This Paper focuses on three of the major issues facing our society today, ones which are likely to be key battlegrounds in the struggle to shape the coming era: multiculturalism and diversity, citizenship and participation, and the Knowledge / Information Society. It reveals fundamental connections between the demands we are grappling with in those fields. It then goes on to suggest an approach to learning, named here for the first time as Open Source Learning, which aims to equip people to engage positively with all three of these major challenges on a fundamental level.