Fabricating Europe: The Formation of an Education Space

FABRICATING EUROPE

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Fabricating Europe The Formation of an Education Space

Edited by

António Nóvoa and

Martin Lawn

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS NEW YORK, BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW

eBook ISBN: Print ISBN:

0-306-47561-8 1-4020-0801-5

©2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow Print ©2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht All rights reserved No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without written consent from the Publisher Created in the United States of America Visit Kluwer Online at: and Kluwer's eBookstore at:

http://kluweronline.com http://ebooks.kluweronline.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Fabricating Europe: The Formation of an Education Space António Nóvoa and Martin Lawn

1

FOREWORD: Space and Learning Goran Therborn

15

CHAPTER 1: Borderless Education: Imagining a European Education Space in a Time of Brands and Networks Martin Lawn

19

IMAGINING SPACE CHAPTER 2: Education and the European Space of Flows David Coulby

35

CHAPTER 3: Notes towards the Definition of a European Educational Space Franco Ferrarotti

47

CHAPTER 4: Locating European Identity in Education Yasemin Soysal

55

GLOBALIZING SPACE CHAPTER 5: Reterritorializing Educational Import: Explorations into the Politics of Educational Borrowing Gita Steiner-Khamsi

69

CHAPTER 6: Returning to Europe: The Use of External References in Reconceptualizing Minority Education in Post-Soviet Latvia Iveta Silova

87

CHAPTER 7: Quality Education and Training for Tomorrow’s Europe: A Contrapuntal Reading of European Commission Documents Ronald Sultana

109

CHAPTER 8: Ways of Thinking about Education in Europe António Nóvoa

131

CHAPTER 9: Coda: Europe, Social Space and the Politics of Knowledge Terri Seddon

157

Index

163

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

INTRODUCTION

FABRICATING EUROPE The Formation of an Education Space

1. INVITATION TO ENGAGE This book emerged out of an invitational seminar, which took place in Lisbon, supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation. The purpose of the meeting was to create a discussion between invited participants on the possibility of a European public space for education/public spaces interweaved with education: the novel situation for educators in Europe, which, it was felt, needed a careful exploration. Members of the meeting were invited because of the critical contribution they had made to an exploratory theoretical understanding of the current situation which educators and citizens in Europe were finding themselves in. Expressed in the invitation to the Lisbon meeting was a core idea, an ambiguous and fuzzy idea, of a European educational space, created by transnational governance, networks, cultural and economic projects. This is a new idea, recording the emergence of particular discourses and practices, but it is not clear what it is, even as it is being formed. It is being produced by national state collaboration, European Union (EU) guidelines and products, academic networks, social movements, business links and sites, city “states,” virtual connections and through this book, ourselves. Yet, the apparent creation of this contemporary space of European policy-making and networking was not a subject of study. As usual, it appeared as a footnote to the normative approach in which an examination of education as a system is strongly bounded by the traditions, laws and practices of the nation state boundaries in which it is seen as existing. National and professional identity, political organization, policy formation and public/private markets are all viewed as contained within the borders of the state. Our concern here is with the new possibilities to be imagined and discerned in the European public and institutional spaces and the lack of impetus within the broad area of educational studies to meet the task of creating analyses and responses. There is no significant literature within the broad area of the social sciences about the new ways in which education, seen in its widest sense, is being formed in Europe, apart from the emergence of cultural, even anthropological, studies of Europeanization and its effects (Therborn 1995; Shore, 2000; Bellier & Wilson, 2000). Gradually, articles and sometimes books focusing on particular education areas, such as the European dimension in the curriculum, teacher education or

1 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 1-13. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

2

INTRODUCTION

vocational training, reflecting long-time priorities of the EU, are being published. Yet, as a subject of study in itself, there has been surprisingly little produced on the gradual emergence of a new space of cultural communication, policy creation and implementation, levels of networking and professional and governmental relations. However, within the other fields of study, education may appear: for example, within political studies; within discussions on regionalism; within network theory; within cultural analyses of city links and economic development and within studies of governance and citizenship. Within these areas, “education” becomes a site of study in terms of wider agendas. The area of “education” may be viewed as an arena for the construction of fresh European educational identities, significant crossnational organizations, new professional affinities and innovative conduits for mutuality. It may provide the opportunity for a legitimation of inequality, for neoliberal solutions, for national or race-based opposition and a strengthening of official nationalist cultures. Europe may be a site of opposition to globalization and a home for new civic spaces. It may not. The problematic explored within this book is threefold. There is a focus on educational studies, on new forms of theorizing about education and upon the reconnection of education/social science work on education. Education, as a field of study, appears to be showing signs of disconnection from the broadly defined area of the social sciences, a relation that was always struggled for in the universities. It is making a recast appearance within business studies, social policy, vocational formation and national policy discourse, loosened from its classical humanist, theoretical and creative spaces of the past. This is not uniform but a discernible trend is appearing. 2. BACKGROUND

The emergence of an interest in the area of education came slowly to politicians primarily involved in an economic and trading agreement, and clearly emerged out of Council of Europe and cultural agreements. By the early 1960s, a combination of meetings by groups of education ministers and their officials had created a forum of discussion and action around common issues between states on education and related topics (youth and sport, higher education, research etc.) By 1971, using a movable description within the 1957 Treaty of Rome regarding cooperation within the field of education and a focus on vocational training, a meeting of education ministers proposed to give attention to education as a field of cultural construction in the new Europe, congruent with the processes of integration. In other words, a cultural and education strategy was produced which would begin the task of constructing Europe as a common space, and the role of education in this task was seen as a necessary step. The legal basis was important, as it was not clear if one existed for this important initiative. Gradually, the pace and scope of educational actions grew, overcoming problems of mandate, so by the late 1970s, they included support for study meetings, the European dimension of education, mobility of students, bilingualism and the compilation of statistics. Involving a “vast number of pilot projects, meetings, seminars, and the like” and an “extensive

FABRICATING EUROPE

3

involvement of administrators of educational systems” (Beukel, 2001, p. 129), these activities began to merge into each other, even if “in practice it has been very difficult to make clear distinctions among vocational, professional, and university training, continuing education, and primary and secondary education” (Sprokkereef, 1995, p. 341). By the time of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, “education” was formally recognized as a major responsibility of the EU and not just the member states, although not without unease: “The Community shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between member states, and if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action, while fully respecting the responsibility of the member states for the content of teaching and the organization of education systems and their cultural and linguistic diversity” (article 126). This was followed by a major reorganization of the EU education programmes, which were getting larger and wider. Diversity and subsidiarity were still the key descriptors of the education area of the EU but the relentless move forward into a lifelong learning zone, an educational space, and a place for quality education, was taken a step further in the Lisbon European Council in 2000. A knowledge-based economy was seen as demanding a timetable for goal achievement, indicators of best practice and national adoption of European guidelines into actions. The Lisbon conclusions implicitly give the Union the mandate to develop a common interest approach in education going beyond national diversities as can already be seen in the demand to Ministers of Education to debate common objectives of educational systems. This mandate will lead to an increase in the European dimension of national educational policies. (Hingel, 2001, pp. 15 & 19)

The Lisbon assembly began an annual series of meetings in which progress on achieving a dynamic economy was evaluated and a detailed work programme instituted. However, a reliance on policy adaptation and political study, using beliefs and norms, policy paradigms and policy elites, is not very useful in the education area. Even quite recently, it could be stated that: A European education policy does not exist. A fully fledged EC [European Community] education policy was not foreseen by the EC’s founding fathers and most would argue that there is no need for it. (Sprokkereef [1989] 1995, p. 345) All indications are that the stimulating and supportive role the EC has played in education over the last decades is being institutionalised, while any scope for future expansion into this field has been effectively removed. (Sprokkereef [1989] 1995, p. 346)

This is a reasonable point if the protestations of national politicians and the sparse evidence of EU regulation is taken into account, but two points have made this analysis redundant. Firstly, the pace of reform, that is, of EU effectiveness and integration, is rapidly increasing, especially since the late 1990s and the Lisbon European Council in 2000. Two commentators, working together in Directorate A, DG Education and Culture in the Commission, in the policy unit, published papers in 2001 which pointed out the significance of the Lisbon context to education:

4

INTRODUCTION it is a sign of the progress made in the European Union context that we have arguably gone further than ever in international cooperation on core aspects of educational policy. (Massangioli, 2001, p. 6) But the combined effect of this collective process of advancing on a broad front will surely be the gradual emergence over time of a “European educational area” in which knowledge and lifelong learning play a central role and in which ideas will be able to circulate as easily as goods and capital. (Massangioli, 2001, pp. 6–7) What is presently happening in co-operation in the field of education tells us, that not only is a European Space of Education in its making, common principles of education are being agreed upon between Member States, leading logically to a European Model of Education. (Hingel, 2001, p. 4)

So, the first point is about the speed of change today. The second point is just as significant, however. A different kind of analysis would have allowed other important features of the European education policy area to be revealed earlier, and its depth and significance recognized. Education is viewed in EU-based policy analyses as a minor area of policy, much less significant than the key areas of integration and trade, like law and economic studies. But from a cultural point of view, which recognizes the major shifts and problems of transnational governance, education has a new prominence as the arena in which identity and legitimacy can be created. It is to this approach that we now turn. 3. FABRICATING EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SPACE

The tendency in European political studies has been to view “Europeanization” as a distinct process, produced by central institutions, which becomes incorporated into local contexts in the following ways: processes of construction, diffusion and institutionalization of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, ways of doing things, and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the making of EU decisions and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures and public policies. (Radaelli, 2000, p. 4)

In this view, the emphasis is on forms of integration, on incorporation, adaptation and occasional diversity, with a focus on the mediating actors who move between centre and locality. We extend this version of Europeanization to approach the concept as linking social structures, networks and actors at the local, national and European levels. As a consequence, the concept of “Europeanization” will be used to describe and explore the formation of new European identities within emergent policy networks, leading to the emergence of the European education space, a fuzzy but significant concept in education policy. 3.1 Governing “European Education”

These emergent policy networks seek to manage the tensions created by marketization, while seeking to modernize educational processes and systems. The

FABRICATING EUROPE

5

concept of the policy network is an explanatory device to understand the links between state and society in the enactment of policy. The idea reflects the increasing complexity of governance, involving a range of partners from state and civil society, in informal and interdependent relations, exchanging resources and knowledge cooperatively. As centralized, hierarchical organizations failed to shift with the changes in communications and complexity, so networks became useful as a description of emergent processes, as an analytical tool and as indicative of a profound alteration in the structure of the polity. In this sense, policy networks are the key policy form and their mapping is critical to the analysis of changing educational governance. The EU has itself been characterized as a “network of networks” (Leonard, 1998, p. 7). The governance of Europe has specific problems and forms. It can be conceptualized as a multilevel system of governance where private and public actors at the transnational, national and local level deal with problems of a lack of central authority and a dispersal of resources. To create and manage policy, a range of partners, at different levels of government, has to be negotiated with; they exist within complex networks, which span intergovernmental, producer, professional and expert forms. They may represent highly organized industry or voluntary sector groups or loose, but important, specialist academic associations. Increasingly, it appears that these networks, woven into sets of linked relations, represent a form of governance unique in Europe, crossing state boundaries, old government divisions and traditions of work and administration. The informality of their organization, the complexity of their knowledge relations and exchanges, the hybridity of their institutional association, combine with their overall interdependence to produce a distinctive form of governance in Europe. This form of governance in education cannot be understood as simply instrumental in transmitting policy or in mediating it. Policy is made in this process, within the web of its decentred and plural forms (Mayntz, 1994, p. 5}. We suggest that Europeanization of education is an outcome of this multifaceted form of governance, and that its purposes are pedagogic: through its processes it builds a Europeanized policy in education. The project of defining and expanding a new public space in Europe is also one of building a new cultural space, a process which is largely ignored by many of its architects and critics because of their focus on the political and economic forms the “New Europe” will take (Bellier & Wilson, 2000, p. 6). These policy actors can be taken to epitomize the new global contexts of policy-making; with their transformed identities, they appear as cultural hybrids and pioneers without territory (see Hannerz, 1996; Featherstone, 1990; Shore, 2000). Within the broad field of Europeanization, and the specific field of EU integration, they act as “agents of European consciousness” (Shore, 2000, p. 26). The new education policy space can be treated as more than a regulatory arena—as a space in which new European meanings in education are constructed.

6

INTRODUCTION 3.2 Fabricating Identities

This collection of articles represents different aspects of an innovative approach to the European policy area in education, growing out of early papers offering critical analyses of aspects of European education policy as an area of study (Coulby & Jones, 1995; Sultana, 1995, 1996; Nóvoa, 1996, 2000; Coulby, 2000). They represent a determined and cumulative attempt to begin work on a cultural politics of education in Europe, which is characterized by a concern for governance and culture as a socially structured practice. Culture is a key concept in the way the book approaches the study of educational policy. It is studied through the way in which the concept exerts a key function in the Europeanizing process: policy documents are threaded through with the “culture” used as the distinguishing feature of the civilizing European process, as a procedure for the creation of an innovative European organizational model, as a core symbolic element of a modern European identity and as a shared consciousness. Apart from the formation of the European economic zone and common market, cultural symbolism and production is the hub of the new Europe. A crucial legitimating factor in the governance of Europe, the transnational stage in which the nation states have produced, is the formation of new categories of European, sharing a narrative of the past and an obsession with the future, a replication of the nineteenth-century processes of nationhood. This new categorization takes place in a number of ways, via the school curriculum, Eurostat statistics and exemplar texts. The construction of an imagined community of Europe (Anderson, 1983) is managed by the plethora of cultural statements which emerge from Brussels, national governments and European pressure groups and are sometimes opposed by newspapers and other agents, with alternative narratives invoked. Education is the key means by which new identities or missions or spatial locations are assigned or produced. Distinctions between groups and nations are rapidly formed or dissolved, a task which education also takes part in through restructured curricula or textbooks. These modernizing cultural narratives produce an imagined space, a Europe newly created, with a mission, and incorporating older, national artefacts and symbols in a new form. Europe than becomes a place and a project through which the “citizens” of transnational governance emerge. Forgetfulness, silences and exclusion are the handmaidens of this process as well, but they have to be searched for. A cultural politics of this process would not only analyze the use of these arguments of the “new Europe” but the methods of their production and distribution, their differential relations to audiences, their contestation and promotion. The creation of collective forms of social consciousness about Europe, “our state,” is a direct result of this historical context in which transnational governance has to be produced. The carriers and mediators of Europeanization, the policy professionals, are a focus for this approach as well: they translate, integrate, obscure, disregard, promote and benefit from the multifaceted aspects of this policy process. The movement of European regulation and trade policies into local and national discourse so that the global appears in the vernacular is a sleight of hand of the mediating policy professional, a process which can be seen clearly in “peripheral” or

FABRICATING EUROPE

7

candidate states. Local modernization uses European arguments and symbols. Most of all, “Europe is the future” and to sustain that view, the past has to be discounted or superseded. Throughout this analysis there is a focus on the actors and institutions who steer, enforce or persuade “others” about the practices and purposes of the new governance. There is an interest in their formal practices, in committees, programmes and national regulation, and on the way that a governing discourse about Europe is produced. It is this production of reason that is central to the new practice of governance in Europe. It is effective because it is no longer associated with national bureaucracies but it is in constant circulation between transnational and national sites, emerges without display and without, at times, clear points of attribution. A concentration on the modern Europeanizing discourse in education recognizes that it is governed in different ways in European nation states and that formal governmental structures are always linked through informal civil society relations. Similarities of discourse, especially in the constant references to globalization and internationalization, disguise local modernizing influences, different traditions of governing and the need to externalize the problem before producing a national or European variant. Governing is based more and more on the use of commercial and private partners and a recognition that the state is no longer the main arbiter and sole provider of the economic and social order. Collective identities, shared cultural institutions and symbols, and a distinctive mission are all part of the new European governance, and a crucial part of the task given to education. The contemporary agenda of European education is not dissimilar to its past, still focused on complex training issues and in reforming mass schooling. It shares a common discourse with the internationalization of educational performance and evaluation, yet it strives to develop a distinctive voice. The replacement of education by learning, as a key organizing concept in Europeanizing education, by means of lifelong learning goals and individual responsibilities, is connected, in this discourse, to questions of European citizenship. A European citizen is one who engages with lifelong learning. In this way, a specific voice and identity is evolving; a particular production of a modern governing European rationale is established and circulated. Although it appears to be clear where Europe is, it is not. It is a moving feast, capable of shape shifting, produced almost daily to reconfigure real or imagined landscapes. Territorial boundaries are unclear: the constant reference to Europe is a process of including and excluding, of confirming the project and requiring acquiescence, and of reimagining geography and relations. Early sensitivities on territory and cultural inheritance have been replaced by speed and inventiveness in placing the “state” in question within a newly imagined European space. The place of education, especially the considerable work over several decades by historians on school textbooks, is central to this process, even though formally education is not the responsibility of the EU. In place of sensitive issues on subsidiarity and central (Brussels) intervention, greater emphasis has emerged on text and discourse in education and on networking. Networking takes place within nation states striving for political advantage within the EU, but it occurs with greater significance

8

INTRODUCTION

(perhaps) among a greater range of policy professionals associated with education, inside the unbounded space of policy-making operating within multiple spheres: and it is created through the activities of a growing contingent of social and political actors, who engage in the discourse of Europe and deploy strategic action—with or without institutionalized contact with the EU. (Soysal, this volume, p. 000)

The sum of this space of flows in education can be portrayed as a space comprised of organizational units, networks, where territorial proximity has been replaced by network (virtual) proximity, and its actors exchange information and expertise within trust relations. This European educational space is the current space of governance where elites of different kinds, in private and professional spheres, act as a source of power, trying to determine the evolving and unstable process of Europeanization. 3.3 Spatialization of European Education As governance has moved from interstate relations to transnational networks, the space inhabited by the policy actors, and they way they imagine this space, become crucial to understanding the significance of “the new European educational space.” They are engaged in building networks, reflecting on experience and imagining this place as its significant actors. Their simultaneous sense of belonging and of otherness within a European policy space reflects an evolving arena of cultural relations, with its own discursive forms and symbols. They act as mediators, negotiators, networkers, interpreters, conduits and experts. The process by which they ascribe meaning to concepts of European education policy is a process in which EU institutions and their networking milieus produce new forms of culture and identity and alter old forms: The EU is creating its own culture, which we see as sets of political institutions, behaviours and ideas which often coincide with, and often contradict, national and other local forms of culture, but which have, as one very important result, the shaping of identities throughout Europe and the identities of Europe outside its boundaries. (Bellier & Wilson, 2000, p. 8)

This space is not to be confused with a political entity; it is not democratic, nor, while dependent on the production of reason, does it necessarily involve dialogue. Europeanization, produced through policy networks and policy actors, operates, we suggest, as a new form of governance, creating a new policy area in which a process of the institutionalization of education through discourse, networks and texts, is taking place. Yet, this process is hidden in the formal EU policy discourse and in conventional studies preoccupied with the rationality and effectiveness of its institutions. 4. ORGANISATION AND CONTENT In “Borderless Education: Imagining a European Education Space in a Time of Brands and Networks”, Martin Lawn focuses upon the idea of borderless education,

FABRICATING EUROPE

9

a term which has been used to describe the ways in which the traditional borders of education are being traversed by new developments which cross geographical or conceptual borders. The Europeanization of education exists alongside the traditions and practices of its constituent nation states and at the same time, as imbricated over it and acting within it. The argument is that a new educational space has been and will continue to be created in Europe and that it is in a constant process of becoming. The powerful networks which simultaneously advertise and construct Europe and which contain heterogeneous memberships drawn from private companies, regulating and evaluation bodies, government departments and Brussels bureaux, and even universities, will assimilate and extend their nodes and hubs into global companies. The brand will not be “Europe” but a pyramid of consumer brands in education. But the argument about the educational space that is being constructed went further. It asked about affinity, the production of a community of interest, under transnational governance—especially now, when territorial institutions are weakened and the individuation of education aims to produce disciplined entrepreneurs, only loosely attached to the local. The first section of the book, “Imagining Space,” groups three contributions that deal with debates about the European space, constructing discussions on knowledge, cultures and identities. David Coulby reflects on “Education and the European Space of Flows.” The chapter describes and analyses the emergent structuration of an education space and assesses its implications for education in Europe. In this respect, it pays particular attention to the curricular systems of schools and universities. Coulby argues that Europe itself remains a problematic entity, and that the European space is increasingly structured not by regional, state or continental boundaries but by networks and pathways that operate to a dynamic of flows and movement. The spread of unrestrained capitalism linked to developments in information and communications technology has led to new patterns of social organisation. People, capital, knowledges, services, styles are moving with increasing speed and frequency within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world. This emergent space can only be partially controlled by states. The space of flows opens new possibilities of liberation and exploitation. Liberation might be visualized by the expansion of postmodern, cosmopolitan, online citizenship to ever more geographical areas and social strata in Europe. Within this space of flows, knowledge itself has become the most important international trading commodity. This is not, however, the familiar scientific, progressive, imperialistic knowledge of the Enlightenment. Knowledge, like culture, is relative, contingent and provisional. Franco Ferrarotti presents some “Notes towards the Definition of a European Educational Space.” He argues that the definition of a European Educational “Space” is at the same time an urgent task and a difficult challenge. If we assume, in the historical perspective, the existence of three main spheres or “spaces” of educational endeavour, that is, the USA, Japan, and Europe, we immediately see convergences as well as major differences among these three cultural milieus. There is no doubt that, roughly speaking, the basic convergence is given by science and technology. The major differences, on the other hand, have to do with the underlying values. Ferrarotti claims that the prejudice to beat is the Eurocentric one; the

10

INTRODUCTION

prejudice, that is, which sees and favours in the western European way of life the basic normative crux, which crowns the whole evolutionary, historical process of humanity and in regard to which every other culture is to be seen as only a preculture, unculture or, as it were, illicit culture. The European integration is characterized by a serious discrepancy between its economic aspects and the institutional set-up. This discrepancy favours and follows the logic of the market and free enterprise, but it seems quite insensitive to the need for cultural and social harmonization and for the integration of the various school systems and legal procedures. From a historical point of view, what seems to be most typically European is the need for meaning and shared intellectual and moral values. Yasemin Soysal discusses problems about “Locating European Identity in Education.” She explains that the gradual advance of the EU as a transnational political entity has stimulated a growing interest in Europeanness and its constituent characteristics. For the potential member states, Europeanness serves as a test of their compatibility for convergence and stipulates measures as inscribed in the nondescript question “who belongs?” For the existing member states, European identity is taken to signify a step closer to European unity. From a scholarly perspective, considering that the last two decades in social scientific production have been marked by a preoccupation with identity, this concern with Europeanness is inevitable but at the same time requires intervention. The problematic of identity and legitimacy constantly surfaces in debates over Europe and European integration. But, the European public space is not coherent, stable, or bounded. It is open to conflicts and creates its own conflicts, and does not depend on collective emotions or given identities. It includes multiple spheres and subjects and it is created through the activities of a growing body of social and political actors, who engage in the discourse of Europe and deploy strategic action. The script of Europe is still open to modifications and rewriting, and it may never end with a coherent narrative. The second section of the book, Globalizing Space, is organized around political and cultural issues, dealing mainly with two European countries that are not member states of the EU: Switzerland and Latvia. The chapter by Gita Steiner-Khamsi addresses the problem of “Reterritorializing Educational Import: Explorations into the Politics of Educational Borrowing.” The study argues that research on educational transfer and borrowing lends itself for examination as to how a new space, the European Space, is currently being created and imagined among political stakeholders in European countries. It focuses on borrowing, presenting two case studies of educational reform in which politicians and policy-makers in two different countries (Latvia and Switzerland) advocated new reform models by extensively and explicitly referring to similar, successful reform models in other European countries. In both case studies, it is argued that politicians and policy-makers distanced themselves from the “original” shortly after they had implemented the reform model which they borrowed from abroad. Thus, the study focuses on the discursive shift from externalization to internalization, as well as from internalization to indigenization, and highlights the move away from “lessons learned from abroad” to “lessons learned at home.” In both case studies, we encounter a phenomenon that has not been studied sufficiently in research on educational transfer and globalization: the erasure of international references and

