A/71/358 importance to regulating the private schools operating in Haiti without any control by public authorities, and of the key importance of preserving education as a public good. III. Vision and concept of “lifelong learning” 33. UNESCO has been the progenitor of the vision and the concept of “lifelong learning”, and the Special Rapporteur recognizes the importance of drawing upon its work. In the 1970s, reflections by the international community under UNESCO auspices led to a shift in focus from education to learning. This was epitomized by the International Commission on the Development of Education, which in 1971 put forward a vision of “the learning society” and recommended as the guiding principle for educational policies that “every individual must be in a position to keep learning throughout his [or her] life”. Recognizing that “the idea of lifelong education is the keystone of the learning society”, 1 the Commission took the view that lifelong education was not an educational system but the principle on which the overall organization of a system was founded, and which should accordingly underlie the development of each of its component parts. 34. The Special Rapporteur commends the report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century entitled Learning: The Treasure Within (“Delors report”), which brought to the fore the need to rethink and broaden the notion of lifelong education as a continuous process and its importance in providing everyone the opportunity as “an ongoing process of improving knowledge and skills”. 2 Learning throughout life was perceived as “the heartbeat of society” 3 and was underpinned by a conception of education in which the formal system was linked to the informal system, in which age was not a barrier to the pursuit of education, and which was centred on four key pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. 35. At the turn of the millennium, the UNESCO World Education Report 2000 was devoted to the topic “The right to education: towards education for all throughout life”. It argued that “education” could not be taken to mean only “schooling” and that “the time to learn is now the whole lifetime”, thus expanding the concept of lifelong learning. Education is a “continuum, coextensive with life”,4 and in today’s globalizing world, it can no longer be defined by a reference to a particular period of life. “Lifelong education” and “lifelong learning” have come to represent in different ways the expectations that societies currently have of education and of the scope that should be provided for every individual to develop his or her potential. 5 __________________ 1 2 3 4 5 8/26 Edgar Faure and others, Learning to Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow (Paris, UNESCO; London, George G. Harrap, 1972), p. 181. UNESCO, Learning: The Treasure Within (Paris, 1996), p. 12. Ibid., p. 20. UNESCO, World Education Report 2000: The Right to Education — Towards Education for All throughout Life” (Paris, 2000), p. 19. Ibid., p. 55. 16-14910