1. Education for Learning to Live Together:
Reorienting Curriculum
Prof. Nityananda Pradhan
Head, Department of Extension Education
NERIE, NCERT, Shillong (Meghalaya)
E-mail: npradhan17@rediffmail.com
Mob: 9402394365

2. Things to Learn from India: The Indian Family
• One for all and all for One
• Togetherness is what rules over
• Culture to live in extended families
• The joint family has always been the preferred
family type
• Most Indians at some point in their lives have
participated in joint family living

3. • Tied up with unseen bond, cooperation,
harmony and interdependence
• The tendency to maintain ‘togetherness’ even
in nuclear structure.
• The first training ground, where people learn
interpersonal skills.
• Provides security and a sense of support to
the old; widows, never-married adults, the
disabled; unemployed members

4. Things to Learn from India: Insights into some
Household Practices
Some of the core characteristics which forms an
Indian family
• Joint living of three or four generations under a
common roof and cooking food
• Members of the family shower enormous respect
on the elders, their age and wisdom
• Family decisions affect most aspects of life,
including career choice, mate selection, and
marriage.

5. • A child learns and is reared by a number of
people, thus dividing work and saving time
• The elderly men and women act as the
watchdogs for the adolescents of the family
• The funeral rites and the worshiping of
ancestors are still a part of the functions of
joint family.

6. • People in joint families learn lessons of
patience, tolerance, cooperation and
adjustment.
• Many children see their best friends in there
grandparents
• The essential familial responsibility of
childcare is taken up by the elders
• Grandmothers have been good story tellers
and loving baby sitters

7. Four Pillars of Learning
The International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first
Century, in its Report (Delors et al., 1996) to UNESCO, “Learning:
The Treasure Within” discusses four Pillars of Learning:
• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to live together
• Learning to be
If education is to succeed in its tasks, curriculum
should be restructured around these four pillars of
learning.

8. The tensions identified in the Delors Report, Learning:
The Treasure Within (UNESCO, 1996), are as real today
as they were 18 years ago:
1. The tension between the global and the local
2. The tension between the universal and the individual
3. The tension between tradition and modernity
4. The tension between long-term and short-term
considerations
5. The tension between competition and concern for
equality of opportunity
6. The tension between expansion of knowledge and our
capacity to assimilate it
7. The tension between the spiritual and the material.

9. Redesigning Curriculum
• Curriculum, content, textbooks, and learning
materials are among the major school inputs (Major
dimensions of quality education).
• Curriculum is a critical factor affecting educational
quality and learning achievement
• The principles four pillars of learning necessitates an
alternative approach to curriculum: resetting
objectives, identifying key competencies, and
integration of relevant knowledge, skills and values
across curriculum areas

10. Revisiting the Four Pillars of Learning
Learning to Know
• Presupposes ‘learning to learn’
• It implies the mastering of the instruments of knowledge
themselves
• Acquiring knowledge in a never-ending process and can be
enriched by all forms of experience
• It is ‘a process of discovery’
• Includes the development of the faculties of memory,
imagination, reasoning, problem-solving, and the ability to
think in a coherent and critical way.
• Can be regarded as both a means and an end in learning

11. Learning to Do
• Implies application of what learners have learned or
known into practices
• It is closely linked to vocational-technical education
and work skill
• Calls for new types of skills: more behavioral than
intellectuals training.
• Material and the technology are becoming secondary
to human qualities and interpersonal relationship
• Implies a shift from skill to competence: A mix of
higher-order skills specific to each individual

12. learning to do means:
• ability to communicate effectively with others
• aptitude toward team work
• social skills in building interpersonal relations
• adaptability to change
• competency in transforming knowledge into
innovations
• job-creation
• readiness to take risks and manage conflicts

13. Learning to Live Together
• The Commission places a special emphasis on this
pillar of learning
• It implies an education taking two complementary
paths: (i) Discovery of others; and (ii) Experience of
shared purposes throughout life

14. Learning to live together implies the development of qualities like:
• Knowledge and understanding of self and others
• Appreciation of the diversity of the human race
• An awareness of the similarities between, and the
interdependence of, all humans
• Empathy and cooperative social behavior in caring and
sharing;
• Respect of other people and their cultures and value
systems
• Capability of encountering others and resolving
conflicts through dialogue;
• Competency in working towards common objectives

15. Learning to be
• First conceptualized in the Report to UNESCO in
1972, Learning To Be
• Implies that ‘the aim of development is the
complete human’ as:
 Individual
 Member of a family and of a community
 Citizen and producer
 Inventor of techniques
 Creative dreamer

16. • Learning to be may be interpreted as learning to be
human
• Implies a curriculum aiming at:
 Cultivating imagination and creativity
 Acquiring universal human values
 Developing memory, reasoning,
 Developing aesthetic sense,
 Developing physical capacity and
 Developing communication/social skills
 Developing critical thinking and exercising independent
judgment;
 Developing personal commitment and responsibility.

17. Pillars of Learning for Reorienting Curriculum
Four pillars of learning relate to all phases and
areas of education:
1. Curriculum Objectives
2. Curriculum Content (Key Competencies)
3. Learning Modules in Integrated Approach

18. Reorganizing Curriculum Objectives
• Curriculum objectives incorporates the principle of
learning throughout life.
• Curriculum objectives are derived from educational
goals
• Generally speaking, school curriculum seeks to achieve
two broad aims:
 To provide equal opportunities for all pupils to learn and to
achieve;
 To promote learners’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural
development
• The four pillars of learning indicate the setting of
curriculum objectives in new century.

