25 July 2024 – On the 45th anniversary of the report No Limits to Learning, we are exploring the transformative power of learning. We talked to Gianfranco Bologna, member of The Club of Rome and Honorary President of Scientific Community at WWF Italy, about how the book came about and why it still remains relevant today.
What was the motivation behind creating No Limits to Learning?
I had an extraordinary friendship with Aurelio Peccei, the founder of The Club of Rome. In the early 70s, his main focus was to understand the dramatic negative effects deriving from our continuous and indefinite material growth in a world with defined natural limits. This was the subject of The Limits to Growth and the first few reports that followed. But Peccei and the Executive Committee of The Club of Rome soon realised that beyond understanding these limits, we also needed to learn how to govern the complex societies and systems that make up our world. And to learn to govern them, it is essential to learn to govern ourselves. So No Limits to Learning came from the need to support the cultural development of humanity and help us learn to adapt to the new world and challenges that we created.
How was the report created?
Making the report was an experiment in learning in itself. The three authors, James Botkin, associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at the time, Mahdi Elmandjra, professor at Mohamed V University in Morocco, and Mircea Malitza former Minister of Education of Romania, coordinated three working groups of experts and consultants representing different cultural areas and disciplines. Blending the variety of approaches and opinions from different parts of the world was a challenge in itself that helped inform the learning framework of the project.
What is the most important concept of the book?
The report had the merit of making people understand the need to shift from our dominant conservative learning methods towards innovative learning that takes into account the complexity of the systems we seek to understand and govern. In traditional learning, we only react to problems, and sometimes it is already too late to implement solutions. Innovative learning on the other hand uses anticipation and participation that prepares individuals and societies to act together in new situations, especially those that have been created by humanity itself. Therefore, innovative learning is an indispensable prerequisite for resolving our global challenges.
What was the role of the report in the history of The Club of Rome?
The report broadened the objectives of The Club of Rome, shifting from simply promoting models for addressing environmental, economic, and social problems towards promoting the training of citizens so they are capable of facing and solving the challenges of the future in their full humanity. These aims are echoed in many of the current initiatives of the organisation, including The Fifth Element program which is centred around learning from each other and asking better questions about the future of humanity.
Why is a book written 45 years ago still so important today?
In the past decades, the environmental and social threats that we are facing have worsened profoundly. To emerge from this crisis, innovative learning is perhaps even more important now than it was 45 years ago. It helps us to better understand the complexity of our world and our reality. It also implies that we are the producers of this reality, and can help us take responsibility for our planet, respecting nature and our fellow humans. As described in the report, making learning participatory, anticipatory, innovative, and integrative would help move us toward desirable futures.
This interview series is part of a collaborative project between The Fifth Element initiative by The Club of Rome, Soka Gakkai, and the World Environmental Education Congress dedicated to the regenerative power of learning. The report No Limits to Learning published in 1979 explores new forms of learning that are essential for addressing global issues and bridging the gap between the complexity of our world and our capacity to cope with it.
