Reza asked:

I'm a student and am actually doing a module on philosophy of education. I would like to have a better
idea on "learning to be".

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I take it that you are referring to the recent UNESCO report on education — the Delors report (? from
memory). It had four strands, as I recall — learning to know, learning to do, learning to be and
learning to live together.

I take the intention of these (roughly) to be about the traditional academic disciplines, about
vocational training, about personal development, and about social, moral and political issues. The
one that interests you, therefore, is the third — personal development.

I'm not entirely happy with this interpretation of the four strands. It is to my mind somewhat superficial.
Here's what it does to the third: it can be about engaging in physical education, learning sports and
leisure pastimes, perhaps drug and sex education, maybe even the fine arts subjects — those
subjects that are about forming leisure interests and about personal development. This superficial
interpretation of the four strands looks at the present curriculum and tries to split it up into the four
areas. The first gets the 'serious' subjects, the second those subjects that are narrowly focused on
the workplace, the fourth gets the 'citizenship' oriented subjects (those few that exist in the present
curriculum) and the third is a grab bag for anything left over. This includes those subjects that have
relatively recently appeared in school curricula because 'schools ought to be doing something about
...' — drugs or vandalism, or the lack of manners in young people, or youth suicide or... All of these
are worthy, but they are also often a shifting of responsibility from parents and communities onto
schools.

The way I would prefer to characterise the third strand, though — becoming a person — means it
would need to take center stage. All the others would contribute to it (although, as I will explain, this is
to understate the role of learning to live together).

This is because 'learning to be' now refers to becoming reflectively able to pull together the disparate
elements of one's self, and to create a coherent character of which one can be proud. Everything else
we do can contribute to this. Much of what is placed in the 'learning to be' area above then gets
shifted to the first two categories. We don't make the snobbish distinction between learning to know
about maths (serious, traditional, a 'proper' school subject) and about our health (marginal,
new-fangled, a 'trendy' subject), or between learning to do carpentry (get you a proper job) and
learning to 'do' footy (just fun).

Further, we have to take learning to live together more seriously, because in order to become
ourselves, we must learn in a community. This is the insight due initially to Lev Vygotsky: "What the
child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow". See Jerome Bruner's "Actual Minds,
Possible Worlds" (1986, ch. 5) for a good brief introduction, or my own "Philosophical Discussion in
Moral Education" (2001, Routledge) for a fuller treatment. As that title indicates, I believe that to
implement learning to be properly, we need to engage children in philosophical discussions in
classrooms through a community of inquiry.

Tim Sprod