educational quality

An important issue that EU must deal with is the unemployment of young graduates. The problem of employability raises the question of adapting the supply from the educational sector to the demand of the labour market. EU should invest in "research and development" where there is an insufficient amount of students and improve perspectives of graduates in humanities.

I suffered under the British system, in which language teaching is inadequate and too late to be effective. It would be good for all European schoolchildren to start learning a language at age six or under - and for everyone to gain some kind of competence in at least two of the three official languages (English, French and German).

This would suck of course for the minority language speakers, who would have to take on two foreign languages, but in some countries (eg. the Netherlands) it's already common. Besides, add up all the native speakers of English, French and German and you have over half the EU, so most people would just have to learn one new language.

Where to find the teachers is another issue...

REFRAMING CITIZENSHIP and EDUCATION IN NATIONAL AND SUPRANATIONAL CONTEXT

does so by taking into account common norms and
common targets, calculating the consequences of its
actions in relation to the broader picture, the social
network of relations in which it is placed. The citizen
is in that sense always a co-citizen. The rights and
the needs of the individual, in the context of liberal
individualism, and the bonds with the community,
the sense of belonging, the attribute of a member of
a society, a societal group, identity, in the context of
the societal, are all located within the concept of
citizenship.
Thus, the “stability of contemporary democracy
is not only dependent on the justice of its basic institutions,
but also on the characteristics and the stances
of its citizens; e.g. in their sense on identity, or on
the way with which they understand potentially antagonistic
forms of national, local, ethnic, or religious
identities. Their ability to tolerate and cooperate with
others that are different from them, their desire to
participate in the political process in order to promote
the public good […]” (Κymlicka 2005, 402).

However, if it is the citizen that participates, recognizes
the whole and becomes recognized as
part/member of it, then, in contemporary conditions
where political power is diffused from the local society
and the State to supranational unions and hyper-
, supra-, national or interstate financial entities and
enterprises, this ability of recognition demands
training and its context a new discussion. On the
other hand, can a context of citizenship be grounded
on the basis of the antagonism of the European economy
against other national and supranational economies,
as it is put forward by the target of Lisbon?
Is the citizen solely a entrepreneurial antagonist?
Citizenship (European, national) is instituted and
affirmed on the sense of belonging and in the cocitizens
that oversee and control political power.
The education of citizens that are called to recognize the same value to the European
and national designs for social cohesion, as the one
ascribed to them when they are being used. Consequently,the issues in Education for equality
in representation and access also concern the knowledge
of the ways with which dichotomies are being
produced; exclusion/ inclusion – skilled/unskilledtrained/
untrained – literal/ illiteral – socialized/
marginalized (Rajchman:1995,Connolly:1987, Popkewitz).

From the perspective of expanding such dichotomist
constructs it is asserted that the contradictory
significations towards which the European texts of
educational policies are moving, and specifically in
regards to social skills, are primarily the result of a
wider shift of European educational and training
policies between employability and citizenship, or,
to be more precise, they are the result of the colonization
of the social from the work place. In similar
manner, within the given texts reading and writing
(traditional ‘basic skills’) are conceived as a neutral
package of de-connected skills, that are detached
from their social dimension, that is literacy as a socially
embedded practice, while citizenship fluctuates
between a passive version, that exhausts its interest
in the information of a citizen’s rights and obligations,
or the functioning of parliamentary governance,
and in an active one, that empowers the
citizen to participate in public life, and potentially,
to invent alternative ways for the functioning of
democracy.

The character of all of the previously mentioned concepts
and meanings, is not taken as granted, but that is
rather open and antagonistic in regards to its definition.
It is made apparent that the educational interventions
in Education for the development of social skills of active citizenship in respect to literacy
can be designed as an integral part of social action.
The proposed perspective has consequences in all of
the sectors of educational intervention: from the
thematology of the units, and the physiognomy of
educational materials to the pedagogy and evaluation.
Such an endeavor demands a shift from the contemporary
paradigm, that is primarily based on economic
efficiency, to the redefinition of adult education
within the wider context of democracy, social justice
and citizens’ attribute, so that the citizen, the literate
citizen, “can be present and active in its struggle to
reinstate its voice, its history and its future” (Giroux
1988, 65).
In other words, it underlines the need for
re-politicizing the interventions in formal and informalstructures of education.

References

Giroux, H.A. 1995. Radical pedagogy as cultural politics. Beyond the discourse of critique and antiutopianism. In McLaren(ed.) Critical pedagogy and Predatory Culture. Oppositional politics in apostmodern era. London: Routledge
Kymlicka, W. 2005. [H Politiki Philosophia tis Epochis mas] ΗΠολιτικήΦιλοσοφίατηςΕποχήςμας. {Transl]Mτφρ. Γ.Μολυβάς, Athens:[Polis] ΠΟΛΙΣ (in Greek). [Kymlicka, W. (1990) Contemporary Political PhilosophyOxford:Oxford University Press (Clarendon) {in English}]
Popkewitz, T., Brennan, M. (Eds). 1998. Foucault’s Challenge: discourse, knowledge and power in education. NewYork:Teachers College Press.
Rajchman, J. (Ed.). 1995. The Identity in Question. London: Routledge.
Connolly, M.1987. Politics and Ambiguity. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press.

Evangelos Intzidis

University of the Aegean

 To improve quality education, all schools in the EU must use the International Language (Esperanto) : it is a second language for everybody, after the native language ; Esperanto is The bridge between languages and cultures.

The quality of education is better when teachers use Esperanto, because pupils have a way to study, to work, to "see" their own native language, and because they have contacts with a lot of other pupils (Esperanto-speakers) around the world.

Esperanto is much easier than any national language. It is more equivalent than any national language because it isn´t for special population (english is for british people and german for people in Germany and Austria). Esperanto is language for everybody all over the world! And everybody can say "esperanto is also my language" although it would not be mother tongue.

HI I AGREE TOTALLY AND THE EU SHOULD  COMPETE MORE WITH USA  TO HAVE THE BEST UNIVERASITIES IN THE WORLD BE MORE ATTRACTIVE ON A GLOBAL STAGE THE EU BLUE CARD IS GREAT BUT NOT MUCH PR ABOUT THAT WHY????  WE NEED TO BE COMPETATIVE IN A GLOBAL WORLD AND BE A SYMBOL A SOFT POWER IN THE WORLD A GREEN ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY HIGH TECH STANDARDS UNION GREAT FR JOHNNY B .

 I also request Esperanto to be teached as the first foreign language for everyone, this at the primary school: this learning will be of the very big benefit for all of them as it is concluded ( some tests have been done yet and some at still in process such as " springboard to languages" in England ) that there is no failures in learning that language. Also, that teaching is easy to teach & to learn so, much less expensive as any other language. So doing, later, any pupil will have much more time ( except for the English's as to day learning foreign languages is not mandatory for them) for learning the language he would like to (italian, chinese,...)    I believe that the government who will take such a decision will allow "a big step for the humanity" ( going on the moon was essentially a big step for the technology )

Note: Bresil plans starting that at school.