FABRICATING EUROPE

11

their substitution with domestic and regional references. Common to the two case studies is an attempt by political stakeholders to create and secure a new geopolitical space that signals a rupture from the past and simultaneously reconfigures the map of political allies in Europe. In “Returning to Europe: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies of Post-Soviet Education Reform”, Iveta Silova tries to capture the complexity of creating a new European space in post-Soviet Latvia by examining how “new” ideas and discourses borrowed from the West interact with the constraints imposed by the “old” education structures, institutions, and practices inherited from the Soviet Union. She discusses the change of discourse regarding separate schools for Russian- and Latvianspeaking students in the context of a globalization movement that aims to ensure Latvia’s integration into the EU, encourage international investment, and attract financial aid. Various international agencies—Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Council of Europe (CE), United States (US) agencies, and United Nations (UN) institutions—have articulated on numerous occasions that development of a cohesive, multicultural society is a necessary prerequisite for Latvia to join the Western alliance. It is within this context that Silova traces the transfer of global discourse on multiculturalism and examines how local agents and stakeholders of education reform have attempted to reconcile international pressures for multiculturalization with domestic politics of Latvianization in an effort to create a new European space for minority education in post-Soviet Latvia. The third section includes two contributions that directly address issues of educational policies within the EU. Ronald Sultana, in “Quality Education and Training for Tomorrow’s Europe: A Contrapuntal Reading of European Commission Documents,” analyses four key words—“quality,” “education,” “Europe” and the “future”—arguing that each of the words is a bearer of several possible meanings, meanings which are dependent on one’s own value system, vision, and ideology. In focusing on each word in turn, he refers to two of the European Commission’s key documents on education, namely Teaching and Learning: Towards the Learning Society (1996), and Accomplishing Europe through Education and Training (1997). The reason for doing so is to develop contrapuntal readings of the contemporary educational project, as this is being hegemonically defined within the present European space. Sultana sees “Europe” as implicated in global political and educational changes and also trying to offer a coherent view about them, and proposes that educators should also take a major role in understanding these transformations as well in order to provide contexts in which citizens can try to manage them. António Nóvoa, in “Ways of Thinking about Education in Europe,” divides the issue into two main parts: in the first, he criticizes three “influences” that have led to current ways of thinking—the agenda-setting by the media, the new “planetspeak,” and the excesses of past and future—and reveals how they define the educational debate in the EU; in the second, he analyzes a set of documents recently issued by the EU in an attempt to interpret the main tenets of the European Educational Policy as they relate to issues of employability, comparability, and mobility. Finally, he illustrates the arguments raised throughout the chapter by using the Bologna process,

12

INTRODUCTION

and argues for the need to rethink the role of research in reference to the limits of current ways of thinking about education in Europe. The book ends with a reading of this collection of articles, written from “outside,” by an Australian scholar, to aid the provision of an intellectual dialogue about Europeanization within globalization. In “Europe, Social Space and the Politics of Knowledge,” Terri Seddon suggests three ways of reading the book. One way of reading the collection is as a window on contemporary developments and debates within Europe. This sort of perspective highlights the problematic nature of Europe. A second way of reading this collection treats Europe as a metaphor. Europe represents a distinctive social space; a space that is emerging from one configuration of places, boundaries, relationships and practices to another. The collection frames up this challenge of extending spatial analysis and the study of social geography to the spatiality, governance and politics of learning in our times: when the local can never be understood divorced from the global and the global is intimately shaped and constrained by the local. Research on Europe can contribute to this agenda in important ways. A third way of reading relates to a politics of knowledge. The book provides some excellent resources for understanding Europe and Europeanness, but it also frames up an important research agenda. The challenge is for researchers to recognise that their contribution is not just to do research but fight for their conditions of existence, and the conditions that will sustain critical inquiry as a socially troubling activity for the future. The approach suggested here moves beyond the narrow policy studies framework that takes as its central principle the adaptive system of belief and regulation. It contains assumptions about the production of policy, the role of discourse and networks, the uses of culture (in various forms) and the creation of virtual space as a place of assembly and decision-making. It postulates the existence of a European education space as a mode of governance, requiring an innovative development of policy analysis, using cultural approaches. As editors, we want to thank all the authors for the intellectual discussions during the preparation of this volume, and for their contributions to understand the process of Fabricating Europe. We want also to thank the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for the invitation to meet in Lisbon and for their support to this publication. Martin Lawn António Nóvoa Editors

REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. London: Verso. Bellier, I. & Wilson, T. W. (2000). An anthropology of the European Union—building, imagining and experiencing the New Europe. Oxford: Berg. Beukel, E. (2001). Educational policy: Institutionalization and multi level governance. In S. Andersen & K. Elliassen, Kjell (Eds) Making policy in Europe (2nd edn). London: Sage. Coulby, D. (2000). Beyond the National Curriculum: Cumcular centralism and cultural diversity in Europe and the USA. London: Palmer. Coulby, D. & Jones, C. (1995). Postmodernity and European education systems: Centralist knowledge and cultural diversity. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham.

FABRICATING EUROPE

13

Featherstone, M. (1990). Global culture: Nationalism, globalisation and modernity. London: Sage. Hannerz, U. (1996). Transnational connections—culture, people and places. London: Routledge. Hingel, A. (2001). Education policies and European governance. Brussels: European Commission— Directorate-Generale for Education and Culture. Leonard, M. (1998). Europe: The search for European identity. London: Demos. Massangioli, G. (2001). A more competitive and dynamic economy in the knowledge society: Towards a new European approach for education. Paper presented at the Teaching Europe Conference, June, EU Institute, Florence. Mayntz, R. (1994). Modernization and the logic of interorganizational networks. MIPGF Working Paper 4. Cologne: Max Planck Institute. Nóvoa, A. (1996). L’Europe et l’Éducation: Éléments d’analyse socio-historique des politiques éducatives européennes. In T. Winther-Jensen (Ed.), Challenges to European Education (pp. 29-79). Berne: Peter Lang. Nóvoa, A. (2000). The restructuring of the European Educational Space. In T. Popkewitz (Ed.), Educational knowledge—changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 31–57). New York: SUNY Press. Radaelli, C. (2000). Whither Europeanization? Concept stretching and substantive change. European Integration Online Papers (EOIP), 4 (8). Shore, C. (2000). Building Europe: The cultural politics of European integration. London: Routledge. Sprokkereef, A. (1995). Developments in European Community education policy. In J. Lodge (Ed.), The European Community and the challenge of the future (2nd edn). London: Pinter. Sultana, R. G. (1995). A uniting Europe, a dividing education? Supranationalism, Euro-centrism and the curriculum. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 5 (2), pp. 115–144. Sultana, R. G. (1996). The EU’s educational agenda: A wolf in sheep’s clothing? In K. Watson, S. Modgil & C. Modgil (Eds.), Educational dilemmas: Debates and diversity (vol. 3, pp. 66–87). London: Cassell. Therborn, G. (1995). European modernity and beyond—The trajectory of European societies 1945-2000. London: Sage.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

GORAN THERBORN

FOREWORD Space and Learning

Europe of today has not risen out of cultural tradition. Whatever else Europe is, it is not a continent of “humane values”, as the Laeken Declaration of December 2001 on the Future of Europe put it, nor any other emanation of a past. Above all, Europe is a learning process, and of late, learning to break with its past, a past of religious totalitarianism—“cuius regio, eius religio”—of monolingual nationalism, of conquest, plunder, genocide, and self-destruction. Only within this rupture with European cultural tradition have the most important practices and skills of the past been able to-remerge and to reassert themselves in new, viable forms: the recognition and the experience of a law beyond the power of any given sovereign, the practice of long-distance trade across political boundaries. Today’s Europe is the world’s trader and the world’s lawyer, the central node of international flows of trade and capital, the world’s region of transnational law and the main support for what global rule-making there is. Contrary to much public discourse-making and impression management, Europe is not just a single market with a great cultural past and with ever-frustrated ambitions to return to the Great Game of world power, by means of the frantic and luckless travels of Mr Solana and a “rapid deployment force” lacking even an adequate logistics to move troops to Macedonia. Europe is a world trade centre, shipping 40% of the world’s exports, and a normative area, pioneering a system of transnational law. Through the European Courts of Human Rights and of Justice and through the complaints procedure of the Council of Europe with regard to social rights, individual citizens and non-state organizations can sue the nation states that traditionally hold sovereignty over them, and which still issue their passports. A book like this, focusing on education and learning in Europe, cutting with analytical razors through the paper heaps of blown-up rhetoric on Europe’s glorious past and glorious future, without falling into insular or nationalist temptations of dismissing what is, in spite of the hyperbole, a major process of social change, a process of world historical significance, is very timely and to be welcomed. As Jürgen Habermas has put it, “What makes the core of the European identity ... is more the character of the learning process than the outcome of it.”1 Social thought and public discourse have undergone a noteworthy spatialization in the last 10–15 years. “Globalization” became a buzzword in the early 1990s; the Romance languages provided us with a shadow term, “mondialization.” In Europe, the singleness of the “Single Market” underlined the spatiality of the concept, and then, when the Single Market arrived—and the act turned out to be less dramatic

15 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 15-17. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

16

GORAN THERBORN

than the fanfares of the overture—we got two new notions of the prime spatial tasks of the European Union: its “enlargement” or “extension” (to the east, not to the south). The policy world of the European Union has recently become filled with “espaces,” usually translated into English as “areas,” but increasingly as “space,” even as “spaces” in plural, a new linguistic invention. Social dynamics and social futures are ever more often presented in spatial terms. In this sense, we are witnessing modernity’s flight into space. This spread of geographers’ stock-in-trade into other social sciences is, in a sense, to be taken positively. Social phenomena do have an important spatial aspect. True, distances get overlayered with the Internet, email, and mobile phones, but they do not disappear. For example, in the last third of the twentieth century, international trade actually became more spatially concentrated-cum-divided, within western Europe, East Asia and North America. However, a general spatialization of social thought and discourse also implies two significant changes of assumptions and perspectives, inherent in the prevailing conception of space as a two-dimensional surface, intrinsic to superficiality. The space of “globalization,” characteristically, is not a sphere, but a Peters’ Projection onto a flatness of points, supposedly interconnected, and of distances, allegedly shrinking. A spatialized (only) world is one where the social game is already given, and bound to remain so for any conceivable future. Social contradictions, dialectics, mutations, social transformations have vanished, banished by spatial thinking. What is there is an expanse, an area, a space, big or small, on which a given game is being played, till the end of time. A spatialized (only) world is a world where social conflict does not matter, or is invisible, where there is no potential for transformative collective action. Individuals may move, contact, and “network,” but collective organization is irrelevant. Social change is extension, enlargement, levelling of the field (or their opposites), no more. A critique of spatialized reason is, then, called for. However, for an understanding of a given game, like the European Union game, a spatial approach is often promising, as in this book. An area, a space, a field is something you can see and where you can be seen, where you can learn from seeing others. The European Union has indeed enlarged enormously the social field visible to scholars and students, as well as to lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians. Most remarkable is the stitching together of the main different academic cultures of western Europe, which the professional organizations, e.g. in political science and sociology, could not quite bridge. At one pole there was, up to the 1970s and 1980s, the anglophone northwestern one of the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, at the other, the francophone southern one from Portugal to Greece—save for its US-educated enclaves—and in between, the German-speaking centre, for a long time surprisingly uneasy with foreign languages. Now European Union research grants and student exchange bring them all together, increasingly including eastern Europeans, previously beyond the cold war pale. Indeed, it might even be argued that there has become too much of this networking and of lining up with the Brussels DirectoratesGeneral, leading to a banalization of European research.

FOREWORD

17

However one sees this, clearly, a new learning space has been opened up. While certain general principles of education and schooling have for a long time been part of world culture, as John Meyer and his associates have taught us, education and pedagogy have also had the extension of their vision somewhat limited by the border posts of their nation states. Here new tendencies are under way, as analysed by the authors of this volume, showing, among other things how “Europe” is becoming a central referent in the teaching of national history and in the legitimation of educational organization, from Zürich to Latvia. The so-called “open coordination” celebrated at the Lisbon Summit of the European Union in 2000, with its focus on comparing policy outcomes, on benchmarking, targeting, and search for “best practice,” makes the very functioning of the European Union pretty much an educational space. Analyses of educational space thereby assume a central importance to an understanding of contemporary Europe. It is to be hoped that European learning will also come to include a learning of what is beyond, above, and below the spatial, of social structuration, of conflicting interests, of alternative social systems, and of possibilities of social transformation. NOTE 1

J. Habermas (2001) Braucht Europa eine Verfassung? In J. Habermas, Zeit der Uebegänge (p. 124). Frankfurt, Suhrkamp. (My translation from German into English.)

Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

MARTIN LAWN

1. BORDERLESS EDUCATION Imagining a European Education Space in a Time of Brands and Networks

1. INTRODUCTION

The capability of the European Union (EU) to create a European education identity, an education “space,” is limited by its own politics and history and its available instruments, but most of all, by time. The nation state model, the dominant form of education systems and discourse in education, is in tension with the capability of the EU to create an alternative identity within the field of education. At the same time, the internationalization of education and trade in education, with its new commercial players, is rapidly altering its scope of action; indeed, there may be no difference between them. Will there be any affinity with this new education space on the part of its professionals and citizens? ***** In 1942, a young Italian diplomat returned to Rome from Berlin and wrote a highly praised report for Mussolini in which he analysed the New World Order being enforced on Europe. He argued that, even though the Nazis had clear goals and operated in a time when there was a sense that the nation state was coming to an end, the Nazis had a flawed and inferior political mission. Their conception of Europe was mechanical and materialistic: They have no idea that no economic order can rule if not based on a political order, and that to make the Belgian or Bohemian worker work, it was not enough to promise him a certain wage, but one must also give him the sense of serving a community, of which he is an intimate part, which he feels an affinity with and in which he recognises himself. (Mazower, 1997, p. 142)

The problem of affinity—that is, a community of interest, based on shared values and mutual appeal, necessary for effective governance—is a complex one and it is part of a past in which national identities banked upon the creation of affinity through education systems and cultural strategies, and were especially sensitive to the role of their professionals in these areas. This problem of affinity and of community is still the main problem within the EU, a view of Europe created against the dark days of the 1940s, and it raises questions about its creation outside nation states and in a period of commercial domination. Can affinity be produced in transnational governance? If it can, then the role of education would probably be central to it, as it has been in the development and sustenance of nation states and 19 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 19-31. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

20

MARTIN LAWN

their systems. Is affinity as important as it was in the past? If it is not, then maybe this new idea of Europe is less like the old form of government than a new institutional neo-liberal governance in which the corporation is the key metaphor: Neo-liberalism tends on the whole to favour severing the economy from social realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic system conforming to its description in pure theory, that is a sort of logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints regulating economic agents. (Bourdieu, 1998)

Can there be affinity when there is no project, only projection? Still, for all the false starts and hesitancies, some kind of governing space is being created in Europe; a new space without precedent, a space in which, increasingly, education is being employed to forge a sense of European identity, especially since the 1980s (Shore, 2000). The market is the dominant European discourse and there is a constancy about the search for the delivery of common taxes, rules of production and consumption, and joint initiatives and innovations that are necessary for it. Yet, this new space for education exists today within this discourse, one with material effects, as a necessary element in the building of shared identity across the market and as a demand for skills, mobility and invention. Education has moved from the position of a sensitive area for cooperation, due to the concerns of individual states for their areas of responsibility, through an increasingly symbolic area of identity formation and into a crucial part of the new knowledge economy. The space can be described as fluid, heterogeneous and polymorphic, yet it is recognisably a hew space. It exists within the daily work of teachers and policy-makers, within shared regulations and funded projects, within curriculum networks and pupil assignments, and in city collaborations and university pressure groups. Just because it exists within a space without boundaries does not mean it does not exist. Its antecedents existed within the nation’s boundaries and were not so self-conscious. When the space exists within transnational governance, networks and partnerships and outside the old national and local ways, it becomes more opaque and at the same time more obvious. Castells has called this space, the “space of flows,” a new connecting and shaping of social practices including the managing of the space in the interests of dominant interests. It is this idea which has replaced the older national forms of conductive processes of control. It is not, though, a form which can be controlled easily and within boundaries, so the new education space, formed in the image of past nation state strategies but with new processes, may itself be open to non-state and non-public forms of influence. This may be its intention. This chapter is focused upon the idea of borderless education, a term which has been used to describe the ways in which the traditional borders of education are being traversed by new developments which cross geographical or conceptual borders. This term is being applied mainly to the delivery of education in new ways in higher education, particularly via new technologies, world university alliances or by commercial companies (Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, 2000). In this chapter, it serves as a vision of a Europe in which the educational space is being filled by cross-border activities. Borderless education is a useful image in another way; it draws attention to the past, to traditions of education constructed within

BORDERLESS EDUCATION

21

borders, the borders of nation states. The Europeanization of education exists alongside the traditions and practices of its constituent nation states and at the same time, as imbricated over it and acting within it. 2. USING THE NATION STATE MODEL Nation states constructed education systems with a wide range of executive tools, by means of legislation, system construction, professional training programmes and specialist buildings and programmes. Most of all, they were managed through a conceptual discourse in which the purpose and structure of the system, teacher identity, and national identity were all bound together in a constant refrain which built the education service and cultural identity every day. The differences between what the EU is capable of doing and what the nation states did in the past is important. Even if the mission is to be the same, the time is now very different. The national contexts in which we work are still ingrained in us, are culturally substantial and appear within our particular systems, even though globalization is creating apparent similarities between us (Green, Wolf & Leney, 1999). In England, the predominant notion of professionalism and partnership in the past meant that the state produced a system and a discourse in which teachers could be seen as sharing responsibility for education with the state. It was Benedict Anderson (1983) who illuminated the process by which a regime, threatened by popular movements (as there were among English teachers in the early twentieth century), created new institutions and languages of national identity. A national identity was “imagined” in which critical ideas were displaced through the use of official statements, reports and policy documents and through the media. Faced with this coherent and determinedly mythological set of beliefs and totems, about the nature of teaching, education and the nation, the imagined community of the English teacher was a modernizing force. It provided a powerful image of the teacher, which lasted through the major part of the century. It was used by and used upon the teachers. According to Smith (1991, p. 162), the idea of national identity had to serve a number of purposes: the primary function is to provide a strong community identity and restore collective faith; secondly, it develops mythological value in the struggle; and lastly, there is the importance of the ideal of fraternity, the idea of the nation as family through the “ceremonial and symbolic aspect.” It is exactly this we can see at work in the official discourse of teachers and schooling, which was developed earlier in the century and enhanced over time (and existed for most of the last century). The peculiar English form of school governance, indirect rule, contrasted with the more common forms of European school administration, a much more direct control by the state (Lawn, 1996). Teachers were managed by a practical philosophy of teacher management and an ideology of professionalism which shaped what teachers should or would be doing in their social behaviour and work relations. The national identity, the values ascribed to it and the place of education in reflecting and reproducing it, placed teachers at the centre of the post-war education service (Lawn, 1997). In the post-war period, progressivism of different kinds was closely

22

MARTIN LAWN

linked with, even congruent with, a pervasive ideology of Englishness in which the natural democratic values of England were compared with the authoritarian regimes of Europe. A free press, the distribution of power and controls on the government established another pillar in support of the idea that teachers were partners as professionals with the local and central government. This gradual correlation between professionalism, a mass schooling, welfare and reconstructionist ideologies and the making of a national and democratic identity produced a powerful discourse in which the influential position of teachers was acknowledged: as heroes of reconstruction, as pedagogic innovators, as carers, as partners of and within the public. This policy gave meaning to teaching. By the 1950s, teachers were praised as the bedrock of the new welfare society, as the foundation of the reconstruction of the education system and as the guardians of the citizenry of the future. Teachers were professionals, fostered by the state, partners in the deliberations of policy, able to influence the direction and control of the system. In effect, they were leaders and followers, circulating within the service through its administration, democratic government and associations, as class teachers, representatives, governors and advisers. Of course, this is an analysis built around a governing discourse. In a social democratic project, especially one like England’s, there was a definite expectation about working in and for the state as a public employee and at the same time a specific way of managing employees of the state. In effect, the politics of teaching became waged in a war of position, kept in place by a policing of the boundaries (in which the problems were excluded) and by the powerful discourse of partnership. But, the teachers existed within a school system which officially and continually referred to them as partners, consulted with their elected representatives and assumed that the teacher was a highly skilled and responsible professional. The teacher was “officially” trusted and they participated in the organization, strategy and development of education at the local and national level through their representatives (Lawn, 1996, passim). Today, these strategies are insufficient due to the expansion of global capital and production flows, international governance and regulation and marketization of services. These are disrupting the state’s capacity to ensure that the national system remains open to “local” control and to configure what happens within it. The discourse of the “nation” is difficult to use effectively now. At the same time, they are not available to the EU, the chosen vehicle of new governance. The creation of the market preceded legitimation, and gradual cohesion has not produced affinity. Is it conceivable that the EU, managed by jealous partners in state governments, could create new “languages of identity,” in Anderson’s phrase, or use many different national systems of education to drive “an imagined community” of Europe in other than a marginal way, or develop a new system of governance able to produce a collective faith or identity or citizenship? Or, if not, what is the nature of this newly emerging space? In common with nation state strategies, an identity for Europe and its inhabitants was (and continues to be) constructed through cultural symbols, myths and capital, and education was a key element in the transmission and construction process associated with European identity. Consistent founding themes in the European

BORDERLESS EDUCATION

23

cooperation, supported by the Ministers of Education, are the idea of education as cultural cooperation, the harmonization of qualification systems and the formation of vocational education, particularly evident since the 1957 Treaty of Rome. But, in particular, cultural cooperation was associated with a new identity, “a European model of culture correlating with European integration” (Council of the European Community [EC], European Education Policy Statements, 1987, p. 11). European identity was treated as fixed, as the sum of its parts, the histories and spaces of national states; it was described as an “exceptional source of development, progress and culture (Council of the EC, European Education Policy Statements, 1987, p. 11). Cooperation meant that these “historical affinities of civilization and culture and ... the hopes that these affinities harbour” (Council of the EC, European Education Policy Statements, 1987, p. 11) could only be realized if there was a higher level of European cooperation centred on the EC and upon education. This “language of identity” treated culture as secured within the confines of the nation states, and that communication, through education, would affirm to European citizens their place in a new, shared space, Europe. In 1971, the Ministers for Education, following the intentions of the Conference of Heads of State meeting at the Hague (in 1969), decided to create a working party which would devise a European Centre for the Development of Education, a way of financing it and a way to establish forms of active cooperation in the field of education. This step, the forerunner of DG Education and Culture and the large programmes of cooperation (like Leonardo and Socrates), was preceded by reliance on the Council for Cultural Cooperation (within the Council of Europe), established in 1962. This strategy has a meaning locked in its time; the space it was creating had crystallized time. It reflects traditional nation state strategies in its selection of its past and their pedagogization, and in its obligation to create cultural identities and boundaries of place. The educational space is imagined as a flow of cultural information through educational sites; it needs new emphases on communication but it is firm on identity: this is fixed within differently located but shared spaces of European civilization. Identity, and so affinity, can be deepened by situating national identities within a new European space, reflecting residual European cultural capital. Again, in 1974, the Ministers of Education reaffirmed their new direction. They began their Resolution by repeating their mantra about Europe as an exceptional source of culture, by confirming that allowance must be made for the “traditions of each country” and that education cannot be seen merely as “a component of economic life” (Council of the EC, European Education Policy Statements, 1987, p. 15). By 1976, the other aspects of this modernizing policy, of using education to create a new cultural identity, were being sustained by familiar projects on crossinstitutional collaboration, documentation and statistics, recognition of qualifications and other aspects of a market in education, which are part of the continuing “calculative rationality” of the modern state (Bauman, 1992). By the late 1990s, this familiar strategy, a shadow of the past of the main partners, had evolved into a different identity altogether. Affinity to Europe based on cross-cultural access, and situated within nation states and official identities, had moved to another kind of imagined Europe in which innovation, research, education and training are its pillars. This “imagined community” had radically altered

24

MARTIN LAWN

dimensions: it was a community like a major corporation was a community, and not a community in the older languages of nation or locality. In this new community, European citizenship has been located in the individual; they would exist in a new space still being built—the “gradual construction of an open and dynamic European educational area” (European Commission, 1997, p. 1). In this major declaration from the European Commission, Towards a Europe of Knowledge, the individuals of this “area” would enter or become members, if they had attained, or would attain, knowledge and competence. First of all, this “area” is a training area, the place through which the employment and productivity strategy of the EU will enhance the “knowledge and skills of all Europe’s citizens.” This area has its own symbol, not the locked up cultural resources of nation states, but the individual engaged in lifelong learning. To do this, there is a determined attempt to “fix” the identity of the European citizen; they would have to have a: “fund of knowledge … continually expanding and renewing it”. competence, defined as a “lifelong basis creativity, flexibility, adaptability, the ability to ‘learn to learn’ and to solve problems”. a solid, broad-based education and a set of skills (technological, social and organisational) … conducive to innovation. plus a “range of transversal competencies—including the understanding of a diversity of cultures, competence in several languages, and the entrepreneurship which leads to the creation or development of businesses”. (European Commission, 1997) A European collaboration based on cultural transfer and exchange (circa the 1970s) has been replaced by “European cooperation networks” pooling European excellence and creating real European expertise. If culture has a place now, it is to protect Europe against globalization. The need to assert and respect cultural identity is felt particularly acutely at a time when our economies are engaged in a process of globalization, which can be perceived as a source of cultural and linguistic standardization or “dumbing down”. (European Commission, 1997)

Identity means having the required knowledge and competences, recognizing membership of a common social and cultural area and mutual understanding of others within it. The dominant strand of identity is now more focused on individuated qualities, projected into a new space, than on a located citizen, inquiring into the places of others. 3. NETWORKING FOR EUROPE

