underlies the world of outer phenomena and who will begin to view human happenings in terms of the deeper spiritual and universal values.