The capacity to learn

I am not myself an educator in the formal sense. But I come from an institution that has been entrusted by the United Nations General Assembly with trying to improve understanding of pressing global problems of human survival, development and welfare. Speaking from that perspective, it seems clear to me that all countries - developed or underdeveloped, East or West of ideological divide - are ill-prepared to deal with the swiftly changing, enormously complex, and increasingly competitive world of tomorrow. Finding the means to prepare the whole of the global society for such a world is therefore essential.

As I look to the next century, I am more and more convinced that it will be the capacity to learn - and in particular to learn from each other - which, more than any other single factor, will determine the viability, autonomy and integrity of all societies. (Speech to National Assembly of Educators, Washington, D.C., USA, May 1984).