Networking has become a ubiquitous feature in descriptions of modern professional and corporate life and represents, in Castells’s words, a “new organizational paradigm” (Castells, 1996, p. 196). For Castells, the new paradigm has been formed from business networks, telecommunications networking and global competition, with the state a continuing player, and together they constitute the new network

BORDERLESS EDUCATION

25

enterprise. In this network enterprise, the basic unit of economic organization is the network and not the subject. In the gradual shift that has taken place in the organizing of Europe—that is, away from nation states and towards other social actors (cities, companies, alliances, partnerships etc.) (Thompson, Frances, Levacic & Mitchell, 1991)—the construction of the educational space has been recast as well. In this “space of flows,” support has been traditionally offered by the EU in terms of discourse (the role of cooperation, thematic networks, social partner meetings etc.), with some financial support. However, the push towards networking has come from the rise of new technologies of communication and the shift in work in education. Two cases of networking are analysed here—elite and academic networks—followed by the case of trading in brands, and their place in the construction of the new educational space is observed. An early form of networking, which has become one of the major ways of creating the educational space, is the elite service class which operates in Brussels and moves in and out of national government departments and private companies. This group, officials of the EU Government, described by Shore (2000, pp. 26–29, passim) as “agents of European consciousness,” produces cultural symbols, practices and institutions in which Europeanization takes place: described as a system of ‘self representation” (Borneman & Fowler, 1988, p. 488) in which they are the producers and the analysts. In a recent project involving universities in seven European countries, (funded incidentally by the EU Targeted Socio-economic Research (TSER) programme), on governance and exclusion, system actors were interviewed about their work in education. The influence of non-national policy frameworks, funding and policy actors on their national situation was one aspect of the project (EU TSER, Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion in Europe 1998–2000). System actors tended to be the most networked of the national case interviewees in the sense that they were mediators of European policies in their nation states or that they met other European officials or even moved between national and European posts. These policy networks connect interdependent public, semi-public and private actors involved in public policymaking. Kickert (in Kickert, Klijn & Koppenjan, 1997) argues that “the concept of policy networks connects public policies with their strategic and institutionalised context” (p. 72); policy networks so clearly belong to the sphere of production of policies and social relationships: they are “producing” the new European educational space. Today, that space is using education to build social capital as the means for economic productivity. These policy networks (or clubs) have their own language (“globalization,” “society of knowledge,” “modernization,” “accountability,” “democratization”), congruent with European policy documents, which they circulate back and forth among themselves, in their national or European settings. This discourse has acted to “legitimize” certain educational policies in their national settings, even though they may not appear in national policy documents or regulations. This is a system of production which uses comparison and the exchange of personnel to renew itself and, like Shore’s agents, they are describing and producing at the same time. This influential networking was described within the project, by the Portuguese team, as a “magistrature of influence” acting within

26

MARTIN LAWN

European committees and task force groups and through their dissemination of studies, reports and statistics. In addition, using their access to funds, especially restructuring funds, they become significant actors within local and national circles through their closeness to funding. These policy networks used to be government department based but they now exist in new forms. For example, the EuroCities network was created by several large European cities to influence funding towards urban policy, and city actors are connected directly to each other through it (without the necessity of acting through national intermediaries). They are creating the new space through their persuasive power and legitimating discourse as actors; as Castells says, they dominate by projecting themselves across time and space: “elites are cosmopolitan” (Castells, 1996, p. 415). Their habitus is global, moving across European agencies and programmes, and closely connected international agencies (like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, UNESCO etc.) in a supranational flow. For academics in education, networks have begun to appear that are distinguishable from professional associations and their annual conferences. One source, particular to Europe, is the range of supported networking which reflects the new governance of Europe (regions, transnational programmes, EU Declarations etc.) and related funding (through Socrates, Thematic Networks, EU-based research projects etc.) Supported (partially funded) networks are a reflection of EU governance, and the close meshing of national governmental policies and programmes with European initiatives. However, there are further “natural” developments which produce networking: new information technologies which allow academics to manage communications and information flow easier than in the past; new cross-university agreements and alliances supporting mobility and joint production; education publishing (journals, books etc.) by publishers producing across European markets; creation of cross-Europe “pressure group” associationism (for example, European associations for special education or adult education). Indeed, in the EU, in the absence of any solid funding for education and the lack of centralized control, it is a dominant mode of organizational development, although in many cases academics feel it is they who are driving networking and, because of EU funding rules, paying for networking. For many academics, networking has not been as necessary as it would be in business. They are still trapped within institutions, organized through bureaucratic order, which were formed in other times. Production and innovation have not driven their organizations, yet, for various reasons, their need to engage in informational exchange and knowledge production, within rapid shifts in governance and the marketization of higher education, has grown. The EU targeted higher education in its development of education in Europe and universities exist now in large networks or pressure groups in Europe, like the Santander and Compostela Groups, and this will change the relations between academics and Europeanization. Networks are seen as powerful objects, increasingly more powerful than the institutions they grew out of. They are less visible than the private and public organizations network members are often employed in. They are a crucial aspect of work now, especially when the marketization of work is shaping education. Networks are unstable and rapidly become obsolescent but they are transformatory:

BORDERLESS EDUCATION

27

they are made of many cultures, many values, many projects, that cross through the minds, and inform the strategies of the various participants in the networks, changing at the same pace as the network’s members, and following the organizational and cultural transformations of the units of the network. It is a culture, indeed, but a culture of the ephemeral, a culture of each strategic decision, a patchwork of experiences and interests, rather than a charter of rights and obligations. It is a multi faceted, virtual culture ... [Yet] it is a material force because it informs, and enforces, powerful economic decisions at every moment in the life of the network. (Castells, 1996, p. 199)

Since networks are based upon trust, are in perpetual circulation and involve asymmetrical relations, they have problems of coordination. They are as strong as their weakest point; they do not respond to centralization or hierarchy and coordination must base itself on the constant “lubrication” of the social relations inside the network. The social relations of the network are the new relations of production, as members, or nodes, can only keep faith with the network if trust is maintained within it and if a useful circulation of information is sustained. Strong networks have high levels of trust which they develop and sustain. So, coordination has to reflect the decentralization of power in the network and the recurring problem of differential responsibility within it. Not everybody is involved all the time or, again, the network has differential speeds, or put another way, it is constantly shape shifting. In education, networking, especially European-based professional associationism, is becoming more and more familiar to academics in education. Although there are areas of Europe which operate language- and culture-based networks (for example, the Nordic countries or the Mediterranean countries), increasingly, borderless networking is being created and sustained. Education networking has features which include: interest-driven pressure, professional or research groups extending to mobilizing, large-scale, thematic alliances; simple informational activities extending to complex, research-based inquiry; confusion between voluntary, interest-driven network model and institutionally based, organizationally driven network model; focus on process and not product, possibly even focus on meetings and not knowledge production. This new form of identity construction reflects the new times in which most aspects of national life are judged according to their contribution to national economic efficiency. The marketization of most spheres of society is a question of saving money (or public expenditure) and creating a new cultural transformation in which the individual and the organization become disciplined by the demands of the market. Everyone has to act like an entrepreneur. Even if networks of academics have positive features and generate a local affinity, are they a significant element in the new space? 4. TRADE AND BRANDS The conditions under which nation states constructed their education systems, and so reaffirmed and renewed their national identities, and which the early stages of the EU copied, are scarcely available now. While the residual values of the national

28

MARTIN LAWN

education services are still present, the new situation is defined in specific contemporary ways. These may be summarised as neo-liberalism and the space of flows. Education is now a traded commodity and the old providers, sure of their place and purpose, are under increasing pressure from new education suppliers, able to use new technologies to cross borders and supported by world trade regulations in their assault upon new markets. These new suppliers are invariably commercial or semi-commercial companies, generating brand identities which they use globally. They are supported by international regulation bodies and the powerful economies. The G8 Education Ministers (which include many of the largest European states) highlighted this new global form of supply in their emphasis on the mobility of labour (G8 Education Ministers’ Meeting) and their symbol of a “passport to mobility.” The key mantra is “true lifelong learning systems” connected to other policy domains of “employment, science, technology and information and communication technologies.” With international collaboration, or at least enforced free trade in marketized education programmes, and a constant reference to “public/ private” and “expert” meetings, Europe (as a part of the global, geographically and temporally) will expand distance learning, double the rate of student and teacher mobility and increase the transferability of qualifications. Naturally, a similar view is taken by GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services)), which is concerned with world trade regulation in all services which are supplied internationally, including commercially supplied education services and even public education services ( if they are viewed as competing with private services). This new world trade in education services, often referred to as borderless education, describes distance learning, mobility of students, commercial companies and provider mobility (teachers) and is aimed at providing a “level playing area” for supply. These are all EU policy priorities in education, usually provided through national higher and further education institutions. Member states, in varying degrees, use private institutions and service companies in their education systems; at the moment, frequently these are national organizations. In future, as education becomes “deregulated,” that is becomes private, new major education companies might deliver European education policy as part of their global reach, delivered locally. Why is this commercial trade in education likely to prove so significant to Europeanization through education? To illustrate the changes in the European member states, symptomatic of what is happening at the transnational level, let us return to England for a moment. The “new public management” which the education service uses has shared, and even indistinguishable, features with business management (Clarke & Newman, 1997). It emphasises “outputs,” “efficiency” and “value for money,” “products,” “flexibility,” “teamwork,” “leadership” and “customers.” Significantly, since the mid-1990s there is a wealth of published material (from local authorities and other sources) advocating new forms of managerial restructuring, planning processes and school improvement where business-led ideas are at the forefront. There has been a major reordering of claims between the public and the private space (Starr, 1989). At the same time, the pace of private sector involvement in education has grown in England, as befits a neo-liberal economy open to capital investment in services. This is a period of transition as education actors interact with private suppliers, financial and management

BORDERLESS EDUCATION

29

consultants, commercial businesses, and new educational traders. This phenomenon has been described by other commentators, particularly by Jane Kenway, (1998) who described the “emergence of [a] whole parallel education industry which is either setting itself up to offer supplies to education or is setting itself up alongside and in cooperation with or in opposition to school education” (p. 80). The assumption is that the future of education may not be state controlled, or that it prevails within different kinds of network, but that education in a global market will have new, different forms of production (Hirtt, 2000, pp. 12–18). The education sector becomes a profit opportunity. Firstly, companies offer products, information and project opportunities to education so as to extend their “influence” and “brand identity” with new consumers. Secondly, education is seen as a place of consumption, buying services directly from businesses, and thirdly, new “learning businesses” emerge as education becomes a commodity available in a market. Lastly, powerful “knowledge companies” (such as Peat Marwick and Arthur Anderson) use their expertise and financial strength in this new market, through forging local partnerships and undertaking consultancies and evaluations of education provision at a national or local level. In the process, they develop operational experience in the education service so that they can “act” effectively by selling “knowledge” to education clients, or function as contractors of services themselves. What will happen is the rise of the brand in education, as Tooley (1999) has argued it has in the developing world, particularly in Latin America and India. The private companies are the new innovators and are growing through their emphasis on innovative technology, distance learning and learning systems. In the absence of a public service provider, the consumers of education, especially in areas of lifelong learning, want to have confidence in the provider. In this case, the European space is as likely to be formed by the Microsoft brand or even the AmericaOnline brand than any transnational European brand. 5. CONCLUSION My argument has been that a new educational space has been and will continue to be created in Europe; it is in a constant process of becoming. It was begun by the member states, using strategies derived from their pasts, although guardedly allowed in a European governance setting, developed through the institutionalization of networking, and it has been overtaken by a new international regime in which neoliberalism has altered the form and function of Europeanization and allowed in new types of provider. The EU is a simulacrum of a state in which the partially open door to enterprise and partnership will soon be shoved aside by the new trade regulations for education. The powerful networks which simultaneously sell and construct Europe and which contain heterogeneous memberships drawn from private companies, regulating and evaluation bodies, government departments and Brussels bureaux, and even universities, will assimilate and extend their nodes and hubs into global companies. The brand will not be “Europe” but a pyramid of consumer brands in education.

30

MARTIN LAWN

But the argument about the educational space which is being constructed went further. It asked about affinity—especially now, when territorial institutions are weakened and the individuation of education aims to produce disciplined entrepreneurs, only loosely attached to the local. Perhaps affinity is a term imported from other locales and other times, associated with national identities and democratic governance. But in the recent past, meaning was given to the public service and, in education, through a community of interest with the professionals employed within it: a community of interest which allowed shared meanings or even oppositional views within a common landscape. Indeed, affinity followed meaning and came from unity and a projected vision. As Laidi says, “Globalization is a state; it is not a meaning” (Laidi, 1988, p. 6). Market efficiency substituted itself for meaning. As the EU as a project overlaps with globalization, the problem of meaning continues. Education was seen in the EU as a way of driving integration but in its new version, the individuation of learning responsibility, it also represents an abdication of its own responsibility. There is no vision offered but an endless circulation of plans and partnerships: no hope but only necessity, and no desire but only private compulsion. The inability of the EU to offer anything other than a site for the globalization of service, either through political impossibility or ideological vacuity, means that it offers, in Laidi’s telling phrase, the “disappearance of expectations” (p. 8), the very opposite of the national project and of the loud discourse of “learning”. Brussels speaks, in common with other agents of the global, in two ways: as a producer and as a symbolic analyst. Social reality is not objectified and the legitimacy of the EU, and its member states, is preserved only by not being risked. It can no longer act as a guide to problems and the synthesizer of meaning but only as a puzzled agent, selling the message that all is well in confusing times, as we are projected into Space. Instead of acting within a new kind of public space for education in the EU, networks may function instead to extend the shift to a new transnational governance, partnered with commerce, in which dominant globalizing commercial pressures provide goods, and the public service provides increasing sets of quantitative data about its production and targets. High-flown plans for new languages of identity and shared cultural sites increasingly seem a matter of brands and the common market language, presenting and comparing data wrenched out of local contexts: “it cannot be taken for granted that empiricism and gradualism will limit the profound doubt that social actors harbour about the meaning of their action” (Laidi, 1998, p. 8). The construction of the European education space, a market condition not a place, has turned into a symbolic expression of the legitimation of the power of capital, released from the boundaries of the nation state where “[p]olitical actions no longer find their legitimacy in a vision of the future, but have been reduced to managing the ordinary present” (Laidi, 1998, p. 7). Vision is being left to product branding and network agents. Whose community of interest benefits from this lack of hope, and is affinity between transnational governance and citizens to be a conspicuous absence in this new European education space?

BORDERLESS EDUCATION

31

REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. London: Verso. Bauman, Z. (1992). Intimations of postmodernity. London: Routledge. Borneman, J. & Fowler, N. (1988). Europeanization. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 487–514. Bourdieu, P. (1998). The essence of neoliberalism. Le Monde, December. Castells, M. (1996). Rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell. Clarke, J. & Newman, J. (1997). The managerial state. Cambridge: Polity Press. Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (2000). The business of borderless education: UK perspectives. London: Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals/Higher Education Funding Council for England. Council of the European Community—General Secretariat European Education Policy Statements, 3rd edn, June 1987. Resolution of the Ministers of Education, November 1971, p. 11. European Commission (1997). Towards a Europe of knowledge: Communication from the Commission, COM(97)563 Part 2: Building a Europe of Knowledge. Brussels: European Commission. EU TSER Education governance and social integration and exclusion in Europe (EGSIE)—EU TSER 1998–2000 with: Universities of Uppsala, JW Goethe Frankfurt, Granada, Reykjavik, Lisbon, Athens, Madison, Queensland, Birmingham and Keele. G8 Education Ministers’ Meeting, Tokyo, 1–2 April 2000. Chair’s Summary. Green, A., Wolf, A. & Leney, T. (1999). Convergence and divergence in European education and training systems. Bedford Way Papers, Institute of Education, University of London. Hirtt, N. (2000). The millennium round and the liberalisation of the education market. Education and Social Justice,2(2), 12–18. Kenway J. (1998). Pulp fictions? Education, markets and the information superhighway. In D. Carlson & M. Apple (Eds.), Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy (pp.61–91). Oxford: Westview Press. Kickert, W., Klijn, E.H. & Koppenjan, J. (1997). Managing complex networks: strategies for the public sector. London: Sage. Laidi, Z. (1998). A world without meaning: The crisis of meaning in international politics. London: Routledge. Lawn, M. (1996). Modern times? Work, professionalism and citizenship in teaching London: Falmer Press. Lawn, M. (1997). The puzzle of the public: (Re)Constructing the teacher within the public service. Historical Studies in Education/RHE, 9 (1), 107–115. Mazower, M. (1997). Dark continent: Europe’s twentieth century. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Shore, C. (2000). Building Europe: The cultural politics of European integration London: Routledge. Smith, A. D. (1991). National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Spring, J. (1998). Education and the rise of the global economy. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Starr, P. (1989). The meaning of privatization. In S. Kamerman & A. Kahn (Eds.), Privatization and the welfare state. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thompson, G., Frances, J., Levacic, R. & Mitchell, J. (Eds.) (1991). Markets, hierarchies and networks. London: Sage. Tooley, J. (1999). The global education industry. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

University of Birmingham

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

IMAGINING SPACE

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

DAVID COULBY

2. EDUCATION AND THE EUROPEAN SPACE OF FLOWS

1. THE STRUCTURING OF EUROPEAN SPACE: EUROPEANIZATION, STATES, NATIONALISM AND THE SPACE OF FLOWS

The European space is not the same as the boundaries of the European Union (EU) states. The vision of a Europe gradually coming together in political, economic and cultural terms is more illusory than real. In fact, power is being redistributed to different levels and institutions. Similarly, patterns of cooperation and interdependence are actually highly differential. The old European space based on states disguised as nations (Appadurai, 1990) has been swept away by a highly differentiated pattern and by a space of flows. These flows have accentuated the level of cultural diversity in Europe and the distinctiveness of the manifold European identities. This chapter describes and analyses this emergent structuration and assesses its implications for education in Europe. In this respect, it pays particular attention to the curricular systems of schools and universities. The EU enlargement is a continuous process. Currently, there is a queue of states waiting in the corridor to be let in. In the first tranche are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia. Behind them are Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Lithuania and Latvia. The divided status of Cyprus and political uncertainty in Malta have made negotiations on the accession of these two islands difficult. The predicament of the former may be eased by the fact that Turkey’s aspirations to accession have now been recognized. The position of Albania and the states of former Yugoslavia (with the exception of Slovenia) are dependent on greater political stability. It was notable, however, that as soon as Kostunica was elected president there was talk of eventual EU membership in both Belgrade and Brussels. Morocco, Israel and the Ukraine have all contemplated membership of the EU. Though Norway and Switzerland prosper outside the EU and Turkish growth rates are higher than those of member states, a main motivation for wishing to join is economic. The enhanced prosperity of Spain, Portugal and Greece following their accession would seem to justify this. There is also another, perhaps cultural, aspiration: membership of the EU endorses the aim of some states to “join Europe.” Behind this is, perhaps, the political motivation that membership of the EU will be a 35 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 35-46. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

36

DAVID COULBY

guarantee of independence and internal democracy. For these reasons, membership is an important political and cultural aspiration in the Baltic States, for instance. There are several ways in which this presents a misleading picture (Jones, 1996; Budge, Newton et al., 1997; Larsson, 1998; Pinder, 1998). It seems to suggest an endless and ineluctable expansion of the EU. This need not be the case. It is quite possible that states will be one day queuing up to leave as they are now attempting to enter. Although Greece joined the euro-zone in January 2001, the 2000 referendum in Denmark came down against membership of the common currency. Were a similar referendum to be held in the UK in the near future, it is almost certain that there would be a similar result. There are indications that in Germany, too, the new currency is far from popular. In Sweden, France and the UK, large sections of popular opinion would be in favour of actually withdrawing from the EU. State chauvinism as well as the democratic deficit of the EU are among the reasons for this failing popularity. Despite the level of political rhetoric and activism, the EU may not even be the most important super-national identity in Europe. The Bosnian wars revealed the divisive and incompetent foreign policy of the Union. By contrast, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was decisive and effective. NATO membership is different from that of the EU, including, crucially, the USA as well as Canada. Many European countries, however, have overlapping membership, including France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK. Non-EU European countries with NATO membership include Norway, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Like the EU, NATO has a queue of aspirant members. In many cases they are the same states. Despite French and Greek recalcitrance in the past, unlike the EU, there are few indications in the current climate of states wishing to withdraw from NATO. The deepening of the EU will prove a more difficult task than widening. In many ways, these processes are contradictory and mutually defeating. The more states that join the Union, the harder it will be to achieve agreement. The extension of qualified majority voting might help this but there are still areas where states will retain a veto. Furthermore, it is hard to imagine the extension of the imprudent and unpopular common agricultural policy to large states such as Poland. The more successful the EU is at homogenising the policy of states, the more difficult it will be for new states to join as the convergence criteria will increase in both number and difficulty. An enlarged and deepened, homogenized Europe becomes an increasingly remote possibility. The euro-zone already provides an example of two-speed or multi-tranche Europe. NATO membership ipso facto provides another dimension of this. It is possible that what will emerge will be a multidimensional Union with states choosing which aspects of policy they opt into. A state like the Netherlands might prefer to participate in all Union policies whereas another, like the UK, might be happy to belong to European trade agreements but prefer to stay out of the eurozone and Schengen, to withdraw from the agricultural policy and in practice actually to prioritize its membership of NATO, its links with the USA and its Atlantic position. As well as supranational organizations, many European states are apparently threatened by the growth of regionalism and small-scale nationalism (Harvie, 1994).

