Learning to be [antikvár]

Presentation of the report Letter from the Chairman, Edgar Faure, to René Maheu, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 18 May 1972 My dear Director-General, I have the honour and the pleasant duty of submitting to you the report of the International Commission on the Development of Education, of which you appointed me chairman at the beginning of 1971 and which has now concluded its work. This is not to imply that the content of the subject has been exhausted or that its scope would not have justified our spending many more months on further studies or longer reflection. Our task was an immense one, and the very considerable work my colleagues and I have put into the production of this modest-sized report could have been continued and deepened for a long time. However, you wanted not so much an exhaustively erudite study as a critical reflection by men of different origins and background, seeking, in complete independence and objectivity, for over-all solutions to the major problems involved in the development of education in a changing universe. If reflection aimed at action is to be fruitful, we must know when to call a halt to it: the Second Development Decade is under way already, and if this report was to be of use to the international community its publication could no longer be postponed. It would be presumptuous of me to try to predict how far the report will come up to your expectations or how much it will contribute to the progress of education in the world, but I believe it is faithful in spirit to the terms of reference you set the commission. We were entirely independent and free in formulating our ideas, and therefore did not feel obliged to be neutral. Foiir basic assumptions underlay our work from the start. The first, which was indeed the justification for the task we undertook, is that of the existence of an international community which.