Learning to know, to live together, to do and to be!

Gitchandra S Oinam *

Four Pillars of Education

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything. -G. B. Shaw; Peace can not be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." –Einstein.

There are two ways to get everyone to hate you in a complex nuisance society-either do something really wrong, or do something really right; either speak too much truth or too much lie. If you have something to say, please raise your hand, then place it over your mouth and keep it there or you will get nothing if you are weak. You can't always change someone.

Sometimes, you have to either accept who they are, or learn to live without them. Never argue with a fool, people might not be able to tell the difference. It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable colour to every object. Discover the decisive diplomacy unless your truth and honest words does not listen by others. Life is not about the mistakes we've made. It's about the lessons we've learned and the friends we've gained.

The 3Cs of life are choices, chances and changes. You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change. If you can't change it, change your attitude first. If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. Remember, three things you can't recover in life-a word after it's said, time after its gone and trust after it's lost. Three types of people are those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.

Holy Sh*t! The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down. No place to work and no income! There is brutality and there is honesty but there is no such thing as brutal honesty! People tend to make rules for others and exceptions for themselves. What most people want is all of the power but none of the responsibility. There are many people so poor, that the only thing they have is money. Who will care for women and children in such a situation?

Secured your women means secured your children, it means secure your society. A man's biggest mistake is giving another man an opportunity to make his woman smile. Dear Men! Making your women feel beautiful is a full time job from which you should never want to retire..... Women have no country that is why men are more curious. A jealous man / woman is faithful.

If s/he doesn't get jealous when someone has your attention, it's because someone else has hers/him. Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing of a society. We must respect and practice our culture even we are far distance from our family and society so that, we can save our identity. To keep it alive, women must initiate for the preservation, promotion and responsibility of our culture, our tradition, our attires and our practices….

If a woman asks you a question, it's better to just give her the truth; chances are she's asking you because she already knows the answer. Men are always trying to lie and women are always trying to find out lies. Perhaps, the reason for why most women wear make-up and most guys lie is just because women fall in love by what they hear about and guys fall in love by what they see. But women do not fear to fight for belief and faith they feel right.

A foolish man tells a woman to stop talking, but a wise man tells her that her mouth is extremely beautiful when her lips are closed. Never argue with a woman when she's tired, or rested. A wise woman does not demand but they think. The only people you need in life are the ones that need you in theirs. Find someone who knows that you're not perfect, but treats you as if you are. Because perfect guys don't exist, but there's always one guy that is perfect for you. Appreciate for what you and your partner have, because nothing is permanent in this world. In just a blink of an eye, everything can be change.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. When you marry the right one, you are complete; when you marry the wrong one, you are finished. And when right one catches you with wrong one, you are completely finished. It is call vicious circle of wedding ring and your wife is ring master. Unfortunately, some of us lose our way, due to the everyday demands of life, work, money, kids, school and other responsibilities that take precedence. The mundane and the every day rut, stale what once so vital and colourful. Slowly even the closest of couples can start to be blinded and that light that used to shine so bright, start to fade….

Description of ideal women is simple "when you're sad you smile, when you're happy you laugh and when you're weak you stay strong…" The best feeling comes when you realize that you're perfectly happy without the people you thought you needed the most. Life is too awesome to waste your time thinking about someone who doesn't treat you right. No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind. The world is more beautiful when we have good things in the heart, joy and transparent smile.

Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope. People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone (including yourself).Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see farther. A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him/hers.

When someone hurts you or leaves you with any reason, the best revenge is to live better. Being nice to someone you hate doesn't mean you're fake. It means you're mature enough to tolerate your hate towards them. To forget someone, the first thing you have to do is to forgive that person. You can't forget if you don't forgive. Relationships end too soon because people stop putting the same effort to keep you as they did to win you. A lot of problems in the world would disappear if we talk to each other instead of about each other. We are forever seeking approval and acceptance in order to determine our status in the social pecking order.

Friendship means understanding, not agreement. It means forgiveness, not forgetting. It means the memories last even if the contact is lost. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything. In the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take, relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make. No one will make a lock without a key. Similarly, God won't give problems without solutions. But the problem is everyday we swim in the ocean of knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most of the people do….

Plant tress if you think in terms of ten years; teach the people, if you think for 100 years. Education provides roadmap to uprising an individual, society, community or whole nation. Although it is important that what the stuff is included in education pack but more important is the method to educate someone. Today a new way of education is not only becoming a strong substitute of traditional learning but gradually replacing it. History of nations describe that human always resist against any change in tradition, then why E-learning is being adopted so rapidly. What is the reason behind this revolution? Human psyche tells that it adopt the things which are nearer to nature. Designing of E-learning is according to human mentality. Getting knowledge was never much easy in the history. Now knowledge is at your door step. Just click and get it.

Investments in education provide a "multiplier effect", compounding the returns in other sectors; with more education comes increased health, economic growth and food security. Each extra year of pre-school increases a person's future productivity by 10-30%.Countries that raise literacy rates by 20-30% have seen increases in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 8-16%. Each 1% increase in the level of women's education generates 0.3% in additional economic growth. In sub-Saharan Africa, investing in girls' education has the potential to boost agricultural output by 25%.If all women in sub-Saharan Africa had a secondary education; 1.8 million lives could be saved each year.

