WHAT ALL EUROPEAN SCHOOLCHILDREN SHOULD LEARN ABOUT EUROPE
Towards an interactive curriculum on European civilization for high school students
If Europeans are to understand their similarities and differences, they must be able to refer to a minimal but shared understanding of European civilization. Such a common base of knowledge must be conveyed at the most advanced stage of education that is still attended by - almost - all youngsters: the last years of high school, the age of sixteen and beyond. These young adolescents represent the target audience for a curriculum conveying what all European school children should learn about Europe.
But there are many obstacles on that road. The member states do not share a common history, and if they were part of the same events at all, it often was on different, hostile sides. The present pressures of globalization and Europeanization reinforce a chauvinist inward turn, even in many member states that have been democracies for most of the past century. The member states do not share a common history, and if they were part of the same events at all, it often was on different, hostile sides. They all have ministries of education and school boards that determine the curriculum, but these are quite unlikely to allow an outside agency to meddle with it, least of all the European Commission, which lacks the legal authority to do so in the first place.
There is an added complication. This is partly due to a parallax: the ethnocentric view of historians in the core countries, forgetful of the accomplishments, geniuses and great events of the countries at the margin.
That is why we must adopt a radically different approach to the dissemination of an idea of European civilization among young adolescents. A single curriculum of European history is bound to further ignite nationalist sentiment and regional reproach. It will be viewed as an alien imposition by the educational authorities of the member countries, and it is sure to be widely rejected before long. A canon, fixed, closed and imposed, runs against the very notion of the variety of European civilization it is meant to convey in the first place. In stead of this canonical perspective, we need an approach that focuses on the connections between scholars, reformers and artists across the continent. We must show the networks of correspondence and conversation that linked these innovators together and carried new ideas and practices across large distances. For each particular theme we should trace the contacts between people in different locations, linked by a common fascination. They wrote one another to share their ideas and traveled to meet and learn from one another. They left home to gain an audience for their inventions and learn about the innovations by their foreign colleagues. They returned home and introduced new ideas and practices in their own country.
In this approach, European civilization is not portrayed as a homogeneous process of dissemination from a few peaks of excellence towards the endless plains of mediocrity, but rather as a network of networks of correspondents and travelers, engaged in an ongoing and open conversation about the topics that made up this multifarious, diverse and yet coherent evolution of ideas and practices.
Since we are dealing with young people of the 21st century, the teaching materials must be not only verbal but also visual and auditive. The highly abstract ideas that take up the concept of civilization must be made more concrete by choosing specific examples that appeal to the youthful imagination and yet have parallels in their own environment.
We are living at the dawn of the age of the internet. The project can only succeed if it uses the potential of electronic communication to the fullest extent. At its heart is a website, where the programs devoted to each theme are available for down-loading. These must be captivating and inspiring audiovisual documentaries of, say, forty-five minutes each, produced with the highest level of professionalism and sophistication: ‘the state of the art’. Translation should be available in all the official languages of the Union.
The project has an added, an interactive dimension. Students, or teachers, or even schools may take up the challenge and do research on the local antecedents of one or even all of the themes.
The list of themes is tentative, provisional and essentially open. We need not draft a definitive inventory of European civilization, we must propose a dozen themes that may inspire and provoke, and prompt others to propose additional themes to be presented according to the formula outlined here.
At this point one may suggest several themes. For instance, one could speak about the European innovation of empirical science by using the lens as an example, as it was used in telescopes and microscopes and today it is the mobile phone of every youngster. Or one could approach the concept of ‘polyphony’ through the history of the piano, the predecessor of the electronic keyboard, so familiar to the teenagers of today.
Seemingly abstract themes such as the evolution of representative democracy and the rule of law may be presented by focusing on the ideas and techniques of popular elections and the curbing of royal prerogative, e.g. through habeas corpus. Or again, the twin themes of the market and civil society as relatively autonomous spheres could be illustrated by tracing the spread of money and the emergence of voluntary organizations such as political parties, peasant and labor unions.
We need not solve all problems at once, we need not complete the project in one stroke. In stead, we may try one step after another and see where it leads us. Thus, the website could become a gift from an older generation of Europeans to the youngest. No assembly is better suited to realize this project in a collaboration of its members and their friends than our most diverse and knowledgeable Academía Europea de Yuste.
