The Four Pillars of Education in Times of COVID-19

 

The Four Pillars of Education in Times of COVID-19

By Dr. Gilberto Hernández Quirós

gilberto.hernandez.quiros@una.cr

UNA Nicoya, Chorotega Campus

Education is such a powerful word that may be synonymous and conducive towards trends on continuous improvement, lifelong learning, and successful endeavors since the very early stages of life.  We all wish to learn, know, have access to input and insights of the most various kinds.  Most importantly, we all wish to be better informed and possess the knowledge to express factual opinions, share understanding, make suggestions and decisions ideally in views of improving one’s quality of life and that of our families, friends, country and communities in which we live.  Education is also synonymous of optimism, tolerance, compassion, self-control, patience and a burning desire to advance towards brighter walks of life.

However, not everyone has access or opportunities to study and pursue a career and this poses the question whether education is for all.   UNESCO, which stands for the United Nations  Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, came up with the production of a declaration of “Education for All” (EFA) where four pillars were identified as the foundations of renewal and reform of education during a meeting in 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand between the so-called E-Nine whose members are Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan. 

These four pillars are the following and my prove to be effective in times of COVID-19.

Learning to Know:

Children, adolescents, young adults and practically everyone should focus on the concept of basic and general knowledge to be able to work on specific areas in accordance with changes in science and technology and socio-economic activities.  This has been evident during the outbreak of the coronavirus which has raise many problems such as ineffective learning.  Therefore, we must adhere to three aspects:  what is learned, how we can make people know and learn, and who is doing the learning.  Several online platforms (such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meets and WhatsApp to name a few) rose to the challenge to mediate education technologically so that we would all continue learning to know.

Learning to do:

This learning concept encompasses thinking skill, initiate and honed sense.  With the declaration of the global emergency to the coronavirus outbreak, the lockdown and all its repercussions, we all had to unlearn and relearn to do things in different ways so we would be able to survive and wait for a vaccine to arrive and fight off the virus.  Of course, this required creativity, hard work and a positive attitude to rethink ways how on how to do things differently.

Learning to live together:

The pandemic made us all separate, social distance and mistrust most if not everyone.  However, as a worldwide society we all had to understand that we were all in this together regardless of culture, geography, or ethnicity.  We had to learn to live together and protect each other to do away with virus and hopefully come back to that normal that we all have been longing for and now appreciate more than ever.

Learning to be:

We have the potential to actualize ourselves through freedom and wisdom to make choices with a strong sense of responsibility despite weaknesses.  Through the pandemic, we had to learn to be patient, cooperative, creative, self-focused plus many other ways to reinvent ourselves and avoid breaking apart or have plans falling through due to the pandemic. 

In short

In learning to do, we adapt and change form skills to competence put into practice.  Those skills should enable us to rethink and reinvent the way we do things during this pandemic.  In learning to live together we should be able to create awareness and understanding with a sense appreciation, cooperation, and conflict resolution.  In learning to live together (during COVID-19 and forever more) we should build a genuine and lasting culture peace geared towards the development of understanding of history, traditions and spiritual values and appreciation of our interdependence.  In learning to be, we are presented with the role of education in developing all dimensions of the complete person to achieve physical, intellectual, emotional, and ethical integration.  It refers to the overall development of the human person as individual and as a member of the society.  In learning to know, we must develop our concentration, memory, skills, and ability to think.  The role of teachers is to act as facilitators, catalysts, monitors, and evaluators of learning.