4.15 Changing cultures is a slow and difficult process and will not succeed in isolation from what occurs in the rest of society. The lifelong learning culture we envisage will be part of a wider set of changes in society, both contributing to their achievement and drawing from their progressive implementation. We see a series of shifts, over time, aimed at substituting inclusion for exclusion, achievement for failure, opportunity for good fortune, diversity for uniformity, a mass for an elite, the many for the few, and pleasure where there is currently dread.

4.16 As the Government prepares its own vision of a learning culture for all and of the development of a learning society, we commend to it the conclusions of the UNESCO commission on education for the twenty-first century, chaired by Jacques Delors. Learning throughout life, it declared, will be based upon the four pillars of learning to live together, learning to know, learning to do and learning to be. Education, it asserted "is at the heart of both personal and community development; its mission is to enable each of us, without exception, to develop our talents to the full and to realise our creative potential, including responsibility for our own lives and achievement of our personal aims".

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