EDUCATION AND THE EUROPEAN SPACE OF FLOWS

37

Despite the noise level of Europeanization, the tendency has actually been for European states to split up. The Soviet Union (Lieven, 1993, 1998), Yugoslavia (Carr, 1980; Hooper, 1995; Pavkovic, 1996, 1997; Judah, 1997; Thomas, 1999) and Czechoslovakia are recent examples of failed superstates. Belgium and Spain have adopted highly federal policies to deal with national distinctiveness. The UK has recently taken less radical but surely irreversible steps along this road. The Northern League in Italy (Richards, 1995) and Breton and Corsican movements in France (Ardagh, 1995; Larkin, 1997; Fenby, 1999) provide further examples of the failed attempt to impose congruence between nation and state. Nationalism remains a prevalent ideology of almost all of Europe (Anderson, 1983; Bhabha, 1990; Featherstone, 1990; Ignatieff, 1994; Khazanov, 1995). The focus of this nationalism may have changed in some places to a more regional level but this seems only to increase its fervency: in Catalunja and Scotland as well as in Latvia and Croatia. Whilst the space of flows (see below) is likely to undermine the role and power of states, the breakdown of democratic and civic institutions in the face of globalization may mean, paradoxically, that people cling to state forms. This may indeed be assisted by the shift of power and symbolism to the more local level. The emergence of Wales and Wallonia deceptively appears to produce greater congruence between state and nation. But English as much as Bangladeshi speakers in Cardiff and Dutch as well as Turkish speakers in Charleroi would seem to have little place in these imagined communities. Nationalism is a double-edged sword for states: it can assist in their formation and solidarity but it can also create fractures, disunity and dissolution. However, the “nation state” may survive both as an entity and as a component of identity construction as earlier traditionalistic beliefs and institutions, such as religion and associated arrangements, survived the Enlightenment. States will seek to preserve power at their level and nationalism will be one of the tools they employ. Control over school curricula will be central to this activity. The cultures of Europe are manifold: the product of settlement millennia old and of more recent demographic movements. To the linguistic, religious and historical diversity of states such as France and Spain have been added the cultures of migrant groups, themselves astonishingly heterogeneous. Cultures are created and recreated through interaction. The speed and diversity of this interaction may have accelerated in Europe but it is a process as old as civilization. It is not, of course, a purely spontaneous process: the state and other agencies play a part in the discursive strategy of culture; traditions may be invented, homelands imagined. The innumerable manifestations of the richness of this cultural diversity are something which school and university systems in particular are empowered by their states either to encourage or to inhibit. Europe itself, of course, remains a problematic entity. Whilst not rehearsing in detail arguments made elsewhere (Coulby, 2000a), the boundaries of Europe to the west and south as well as to the east are far from clear. They are defined by politics and cultural inscription rather than by geography. In the context of the European space, as in others, the cold war vocabulary of east and west is inappropriate as well as inaccurate. It implies economic triumphalism and the marginalization of certain states. The geographical area of the former Yugoslavia is not on the fringes of

38

DAVID COULBY

Europe. Its politics have not been marginal to peace and war in Europe for the last 150 years. Religious and “ethnic” conflicts are everyday circumstances in the EU countries; they are not an exotic, Balkan phenomenon. Nor are the politics of this region the product of local aberration: as Turkey and Austria-Hungary declined, Russia, France, Germany and the UK all pursued interventionist foreign policies in the area, a practice now followed by the USA (Glenny, 1999). Any attempt to describe the emerging European space needs to take account of Russia. It would be a mistake to believe that Russian power, economic as well as political, would fail to revive. Russia remains concerned with the “near abroad.” As the stand-off between Russian and UK tanks at Pristina airport in the summer of 1999 revealed, Russia is still a military superpower and still has a foreign policy which stretches to the Adriatic. NATO and EU presumptions that history is finished have led to short-term neo-imperialism. As a medium-term strategy this may prove to be hazardous. EU and US impotence in the face of the destruction of Grozny in late 1999 and the subsequent regime of murder and torture indicate the limits of the New World Order. Russian is the language which no one wants to learn in schools and universities across Europe and how the West won the cold war is the accepted version of late twentieth-century history. School and university curricula may be assisting in the inscription of the enmities of the twenty-first century (Coulby, 1997a, 1997b, 2000b). European space is increasingly structured not by regional, state or continental boundaries but by networks and pathways that operate to a dynamic of flows and movement (Castells, 1996, 1997, 1998): at the end of the twentieth century, we are living through one of these rare intervals in history. An interval characterised by the transformation of our “material culture” by the works of a new technological paradigm organised around information technologies. (Castells, 1996, p. 29)

The spread of unrestrained capitalism linked to developments in information and communications technology (ICT) has led to new patterns of social organization. People, capital, knowledges, services, styles are moving with increasing speed and frequency within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world. This emergent space can only be partially controlled by states. Despite their ageing populations, many European states are currently attempting to implement rigorous immigration policies, for instance, in the belief that this flow can be controlled. By contrast, the rapid shifts of capital as transnational corporations invest and disinvest are much more difficult to control. National curricular systems allow states to determine which foreign languages their citizens should study but the spread of the worldwide net is appreciably less susceptible to political control. The space of flows opens new possibilities of liberation and exploitation. Liberation might be visualized by the expansion of postmodern, cosmopolitan, online citizenship to ever more geographical areas and social strata in Europe. Certainly, ICT developments have changed not only patterns of communication but also the ways in which knowledge itself is stored, retrieved and communicated. Access to apparently limitless amounts of data as well as numberless correspondents

EDUCATION AND THE EUROPEAN SPACE OF FLOWS

39

with whom to evaluate it is now available to increasing numbers of people throughout Europe. European space is increasingly structured not by regional, state or continental boundaries but by networks and pathways that operate to a dynamic of flows and movement. The exploitative possibilities of the space of flows involve the marginalized groups in Europe. Working-class and immigrant families, the familiar victims of exploitation and oppression, are now characterized as having digital deficit. Furthermore, Europe, particularly the EU, continues to use its post-industrial advantage to exploit large areas of Africa, Latin America and Asia in terms of relations of trade. There is, finally, a danger that this new structuration of the European space will be accompanied by the breakdown of civic and democratic institutions. Local governments are losing authority both to centralising states and to the new regions. At all levels and in many states people are participating less in democratic elections. In the onset of global capital, sometimes, as in the UK, abetted by right-wing governments, trade union membership and influence has declined. On the other hand, non-democratic institutions are being increasingly empowered. Transnational corporations are obviously central here: which European government can retain authority in the face of investment decisions by Ford or Shell? The democratic deficit of the EU means that many its institutions, and particularly the Commission, are seen as part of this exploitative thrust. The emergence of the space of flows is not, of course, an exclusively European phenomenon. In global terms, Europe is linked to other hot spots, Singapore and South Korea as well as Japan and the USA, where economic and social change are leading to a reconfiguration of space. Indeed, it is only in global terms that these changes can be understood. This restructuring of the European space attendant on globalization is likely to continue. The European space cannot be an economic or cultural fortress. But globalization does not imply homogenization in either cultural or economic terms: again, the pattern is of diversity, of overlapping and fluid forms. Within Europe there are centres of post-industrial expansion—Finland, Catalunja, southern England—as well as areas of traditional agriculture—Transylvania, the Scottish Highlands. Similarly, cultural traditionalism continues in Catholic Ireland as well as Orthodox Serbia, and the cultural successes of modernity—pop music, television, films, fast food, newspapers and magazines—are apparently ubiquitous in Europe. Despite the Internet, postmodern and post-colonial cultural forms—the novels of Ahdaf Soueif and Philippa Gregory, BBC’s The Cops, nouvelle cuisine, Tate Modern and Gehry’s buildings—remain esoteric and elite interests. Within this space of flows, knowledge itself has become the most important international trading commodity (Neef, 1998). This is not, however, the familiar scientific, progressive, imperialistic knowledge of the Enlightenment (Lyotard, 1984). Knowledge, like culture, is relative, contingent and provisional. Although the knowledge taught in schools would seem to differ dramatically from this, university knowledge and the experience of learning from the Internet are closer to the contingent, temporary, commodified knowledge of the knowledge economy. Europe is an important producer in the knowledge economy (Lash & Urry, 1994). It produces not only the obvious books, music, journalism, fashion and pop music but also the technology of Formula 1 cars and the Eurofighter and highly prestigious

40

DAVID COULBY

PhDs. Europe is also in other areas a persistently underperforming producer. Despite initiatives at EU level, Europe is highly dependent on imported chip technology and software. Within this European space, absolute resource shortage and environmental degradation may become increasingly more important constraints than the politics of boundary maintenance. Again, this is an area where the traditionalistic school curriculum in particular may be failing to prepare children and young people for the future (Orr, 1992; Hicks & Slaughter, 1998). Thus, the transportation of oil from Kazakhstan to the industrial areas of north-east Europe may be the determining issue of both economic prosperity and war and peace. What is at issue here is the nature of the flow of the commodity. Across whose territory will this commodity pass? Who will control and profit from this flow? Similarly, the control of unpolluted water supplies offers possibilities for wide regional cooperation or conflict, as can already be seen in both Turkey and the Danube basin. Predicted climate and sea level changes associated with global warming are likely to exacerbate the importance of flows of water, oil and energy. 2. EUROPEAN EDUCATION AND THE SPACE OF FLOWS In considering the space of flows it is possible to distinguish both institutions and processes which are engaged with it. This engagement itself may take the form of production or reproduction. Thus, Microsoft, by marketing the software—Windows, Office, Internet Explorer etc.—helps to produce and expand the space of flows. By advertising, product upgrading, franchise and licensing deals, endowing prestigious university departments and professorships etc. they also work to reproduce this space. Of course, this reproduction is itself shaped within the product range and profit of Microsoft but this is not quite the point here. A similar argument could be made for Nokia or a whole range of hardware, software, telecommunications and consultancy companies. The complete automation and digitalization which followed the Big Bang has made the London Stock Exchange a key player in the space of flows as it allows the instantaneous transfer of ever larger amounts of capital around the globe. It is less easy here to isolate the reproductive role which is perhaps taken by the Financial Times, with its vast amount of regularly updated data and analysis (with even more accessible online). The initiation of a Japanese edition of the Financial Times, as well as the predicted competition between the new European edition of the Wall Street Journal, reveal the tendency towards globalization and monopoly formation within this new space. A less obvious process in the generation of the space of flows is cultural tourism. The movement to and fro of large numbers of rich people would be an unimportant social phenomenon were it not that it is accompanied by other cultural and consumerist activities. The surprising, fashionable taste for Spanish beer in the UK is a trivial example. The power that the Disney holiday complexes and associated products exert on the imaginative world and the identity formation of Europeans and Japanese as well as Americans is more serious (Zukin, 1991; Clarke, 1998; Maio, 1998). The popularity of Greece as a holiday destination is associated not only with

EDUCATION AND

THE

EUROPEAN SPACE OF FLOWS

41

sea and sunshine but with the famous archaeological sites, which are widely visited. The association between archaeology and nationalism is well established (DiazAndreu & Champion, 1996). Cultural tourism plays its part in the generation of a wider European Hellenophilia which has important educational dimensions (Coulby, 2000c; Zambeta, 2000). Universities are critical institutions in both the production and reproduction of the space of flows. In their research facilities and programmes, they are among the institutions actually creating it. In terms of reproduction, it is universities that generate the skills needed for success in the knowledge economy. These skills are not only concerned with ICT capabilities, though these are increasingly central to higher education. They also involve the wider skills and concepts of networking: working in (often multidisciplinary) teams, retaining important contacts and moving smoothly between the professional and the social, acquiring particular cultural interests, tastes and customs, skills of branding and marketing and especially selfpresentation. Universities are themselves increasingly networked at both departmental and institutional level. Whilst some of these links are national, they are increasingly international, involving other universities in Europe (frequently using the encouragement of the various EU higher education schemes) and North America. Links with local, national and international corporations as well as research funding and project development agencies are crucially important in terms of research funding. Thus, three elite universities, one in England, one in France and one in California, will link up with an international software producer. For the universities, this means the appointment of new developmental staff, a range of additional research students and new, up-to-date buildings and facilities. For the corporation, it involves the development of new products and/or markets and ultimately, sustained profitability. The ability of universities to form relationships with other aspects of the knowledge economy (almost certainly beyond the national level) is one of the key determinants both of their own success and of the economic vitality of their states. For universities, this has meant not only expansion in their student numbers and range of activities but also the associated closer state involvement and scrutiny (Cowen, 1996). Colleagues at the Lisbon seminar remarked that I had a rather sanguine view of European universities. The inflexibility of the German university system was particularly recommended to my attention. Certainly, there are differences within as well as between states in the extent to which universities have succeeded in embedding themselves inside the knowledge economy. Recently, the central German Government has initiated attempts to shorten and slim down the degree syllabus. The independence of both the Lander and the universities themselves mean that Berlin will have a struggle on its hands. Nevertheless, the initiation of the attempted policy change reflects, perhaps, recognition of the advantages that other states are accruing from their education sectors. Following the Bologna agreement on higher education in the EU, there appears to be movement in several states towards convergence at this phase. However, since this, in the Netherlands as well as Germany, is in the direction of shortening the amount of time it takes to gain a first degree, it may be motivated at least as much by the urge to limit spending on universities as by progress towards European harmonization.

42

DAVID COULBY

Schools, in contrast to universities, increasingly look like outmoded institutions teaching traditionalistic and modernistic knowledge to children and young people whose backgrounds, lifestyle and aspirations are increasingly postmodern. Through their nationalistic and, at best, Eurocentric curricular systems, schools appear still to be engaged in the attempted elimination of linguistic, religious and cultural diversity (Coulby & Jones, 1995; Coulby, 2000a). They tend to teach the cultural, historical and scientific superiority of their own states and/or of Europe in general. The centrality of the link between school systems and nationalism is well made by Nóvoa: it is of importance to keep in mind the relationship between the model of mass schooling and the model of the nation-state. The ontology of modernity constructed a school which played an important role in cultural and national unification. Buttressed by an ideology of modernization and by scientific rationality, this project successfully carried forward the project of integration of populations—or more precisely, citizens— within the new nation states. This was in fact, more than its role. It was its reason of being. (Nóvoa, 2000, p. 55)

Whilst there is pressure to replace this nationalistic school system with one where the curriculum might concentrate more on Europe as a whole, this would only replace a narrow ethnocentrism with a slightly wider Eurocentricism (Sultana, 1995, 1996a, 1996b). Schools, then, are particularly prone to epistemological certainty. They rarely teach children and young people how limited, temporary or contingent is the knowledge they offer. In this respect, they would seem to be producing consumers rather than producers or entrepreneurs for the knowledge economy. In terms of reproduction they are still firmly entrenched in patterns of tradition and modernity. Unlike universities, they do not open up to their pupils the emergent space of networks but emphasize the nation-disguised-as-state and the associated imperial cartographies and epistemologies. The critique of post-colonial discourse theory of the forms of knowledge prevalent in European schools is still as applicable as it appears to be unrecognized (Freire, 1972; Carnoy, 1974; Feyerabend, 1978; Fanon, 1980a, 1980b; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983; Young, 1990; Joseph, 1992; Said, 1995; Young, 1995; Popkewitz, 1997; Apple, 2000). In terms of the emerging resource shortages, environmental degradation and changes to the biosphere mentioned in the previous section, school curricula systems would seem still to be concealing these issues from pupils rather than making information about them available. To take England and Wales, which so often provide an extreme example, all three of these issues receive explicit mention in National Curriculum geography and science. However, it is not only that the time devoted to them is relatively brief, it is also that they cannot be addressed either in a social or international context. The expulsion of sociology and economics from the curriculum of the compulsory school has meant that these issues cannot be addressed by pupils in a critical way. The production and consumption of the world’s wealth; the way these are controlled by transnational corporations and states; their medium-term impact on global sustainability: these issues are largely invisible in the classrooms of England and Wales. The school curriculum does not reveal to pupils the social, economic and cultural processes and consequences of the

EDUCATION AND THE EUROPEAN SPACE OF FLOWS

43

space of flows. The actual nature of the European space within which they live may remain concealed. Urban schools in particular are characterized in many states by a crisis of order and legitimacy. Their social control and stratification functions are ever more central and explicit (as against the nationalistic social and cultural reproduction functions mentioned earlier). Schools, especially secondary schools, are in danger of becoming child storage units. Again, there are major differences between states. These differences will depend, among other things, on the extent to which secondary schools are differentiated, streamed and banded; the extent to which associated examinations are tiered; the extent to which the curriculum system is controlled by the central state; the extent to which this curriculum is assessed and scrutinized; the dimensions of the associated cultural gap between pupils and the curriculum. The stratification aspect is addressed below but it is important to recognize that the processes of stratification are also processes of control. The regime of frequent and rigorous testing—in France and Greece as well as England and Wales—itself exerts control over children and young people. The need to revise and prepare and to be ever studious in class and out places severe constraints on the use of time and the possibilities for alternative identity formation for children and young people. Stress levels serve to control teachers as well as pupils (Sherman Swing, Schriewer & Orivel, 2000). It is the emphasis on stratification at secondary level, as well as the traditionalistic/modernist curricula mentioned earlier, which are leading to dysfunctional institutions. Given that actual stratification is increasingly visibly seen to be outside school and located in the networks, the legitimation of the continuation of secondary education may be an emergent political issue. Economically privileged children are those with access to the post-industrial technology and networks (personal, cultural and stylistic as well as technological). Schools, as ever, appear powerless to compensate for these inequalities. The function of the modernist school, it could be argued, was to exert social control and to reproduce stratification and nationalism. In the space of flows, nationalism is counterproductive, stratification less structured and more related to digital access than to school examination hierarchies. In some areas, the function of social control remains. Education and the workplace are not separate domains (Bash & Green, 1995). The workplace of the knowledge economy has other needs than for stratification and nationally inscribed identities. Lifelong learning, just in time learning, open and distance learning have all become characteristics of further and higher education but not of schools. The curricula of schools are increasingly dissociated from the social and technical protocols of the post-industrialized workforce. Critics have been saying this for decades. The dissociation is currently radical (Neef, 1998). But here it is necessary to return to the points raised in the first part of this chapter concerning the reducing role of European states and their increasingly desperate attempts to disguise themselves as nations. Centralized curricula have become the pre-eminent response by states to the crisis of nationalized identity. Faced with the importance of transnational corporations, of European-level institutions, with ever more confident demands for regional autonomy or “national” independence, with the multicultural populations of the cities, states have

44

DAVID COULBY

consolidated the-state-as-nation and the Europe-as-fount-of-civilization myths in school curricula as policies designed to ensure their own preservation. In doing this they are failing to respect or enhance the diversity upon which European culture depends. In the space of flows and networks this nationalistic stress is both politically outdated and economically irrelevant. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to António Nóvoa and Martin Lawn for inviting me to the Gulbenkian seminar in Lisbon. I am grateful to the other participants for sharing their ideas and research. Finally, thanks to Evie Zambeta for commenting on an earlier draft of this chapter. REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global culture: Nationalism, globalisation and modernity (pp. 295–310). London: Sage. Apple, M. W. (2000). How the conservative restoration is justified: Morals, genes and educational policy. In J. Bouzakis (Ed.), Historical–Comparative perspectives: Festschrift for Andreas M. Kazamias (pp. 315–332). Athens: Gutenberg. Ardagh, J. (1995). France today. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bash, L. & Green, A. (1995). World yearbook of education 1995: Youth, employment and education. London: Kogan Page. Bhabha, H. K. (1990). Nation and narration. London: Routledge. Budge, I., Newton, K. et al. (1997). The politics of the New Europe: Atlantic to Urals. London: Longman. Carnoy, M. (1974). Education as cultural imperialism. New York: David McKay. Carr, R. (1980). Modem Spain: 1875–1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castells, M. (1996). The information age: Economy, society and culture: The rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell. Castells, M. (1997). The information age: Economy, society and culture: The power of identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Castells, M. (1998). The information age: Economy, society and culture: End of Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell. Clarke, C. (1998). Nature by design. New Internationalist, 28 December, 28–30. Coulby, D. (1997a). European curricula, xenophobia and warfare. Comparative Education, 33 (1), 29–42. Coulby, D. (1997b). Language and citizenship in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia: Education and the brinks of warfare. European Journal of Intercultural Studies, 8 (2), 125–134. Coulby, D. (2000a). Beyond the National Curriculum: Curricular centralism and cultural diversity in Europe and the USA. London: Falmer Press. Coulby, D. (2000b). The playing fields of Eton: warfare and curricular systems in Europe. In J. Bouzakis (Ed.), Historical–Comparative perspectives: Festschrift for Andreas M. Kazamias (pp. 349–362). Athens: Gutenberg. Coulby, D. (2000c). Greek civilisation as curricular construct: UK. Comparative Education Society in Europe Conference: The emergence of the "knowledge society": From clerici vagantes to the Internet. Bologna. Coulby, D. & Jones, C. (1995). Postmodernity and European education systems: Centralist knowledge and cultural diversity. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham. Cowen, R. (1996). The evaluation of higher education systems. London: Kogan Page. Diaz-Andreu, M. & Champion, T. (1996). Nationalism and archaeology in Europe. London: UCL Press. Fanon, F. (1980a). A dying colonialism. London: Writers and Readers.

EDUCATION

AND THE

EUROPEAN SPACE

OF

FLOWS

45

Fanon, F. (1980b). Towards the African revolution. London: Writers and Readers. Featherstone, M. (1990). Global culture: Nationalism globalisation and modernity. A theory, culture and society. London: Sage. Fenby, J. (1999). On the brink: The trouble with France. London: Warner Books. Feyerabend, P. (1978). Science in a free society. London: Verso. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Glenny, M. (1999). The Balkans 1804–1999: Nationalism, war and the great powers. London: Granta. Harvie, C. (1994). The rise of regional Europe. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hicks, D. & Slaughter, R. (1998). The world yearbook of education 1998: Futures education. London: Kogan Page. Hobsbawm, E. &Ranger, T. (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hooper, J. (1995). The new Spaniards. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ignatieff, N. (1994). Blood and belonging: Journeys into the new nationalism. London: Vintage. Jones, R. A. (1996). The politics and economics of the European Union. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Joseph, G. G. (1992). The crest of the peacock: Non-European roots of mathematics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Judah, T. (1997). The Serbs: History, myth and the destruction of Yugoslavia. London: Yale University Press. Khazanov, A. K. (1995). After the USSR: Ethnicity, nationalism and politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Larkin, M. (1997). France since the Popular Front: Government and people 1936–1996. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Larsson, R. (1998). Boundaries of Europe. Stockholm: Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research. Lash, S. & Urry, J. (1994). Economies of signs and space. London: Sage. Lieven, A. (1993). The Baltic revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the path to independence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lieven, A. (1998). Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lyotard, J. F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Maio, K. (1998). Disney’s dolls. New Internationalist, December, 12–14. Neef, D. (1998). The knowledge economy. Boston, MA: Buttertworth-Heinneman. Nóvoa, A. (2000). Europe and education: Historical and comparative approaches. In J. Bouzakis (Ed.). Historical–Comparative perspectives: Festschrift for Andreas M. Kazamias (pp. 47–70). Athens: Gutenberg. Orr, D. (1992). Ecological literacy: Education and the transition to a postmodern world. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Pavkovic, A. (1996). The Yugoslav idea: A short history of a failure. In J. Perkins & J. Tampke (Eds.), Europe: Retrospects and prospects. Manly East: South Highlands Publishers. Pavkovic, A. (1997). The fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism in a multinational state. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Pinder, D. (1998). The New Europe: Economy, society and environment. Chichester: John Wiley. Popkewitz, T. (1997). The production of reason and power: Curriculum history and intellectual traditions. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 29 (2), 131–164. Richards, C. (1995). The New Italians. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Said, E. (1995). Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient. With a new Afterword. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sherman Swing, E., Schriewer, J. & Orivel, F. (2000). Problems and prospects in European education. Westport, CT: Praeger. Sultana, R. G. (1995). A uniting Europe, a dividing education? Supranationalism, Euro-Centrism and the curriculum. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 5 (2), 115–144. Sultana, R. G. (1996a). The European Union and its educational agenda: A wolf in sheep’s clothing? In K. Watson, S. Modgil & C. Modgil (Eds.), Educational dilemmas: Debates and diversity. Vol. 3. Power and responsibility in education (pp. 66–74). London: Cassell. Sultana, R. G. (1996b). Of facts, fictions and the EU: A Response to Ryba from the middle of nowhere. In K. Watson, S. Modgil & C. Modgil (Eds.), Educational dilemmas: Debates and diversity. Vol. 3. Power and responsibility in education (pp. 82–87). London: Cassell.

46

DAVID COULBY

Thomas, R. (1999). Serbia under Milosevic: Politics in the 1990s. London: Hurst. Young, R. (1990). White mythologies: Writing history and the West. London: Routledge. Young, R. (1995). Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture and race. London: Routledge. Zambeta, E. (2000). The Curricular construction of Greece. Comparative Education Society in Europe Conference: The emergence of the "knowledge society": From clerici vagantes to the Internet. Bologna. Zukin, S. (1991). Landscapes of power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

FRANCO FERRAROTTI

3. NOTES TOWARDS THE DEFINITION OF A EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SPACE

I The definition of a European Educational “Space” is at the same time an urgent task and a difficult challenge. If we assume, in the historical perspective, the existence of three main spheres or “spaces” of educational endeavour—that is, the USA, Japan, and Europe—we immediately see convergences as well as major differences among these three cultural milieus. No doubt, roughly speaking, the basic convergence is given by science and technology. The major differences, on the other hand, have to do with the underlying values. I submit that the most serious shortcoming of the present-day thrust towards a worldwide economic globalization concerns the neglect or the inability to understand such distinction. To put it succinctly, while technology seems to be basically the same in practical implementation all over the world, irrespective of peculiar characteristics of each specific community or locality into which it is being imported in a more or less coercive manner, cultural values, in the sense of cultural orientations and patterns of behaviour, active in each historical context, are likely to be widely divergent and to require an ad hoc examination. Thus, we may observe the overpowering sense of the community at work in Japan, to the point mat the idea of the individual as a free agent is hardly tenable, or we may realise that in American society, the utilitarian principle and the ability to make money, linked with a technical efficiency or workmanship factor, are by far the most important tenets for moral justification and for social respectability; that is to say, for attaining a good standing in the community. The European scene appears to be more complex. In the first place, history and historical consciousness play here a role much greater than anywhere else. Secondly, and consequently, the past carries a decisive weight in terms of the educational process as a way to achieve the formation of the responsible individual person or, to put it more precisely, of the personality of the person. Here, as we may learn from Greek culture and Christian testimony, the conscious participation of each individual requires that the entity in which we desire to participate represent a hierarchic scheme or a symbolic concentration, whereas in utilitarian societies, participation is not in terms of systems of meaning representing the ultimate reality. These societies

47 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 47-54. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

48

FRANCO FERRAROTI

are interest-based and participation in them refers primarily to the process of making decisions concerning the various practical interests. But, in Europe, the prevailing concept of culture is still essentially individualistic in the classical sense. We, as Europeans, have not been able so far to go beyond traditional humanism. The educated person is still conceived in Greek terms as an individual kalòs kaì agathòs or, to put it in Ciceronian terms, vir bonus dicendi peritus (“a man of good standing in the community who is an expert in the art of communication”). II Needless to say, this concept is far from adequate for an industrial mass society. The elaboration of a European educational “space” requires, in the first place, the transition from the concept and practice of an elite culture, whereby the educated person asserts themself against and over a mass of illiterate persons, oì pollòi, who can be said to be human only in a zoological sense, to a new concept of culture, corresponding to the functional needs of a mass society without being subordinate to them. In fact, this does not mean the subordination to technology or the abandonment of any value or selective criterion. It rather points to the need for a new paideia and a new selection founded on a broad social basis, which inevitably raises two issues: a) to overcoming of the question of the so-called “two cultures,” especially as expounded in the famous and misleading pamphlet by C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution; and b) what are the methods and avenues to express, from within an industrial mass society and its mass culture, adequate criteria of excellence? The hot debate ignited in the early 1960s by the pamphlet of C. P. Snow, especially if seen from a certain distance, is undermined by some serious misunderstandings, capable of reducing its value in terms of pedagogic insights down to a purely rhetorical exercise. It is the very idea of culture that seems to be conceived in a narrow-gauged, unacceptable meaning. C. P. Snow does not seem to be able to get away from the confusion between the concept of culture as a complex of cognitive attainment and moral values and the concept of culture as a complex of habits of everyday life and average mentality of given professional groups. Undoubtedly, the classical concept of culture as a value-loaded normative criterion is no longer tenable in its elitist connotations. However, this does not mean that culture can be pragmatically understood as a purely lived experience and therefore reduced to a set of behavioural patterns typical of some professional categories, such as the theoretical physicists or the members of the legal profession and so on, lest one falls under the strictures recently expounded by Allan Bloom in his book, The Closing of the American Mind. Snow’s dilemma of the “two cultures” facing the “scientific revolution” and trying to measure up, in some sort of invidious comparison, to the new emerging needs of the global society is not well taken. While it points to a real issue of present-day technically advanced societies, it fails to realize that it is not a question of choosing one culture against the other but rather, to enable people to assess reasonably, that is, on the basis of a