WHAT ALL EUROPEAN SCHOOLCHILDREN SHOULD LEARN ABOUT EUROPE
Towards an interactive curriculum on European civilization for high school students
If Europeans are to understand their similarities and differences, they must be able to refer to a minimal but shared understanding of European civilization. Such a common base of knowledge must be conveyed at the most advanced stage of education that is still attended by - almost - all youngsters: the last years of high school, the age of sixteen and beyond. These young adolescents represent the target audience for a curriculum conveying what all European school children should learn about Europe.
But there are many obstacles on that road. The member states do not share a common history, and if they were part of the same events at all, it often was on different, hostile sides. The present pressures of globalization and Europeanization reinforce a chauvinist inward turn, even in many member states that have been democracies for most of the past century. The member states do not share a common history, and if they were part of the same events at all, it often was on different, hostile sides. They all have ministries of education and school boards that determine the curriculum, but these are quite unlikely to allow an outside agency to meddle with it, least of all the European Commission, which lacks the legal authority to do so in the first place.
There is an added complication. This is partly due to a parallax: the ethnocentric view of historians in the core countries, forgetful of the accomplishments, geniuses and great events of the countries at the margin.
That is why we must adopt a radically different approach to the dissemination of an idea of European civilization among young adolescents. A single curriculum of European history is bound to further ignite nationalist sentiment and regional reproach. It will be viewed as an alien imposition by the educational authorities of the member countries, and it is sure to be widely rejected before long. A canon, fixed, closed and imposed, runs against the very notion of the variety of European civilization it is meant to convey in the first place. In stead of this canonical perspective, we need an approach that focuses on the connections between scholars, reformers and artists across the continent. We must show the networks of correspondence and conversation that linked these innovators together and carried new ideas and practices across large distances. For each particular theme we should trace the contacts between people in different locations, linked by a common fascination. They wrote one another to share their ideas and traveled to meet and learn from one another. They left home to gain an audience for their inventions and learn about the innovations by their foreign colleagues. They returned home and introduced new ideas and practices in their own country.
In this approach, European civilization is not portrayed as a homogeneous process of dissemination from a few peaks of excellence towards the endless plains of mediocrity, but rather as a network of networks of correspondents and travelers, engaged in an ongoing and open conversation about the topics that made up this multifarious, diverse and yet coherent evolution of ideas and practices.
Since we are dealing with young people of the 21st century, the teaching materials must be not only verbal but also visual and auditive. The highly abstract ideas that take up the concept of civilization must be made more concrete by choosing specific examples that appeal to the youthful imagination and yet have parallels in their own environment.
We are living at the dawn of the age of the internet. The project can only succeed if it uses the potential of electronic communication to the fullest extent. At its heart is a website, where the programs devoted to each theme are available for down-loading. These must be captivating and inspiring audiovisual documentaries of, say, forty-five minutes each, produced with the highest level of professionalism and sophistication: ‘the state of the art’. Translation should be available in all the official languages of the Union.
The project has an added, an interactive dimension. Students, or teachers, or even schools may take up the challenge and do research on the local antecedents of one or even all of the themes.
The list of themes is tentative, provisional and essentially open. We need not draft a definitive inventory of European civilization, we must propose a dozen themes that may inspire and provoke, and prompt others to propose additional themes to be presented according to the formula outlined here.
At this point one may suggest several themes. For instance, one could speak about the European innovation of empirical science by using the lens as an example, as it was used in telescopes and microscopes and today it is the mobile phone of every youngster. Or one could approach the concept of ‘polyphony’ through the history of the piano, the predecessor of the electronic keyboard, so familiar to the teenagers of today.
Seemingly abstract themes such as the evolution of representative democracy and the rule of law may be presented by focusing on the ideas and techniques of popular elections and the curbing of royal prerogative, e.g. through habeas corpus. Or again, the twin themes of the market and civil society as relatively autonomous spheres could be illustrated by tracing the spread of money and the emergence of voluntary organizations such as political parties, peasant and labor unions.
We need not solve all problems at once, we need not complete the project in one stroke. In stead, we may try one step after another and see where it leads us. Thus, the website could become a gift from an older generation of Europeans to the youngest. No assembly is better suited to realize this project in a collaboration of its members and their friends than our most diverse and knowledgeable Academía Europea de Yuste.