A farmer with just four years of education is 9% more productive than one with no education. Women's education is responsible for half of the reduction of child mortality over the past 40 years. On average each additional year of schooling for a country's population reduces the chances of falling into civil war by 3.6%.People of voting age with a primary education are 1.5 times more likely to support democracy than people with no education. There would be a 12% drop in global poverty if all students in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills. Wages rise 20% for every year beyond 4th grade that a girl remains in school, reports of UNESCO, United Nations Global Compact and UNIFEM says.

According to UNESCO, the Four Pillars of Education are Learning to know, Learning to do, Learning to live together and Learning to be. These four pillars of education can't be anchored solely in one phase in a person's life or in a single place. There is a need to re-think when in people's lives education should be provided, and the fields that such education should cover. The periods and fields should complement each other and be interrelated in such a way that all people can get the most out of their own specific educational environment all through their lives.

Learning to Know: It implies learning how to learn by developing one's concentration, memory skills and ability to think. From infancy, young people must learn how to concentrate - on objects and on other people. This process of improving concentration skills can take different forms and can be aided by the many different learning opportunities that arise in the course of people's lives (games, work experience programmes, travel, practical science activities, etc.). The development of memory skills is an excellent tool for countering the overpowering stream of instant information put out by the media. Thinking is something children learn first from their parents and then from their teachers. The process should encompass both practical problem-solving and abstract thought.

Both education and research should therefore combine deductive and inductive reasoning, which are often claimed to be opposing processes. While one form of reasoning may be more appropriate than the other, depending on the subjects being taught, it is generally impossible to pursue a logical train of thought without combining the two. The process of learning to think is a lifelong one and can be enhanced by every kind of human experience. In this respect, as people's work becomes less routine, they will find that their thinking skills are increasingly being challenged at their place of work.

Learning to do: It is closely associated with the issue of occupational training: how do we adapt education so that it can equip people to do the types of work needed in the future? Here we should draw a distinction between industrial economies, where most people are wage-earners, and other economies where self-employment or casual works are still the norm. "Learning to do" can no longer mean what it did when people were trained to perform a very specific physical task in a manufacturing process. Skill training therefore has to evolve and become more than just a means of imparting the knowledge needed to do a more or less routine job.

The key concept now is one of "personal competence". This personal competence is assessed by looking at a mix of skills and talents, combining certified skills acquired through technical and vocational training, social behaviour, personal initiative and a willingness to take risks. If we add a demand for personal commitment on the part of employees in their role as change agents, it is clear that this kind of personal competence involves highly subjective innate or acquired qualities, often referred to as "people skills" or "interpersonal skills" by employers, combined with knowledge and other job skills. Of these qualities, communication, team and problem-solving skills are assuming greater importance. Then, the question of innovation arises- How can people be prepared to innovate?

Learning to live together: violence all too often dominates life in the contemporary world, forming a depressing contrast with the hope which some people have been able to place in human progress. Human history has constantly been scarred by conflicts, but the risk is heightened by two new elements. Firstly, there is the extraordinary potential for self- destruction created by humans in the twentieth century. Then, we have the ability of the new media to provide the entire world with information and unverifiable reports on ongoing conflicts. Public opinion becomes a helpless observer or even a hostage of those who initiate or keep up the conflicts. Until now education has been unable to do much to mitigate this situation. Can we do better? Can we educate ourselves to avoid conflict or peacefully resolve it?

Some subjects lend themselves to discover other people are - human geography in basic education, foreign languages and literature later on. For example, teaching youngsters to look at the world through the eyes of other ethnic or religious groups is a way of avoiding some of the misunderstandings that give rise to hatred and violence among adults.

Thus, teaching the history of religions or customs can provide a useful reference tool for moulding future behaviour. Forgetting that they are putting themselves across as models, they may, because of their attitude, inflict lifelong harm on their pupils in terms of the latter's openness to other people and their ability to face up to the inevitable tensions between individuals, groups and nations. One of the essential tools for education in the twenty-first century will be a suitable forum for dialogue and discussion. In the world of work, too, so many achievements would not have been possible if people had not successfully moved beyond the conflicts that generally arise in hierarchical organizations through their involvement in a common project.

Finally, Learning to Be: The aim of development is the complete fulfillment of man, in all the richness of his personality, the complexity of his forms of expression and his various commitments - as individual, member of a family and of a community, citizen and producer, inventor of techniques and creative dreamer'. Rather than educating children for a given society, the challenge will be to ensure that everyone always has the personal resources and intellectual tools needed to understand the world and behave as a fair-minded, responsible human being. More than ever before, the essential task of education seems to be to make sure that all people enjoy the freedom of thought, judgment, feeling and imagination to develop their talents and keep control of as much of their lives as they can. Education should contribute to every person's complete development - mind and body, intelligence, sensitivity, aesthetic appreciation and spirituality.

New methods have evolved from experiments at local community level. Their effectiveness in reducing violence or combating various social problems is widely recognized. The twenty-first century will need a varied range of talents and personalities even more than exceptionally gifted individuals, who are equally essential in any society. Concern with developing the imagination and creativity should also restore the value of oral culture and knowledge drawn from children's or adults' experiences.