NOTES TOWARDS THE DEFINITION OF A EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SPACE

49

rationally balanced judgement, each historical situation as it emerges with all its human import and peculiarity. The tension between the “two cultures”—the scientific and the humanistic one— cannot, at any rate, be easily disposed of. One should resist the temptation of a gross equation between the two. There is no doubt that art, literature, historical studies and the humanities in general do not progress in the same way as science and technology do. It is well known that, while humanistic culture aims at internationalization or at one’s inner cultivation, the goal of scientific culture is to be seen in terms of results accumulation and gradual refinement of specific techniques for determining and solving carefully circumscribed issues. What is most important in order to define a European educational space is the awareness that what is needed is not the choice of a culture against the other but rather, the understanding that there is only one culture and that this basically unitary culture rests on a new kind of sensibility; that is, on a special ability to see each cognitive fragment into a global set meanings. III In this perspective, the prejudice to beat is the Eurocentric one; the prejudice, that is, which sees and favours in the western European way of life the basic normative crux which crowns the whole evolutionary, historical process of humanity and in regard to which every other culture is to be seen as only a pre-culture, unculture or, as it were, illicit culture. In this sense, such a culture is one which prevents the understanding of others, and sets itself up as a self-conscious culture against the others. It is a culture apart, proud of its own specificity, one which hastens to pose itself as a reason and backing for a superiority not manifested. This situation has been described with great clarity, in its geographical and spiritual nature: What interests us is the concept of Europe from the cultural and moral point of view— the Europe which is a quiddity, a thing in itself, distinct from the other parts of the globe, above all for certain particular characteristics in its mode of thought and feeling, its philosophical and political systems: the Europe as historical “individuality” ... when we say “Europe”, we mean to refer not only to a certain tract of land, washed of certain seas, ridged by particular mountain ranges, experiencing a particular climate, etc. We mean to refer, more particularly, to a certain form of civilization, a “way of being” ... The “European” is much more than the “white”: before and above everything, it is a certain way of thinking and feeling peculiar and special to himself. (Chabod, Storia dell’idea dell’Eurapa, 1984 [1964], p. 20)

Europe is thus a reality in fact, but also, above all, in consciousness, which distinguishes it from every other reality on a world scale. It is different as “value”: that is, by contrasting itself to what is not Europe, not comparable to itself, still less assimilable. In the Middle Ages, the idea of a Europe under Charlemagne had already appeared, when he was referred to as rex pater Europae or Europae venerandus apex. But soon the distinction/contrast between Germans and Romans was transcended and replaced by the one between Westerners and Orientals. In Machiavelli, Europe indicates a group of individual abilities or “virtues,” whereas

50

FRANCO FERRAROTI

Asia and the East in general mean despotism, having a single master, social, political and intellectual stagnation; a theme John Stuart Mill was to take up in his wellknown tract, On Liberty. Only Tacitus, and later Montaigne and Montesquieu, placed the barbarians on a higher plane with respect to Europeans, but only for pedagogical reasons. The myth of the “noble savage” was worked out as a call to the European fallen prey to vice, corrupt and forgetful of his real claims to nobility. However, human history was summarized and equated with that of Europe. Bossuet was ignorant of China and noticed the Arabs in passing in his Discours sur l’histoire universelle, though he dwelt on the lessons to be drawn from ancient Egypt. Voltaire, the lively cosmopolitan, in his extraordinary avant propos to the Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (1750) (as in essence in the earlier Le siècle de Louis XIV), remarked on “four happy ages”, those in which the arts were perfected and which, used as measure of the greatness of the human spirit, are an example for posterity. These four ages are those taking their name from Pericles, Caesar and Augustus, the Italian Renaissance, and the century of Louis XIV. It is hardly necessary to observe that they are European ages. The measure of the greatness of the human spirit can only be European, linked to and determined by the Europe of culture but also, in context, to that of customs, to society’s life. It is quite incredible: enlightenment cosmopolitanism dialectically reverses into its opposite; European specificity is transformed into a reason for unchallenged superiority. Seemingly universalistic cosmopolitanism is made to coincide with a single European tradition and a single racial type—European, Caucasian and Aryan. Students of Indo-European linguistics have observed that the concept of “Aryan” applied to a race is a travesty, of which, however, there are many famous examples. After the performance in Berlin of his Ring, Wagner wrote to Ludwig of Bavaria, in May 1881: “It is undoubtedly the work of art most characteristic of the Aryan race” (Selected Letters of R. Wagner, ed. Spencer, B. Millington, 1988). The Sanskrit “arya” means “noble” and it is thus not legitimate to apply it one-sidedly and exclusively to the Germanic peoples. As for Italy, it is hardly necessary to recall that for centuries it has been a melting pot of different races. It is quite useless to bother with the “sacred” texts of this century’s crudest racism, present at the birth of, and with the major responsibility for unleashing, the Second World War. It is not even necessary to quote Hitler’s Mein Kampf or Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century. European racism, which now finds its unheard-of and disturbing manifestations in intolerance against coloured people and foreign immigrants even in peoples like the Italian—which believed themselves exempt and undamaged as regards certain prejudices, given their tradition of “catholicity,”—boasts important, “noble” forerunners, deeply rooted in the history of European philosophy. It has been remarked that, according to Hegel: after Abraham, Jewish history reaches a higher level of religiosity in the laws of Moses. Extraneousness from men and nature, poverty, the lack of any help in the midst of the powers surrounding the people, increase ... the Greeks lived in the awareness of the divine character of nature and the state, and so mastered beauty, life, love and happiness: the life of the Jews was instead suffused with an infinite separation and contrast, from the passivity of the mass and from unhappiness ... the great tragedy of the

NOTES TOWARDS THE DEFINITION OF A EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SPACE

51

Jewish people ... is not for Hegel a Greek tragedy, it cannot arouse either terror or pity, as these sentiments arise only from the fate which afflicts an honest person because of his inevitable fault. It can arouse only horror ... (for Hegel) the destiny of the Jewish people is that of Macbeth, who removed himself from nature itself, bound himself to alien beings, and to serve them had to trample and kill everything that is sacred in human nature. (Dilthey, 1986, pp. 112–115)

IV Hegel’s severe judgement sounds like an early justification for Hitler’s “final solution.” The “different” must be eliminated. He puts society in crisis through his inoffensive presence, that society supposedly “amalgamated,” conceptually mastered with no exceptions, totally faithful to blood and soil, without reservation, in the sickly cheerfulness of a choir accompanied by the mindless sound of a Sunday accordion, with rivers of beer and generous helpings of frankfurters. And yet a poetic vision is also possible, not without genuine pathos and aura, of a Europe united in a fatherly way under the patriarchal rule of its most Christian Kings: Those were fine, splendid times when Europe was a Christian land, where a single Christianity lived as part of the world delineated on a human basis, and when a single great common interest united the most remote provinces of this vast spiritual realm. Without great landed possessions, a single supreme head led and unified the great political forces. A considerable corporation, to which each had access, was immediately below him, obeying his orders and setting itself enthusiastically to consolidate his beneficial powers. Every member of this community was honoured everywhere. And if the most humble sought comfort and help from him, protection or advice, and in return provided willingly and generously for his many needs, he too found protection, respect and audience from the powerful. And all held dear these chosen people, armed with amazing strength, like sons of heaven whose presence and good will distributed manifold blessings. A childlike faith bound men to their messages ... They were the expert pilots on the great unknown sea, under whose shield all could stand unconcerned through the storms and tranquilly trust in a land fall and safe disembarcation on the shores of the true homeland. (Novalis, 1942, p. 3)

In the light of these documents which instantly illuminate rightly a whole cultural and sociopolitical context, it is rather odd to go on asking if, for example, Martin Heidegger was a Nazi or contributed to Nazism’s success; or if, on the other hand, there was between his thought and Nazism ultimately only a brush, an occasional contact, something like a touch of elbows, like what happens on a train packed with standing passengers, silent and anxious. Undoubtedly, there is a risk of racism in every strongly historical rooted thought. Racism is perhaps the tragic deviation of a virtue. On the other hand, it is dangerous to hold that virtue has the monopoly of truth. In the integrated community, the arrival of the stranger and the “different” is perceived as a threat. Long before Hitler or Rosenberg, Arthur de Gobineau stated: The birth, developments and eclipse of a society and of civilization are phenomena which take the observer far above the horizons that generally show him. In their initial causes. They bear no imprint of the human passions, popular, material factors, too fragile to have a place in such a long-term operation. Unique, the different modes of

52

FRANCO FERRAROTI intelligence distributed among the different races and their combinations, make themselves known ... The existence of a society, being first of all an effect that does not depend on man to produce or prevent it, involves no effect for which he is responsible. It involves no morality. A society in itself is neither virtuous nor vicious. It is neither wise nor foolish; it is ... One must make history enter the family of the natural sciences. (de Gobineau, pp. 544–545)

With an essentially naturalistic apparatus of reasoning, taken up in technological terms by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West, de Gobineau says scientifically that the degeneration of society certainly arises from mixing (“la dégéneration des sociétés vient du mélange ...”). The seeds of racism must be sought in this crude determinism, with its biophysical basis. Causes of a cultural order seem to play the ambiguous role of a clumsy cover-up. Not even the great, tormenting, open problems of human experience seem able to placate the hatred for the “different” which animates racism. V The peculiar nature of the European cultural tradition, with its positive features and its obvious perversions, should not lead us to forget the cultural debts of Europe visà-vis other parts of the world. Cultural borrowings seem to be essential for world progress. It is not a zero sum relationship. If one party gains, the other one does not lose. It is a gain for everybody. It is well known that the invention of paper and printing techniques came from China and that through Arabic culture present-day numerical systems came to Europe after having been found and used in India. The so-called “Greek miracle” is no miracle at all. Scientific progress does not pass through different, purely European phases, as it is usually believed; that is to say, the original Greek phase, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and finally modernity. Things are more complicated than such a diachronic scheme of development would have it. Although often only implicitly, Herodotos and Plato recognize that Greece owes much to the ancient Egyptians and to the Babylonians. In fact, the way Egyptians would calculate fractions was still in use in Greece until AD 700. On the other hand, the influence of Arabic thought on Middle Ages philosophy can hardly be exaggerated. What seems to be typically European is a powerful acceleration of most scientific acquisitions, not to mention a unique organizational ability, especially in the field of economic production and rational bookkeeping. But this is quite far from justifying any claim to cultural supremacy. What should be retained is a peculiar orientation which is at the basis of the European educational “space.” In essence, this orientation is historical and would be seriously impaired or distorted if constrained within the impersonal and ahistorical framework of present-day technology. The very idea of Europe would then be in jeopardy as it would be defenceless with respect to American pressure. This pressure would appear, at first, purely technical, but soon enough its broader cultural and social implications would surface as a serious threat to European identity. This does not mean that identity is a meta-historical value in itself. This belief would in the end result in a mortal trap and take us back to some sort of

NOTES TOWARDS THE DEFINITION OF A EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SPACE

53

Eurocentrism under the cover of an untenable “European normative structure.” Identity itself is a historical process and not a fixed, dogmatic set of values, “frozen,” as it were, unchangeable and given once and forever. A European educational space can retain its originality to the extent to which it remains basically faithful to its roots. For this reason, the way Europe is conceived and being constructed today acquires a fundamental importance. The magnitude of this task is formidable. It has been rightfully observed that “the European Commission is seeking to revitalize and reactivate a sense of European identity associated with the heritage of Western civilization” (Morley & Robins, 1995). The present push for economic, political and cultural unity is an attempt to refurbish the old image of princess Europe as wealthy, free and powerful. We can hardly be surprised by this resurgent appeal to a common culture and identity, to the collective consciousness (whatever that might mean) of European citizens. But we must be troubled by its contemporary implications. It is difficult to see the relevance of this rear-view sense of grandeur for any significant relocation of Europe in a changing world and for any genuine and meaningful reimagination of European identity (cf. Morley & Robins, 1995, pp. 77–78). After the meeting in Nice of the European Commission and of the Prime Ministers of the member states (7–12 December 2000), two basic models for the Europe of tomorrow have emerged: a) the Europe “des patries”, or of the various fatherlands, conceived as coincident with the single nation states, according to the formula cherished by General De Gaulle; b) a Europe built starting from the grass roots, at the level of local municipalities and regional governments, against the logic of any centralized and top-heavy political structure. Men of good will (but this does not offer any guarantee about farsightedness) are actively working for a compromise. It is perhaps too soon to predict the outcome of such efforts. In the meantime, we have the bitter taste of frustration that usually goes with the intermediate phase between dawn and the full light of day. VI At the present time, after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, a new world scenario is taking shape. From the bipolar tension between the USA and Soviet Union—the so-called “cold war” for almost 50 years—we have gone through a unipolar period of some 10 years during which the USA was the only remaining world superpower and finally, after 11 September 2001, we are about to enter a new, unprecedented phase of multipolarity in which the American hegemony is challenged and the USA is forced to begin negotiations, especially with Russia and China. In these circumstances, the process of European integration lags behind. It does not seem capable of facing autonomously and with its own voice the issues arising in the new world scene, from Kosovo to the struggle against worldwide terrorism.

54

FRANCO FERRAROTI

Why? The answer is of necessity a complex one. European integration is characterized by a serious discrepancy between its economic aspects and the institutional set-up. This discrepancy favours and follows the logic of the market and free enterprise, but it seems quite insensitive to the need for cultural and social harmonization and for the integration of the various school systems and legal procedures. In this perspective, the introduction of a common currency—the euro— by the end of February 2002, is certainly a positive step. However, no competent builder of a new house starts from the roof while neglecting the foundations. An effort should be made by the European nations represented in the Strasbourg parliament and in the European Commission in Brussels. Faced with cultural and political decisions, Europe has been so far mostly silent: an economic giant with an incredibly small head. A specific European contribution to the present-day world problems should perhaps emphasize the awareness of its interconnected globality against a piecemeal approach, centring on petty “solutions.” From a historical point of view, what seems to be most typically European is the need for meaning and shared intellectual and moral values. Widespread hunger and epidemic diseases, such as AIDS in Africa today, have been with us since immemorial times. What has changed is the attitude to the mass media of communication. In this respect, the role of a united Europe could be essential. REFERENCES Bloom, A. (1987) The closing of the American mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. Chabod, F. (1984 [1964]). Storia dell’idea dell’Europa (p. 20). Rome-Bari: Laterza. de Gobineau (1884) A. Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, 4th edn (vol. II, pp. 544–545). Paris: Firmin Didot. Dilthey, W. (1986). Storia della giovinezza di Hegel, and Frammenti postumi (pp. 112–115). Naples: Guida. Millington, S. B. (Ed.) (1988). Selected letters of R. Wagner. New York: Norton. Snow, C. P. (1959) The two cultures and the scientific revolution Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morley, D. & Robins, K. (1995). Space of identity. London: Routledge. Novalis (1942). Chistentum oder Europa (Italian translation Cristianità o Europa) (p. 3). Turin: Einaudi. Oswald Spengler (1926) The decline of the West. New York: A. A. Knopf).

YASEMIN SOYSAL

4. LOCATING EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN EDUCATION1

The gradual advance of the European Union (EU) as a transnational political entity has stimulated a growing interest in Europeanness and its constituent characteristics. The reference to a vocabulary of European identity in popular and political discourses is almost routine and inadvertent, whether the matter is expansion of Europe to include new members or the policy actions of member states in fields as diverse as economy, migration, environmental protection, and education. For the potential member states, Europeanness serves as a test of their compatibility for convergence and stipulates measures as inscribed in the nondescript question “who belongs.” For the existing member states, European identity is taken to signify a step closer to European unity. From a scholarly perspective, considering that the last two decades in social scientific production have been marked by a preoccupation with identity, this apprehension with Europeanness is only inevitable but at the same time requires intervention. In essence, the underlying concern with European identity lies in the plausibility and requisiteness of Europe as a “demos” (Weiler, 1999). The implicit assumption about European integration is that Europe requires its demos. A demos (the peoplehood, public of the polity) is seen as essential as the basis for legitimate polity formation, exercise of citizenship, and governance at the European level, all of which are projected to be inextricably linked with a shared identity and culture (Garcia, 1993; Delanty, 1995; Weiler, 1999; Shore, 2000). Europe requires Europeans, otherwise, the legitimacy crisis of the very process of European integration and project, the argument, goes. The problematic of identity and 2 legitimacy constantly surfaces in debates over Europe and European integration.

1. WHAT DOES “EUROPE AS DEMOS” IMPLY? 1.1 Europe as a Cultural Collectivity “Europe” is postulated, and being constructed, as a supranational community, members of which are bonded and bounded with a culture that is rooted in the past of Europe and which is naturally evolving, albeit with unfortunate and at times catastrophic breaks. The projected collectivity of Europe is encompassing and

55 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 55-66. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

56

YASEMIN SOYSAL

culture is its constitutive seal. On their part, the EU elites, predominantly the Commission, busy themselves with building European collectivity. Since the late 1980s, several communications and reports issued by the EU have recognized culture and identity as key dimensions of European integration—thus, the inordinate number of initiatives, either to create awareness among people about their European identity or to construct one.3 At the locus of the theory and practice of Europe as a cultural collectivity are concerns about achieving social cohesion and solidarity. It is an organic community project, requiring, in Anthony Smith’s (1995) vision, Europeans who share a common heritage, myths, history and cultural values. Thereby the project has to draw upon generic assumptions as to Europe’s common past, civilizational heritage, and distinct cultural values. Greek and Roman legacy, Renaissance humanism and enlightenment, parliamentary democracy, and the Christian past are readily offered as the common European patrimony. This patrimony is presumed to be what 4 naturally unites and makes Europeans and what distinguishes them from others. 1.2 Europe as a Category of Subjectivity Europe is charged with affording subjectivities and emotions conducive to political fidelity and allegiance and shared fate. Consequently, as a state of personhood, to be European is envisioned as a subject position, embodying desires and sentiments, civic constitution, loyalties, and a distinctly “European” sense and sensibility of self (Shore, 2000). European subjectivity as such is sought in the responses individuals confer to the signs and ideals of Europe. Eurobarometer surveys and analyses of electoral behaviour are useful as the most common, and taken-for-granted, methods of measuring subject positions and degrees of Europeanness. 1.3 Europe as an Institutional Unity The much debated issue, perhaps to the point of excess, is the prospects of Europe vis-à-vis the existing nation states, variously articulated in such polarized tendencies and contestations as “widening versus deepening” of Europe (Wallace, 1993) or advocating a “Europe of nations” against the “nation of Europe” (or vice versa) (Smith, 1993). Whether expressed in the form of apprehension or anticipation, the concern lies with the political identification of the demos with a European authority structure, as opposed to identification with a particular nation state. The prospective institutional unity of the imagined Europe is expected to summon stability, coordination, interdependence and mutual social responsibility, and binding values and principles—hence the community “we-feeling” (Scharpf, 1999; Olsen, 2001). ***** These argumentations about the nature of the European demos proceed from an implicit overlap between communities, cultures and the public, in which the nation

LOCATING EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN EDUCATION

57

state appears as both an attractive and convincing model whereby achievement of a culturally defined community is posited as a prerequisite to assist the development of the public and communication. This view is clearly represented in the following: the nation-state represents a stable equilibrium capable of uniting large populations. Such a community guarantees a communicative capacity that enables deliberation and generates a sufficiently strong we-feeling that can carry the weight of effective and democratic governance. (Cederman, 2000, p. 16)

The modus operandi of such a we-community is recognizable and mutual cultural attributes, through which individuals can communicate with each other better and bond in solidarities. Calhoun (1999) provides an excellent critique of the tacit affinity between community, cultures, and the public prevalent in our popular and academic thinking, and warns us against analytically conflating them. I concur with Calhoun’s suggestion as an analytical strategy and furthermore argue in this chapter that the presumed link between such constructs as identities, cultures and communities is neither tenable nor empirically becoming in the European case. More importantly, I assert that absent from the debate are the questions: What kind of an identity is being built or envisioned in European public spheres? What kind of a common public space does Europe need and can it afford? How much do a shared political identity and culture constitute the basis of this common public space? In this chapter, I attempt to locate the emerging European public space in the specific field of education. I do this through a preliminary investigation into the nature and scope of Europe as an identity category or position as it is built in educational spaces.5 My substantive examples come from school textbooks and curricula and public engagements and action around them.6 Textbooks and curricula reflect the official and codified versions of Europe, but these are increasingly products of the work of an effective network of actors—from teachers, academics, advocacy groups to ministerial and EU officers, and to international organizations of various sorts, UNESCO, Council of Europe and the like. They convene and attend meetings and conferences on teaching Europe, survey and evaluate definitions and histories of Europe, and discuss and develop tools and texts for educating the future generations of “Europeans.” Through their activities, Europe is continuously revisited, revised, and remapped. I start my inquiry from an institutionalist perspective. By institutionalist perspective, I mean paying attention to the discursive and organizational make-up of a specific policy field. I will focus my discussion on two specific aspects of the Europeanization of identity (or the emergence of the category of European identity): its location and its content. By location, I mean the public and social spaces within which Europeanization is “happening.” This raises methodological issues for studying Europeanization from an institutionalist perspective: first, the actors and processes on which we focus our analytical gaze, and, second, the level of analysis we choose. By content, on the other hand, I mean the discourses through which the claims to identity are advanced and the constitution of the emerging identities. A discussion of the content of European identity invites us to revisit the two major

58

YASEMIN SOYSAL

analytical concerns of the institutionalist theory: first, the issue of convergence and divergence, and second, institutional conflict and change. 2. LOCATION OF IDENTITY: WHERE DOES EUROPEAN IDENTITY HAPPEN? One of the challenges I see in studying the Europeanization of identity is to locate where it happens. Much of the debate on European integration and identity privileges the legitimate actorhood of nation states or intergovernmental negotiation and decision-making structures. This stems partly from the disproportionate weight given to economic, political and legal aspects of the European integration process. However, investigating Europe from the margins—that is, from a less formalized and less prioritized policy field such as education—reveals a wider set of actors and processes in action. In the case of education, the rather less structured and less formalized nature of this EU policy field (unlike the monetary or economic or security issues) provides an opportunity area for various actors to seize the initiative outside the strict intergovernmental negotiation structures. Education remains a priority of member states, until recently not very much touched by supranational policy-making. Since the Maastricht Treaty, education policy has had its own separate directorate.7 Also since then, the Union has developed and funded several educational initiatives. Many of these initiatives, however, have been confined to the recognition of diplomas, vocational education, contacts between educational institutions, and exchange and language teaching programmes. Curricular development and content are still adamantly guarded by the nation states, despite the EU resolutions to insert “European content/dimension” into school curricula. Many scholars in and activists of European integration comment that the attempts of the Commission to Europeanize education remain limited and not effective.8 Nevertheless, we find enormous activity at the European level, which, when taken in its entirety, contributes to the production of an effective Europeanness in the field of education. First, an extensive set of non-governmental organizations are at work: networks and advocacy groups, teachers’ unions and associations, immigrant and minority organizations—all actively taking part in defining and redefining Europe, mostly under the auspices of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and other inter- and transnational bodies. There are also increasing number of advisory committees comprised of scientific experts and technocrats effecting government policy and decision-making through diverse sets of channels. Their activities extend European networks, both organizationally and symbolically, and facilitate a climate of Europeanness and the promotion of European education and ideals. Among the most significant activities are the works of international committees and organizations that are engaged in revising history textbooks and remedying conflicting histories. Several such initiatives can be listed: for example, the joint committees between Germany, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, and more recently between Greece and Turkey. These committees work to harmonize the teaching of historical relations between neighbouring countries, normalize contentious histories, and bring