19. 1. School curriculum should be more balanced, taking into
account not only the cognitive-intellectual dimension of
personality but its spiritual, moral, social skills and values
aspects
2. Contributing to social cohesion, inter-cultural and inter-national
understanding, peaceful interchange, and,
harmony.
3. Developing a learning society in a new century as one of
the keys to the twenty-first century: The shift from
'schooling‘ to ‘learning throughout life
4. Linkage between education and the world of work: School
curriculum can no longer be purely academic and college-bound;
it has to impart employable skills, and positive
attitudes toward work, and to develop competency in
adapting to change.

20. Reorganizing Curriculum Content
• Curricular changes are meant to develop a set
of key competencies as defined in curriculum
objectives and standards.
• Set of new key competencies to be inculcated
among all learners in an emerging knowledge-based
society

21. • Defining Competence: The ability to meet complex
(motor and/or cognitive) task with ease and
precisions. The term ‘competence’ denotes ‘a
complex action system encompassing cognitive skills,
attitudes and other non-cognitive components.
• Each of the four pillars of learning provides a range of
generic competencies to be developed through
curriculum and instruction

22. • Identifying and Selecting Key Competences:
a) Curriculum-bounded competencies, such as ability to
communicate with others, basic science/math skills, computer
literacy and media competence, and capacity of situating in
the world of individual.
b) Cross-curricular competencies, which include meta-cognitive
competencies, intra-personal competencies,
interpersonal competencies, and coping competencies

23. Cross-curricular competencies to be require of all
learners:
 Collecting, selecting, processing and
managing information
Mastering instruments of knowing and
understanding
Effectively communicating with others
Adapting oneself to changes in life
Cooperatively working in teams
Resolving conflict through peaceful dialogue
and negotiation.

24. Repackaging Learning Modules in Integrated
Approach
• Subject matter content is no longer organized
on basis of individual disciplines but more in
an interdisciplinary or integrated approach.
• Learning outcomes are not expressed merely
in test scores but in terms of knowledge, skills,
values, or competencies as embedded in the
pillars of learning

25. • Two approaches to the repackaging of learning
content in terms of generic competencies to be
inculcated among all learners:
• To design curriculum content of individual school subject and related
learning units in terms of fundamental knowledge, basic skills and
universally shared values which are pertinent to the key competences
(breaking down to set of knowledge, skills and values, and then integrated
in individual school subjects as history, geography, foreign language,
literature, environmental studies)
• To redesign learning modules or units, or curriculum blocks’, which can be
used in light of the nationally set curriculum standards (e.g. modules or
units or even a course could be designed to develop connections between
disciplines and enable students to see knowledge as inter-related whole)

26. A Framework of Education for Learning to Live
Together
A framework for education for Learning to Live
Together integrates 3 elements:
1. Emotional intelligence
2. Empathy
3. Pedagogy of love

27. 1. Emotional Intelligence
• Emotional intelligence refers to how well we handle
ourselves and deal with others (Goleman, 1998).
• The emotional intelligence competencies are being
increasingly used in many sectors, including
education.
• The use of emotional intelligence elements can
improve the humanistic aspects of education
(Salovey and Meyer, 1990).
• The emotional environment of the classroom should
be healthy for effective learning to take place.

28. Emotional intelligence competencies:
1. Emotional self-awareness: The skill to focus our
attention on our emotional state – being aware, in-the-moment,
of what we are feeling.
2. Emotional self-regulation: The skill to be able to choose
the emotions we want to experience, rather than being
the victim of whatever emotions occur
3. Emotional self-motivation: The ability to use our
emotions to be positive, optimistic, confident and
persistent rather than being negative and pessimistic
4. Empathy: Ability to put ourselves in the other person’s
feelings.
5. Nurturing relationships: The ability to demonstrate care
for others.

29. 2. Empathy
• Empathy is the capacity to understand and respond to
the unique experiences of others (Ciaramicoli, 1997).
• A very important part of the emotional intelligence
competencies.
• There are many ways for teachers to express and
exercise empathy:
• Asking open ended question,
• Slowing down when giving instructions
• Avoid making snap judgments
• Student-centred teaching
• More listening and reflection

30. 3. Pedagogy of love
• The human need for love, justice and compassion
are all intricately entangled with education.
• Compassion, love and joy are inherently the
building blocks of the learning to live together.
• The pedagogy of love is complex. several salient
elements of love:
(i) love involves kindness and empathy;
(ii) love involves intimacy and bonding;
(iii) love involves sacrifice and forgiveness; and
(iv) love involves acceptance and community.

31. A cycle of the pedagogy of love: The role of a
teacher
• Teachers have a vital role to play in the
educational process by embracing the pedagogy
of love.
• Pedagogy of love emerges through teachers’
moral attitude, emotions, and actions, and their
interactions within the cycle.
• The Cycle of the Pedagogy of Love is all about the
caring attitude of the teacher, ultimately leading
to loving actions

32. 1. Attitude: For the pedagogy of love to be put into
practice, the teacher should care about all that is
around him/her.
2. Emotion: Once the teacher develops caring attitude
towards the learners’ interest, it leads to a concern
for the learner’s total well-being.
3. Action: Attitudes leads to concern; and concern
leads to emotions. These emotions filled with
concern for the learner’s ‘total self’ will transform
into love for the learner.

33. Long live the education of the heart;
Long live the pedagogy of love;
And let’s live long as a caring and loving society,
by learning to live together!