LOCATING EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN EDUCATION

59

about a rapprochement among “former enemies.” The European History Teachers’ Association organizes workshops to debate the teaching of conflicting episodes and personalities of European history. Similar conferences re-vision Vikings as spirited long-distance traders rather than as crude warriors. In another initiative, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Scottish, and English history teachers gathered together in Toledo to discuss the “controversial personality” of Philip II and his times—recasting his legacy as one of advancement in arts and literature, rather than entrenchment of Catholicism in Europe. These are efforts to rehabilitate the “unique national heroes and enemies” and the remaking of a European heritage, not of wars and conflicts, but of a positive collective past. One other effective form of activity is the establishment of European educational statistics, socially and politically unifying an educational space. These statistics make abstract notions of European space “tangible,” natural, and self-evident, by fashioning a common language and instituting formal ways of understanding and measuring success in a standardized manner across the terrain of Europe (Shore, 2000). All these exercises in reassessing histories and creating standardized, across-theboard measurements are a prelude to coordinated teaching and curriculum development and unified educational targets and results. They are also movements towards what Laura Cram (200la) aptly calls the banalization of Europe, Europe becoming “part and parcel of daily routines,” Europe becoming taken-for-granted, everyday reality.9 This is where Europeanization (the creation of Europe, if you will) happens and where European space is enacted: mainly outside intergovernmental structures and formal EU institutions, and through informal institutional processes. Through these processes a revised representation of Europe is communicated and contested. It is not sufficient, then, to confine our analysis simply to legal definitions, arrangements and formal governmental structures, and those actors who are strategically placed within or connected to the EU institutions. The challenge for us is to expand our analytical agenda to actors and processes which are often deemed to be ineffective, and thus remain invisible to much of our analysis. And we should do this by bringing to the fore the non-state associational and networking practices, and by identifying the institutional resources and opportunities they mobilize, both at national and transnational levels.10 A second issue regarding the location of European identity is to do with the level of analysis. When it comes to explicating European identity, most studies either search for a political identity of the EU itself in the international arena (vis-à-vis other political entities or nation states), at times secured in commonplace symbols of statehood and cultural collectivity (flag, anthem, heroes, holidays). Or, alternatively, European identity is searched for in individual citizens’ consciousness and dispositions as subjects (a favourite concern of the Eurobarometer surveys). The general hypothesis is that the more institutionally integrated the EU, with its distinctive institutions and sovereign governing principles, the more there is the likelihood of a shared identity and culture, discernible at the level of individual citizens and, expectedly, replacing or at least undermining national identities. Such formulations of identity unnecessarily dichotomize the levels of analysis. National and transnational are taken as autonomous levels, and the question

60

YASEMIN SOYSAL

becomes either the dominance of one over the other, or the linear transition from one to the other. There is much confusion surrounding this issue and much time and energy is spent in arguing whether we are approaching a transnational stage or not. This is obviously not a productive debate. We need to reconceptualize the transnational as integral to the very structuration of the national. In other words, transnational and national should be seen as constitutive of each other, engendering new identity positions and practices. In terms of research strategies, this suggests that we should locate the transnational as it factors in the territorially defined spaces and institutions of identity. This also means paying attention to how local, regional, and national are rearticulated within the transnational—as in the case of the emergence of the Lega Nord, previously an industrial region of Italy without a distinct, standing identity of its own, as a possible identity position within the Europe of regions with its own language, its legends, and its school system (Agnew, 1995). We also see this in the remaking of Berlin not only as “the Hauptstadt of the reunified Germany” but also as “a Kulturstadt in a unified Europe,“ and as “a cosmopolitan Weltstadt in a globalizing world” (L. Soysal, 2001, p. 7). In these cases, transnational and national cease to exist as independent levels of analysis or linearly situated stages. 3. CONTENT OF IDENTITY: WHAT DOES EUROPEAN IDENTITY HOLD? To expand on what I mean by content, I want to take up two specific examples of the ways that European identity is projected and practised: first, the definition of European identity in schoolbooks and curricula, and second, the discourses employed in educational claims. As it is taught in schools, Europe is a diffuse idea and discourse, with contingent boundaries and not necessarily delimited by the EU. Its identity is a loose collection of civic ideals, such as democracy, progress, equality and human rights. As such, Europe represents the “modern normativity” (or “transnational normativity”) (Therborn, 2001). And its identity is not an exclusive one. With such a definition, everyone can be European, as long as they adhere to the principles. Around this definition, there is much convergence across European schoolbooks. Europe as normativity, to use Göran Therborn’s seductive terminology, is a different way of conceptualizing identity from that we normally assume. Unlike national identity categories, it does not find its legitimacy in deeply rooted histories or ancient cultures and territories. This Europe is oriented to the future, not the past. No doubt, history textbooks glorify Europe’s Roman, Christian, and even Greek origins as particular European achievements; but they are treated less and less in ethnic or religious narratives, and more and more in terms of universalistic axioms that they represent. So what are celebrated are the abstract, universalistic principles that are attributed to Europe’s past, independent of the fact that the same principles were the basis of Europe’s conflict- and war-ridden past. In recent schoolbooks, Europe appears as a much more peaceful land than its history empirically dictates. Historically, Europe emerged and was sustained more by conflict and division than

LOCATING EUROPEAN IDENTITY

IN

EDUCATION

61

by consensus and peace, but now what holds Europe together, in textbooks, is a set of civic ideals, universalistic tenets and principles. The trouble with such formulations of identity, though, is however much they are claimed, these universalistic principles and ideals can no longer be affixed specifically to Europe or the member states. The origins of Europe can be traced back to its discursive and institutional position vis-à-vis others (Herzfeld, 1987; Delanty, 1995), but now it is no longer easy to assert a European past and define a present significantly different from others. At the end of the twentieth century, human rights, democracy, progress, equality are everyone’s; every nation’s modernity, even when they organize their modernity differently and even when they fail to exercise that modernity. This is what makes it impossible to define a territorially and culturally bounded European identity. But this is also what makes possible a European identity; one which transcends Europe and is legitimated by claims to universality rather than particularisms. This Europe does not exist against its “others.” Only in economic competition, America and Asia become Europe’s others; but they do not necessarily constitute cultural others. The same can be said for Islam. Europe, in collaboration with non-Europeans, defended and still defends Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia against the non-democratic Yugoslavian state. Also remember the pains the European leaders went to in the aftermath of the attacks on New York to differentiate their “war against terrorism” (an ambiguous other) from a “war against Islam.” Despite attempts to the contrary, Europe fails to create its cultural, and symbolic, other; and rightly and fortunately so.11 As such, the new Europe lacks originality, a condition of nationness (Weiler, 1999, p. 340), and its identity does not appear as a challenge to national identities. Schoolbooks and curricula testify to this. 12 A significant proportion of history teaching in schools is still devoted to national or local history. But the nation and its history that is taught is less recognizable to the eye than before. The textbooks increasingly situate the nation and identity within a European context, and in the process, the nation is being reinterpreted and recast anew. We increasingly observe a normalization of national canons and unique myths and histories of nations. For example, ancestral tribes (Germanic and Gallic tribes, Normans, Francs, and Celts) are depicted not in heroic but cultural terms, through the images of quaint village life, hospitality, and artistic achievements (Soysal, 1998). Crusades are taught not as holy wars and conquest but as occasions for cultural exchange and learning between wider civilizations. As we read in English textbooks, Christians learned to use forks and adopted table manners from more civilized Arabs during their attempts to capture the “holy lands.” The same normalization applies to national heroes. They are talked about matter of factly, removed from charisma and mythical glorification. Joan of Arc or Bismark are considered with sentimental detachment, and invoked not as a personification of a glorious French or German moment but as common historical figures from whom to learn. Like the nation, local and regional are also revised and recast within the European. We have several examples in textbooks of how regional specificities emerge as possible identity positions within the Europe of regions (e.g. Bavaria, the Basque country, Catalonia, Padania, Corsica, Scotland as European regions). In French geography

62

YASEMIN SOYSAL

textbooks we read that European integration has modified the organization of the French space. Within this new space, Alsace-Lorraine loses its contested existence in the national imaginary, and emerges as a region in the heart of Europe, rich, dynamic and with encouraging prospects.13 My analysis of schoolbooks also testifies to divergence in identity projections and formulations. While the “idea” of Europe is accepted and incorporated in school curricula and textbooks in expansive ways, its appropriation varies in form. Contingent upon the history and institutional trajectory of Germany’s education system and textbook production, in German history books, Europe (and also local regions) figures heavily in the narration of history and identity, while the nation disappears. In French textbooks, on the other hand, the French nation, historically conceptualized as an abstract and universalistic entity, is equalized with Europe. In other words, Europe becomes French (Soysal, Bertilotti & Mannitz, forthcoming). Such divergence also exhibits itself in collective attempts to invent a historical content for Europe. The conflict over the Museum of Europe is a case in point. The official Greek discontent over dating the origin of Europe to the times of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire indicates a different claim to Europe. Never easily made at home in Europe (after all, they were the “East” to the Roman Empire, and their city states “discriminated between citizens and barbarians, therefore [making them] unfit for a European founding myth”), Greeks are keen to acclaim the Hellenic beginnings for Europe and create “trouble” over European heritage (Kohli, 2000). So Europe, as narrated in schoolbooks and as conceptualized in educational spheres, hosts multiple geographies, multiple boundaries, and multiple cultural references. Europe affords national and regional identities, belongings, but not in an organic, interdependent way as Weiler suggests in his multiple demoi model, as these multiple parts hang together rather haphazardly, sometimes affirmatively but often refiguring each others’ interpretation and meanings. Europe is fuzzy, no longer historically unique and precise to perpetuate a coherent, homogeneous collective.14 Unlike the national identities and histories, as they were codified in the ardent processes of state and nation building, Europe cannot afford to develop its discriminating particularisms and authentic markers. It derives its legitimacy from universalistic principles and from the future it projects. And that future, or aspiration for that future, is now entangled with others’ futures, making European identity broader than Europe itself.15 Complementary to schoolbooks and curricula, a second source I suggest for investigating the content of European identity is the discourses through which claims to rights are advanced and legitimated in the public sphere. In my research, I find that minority (ethnic, religious, or regional) groups’ engagement in claimsmaking furthers the Europeanness of the public spheres and identities. When, for example, immigrant associations mobilize around educational claims for group-specific provisions and identities, they connect their claims to European discourses and agendas of human rights. In forwarding demands about mother tongue instruction, Islamic foulard, or halal food in schools, they appeal to the dominant discourses of equality, rights and emancipation. In that sense, their claims for difference are affirmed by the

LOCATING EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN EDUCATION

63

universalistic and homogenizing ideologies of human rights, rather than the particularities of religious or ethnic narratives. By so doing, they participate in and contribute to the reification of European (and global) discourses and ideals, as well as common public spaces (Soysal, 1997). This is all in line with the institutionalist arguments about isomorphic tendencies; that is, the diffusion, reproduction and elaboration of the rules and principles of the wider cultural environment at national/local levels. My example again attests to the involvement of an extensive set of actors in this process, even including those marginal ones, like immigrant associations, which are neglected in predominant accounts. However, by pointing to shared discourses and practices of claims-making, we should not assume harmonious, conflict-free public spheres or homogeneous (policy) outcomes. This brings me to another analytical concern that occupies the institutionalist research agenda: institutional conflict and change. As frequently drawn attention to by the critics of the theory, institutionalist approaches are more attentive to stability and persistence in institutions than change and conflict. Conflicts between different institutional spheres and levels, between institutions and their environments, and between the logics of different organizational systems have already been observed as sources of tension and change in institutionalist accounts (Broderick, 1970; Jepperson, 1991; Friedland & Alford, 1991; Olsen, 2001). Not much attention has been given, however, to the contradictory principles that institutionalize the very idea of Europe itself. Europe, as a rationalized institutional environment, hosts multiple and often contradictory systems of rules. These conflictual principles and the organizational rules associated with them enable different legitimating discourses, authorize different sets of actors and claims, and thus create a basis for both conflict and change. To exemplify from my research, I find that in European countries there is significant variation in the accommodation of the types of educational claims advanced by immigrant groups. While some claims face organizational resistance, others are more readily accepted and incorporated into formal state structures. The educational authorities in Britain, for example, are more willing to accommodate the claims for Islamic dress codes, or even the teaching of immigrant languages in schools. On the other hand, religiously codified family laws (or polygamy, female circumcision) that create status disparity between genders are not viewed as legitimate demands. Here, what we see is that the principle of gender equality contests the principle of religious equality. These are principles which are clearly embedded in European and global institutional frameworks. In Europe, the treatment of women is codified in secular laws and institutions; thus, the attempts to subject it to a religious, private domain generate conflict (Soysal, 1997). By drawing upon conflicting institutional principles, societal actors forge new alliances and open up space to insert their demands. In the Netherlands, for example, as an extension of the pillar system, education is organized along religious denominations. This system allows the Muslim minority to build a case to make demands for separate or single-sex schools. In the process, interesting patterns of alliances take shape. Christian church groups, for instance, support the claim of Islamic organizations arguing for the principle of religious freedom. Similarly, in Britain, Christian and Muslim groups allied against the Labour Government’s

64

YASEMIN SOYSAL

decision to abolish Section 28, the legislation that prohibits the discussion of homosexuality in classrooms. They also demanded the right to withdraw their children from sex education classes. Thus, apparently contradictory interests become aligned, creating possibilities for the accommodation of new claims that challenge the (rationalized) order of European education. The European public space is not coherent, stable, or bounded. It is open to conflicts and creates its own conflicts, and does not depend on collective emotions or predisposed identities. It includes multiple spheres and subjects and it is created through the activities of a growing contingent of social and political actors, who engage in the discourse of Europe and deploy strategic action—with or without institutionalized contact with the EU. As such, Europe is a space for participation but it does not imply the existence of a European demos or polity in the conventional sense—based on consensus and uniformity. This European space is not even a Habermasian project. Its inception, existence, and its eventual progress, however much they rely upon or proceed from models of rational communicative process, do not necessarily bring reason and will together and create agreeable positions (Habermas, 1962; see also Risse, 2000). The European public space implicates an evolving but at the same time ever-extended and ever-fuzzier Europe—beyond the territorial limits of nation states, though not without its conflicts and ruptures. The script of Europe is still open to modifications and rewriting, and it may never end with a coherent narrative. The fact that it is contested, however, points not to its absence but to its increasingly taken-for-granted existence as a productive framework for reflection and experimentation. NOTES 1

This chapter draws upon my ongoing project, “Rethinking nation-state identities in the New Europe,” funded by the “One Europe or Several?” Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council, with additional grants from the Fuller Bequest Fund, the University of Essex, Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy. A version of this chapter was published in European Societies, 4(3), 2000. 2 But see Banchoff and Smith (1999) for a refreshing challenge to the “crisis” thesis. 3 See Shore (2000) for a detailed review of the EU policy discourse and activities towards the creation of European culture and identity since the mid-1970s. 4 Smith (1992) himself is sceptical of the prospects of this project given the habitual communities of already existing national cultures and the historical embeddedness of nation states. 5 To clarify, I take identity as a discursive and contingent category to be explained, not as self-evidently analytical or sociologically innate in and of itself. Identities are codified and publicly available categories, providing templates for managing and manufacturing the “self.” See Handler (1994) for a most helpful critique of scholarly deployments of identity. 6 In my current project, I am explicating the redefinitions of Europe, nation and citizenship in public education in relation to the ongoing consolidation of Europe as a transnational entity. I carry out this inquiry through a cross-national and longitudinal analysis of secondary school national curricula and textbooks in history and civics subjects. The data set for the broader project is constructed by sampling the history and civics textbooks and curricula in four European countries (Germany, France, Britain and Turkey) at three time points, the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s, when major educational reforms took place. The project also examines public debates, conflicting claims and court cases that surround education systems and national curricula, as well as the incorporation of minority cultural/religious provisions into public education systems. 7 Directorate General XXII for Education, Training and Youth.

LOCATING EUROPEAN IDENTITY IN EDUCATION

65

8

See Theiler (1999) for a comprehensive review of the EU activities in the field of education. Complementary efforts to ascertain a European identity through cultural policy and marketing are also under way (Shore, 2000). 9 Cram’s (2001b) own research on women’s movements and their participation in European networks, EU institutions and programmes (in Greece, Ireland and the UK) reveals how European discourses penetrate domestic political structures, organizational literatures and activities resulting in the “acceptance of the EU as a given rather than as something remarkable.” 10 Placing the emphasis on informal processes and outside the intergovernmental structures is not to suggest that Europe as a process privileges actors and their interests indiscriminately and equally. The participation in European public spaces is often fragmented and diffuse, but by its nature of diffusion it may have more penetration. Weiler (1999) raises concerns about the perils of such a process for democracy, about not being procedural and transparent. One cannot help but agree with his proposals for improving participation in the European public space. My point here concerns the analytical foundations of making Europe and European public spaces, not its normative inadequacies and improvement. 11 Surely there are attempts to symbolically define America as the other; in the meaning of culture (e.g. resistance to McDonalds by promoting local cuisine), in definitions of justice (e.g. denouncement of the death penalty and gun control), in models of social equality (e.g. the role of the state versus market in providing social equality and standard of living). Among these, one thing that Europe can still claim as its own, despite all its existing variants in the member states, is the welfare state and some understanding of the shared social (Weiler, 1999). However, this is increasingly undermined by the hegemonic discourse of liberal market theories, currently favoured by most European governments. 12 Shore reports that the Commission officials hold the same image of mutually existing, multiple identities when it comes to their approach to European identity. In their defence of this position, they duly iterate that this idea itself is supported by contemporary anthropological theories (2001, pp. 51– 52). See also Pantel (1999). 13 This is quite remarkable for France where regions are always undermined in favour of the centre, as opposed to Germany and Spain where regional diversity is encouraged because of the more federalist political structure. 14 “Fuzzy Statehood” is the title of Batt and Walczuk’s research project on European integration in central and eastern Europe. See www.bham.ac.uk/crees/statehood 15 Admittedly, the analysis I am advancing here derives from just one specific narration of Europe, as it is exercised in schoolbooks and curricula and in educational spheres. We may be inclined to fault this narration of Europe as limited and contained. But this is one important narration. Schoolbooks and curricula are important not as texts themselves but for the broader social and political debates, struggles, orientations they represent. One should also note that Europe is being constructed and defined differently in different organizational fields. And these designs and definitions may follow disparate premises and at times may very well be contradictory.

REFERENCES Agnew, J. A. (1995). The rhetoric of regionalism: The Northern League in Italian politics, 1983–1994. Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers, 20,156–172. Banchoff, T. & Mitchell, P. Smith (Eds.) (1999). Legitimacy and the European Union: The contested polity. London: Routledge. Broderick, A. (1970). Preface. In The French Institutionalists. Maurice Hauriou, Georges Renard, Joseph T. Delos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Calhoun, C. (1999). Citizenship, identity, and social solidarity. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association meetings, August, Chicago. Cederman, L-E. (2000). Nationalism and bounded integration: What it would take to construct a European demos. Department of Politics, University of California, Los Angeles. Cram, L. (2001a). Imagining the Union: The case of banal Europeanism? In H. Wallace (Ed.), Whose Europe: Interlocking dimension of European integration. London: Macmillan. Cram, L. (2001b). Social movements: The case of women’s movements and European integration. One Europe or Several? The Dynamics of Change across Europe. (Economic and Social Research Council) Newsletter, 6.

66

YASEMIN SOYSAL

Delanty, G. (1995). Inventing Europe: Idea, identity, reality. New York: St Martin’s Press. Friedland, R. & Alford, R. R. (1991). Bringing the society back in: Symbols, practices, and institutional contradictions. In W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Garcia, S. (Ed.) (1993). European identity and the search for legitimacy. London: Pinter. Habermas, J. (1962 [1989]). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Handler, R. (1994). Is “identity” a useful cross-cultural concept? In J. R. Gillis (Ed.), Commemorations: The politics of national identity (pp. 27–40). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Herzfeld, M. (1987). Anthropology through the looking-glass: Critical ethnography in the margins of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jepperson, R. (1991). Institutions, institutional effects, and institutionalism. In W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 143–163). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kohli, M. (2000). The Battle-grounds of European identity. European Societies, 2 (2), 113–137. Pantel, M. (1999). Unity-in-diversity: Cultural policy and EU legitimacy. In T. Banchoff & P. S. Mitchell (Eds.), Legitimacy and the European Union: The contested polity. London: Routledge. Olsen, J. (2001). Organising European institutions of government. In S. S. Andersen (Ed.), Institutional approaches to the European Union. Proceedings from an Arena Workshop, ARENA Report, no. 3. Oslo: ARENA. Risse, T. (2000). Let’s talk. Communicative action in world politics. International Organization, 54 (1), 1–39. Scharpf, F. W. (1999). Governing in Europe: Effective and democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shore, C. (2000). Building Europe: The cultural politics of European integration. London: Routledge. Smith, A. D. (1992). National identity and the idea of European unity. International Affairs, 68 (1), 55– 76. Smith, A. D. (1993). A Europe of nations—or the Nation of Europe. Journal of Peace Research, 30 (2), 129–135. Smith, A. D. (1995). Nations and nationalism in a global era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Soysal, L. (2001). Diversity of experience, experience of diversity: Turkish migrant youth culture in Berlin. Cultural Dynamics, 13 (1), 5–28. Soysal, Y. (1998). Identity and transnationalization in German school textbooks. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 30 (2), 53–61. Soysal, Y. (1997). Citizenship and claims-making: Organized Islam in European public spheres. Theory and Society, 26,509–527. Soysal, Y., Bertilotti, T. & Mannitz, S. (forthcoming). Projections of nation-state identity in French and German history and civics textbooks. In H. Schissler & Y. Soysal (Eds.), The nation, Europe, the world: Textbooks and curricula in transition. Providence, RI: Berghan Books. Theiler, T. (1999). The European Union and the “European dimension” in schools: Theory and evidence. European Integration, 21, 307–341. Therbom, G. (2001). European modernity and European normativity: The EU in history and in social space. In S.S. Andersen (Ed.), Institutional Approaches to the European Union. Proceedings from an Arena Workshop, ARENA Report, no. 3. Oslo: ARENA. Wallace, H. (1993). Deepening or widening: problems of legitimacy for the EC. In S. Garcia (Ed.), European identity and the search for legitimacy. London: Pinter. Weiler, J. H. H. (1999). The constitution of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

University of Essex

GLOBALIZING SPACE

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

5. RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT Explorations into the Politics of Educational Borrowing

Several scholars in comparative education research have examined why and how policy analysts use references to educational reforms abroad when introducing educational reforms at home. In fact, research on educational transfer—educational borrowing and educational lending, educational reception and educational diffusion—constitutes a major field in international comparative educational research. 1. BORROWING, EXTERNALIZATION AND “LESSONS LEARNED” FROM ABROAD

Most prominent among comparative studies on educational transfer is the work by Jürgen Schriewer. Based on Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Self-referential Systems (Luhmann, 1990), Schriewer analyses the emergence of das Internationale Argument in policy discourse and educational research. He finds that precisely at those moments when new educational policies and practices become contested, policy-makers and educational research resort to das internationale Argument; that is, use experiences in other educational systems as sources of authority. International references, thus, help to legitimize the introduction of those reforms at home that otherwise would have been contested. Politicians and policy-makers in several European countries tend to increasingly resort to “globalization” and “Europeanization”—not only in the realm of the economy but also in education—as arguments for revamping and reorganizing local or national policies. References to reforms abroad—in particular, comparisons with developments in other countries that are perceived as successful—seem to serve politicians and policy-makers as a tool to substantiate the need for dramatic change at the local and national level. A good case in point are the large-scale international comparative studies of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) or the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which had been running for several decades but only gained a major public momentum in the 1990s. For example, over the last 40 years, the IEA (founded in 1958) has conducted a total of 15 large-scale cross-national studies, eight of which have been administered only in the past 10 years.1 The interest in international comparative studies is not only manifested in the boom of IEA studies in the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium but also in the increasing number of countries A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 69-86. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

70

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

participating in IEA studies2, as well as in the greater media attention given to crossnational analyses. The revitalization of international comparative studies is not surprising given that they lend themselves for “externalization” of educational reforms; that is, politicians and policy-makers are able to use them as external reference points to facilitate change in their own local or national contexts. A growing number of researchers have become interested in analysing the politics of educational transfer; in particular, examining political reasons for importing or exporting educational reform models (Schriewer, 1990, 2000; Phillips, 1993; Halpin & Troyna, 1995; Popkewitz, 2000; Steiner-Khamsi, 2000; SteinerKhamsi & Quist, 2000). There are several observations that guide this particular field of research. For example, externalization appears to become instrumental for those reforms that are politically highly contested, such as privatization of education, standardized student assessment, outcomes-based educational reform or de-unionization of teachers. It is assumed that without externalization, those highly contested, newly introduced reforms would have had little chances of gaining broad public support and would have elicited active resistance. We can easily identify occurrences of externalization in educational policy and research. Often, this kind of externalization or policy borrowing is presented as “lessons learned from abroad.” It is important to point out that externalization functions as the last source of authority and tends to be activated once self-referentiality falls short of argumentations. In most instances, self-referentiality prevails and internal references are sufficient. The Theory of Self-referential Systems (see Luhmann & Schorr, 1979) asserts that educational systems perpetuate themselves by means of internal references, notably, references to tradition, beliefs and organization. In times of rapid social, economic and political change, however, internal references fail to justify the persistence or introduction of reforms. It is precisely in those times that externalization offers itself as a means to radically break with the past and import or borrow models, discourses, or practices from other educational systems. It is important to bear in mind that education constitutes an ideal site for studying referentiality. In fact, using references as sources of authority—internal or external, domestic or international—is endemic to education, which is under constant public pressure to legitimize its practices, values and forms of organization, since, in the domain of education, each and every citizen feels entitled to act as “natural expert” and stakeholder. In practice, examples of externalization processes include the import of Australian, New Zealand, US and Canadian models of outcomes-based education (OBE) in post-apartheid educational reform in South Africa, the import of the British model of parental choice in various countries of the European Union, and the European import of the US model of “weak state and strong public” that translates into decentralized educational structures and school-based management. While several studies on the politics and economics of educational transfer have analysed the political and economic uses and abuses of international references, little has been said about the omission or deliberate erasure of international references. The questions at stake are the following. At what moment and in what context of domestic school reform will policy-makers and educational researchers attempt to obscure traces of international borrowing? When and under which conditions are international references deliberately dropped? When and in which context is

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

71

externalization of school reform replaced by internalization; that is, when and why do policy-makers start claiming that a new reform idea emerged from internal discussions rather than from “lessons learned from abroad,” i.e. from school reforms that had been borrowed from elsewhere? The shift from externalization to internalization—or to phrase it differently, from deterritorialization to reterritorialization, from internationalization to indigenization of imported educational reform models—has indeed been neglected in comparative research on educational transfer. European policy-makers and researchers are increasingly making references to “globalization,” which helps to conceal the origins of those educational reforms that were imported from countries outside of continental Europe. In other words, continental European policy-makers and researchers prefer to refer to newly introduced reforms of decentralization, schoolbased management, parental choice, and outcomes-based education first as “global reform movements,” and later as “European reform movements” rather than as reform models that have been borrowed from the USA, Britain, and New Zealand. Why? Striking in the European context is the trend for politicians and policy-makers to drop references to “globalization,” “internationalization,” and, in particular, to experiences from the USA, and replace them both with domestic and regional references; that is, with references to European experiences and models. This study argues that research on educational transfer and borrowing lends itself for examining how a new space, the European Space, is currently being created and imagined among political stakeholders in European countries. 2. DETERRTTORALIZATION AND RETERRITORIALIZATION OF REFORMS

There are, at least, two avenues of research that surface when we examine transnational transfer processes in education: the first from the perspective of lending, and the other from the perspective of borrowing. An interesting strand of research would be to delve into the particular reform model and formulate research questions that pertain to the lending of a particular reform model: what exactly are the characteristics of this particular reform model that allow “policy lenders” or “policy exporters” to deterritorialize a particular domestic model and reframe it as an international or global reform model? Is it that it is very broadly defined and therefore suitable to adapt to different cultural contexts? Or, what does it take for a domestic reform model to become deterritorialized and reframed as a “global reform model”? Is there a take-off point at which a model becomes transferable across national and cultural boundaries? On the lending side, we could also focus on agency and ask: is that particular model powerful; that is, is it a model that is supported by resourceful organizations (e.g. World Bank3), far-reaching transnational organizations (e.g. UNESCO, the United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], multilateral and bilateral cooperation agencies, European Union), or economically strong governments (e.g. USA, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain)?

72

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

There is, however, a second strand of research that opens up once we focus on borrowing and examine how local actors encounter and react to so-called global forces: the need to create an autonomous European space in educational reform by blurring traces of educational import from countries and school reforms that are located outside that particular geopolitical space. What we are observing today is a Europeanization of school reform models that have been imported or borrowed from the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. In this second strand of research, we do not attempt to shed light on the characteristics of the particular reform model and its potential for export or lending but, instead, we highlight the features of the borrowers or importers. There are several clues that suggest that the quest for imagining an autonomous educational space in Europe reflects the struggle to come to grips with a new space—Europe—and the urge to restrain other spheres of influence, notably, the American influence on the New Europe. This study focuses on borrowing. It briefly presents two case studies of educational reform in which politicians and policy-makers in two different countries (Latvia and Switzerland) advocated new reform models by extensively and explicitly referring to similar, successful reform models in other European countries. Unique about these two case studies is the finding that the same politicians and policy-makers distanced themselves from the “original” shortly after they had implemented the reform model, which they borrowed from abroad. In fact, in both countries, political stakeholders turned their backs on externalization and borrowing, so to speak, and instead insisted that their newly introduced reform models strongly resonated with domestic needs and developments. Thus, this study focuses on the discursive shift from externalization to internalization, as well as from internalization to indigenization, and highlights the move away from “lessons learned from abroad” to “lessons learned at home.” In both case studies we encounter a phenomenon that has not been studied sufficiently in research on educational transfer and globalization: the erasure of international references and their substitution with domestic and regional references. Common to the two case studies presented in this edited volume is an attempt by political stakeholders to create and secure a new geopolitical space that signals a rupture from the past and simultaneously reconfigures the map of political allies in Europe. 3. FLAGS OF POLITICAL CONVENIENCE In a critical analysis of international education development projects, James Lynch (1998) coins the very powerful term “flags of convenience” to denote buzzwords in education policy that, in recent years, have attracted international funding (pp. 24 ff.) In the context of international cooperation, “poverty alleviation,” “minorities,” “client-centredness” or “equity enhancement” are examples of such buzzwords that have been used to legitimize the need for a project. However, as Lynch poignantly asserts, many projects sail under false flags of convenience once the project gets funded. Drawing from examples in girls’ education and “minority” projects, Lynch masterfully notes that shortly after trumpeting their commitment to these flags of convenience, the project staff allocate the bulk of resources to other objectives. Once

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

73

“the veil of deception is cast aside and the ‘deep structure’ of the project is examined” (p. 24), it becomes apparent that the girls, the poor, and the minorities have, once more, been abused and instrumentalized by project staff to receive international funding that serves other parts of the population. Lynch refers to a “minority” project in which the allocated funds were used for the financing of prestigious buildings rather than for objectives that are commonly associated with minority education, such as the remission of school fees, more equal distribution of textbooks, provision of scholarship, recruitment of female teachers and administrators, or provision of adequate water and sanitation in schools. What Lynch observed in his essay, “International transfer of dysfunctional paradigms” (1998), applies to some extent to domestic policy borrowing. In addition to those buzzwords that are being borrowed in international educational projects, such as “minority” or “diversity,” “equity” and “client-centredness”, there are additional flags of convenience that prevail in the European context and are examined in the following case studies: “outcomes-based education,” “multiculturalism” and “effectiveness.” In all the case studies that are presented in this chapter these borrowed concepts were capable of securing public support and funding for introducing new school reforms that would have been otherwise highly contested. Lynch’s powerful term “flag of convenience” is closely related to studies that examine the gap between policy discourse and practice (Schriewer, 2000) or the gap between policy talk, policy action and policy implementation (Tyack & Cuban, 1995; Cuban, 1998). In a broader interpretative framework, the distinction between discourse and practice draws from Michel Foucault’s work on knowledge and power, which acknowledges that “truth” and (social, political, economic) realities are continuously being created and re-established by means of discursive power (Foucault, 1970, 1972). Using this broader interpretative framework, educational borrowing can be seen as a tool for gaining additional public credibility and political legitimacy for insisting that there exists a singular solution that is capable of resolving a variety of different educational needs and problems. In this study, I report on two case studies that illustrate the international transfer of educational discourses in which the following flags of convenience have been hoisted: multiculturalism (Latvia) and effectiveness (Switzerland). Obviously, political stakeholders in these two countries operate within quite different political, economic and cultural contexts. Nevertheless, there is, at least, one commonality that justifies a comparison of these disparate contexts: Political stakeholders and educational policy-makers in both countries had been under public pressure to establish a new space and a new historical period that publicly marks a rupture from the past. The educational systems in both countries were restructured precisely at a time in history when there was public and political pressure to signal a major departure from previous policies inherited either from the Soviet regime (Latvia) or from the isolationist regime (Switzerland). Thus, in a post-Soviet (Latvia) or Europeanization (Switzerland) era, borrowing from the past by using domestic references did not constitute a viable political option in either country. Unlike an earlier case study—of Achimota College in Ghana—which scrutinized the early stage of borrowing and shed light on the political conditions under which externalization initially occurred (Steiner-Khamsi & Quist, 2000),4 the following

74

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

two case studies provide insight into a later stage of borrowing where externalization was replaced by self-referentiality, internalization by indigenization, and imported educational models were refrained as domestic or regional models. Thus, the two case studies draw our attention to that particular stage in which externalization vanishes and paves the path for a self-referential mode of system regulation. Thus, international policy borrowing or externalization can be understood as a transitionary policy strategy that is eventually replaced by self-referentiality. 4. TWO CASE STUDIES In both countries, there was public pressure to develop and introduce a new school reform model that radically broke with past experiences, and more importantly, visibly departed from earlier political agendas. The first case study, multiculturalism in post-Soviet Latvia, is presented in more detail in another chapter of this edited volume (Iveta Silova). I will therefore only briefly present the major findings of this study as it relates to the focus of this chapter. The second case study draws from my own long-standing research on transatlantic (Europe–North America) borrowing of educational policies and, for the purposes of this edited volume on the European Educational Space, focuses on one particular development in the Canton of Zurich (Switzerland): the erasure of those American references that, in the inception phase, were frequently used by the Minister of Education to justify the introduction of “Effective School Reform”5 in Zürich and the subsequent replacement of these “lessons learned” from the USA with references to similar European models that also emphasized effectiveness and school improvement. 4.1 Multiculturalism in Post-Soviet Latvia In “From sites of occupation to symbols of multiculturalism: transfer of minority education discourse in post-Soviet Latvia,” Iveta Silova (2001) examines the erasure of Soviet references and their subsequent replacement with western European references. Silova interprets the shift from the Soviet to the western European reference system as a marker for the new geopolitical educational space that Latvia politically and economically has been aspiring to and preparing to inhabit at the turn of the millennium.6 What is fascinating about this particular change of political allies is that it has merely affected the discursive level but not the practice of separate schooling. The separation of school systems, one for Latvian speakers and another for Russian and other ethnic speakers, continues to exist but segregated schools are no longer seen as “sites of occupation” but are now being reframed as “symbols of multiculturalism.” In the early 1990s, the Latvian Government came under serious attack from European commissions (Council of Europe, European Union, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE]) and international human rights organizations for discriminating against Russian speakers and residents in postSoviet Latvia, as reflected, among others, in the practice of separate schooling for Latvians and Russians. The dual educational system that became enforced across the

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

75

Soviet Union dates back to Stalin’s nativization policy, which determined that national cultures needed to be “national in form but socialist in content” (Stalin, 1934, p. 261, cited in Silova, 2002, p. 17). With the annexation of Latvia by the Soviet Union in 1944, two separate educational systems were established for the two largest “nationalities” in the Latvian Republic of the Soviet Union, one system for Latvians and another for Russians. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s framework, Silova (2002, pp. 18 ff.) interprets the separate schooling system policies as “disciplinary technologies” that were based on enclosure, partitioning and ranking, and enabled an effective surveillance of ethno-nationalistic sentiments, which could have threatened the plan of implanting pan-Soviet nationalism. In addition, separate schools for Russian students had the advantage of fostering loyalty to their “external motherland,” that is, Russia, and prevented them from becoming too attached to the republic in which they were residing. With the political shift in the early 1990s, when the Government was under international pressure to prove their transition from “a multinational society” under Soviet rule to a country that, under the tutelage of the Council of Europe and the European Union, was striving to be regarded as “a pluralist society,” the semantics of separate schooling were changed by political fiat. The dual school system remained firmly in place but the meaning associated with separate schooling underwent a transformation or “metamorphosis” (Silova, 2001, pp. 21 ff.); segregated schools were no longer seen as sites of (Russian) occupation but as (western European) symbols of multiculturalism. The new discourse—that is, the reinterpretation of separate schooling as “multiculturalism”—found great resonance with Latvians and Russians alike; however, as Silova argues for quite different reasons (2002, p. 27): For them [Russians in post-Soviet Latvia], the recognition of new discourse meant they there were no more threats of ethnic discrimination and no more reason to fear that the Russian schools would be closed, teachers fired, and students sent to assimilate in Latvian schools. Finally left alone, Russian schools now felt more in control of their future. More importantly, internationalization strategies of referring to Western multicultural education practices are pursued by the Russian minorities as a mechanism to externalize the autonomy issue and gain international support for their demands locally.

The discursive shift from segregation to multiculturalism also found fertile grounds within the Latvian community (Silova, 2002, pp. 27 f.): For Latvian schools, their teachers, students and parents, the existence of separate school structures allows to proceed with “healing” of the national identity and strengthening of the national character in a faster, less painful way. Continuing to perceive themselves as a national minority and being preoccupied with how to protect their own identity against the Russian or, increasingly, English language, many ethnic Latvians fear that incorporation, integration or even assimilation of “other” into the Latvian identity would require losing or changing their existing “Latvianness” (Silova & Catlaks, forthcoming). In this way, a continuing separation of schools along ethnic lines, which is presented as an expression of multiculturalism, means that Latvians do not have to “deal” with the Russian minority issue in Latvian language schools.

76 4.2

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI Effective Schools in Switzerland

Similar to Silova’s case study that examines the creation of a new “European space” in Latvian educational policy at the expense of the former Soviet space, the second case study on Switzerland explores the establishment of that same (European) space at the expense of the former American sphere of influence. Surprisingly, Switzerland, notorious for its parochialism and helvetische Verspätung7 in complying to international standards in general, and in adopting international trends in school reform in particular, was in the mid-1990s in the front line for promoting the import of non-European school reform models. The Ministry of Education for the Canton of Zurich, in particular, has been an ardent supporter of US standards-based educational reform, school-based management, outcomes-based education, and market-oriented school reform. Over the past few years, an interesting shift has occurred: in the mid-1990s, the Ministry of Education explicitly referred to US models of educational reforms, and, in fact, hired American educational consultants and firms to develop a reform package for schools in the Canton of Zurich. Two years later, after a period of heated debates and protests by teacher unions, this reference was dropped and the Ministry publicly distanced itself from American models of school reform: it ceased to use external references to US educational reforms and started to use references to European reforms, especially to reforms in the Netherlands and Denmark. In addition, the Ministry resorted to “global standards” in school reforms to legitimize the introduction of these contested reforms in the Canton of Zurich. As in other European countries, the smallest common denominator of the various parties forming a neo-liberal coalition in Swiss parliaments and governments at national, cantonal and municipal level has been to cut the “inflated state apparatus” and to loosen state control and allow instead for market forces to regulate public affairs. What started out as a broad public administrative reform—“New Public Management” (NPM)—that attempted to introduce lean and efficient management, reduce the state apparatus, abolish the status of civil servants, and replace tenure of civil servants with performance-based promotion and employment, soon became the guiding principles for a major school reform in the Canton of Zurich. Adapted to the educational sector, NPM became recontextualized as effective and market-oriented school reform that would be based on school-based management, choice, and comprehensive quality control in schools. The initiator of NPM and an ardent supporter of American school reform models that promoted choice, site-based management and standards, was the newly elected Minister of Education, Ernst Buschor, former professor of economics. Prior to his election as Minister of Education in 1995, he headed the Ministry of Health where he first successfully implemented his beliefs in NPM and total quality management (TQM). Interesting but not novel is the transfer of TQM from health reforms to educational reforms. More striking and unprecedented in the Swiss history of education reforms is, however, the second transfer: the borrowing of US health and educational reform models. The minister’s externalization strategy, that is, his reference to US health and educational reforms, encountered first scepticism, and later active resistance, given that from all the public sectors in American society,

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

77

these two sectors—health and education—were notorious for perpetuating inequality, poverty and exclusion. Nevertheless, the reforms in the Canton of Zürich were commonly referred to as NPM, thus using an American acronym for a Swiss reform, and sailed until 1998 under the American flag of efficiency, effectiveness, decentralization and quality improvement. Despite the public controversies over the import of US reform models, Buschor has been acknowledged for developing visions that were radically new and different from the step-by-step reform approach that the previous ministry was pursuing. The speed as well as the comprehensive scope of reforms that Buschor implemented at all levels of the system (kindergarten, primary education, secondary education, tertiary education) and in all reform areas (governance, finance, curricula, teacher education, etc.) found resonance among great parts of the population and the education community, which had found past reforms too slow, too decimal, too parochial and too ineffective. Buschor promised fundamental changes and the adaptation of “international standards” in education; promises that were unheard of in a country that, until recently, firmly promoted local patriotism and local governance and whose local politicians rejected any kind of “external” references as “pressure from abroad,” even if they were “coming from Berne,” the capital of the country. In fact, until the late 1980s, Berne was Ausland; that is, any federal policy guidelines that “Berne” released for consideration to the cantons—most of them in the form of loose recommendations and not binding—were seen as foreign intervention and alienating. How, then, did Buschor’s externalization, his “lessons learned from abroad,” in particular from the USA, translate into local school reform in Zürich? As with most instances of borrowing, lessons from the US school reform were only selectively transferred to the Swiss context. There were, in particular, three concepts of effective and market-oriented school reform that Buschor selectively borrowed from the USA: private sector involvement in school reform, outcomes-based education, and competition among schools as a driving force for quality improvement. These three borrowed concepts were implemented in a variety of ways: For the first time in the history of school reform in the Canton of Zürich, the private sector was provided access to schools. After being taken by the extensive use of technology in Californian schools, Buschor hired, upon his return to Switzerland, Arthur Andersen Consulting to design a school reform package that targeted the use of instructional technology in primary schools.8 In addition, he supported the massive expansion of the local education industry, which resulted in many small consulting firms with one or two staff offering their services for evaluation, organizational development, supervision, or curriculum design in schools. The second concept, outcomes-based education, enforced accountability of schools based on the performance and satisfaction of their students. Finally, he supported, in theory, competition among schools, which was to be instigated by schools marketing their own “school profile” or curriculum to potential customers, that is, parents. It is important to note here that the introduction of school–industry partnerships, outcomes-based education, and market orientation did not generate all those alerting side effects that critics had pointed out based on experiences in the USA. Contrary to all expectations, Buschor’s NPM and “Effective Schools” reforms did not lead to

78

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

a boom in standardized testing, choice, privatization, school rankings in newspapers, or to education firms taking over curricula and governance of school districts and firing all “ineffective” teachers and principals and replacing them with uncertified, cheap and non-unionized school staff. On the contrary, the radical reforms that were supposed to bring about fundamental changes in how schools of the twenty-first century will be financed, governed and organized led to only one visible change: the creation of the new profession of school principal. This modest outcome is surprising given the uproar and the media attention that Buschor’s radical reform idea caused in the mid-90s. There are several explanations that account for the unexpected developments in the Swiss school reform. First, as David Tyack and Larry Cuban pointed out (1995), there is a huge difference between policy talk, policy action and policy implementation. What politicians and political stakeholders announce in public is different from what gets translated into policies and is different from what schools eventually implement in practice. The dual transfer process—from policy talk to action and from policy action to implementation—provides ample room for modification, reinterpretation and resistance by various actors involved at each level of a policy implementation process. Cuban takes this analysis a step further and asserts that we should not always confine ourselves to studying how reforms change schools but rather, how schools change reforms (1998). In practice, many reforms that promise fundamental change become incremental reform programmes once they encounter the incremental, step-by-step reform culture of schools. Second, the modest outcome of the fundamental reform promise can be seen as a reaction to the great resistance towards importing US educational reform models and hiring US consulting firms for revamping Swiss schools. Among the leading critics was the teachers’ union, VPOD,9 that devoted several issues of its magazine, Magazin fur Schule und Kindergarten, and organized meetings and conferences criticizing Buschor’s reform plans for merely advancing short-sighted managerial solutions that were devoid of any pedagogical visions for improving the quality of schools (see, for example, Steiner-Khamsi, 1998, 1997). Buschor and the ministerial staff responded to their critical comments by emphasizing that the Zurich model of outcomes-based, market-oriented and effective schools merely represents a soft version of reform models borrowed from abroad; that is, a version that is adapted to the Swiss context of small neighbourhood schools and to a history of strong public schooling that remains free of charge. By 1999, four years after the inception of the borrowed reform package, the ministerial staff diligently avoided the use of external references to US school reform models and instead stressed the uniqueness and novelty of the Zurich model of effective schools. The new emphasis was put on “partial autonomous public schools”10; that is, primary and lower secondary schools that elect a school principal, establish a pedagogical “school profile,” and engage in continuous self-evaluation. No more mention of partial privatization, school choice, and quality improvement by means of competition was heard in public. What started out as a radical reform policy that promised to overhaul the entire system, was reduced, four years after its inception, to an unremarkable management reform that mainly advanced the professionalization of principals by establishing, for the first

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

79

time, degree programmes and professional development programmes in educational administration. Third, starting in 1999, the Minister of Education switched his spatial frame of reference from the USA to continental Europe, more specifically to school reform models in the Netherlands and Denmark. For example, in an interview with one of the two leading newspapers of Zürich in January 2000, the Minister of Education explicitly stated that he is modelling the school reform in the Canton of Zürich after school reforms in the Netherlands (Teuwsen, 2000, p. 44). Unlike the widely discussed and heatedly debated US and British school reforms, the Dutch and Danish models were less well known in the Swiss education community and were less subject to criticism and controversy. There were two additional advantages that external references to experiences in the Netherlands and Denmark had to offer. Both European models manifest, to some extent, a social market orientation rather than a completely free market orientation, which most of the US reform models are associated with in Europe. The Ministry of Education, for example, revised its financial distribution plan in ways that include social indicators, ensuring that communities in financial need with low-income students receive adequate state funding. With the change of reference frames, attention was placed on “school improvement” and school-based management rather than on “school effectiveness” and market orientation (see Sammons, 1999). Thus, the first advantage was that the Dutch and Danish references succeeded in appeasing critics who attacked the Ministry of Education for pursuing neo-liberal reforms that were oblivious to equity and diversity issues. The second advantage was the reterritorialization of ongoing school reforms into a European space which had already been in existence, and in fact, had shaped the reforms in upper secondary education, lower tertiary level, and universities but, until 1999, had no impact on primary and secondary school reforms.11 Buschor succeeded in tuning into the momentum of Europeanization. He reframed his controversial reforms, in particular, school-based management (“partially autonomous public schools”) but also the introduction of English12 and computer technology at primary school level as part of a greater cause: the need to adapt education to European standards in education. In retrospect, the “Effective Schools” reform reflects three different stages of transfer that are partially overlapping: In the first stage, external references to US educational reform models were explicitly made. When the imported model encountered resistance and faced difficulties in the implementation phase, it was reframed as a new domestic model that supposedly only vaguely resembled originals in other countries. Hence, in this second stage, externalization was suspended and emphasis was placed on indigenization. Finally in the third stage, the “Effective School” reform was affiliated with the greater plan of Europeanizing the entire Swiss educational system. In this most recent stage, the Minister of Education and his ministerial staff are using references to “lessons learned” in other European countries, specifically in the Netherlands and Denmark. In that stage, the school reform in Zurich, originally modelled after reforms in the USA, became reinterpreted as an exemplar of new trends in European school reforms and, thus, was reterritorialized in the European educational space.

80

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI 5. EXTERNALIZATION IN TIMES OF POLITICAL CHANGE

The two case studies mentioned in this chapter illustrate how references to “lessons from elsewhere” (Phillips, 2000), specifically references to educational reform models of other European countries, have served to reconfigure geopolitical alliances. In the cases of Latvia and Switzerland, the reconfiguration resulted in the creation of a—real or imagined—European space in education. In agreement with Arjun Appadurai’s (1994, p. 295) contention, that “one man’s imagined community (Anderson, 1983) is another man’s political prison,” it is essential to also reflect on who or what is excluded from that very European space that reforms in these countries attempted to generate. Which are the boundaries of that space, against whom is it directed, and which previous space/s is it replacing? Both in the case of Latvia and Switzerland, the recently adopted European framework has replaced earlier frameworks. In Latvia, it replaced a Soviet framework; in Switzerland, an isolationist and later on—for a short period in the 1990s—an American framework. Policy borrowing from other educational systems, European or not, appears to be a very effective strategy for signalling a rupture with the past and promising a new (political) future. It is not surprising that transnational borrowing frequently occurs at times of dramatic political, economic, or social change. In the past decade, transnational policy borrowing has been common in post-socialist countries and, in general, in countries that have undergone radical political changes. An example of a considerable political change that triggered a flurry of transnational borrowing is South Africa after the end of apartheid in 1994. To make the case here that transnational borrowing is by no means a European phenomenon but, rather, indicative of major political changes that have been occurring in European countries and elsewhere, I would like to briefly mention a third case study on educational borrowing. Carol Anne Spreen deals in her study, “Globalization and educational policy borrowing: mapping outcomes based education in South Africa,” with the concept of lending and borrowing of educational policies (Spreen, 2000). In particular, she examines how various models of outcomes-based education (OBE) were circulated across Australia and New Zealand, throughout the USA and Canada, and then from there, with funding from bilateral donor organizations, were imported to South Africa by domestic experts in the period immediately following the end of apartheid in 1994. She traces in detail how the current South African Curriculum 2005 has incorporated and locally adapted elements from OBE reforms in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA. Her case study on policy borrowing in post-apartheid South Africa draws on two methodological approaches that appear suitable for studying educational borrowing in other parts of the world, including Europe. First, she analyses how the OBE school reform model was locally adapted and recontextualized in ways that accommodated political interests and political alliances of South African stakeholders in education. Hence, her emphasis is on agency and agents of borrowing. Her biographical approach utilized in her semi-structured interviews with South African policy experts and educational stakeholders enabled her to shed light on networking and international cooperation structures that accelerated policy

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

81

borrowing in the South African context. This approach demonstrated how different actors borrowed and emphasized different national versions of OBE, particularly ones that would help legitimate or push their own policy agendas. Second, she determines the different stages of educational borrowing. Her investigation into the political advantages and disadvantages of “externalization,” that is, references to school reform models from abroad, is based on interpretative frameworks of sociologist Margaret Archer and comparativist Jürgen Schriewer. Striking in her study is the finding that South African policy experts and school reform experts made, in the beginning stage of the borrowing process (1994 until 1996), explicit references to “lessons learned” from abroad. At that stage, “externalization” or references to models from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA and Scotland sailed under the flag of internalization, signalling a renunciation of the isolationist apartheid regime and an embracement of a new educational policy space that was populated by educational systems in North America and other free, democratic and economically developed countries of the First World. Instrumental in this initial stage of international borrowing was the strong involvement of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), an important political ally of the African National Congress (ANC) and the new post-apartheid regime. COSATU and the labour movement were the first to borrow OBE principles for their worker education programmes and became a leading force advocating the adoption of OBE in the overall formal educational system. However, this initial stage in which political stakeholders, ANC and COSATU representatives, explicitly referred to OBE models in other countries, only lasted approximately two years. Critics of educational import, and in particular, of OBE, surfaced in great numbers. In this new stage of transfer, political stakeholders were under public pressure to revoke their original announcement that the South African educational system is copying or imitating other countries’ educational reform models. In fact, any reference to “lessons learned from abroad” proved to be detrimental to the policy implementation process. Once the imported school reform became internally contested, the external frame of reference was erased and policy and school reform experts stressed the local adaptation, “indigenization” or “hybridization” of the original model. Drawing from Margaret Archer’s work on externalization and external transactions (1984, 1991), Spreen identifies three phases of borrowing in the South African educational context (pp. 272 ff.): In the first period (1970–80s), borrowing functions as an external transaction and is used for external referencing; in the second period (1990–95), borrowing is utilized for legimitation and can be interpreted as a form of political manipulation; in a third period (1996–98), the shift occurs from externalization to internalization. This third period is characterized by a vanishing of international or external references. For the purposes of this study, the most relevant stages are the second period (1990–95), in which OBE was imported with explicit references to models abroad, and the third period (1996–98), in which those very strategies of externalization, international and external references were oppressed and replaced by internal references. Returning full circle to the vignette on externalization and the theory of selfreferential systems (Luhmann & Schorr, 1979; see also Schriewer, 1990, 2000, and

82

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

Steiner-Khamsi, 2000) that was presented in the first section of the chapter, I would like to capture the discussion of the case studies on borrowing in terms of the proposed theoretical framework. In times of massive political changes, selfreferences to traditions, beliefs and organization, which, according to Luhmann and Schorr (1979) are the most commonly used internal references to justify the persistence or introduction of reforms, lapse as legitimacy strategies. In fact, what is politically required at these times of political change is a clear rupture with the detested past and a turning point that signals a new (political) future without the legacies of the past. Instead of carrying on with self-references, new references to lessons from elsewhere, policy borrowing, or externalization open up the chance to resituate an educational system internationally and domestically. 6. CONCLUSIONS The Latvian and Swiss case studies illustrate how externalization or external references to school reforms were reterritorialized by exchanging the Soviet space of reference (Latvia) or the US space of reference (Switzerland) with the emerging European space in educational reform. It is suggested here that research on the educational borrowing process lends itself as a methodological tool to trace the emergence of new transnational spheres of influence on local and national educational reforms. In addition, the emphasis on the politics of transnational educational borrowing provides important clues not only for understanding why policies are being borrowed from abroad in the first place, but why traces of borrowing are being blurred in subsequent stages of the policy implementation process. All three case studies, two of them reported from other studies (Spreen, 2000; Silova, 2001) and the last one describing my own research focus, illustrate, in one way or the other, how externalization as a legitimation strategy for importing or maintaining contested school reforms is deeply embedded in a given political, economic and cultural context. At times, it appears to be politically opportune to borrow from abroad and at other times it seems politically more feasible to conceal the import of educational models from abroad and to insist that those very models are domestic versions of models that coincidentally exist elsewhere. There are a few commonalities between the borrowing, indigenization and reterritorialization processes in the three case studies that deserve to be highlighted. First, externalization signalled in all three country contexts a radical departure from an undesired past: from apartheid (South Africa), from the Soviet Union (Latvia), from parochialism and isolationism within the world and, in particular, within the European Union (Switzerland). In all three case studies, the more common practice of self-referentiality in which educational systems refer to traditions, beliefs, or organization to justify the perpetuation of existing reforms was not a policy option because they are “backward” oriented, that is, oriented towards an undesired past. This is not to suggest, however, that the strategy of transnational borrowing for overcoming an undesired past, is, by necessity and in the long run, successful. As Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (1997) remarked with regard to social reforms in post-socialist European countries, there persists a continuity between the imperial

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

83

past and the independent present, which may manifest itself at different levels, including the more straightforward infrastructural legacies, the administrativebureaucratic legacy, and the more elusive political and cultural continuities. Second, transnational borrowing occurs mainly at the level of policy talk. What gets translated into local or national policies and what finally gets implemented at school level does not necessarily reflect the borrowed model. “Lessons learned from abroad” are often reduced to political rhetoric that help to make domestic school reforms sail under the flag of internationalization and adaptation to “international standards” in education. We are witnessing a huge international market of buzzwords in educational reform, such as effectiveness, outcomes-based education, multiculturalism, quality assessment, that all mean something entirely different in various cultural contexts. Nevertheless, these international buzzwords often serve politicians as political flags of convenience for which they publicly claim to have received the stamp of approval given by an imagined global educational research and policy community. Third, in all three case studies there was resistance to importing educational models from abroad. Transnational educational borrowing was thus followed by a period in which politicians and political stakeholders downplayed externalization and instead emphasized the local adaptation and indigenization of the borrowed model. At that stage, externalization became concealed and the uniqueness and novelty of the domestic model was stressed. Finally, research on educational transfer surfaces useful hints for understanding globalization processes and allows us to examine the larger issue of educational convergence: Are national educational systems indeed becoming increasingly similar as a result of globalization? Since, in Europe, “globalization” is closely associated with the threat of “Americanization,” it appears useful to restate the question in a less abstract manner: are educational reforms in Europe becoming increasingly Americanized? From a culturalist perspective (Steiner-Khamsi, 2000) that examines local reactions to global forces and distinguishes what is being traded internationally from what is being implemented locally, there is evidence to suggest that educational systems are indeed not converging towards a singular US model of educational reform. Instead, we are clearly observing traces of a new regionalism in European policy borrowing. The most visible sign is the tendency of politicians to refer to other continental European countries and to distance themselves from oversees. This newly emerging European space for policy borrowing is still, more often than not, imagined. For some countries in central and eastern Europe that aspire to be regarded as part of that economically and politically desirable space, however, the European space represented by its official gatekeepers—the European Union, the Council of Europe and other organizations that regulate and manage the space in the domain of education—is very real and not imagined. Europe is not alone in having official gatekeepers that are firmly in place, determining social and educational policies of her new members. What the European Union and the Council of Europe are to central and eastern European countries, the World Bank, in cooperation with UN organizations and bilateral cooperation agencies, is to developing countries: a lender of social and educational policy, both financially and conceptually (Mundy & Murphy, 1999; Jones, 1999).

84

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

Nevertheless, what is becoming similar and what comes across as the international convergence of national educational systems is the international language and the flags of convenience that politicians and political stakeholders utilize when enforcing their own political agendas for educational reform. The question whether and how policy talk that was borrowed from other European countries, and to a lesser extent from oversees, is being implemented at local level is a different issue altogether which deserves academic curiosity and scrutiny. NOTES 1

The following eight IEA studies have been conducted in the 1990s (IEA, 2000): Reading Literacy, Computers in Education, Languages in Education Study, Third International Mathematics and Science Study, Second Information Technology in Education Study Module 1, Third International Mathematics and Science Study Repeat, TIMSS-R Video Study, and Civic Education Study. In addition to the eight studies completed by the year 2000, three studies are near completion (Preprimary Education Project, Second Information Technology in Education Study Module 2, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and two are in preparation (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, Second Information Technology in Education Study Module 3). 2 The first Civic Education Study (1971) was part of the Six-Subject Study and comprised only nine countries, whereas 28 countries participated in the second Civic Education Study (1994–2001). 3 And, at a much smaller scale, the emerging transnational education industry (e.g. Arthur Andersen, Sylvan Learning Systems, Peterson’s, Edison Learning Systems, etc.) that promotes specific school reform packages. 4 In the case study on the Achimota College in Ghana (Steiner-Khamsi & Quist, 2000), we traced in detail all the political options for borrowing at a given time (1920s) and in a specific context (Gold Coast, i.e. British colonial Ghana) and found that “extemalization,” that is, references to an American model (Hampton–Tuskegee model), was politically more acceptable than borrowing a similar domestic model that had been offered for decades by missionary schools in the Gold Coast. 5 German: “Wirkungsorientierte Schulreform.” 6 See also Iveta Silova’s chapter in this edited volume. 7 Helvetische Verspätung refers to the Swiss (Helvetic) time-lag in adopting reform movements that had already been in place in other countries for several decades. 8 The project (“Schulprqjekt 21”) has been implemented in 12 school districts of the Canton of Zurich. It now comprises the introduction of technology as well as the use of English at primary school level. 9 German: “Verein des Personals der Oeffentlichen Dienste” (Union of Public Sector Employees). 10 German: “Teilautonome Volksschulen.” 11 The following examples illustrate the Europeanization process that has been going on at various levels of the educational system: at upper secondary school level, the introduction of the “Berufsmaturitat” and the accreditation of private providers of technical and vocational education; at lower tertiary education level, the transformation of “Hohere Fachschulen” into “Fachhochschulen,” and at university level, the introduction of (relatively modest) student tuition fees. 12 In the autumn of 2000 this caused a major protest in the French- and Italian- speaking parts of Switzerland, where Buschor was criticized for being unpatriotic for favouring the teaching of English over French in primary schools. He was also criticized for publicly announcing the introduction of English in primary schools without conferring first with the 25 other Ministers of Education in Switzerland.

REFERENCES Appadurai, A. (1994). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy, In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global culture. Nationalism, globalization and modernity (pp. 295–310). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Archer, M. (1984). The social origins of education systems. London: Sage.

RETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATIONAL IMPORT

85

Archer, M. (1991). Sociology of one world: Unity and diversity. International Sociology, 6 (2), 131–147. Barkey, K. & Von Hagen, M. (Eds.) (1997). After empire. Multiethnic societies and nation-building. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Cuban, L. (1998). How schools change reforms. Teachers College Record, 99 (2), 453–477. Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things. An archeology of the human sciences. New York: Random House. Foucault, M. (1972). The archeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. New York: Pantheon Books. Halpin, D. & Troyna, B. (199S). The politics of educational borrowing. Comparative Education, 31 (3), 303–310. International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) (2000). Brochure on the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Amsterdam: IEA Secretariat. Jones, P. W. (1999). Globalisation and the Unesco Mandate: Multilateral prospects for educational development. International Journal of Educational Development, 19(1), 17–25. Luhmann, N. (1990). Essays on self-reference. New York: Columbia University Press. Luhmann, N. & Schorr, K-E. (1979). Reflexionsprobleme im Erziehungssystem. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Lynch, J. (1998). International transfer of dysfunctional paradigms. In D. Johnson, B. Smith & M. Crossley (Eds.), Learning and teaching in an international context: Research, theory and practice (pp. 7–33). Bristol: Centre for International Studies in Education. Mundy, K. & Murphy, L. (1999). Transnational advocacy, global civil society? Emerging evidence from the field of education. Comparative Education Review, 45 (1), 85–126. Phillips, D. (1993). Borrowing educational policy. In D. Finegold, L. McFarland & W. Richardson (Eds.), Something borrowed, something learned? The transatlantic market in education and training reform (pp. 13–10). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Phillips, D. (2000). Learning from elsewhere in education: Some perennial problems revisited with reference to British interest in Germany. Comparative Education, 36 (3), 297–307. Popkewitz, T. S. (2000). Globalization/regionalization, knowledge, and the educational practices: Some notes on comparative strategies for educational research. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Educational knowledge. Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 3–27). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Sammons, P. (1999). School effectiveness. Coming of age in the twenty-first century. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Schriewer, J. (1990). The method of comparison and the need for externalization: Methodological criteria and sociological concepts. In J. Schriewer, in cooperation with B. Holmes (Eds.), Theories and methods in comparative education (pp. 25–83). Bern: Lang. Schriewer, J. (2000). Comparative education methodology in transition: Towards the study of complexity? In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formation in comparative education (pp. 3–52). Bern: Lang. Silova, I. (2001). From sites of occupation to symbols of multiculturalism: Transfer of minority education discourse in post-Soviet Latvia. PhD dissertation in Comparative and International Education. New York: Columbia University. Silova, I. (2002). From sites of occupation to symbols of multiculturalism: Transfer of global discourse and the metamorphosis of Russian Schools in post-Soviet Latvia. Unpublished manuscript. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. Silova, L & Catlacks, G. (2001) Minority education in post-Soviet Latvia: Balancing the legacies of the past and a vision for the future. In F. Salili & R. Hoosain (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues, policies and practices (pp. 125–149). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Spreen, C. A. (2000). Globalization and educational policy borrowing: Mapping outcomes based education in South Africa. PhD dissertation in Comparative and International Education. New York: Columbia University. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (1997). Lehren aus Deregulierung und Schulwahl in den USA. Magazin für Schule und Kindergarten, 100/101, 28–39. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (1998). Szenario 2010 zur wirkungsorientierten Schulreform. Magazin für Schule und Kindergarten. Part I: (108): 16–24; Part II: (109): 24–29. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2000). Transferring education, displacing reforms. In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formation in comparative education (pp. 155–187). Bern: Lang.

86

GITA STEINER-KHAMSI

Steiner-Khamsi, G. & Quist, H. O. (2000). The politics of educational borrowing: Reopening the case of Achimota in British Ghana. Comparative Education Review, 44 (3), 272–299. Teuwsen, P. (2000). Ernst Buschors mission. Das Magazin. Wochenendbeilage des Tages-Anzeigers, 1, 34–45. Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995). Thinking toward Utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Teachers College, Columbia University

IVETA SILOVA

6. RETURNING TO EUROPE The Use of External References in Reconceptualizing Minority Education in Post-Soviet Latvia1

1. INTRODUCTION The breakdown of communism in eastern and central Europe and the former Soviet Union has marked the emergence of a new geopolitical space, which is now undergoing fundamental reorganization to ensure the return of the newly established democracies to Europe. In the reorganization process, education has played “a major symbolic and reconstructionist role” in destroying the past and rebuilding the future (Cowen, 2000, p. 338). Marking a radical departure from the Soviet to the western European space, politicians and education policy-makers have used both prospective and retrospective considerations to formulate new education reform in the region (Mitter, 1992). Prospective considerations have involved an attempt to reach the “modern” education standards and ideals existing in the Western countries, whereas retrospective considerations have been reflected in “a quest for original formulas” cultivated in the region before World War II (Birzea, 1994). Particularly, a prospective nature of new educational reform movements has been observed in the emergence of Western discourses on “humanization,” “democratization,” “liberalization,” “pluralism” and “diversity” in speeches, programmes and preambles of politicians and education policy-makers in most eastern and central European countries and the former Soviet republics (Birzea, 1994; Mitter, 1997). A retrospective nature of educational reform has surfaced in expressions of patriotism, often distorted by nationalism, intolerance and even war and genocide, as witnessed in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia (Mitter, 1997). In addition to an intricate interplay between the prospective and retrospective considerations, the reorganization of the newly established democracies towards the western European ideals has been further complicated by the continuing influence of the Soviet legacies. Based on the comparison between the empires and their successor states, Barkey and von Hagen (1997) suggest that there is a continuity between the imperial past and independent present which can manifest itself at different levels, including the more straightforward infrastructural legacies, the administrative–bureaucratic legacy, and the more elusive political cultural continuities. In the case of the former communist bloc, these legacies include social and economic structures, state institutions, a particular set of elites, and a complex

87 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 87-107. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

88

IVETA SILOVA

demographic situation (Barkey, 1997). The inherited complexity of the ethnodemographic situation is now referred to as “the latest and potentially most explosive ‘national problem,’” 2 which manifests itself in ethnic fragmentation, tensions and conflict among the Russian-speaking and indigenous groups on the territories of the former Soviet Union. The “national problem” is particularly acute in Latvia, which has the largest Russian minority of all the Baltic States and the second largest in the former Soviet Union.3 Similar to other former Soviet republics, the “national problem” in Latvia has been addressed by employing both prospective and retrospective considerations. On the one hand, the Latvian Government pursues Latvianization strategies to ensure the defence of Latvian national rights and reversal of the decades of Russification and Soviet assimilation. On the other hand, Latvia’s determination to join the Western alliance requires definition of national policies in terms of European values, which emphasize respect for pluralism, human rights and tolerance, as well as cultural and linguistic diversity. This chapter attempts to capture the complexity of creating a new European space in post-Soviet Latvia by examining how “new” ideas and discourses borrowed from the West interact with the constraints imposed by the “old” education structures, institutions and practices inherited from the Soviet Union. One of the Soviet legacies which continuously demonstrates ethnic tensions and fragmentation in Latvian education is the existence of two parallel school structures—one using Russian language instruction and the other using Latvian. Established during the Soviet period (1940–91), these schools differed not only in their language of instruction but also in curricula, value systems and teaching staff. They were used by the Soviet regime as mechanisms to institutionalize a dual notion of nationhood among the Russian and indigenous populations. Thus, students attending Latvian schools associated themselves with Latvia and were usually bilingual,4 whereas students attending Russians schools typically had a “strong Russian orientation” and spoke Latvian relatively poorly (Karklins, 1998). This institutionalized dichotomy of nationhood not only played a significant role in the collapse of the Soviet Union but, as some scholars (Limberg, 1994; Brubaker, 1996) suggest, continues to shape the “national” question in the successor states today. Whereas the dichotomous structure of the school system has not substantially changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, education reform discourse about separate schools for Russian and Latvian students has undergone a great transformation. Russian language schools moved from being associated with “Soviet state instruments” and “nests of Soviet occupants” at the beginning of the 1990s to “symbols of multiculturalism and pluralism” by the end of the decade. In fact, separate school systems for Russian- and Latvian-speaking populations are now being publicly referred to as necessary elements of democratic development in that they allow different ethnic groups to trace their cultural and linguistic heritage (UNDP, 1997). A new reconceptualization of the separate schooling for different ethnic groups is clearly reflected in a recent speech by the Latvian President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga (2001):

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

89

Latvia’s multicultural environment is reflected in the country’s primary education system, which provides schooling to a greater or lesser extent in six different languages, including Roma. There are almost 200 Russian language schools in the country, as well as Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian and Belarussian schools. Minority children in Latvia are being given the chance to maintain their cultural identity while being Latvians and Europeans, in a spirit of cultural diversity and tolerance.

This chapter discusses the change of discourse regarding separate schools for Russian- and Latvian-speaking students in the context of a globalization movement that aims to ensure Latvia’s integration into the European Union, encourage international investment, and attract financial aid. Various international agencies— Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Council of Europe (CE), United States (US) agencies and United Nations (UN) institutions—have articulated on numerous occasions that development of a cohesive, multicultural society is a necessary prerequisite for Latvia to join the Western alliance. It is within this context that I will trace the transfer of global discourse on multiculturalism and examine how local agents and stakeholders of education reform have attempted to reconcile international pressures for multiculturalization with domestic politics of Latvianization in an effort to create a new European space for minority education in post-Soviet Latvia. 2.

GLOBALIZATION AND BORROWING OF EDUCATION DISCOURSES

In the last three decades, the debate on the effects of globalization on education has become the centre of education research. As the convergence theories of the 1960s and 1970s predicted that nearly all societies were moving towards the same point, though at different speeds (Axford, 1995), comparative education scholars took on the task of explaining why and how education “borrowing” contributes to an increasing similarity of education systems worldwide. The collapse of communism in eastern and central Europe, however, led some theorists (Offe, 1991) to believe that “convergence” was in fact a one-way flow towards Westernization. Depending on their interpretative framework and geographical position, scholars referred to the globalization phenomenon as “McDonaldization” (Ritzer, 1993), “Europeanization” (Ritchie, 1997; Stoer & Cortesao, 2000) or “internationalization” (Burbules & Torres, 2000). Although it is widely recognized that the globalization process has had a considerable impact on national educational systems, there has been no agreement among the leading comparative education scholars on exactly how current globalization processes affect education and what role education transfer plays in this process (Steiner-Khamsi, 2000). The most prevalent theoretical approaches explaining the impact of globalization on education include consensus, conflict, and culturalist models.5 Moving away from the consensus and conflict theories, which explain the globalization phenomenon primarily in terms of homogenization (either voluntary or imposed),6 this chapter advances a culturalist approach of comparative analysis aimed to deconstruct the historical and political contexts of education transfer and emphasize the role of the local agency in the “borrowing” process.

90

IVETA SILOVA

While recognizing the impact of cultural imperialism on education systems, the culturalist model challenges the assumption that globalization leads to homogenization and results in the international convergence of education systems. As Appadurai describes, globalization involves “the use of a variety of instruments of homogenization (armaments, advertising techniques, language hegemonies, and clothing styles) that are absorbed into local political and cultural economies, only to be repatriated as heterogeneous dialogues of national sovereignty, free enterprise, and fundamentalism” (1996, p. 42). Based on the assumption that “there are no global developments that affect local cultures in identical ways,” the culturalist model applied to education theory acknowledges the diversity of education issues in societies divided by class, race, ethnicity and gender (Steiner-Khamsi, 2000, p. 163). The concept of “diversity” or “hybridity” makes it possible to think of educational reforms as “plural assumptions, orientations, and procedures” (Popkewitz, 2000, p. 173) which are being constantly contested, disputed and challenged. In this way, the culturalist model emphasizes the political context of education transfer. More importantly, the culturalist approach places the local agency in the centre of education transfer, thus emphasizing “borrowing” as a self-regulated reflection on education reform. Building on Luhmann’s theory of self-referential systems (1990), Schriewer (1988) and Steiner-Khamsi (2000) use the concept of “externalization” or reference to existing models outside the educational system to illustrate how “borrowing” can be used by the local agency as a mechanism for reaching its own needs, such as, for example, reflecting on education reform, legitimizing contested educational reforms domestically, objectifying value-based decisions, or “signalling” certain reform movements internationally. In this way, the local agency is not perceived as a “helpless victim,” which is ruthlessly manipulated and controlled by the global forces. Rather, the local agency is perceived to have its own needs and interests that may be pursued by engaging in negotiations with the global forces. Whereas the recontextualization processes of the borrowed educational practices have been well documented7 (Robertson & Waltman, 1993; Phillips, 1993; Halpin & Troyna, 1995; Spreen, 2001), very few studies engage in a detailed examination of the transfer of education discourses. As Steiner-Khamsi (2000) points out, the fact that the borrowed education programme was not implemented does not mean that the transfer did not occur. Instead, what is being transferred is not a particular aspect of education reform, but rather, a political discourse associated with it. It is specifically this area of comparative education that remains lacking in study, yet has a great potential to contribute to the study of globalization processes in education. Its most significant contribution is establishing a link between the transfer of discourse and its relationship to greater social, economic and political transformations, leading to constituting, reproducing and changing systems of knowledge and belief. This chapter attempts to fill in this theoretical gap by arguing that transfer of discourses does not lead to simply replacing internal references with external ones, but, given the political context and the role of the local agency, involves major conceptual disputes about new education ideas and practices. As Popkewitz and Pereyra (1993) point out, the elements of regulation and contestation in education reform are carried not necessarily by “legislative or coercive functions of the state”,

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

91

but, rather, “in the rules, norms, and patterns of communication that structure in certain possibilities and filter out others” (p. 25). This means that changing discourse practices may lead to changes in knowledge, social relations and social identities. In this context, discourse can be seen as a mechanism by which “world” and “truth” are produced and reproduced through the formation of people’s everyday knowledge and ways of reasoning. For the purposes of this chapter, I define discourse as “an area of language use expressing a particular standpoint and related to a certain set of institutions” (Peet & Watts, 1996, p. 14). Specifically, this definition of public discourse implies its formation by different agents,8 includes both internal discourse (formed by different agents locally) and external discourse (formed in relation to the international community),9 and recognizes the importance of political and historical context within which a new discourse emerges. By emphasizing the multiplicity of internal and external voices in the creation of public discourse, this definition recognizes the internal complexity and contestability of new discursive concepts.10 Recognizing the importance of the historical and political context of the emergence of new discourse provides a possibility to examine the limits and forms of discourse formation, including the conditions under which certain discourses are rendered “sayable,” “conserved,” “memorized,” “reactivated” and “appropriated” (Foucault, 1991). In other words, the proposed definition of public discourse allows linking discursive practices to other previous and simultaneous historical and political events in order to capture how knowledge and new ways of reasoning are constructed. Conceptualized within the culturalist model framework and drawing from the studies of discourse formation by Foucault (1977, 1991), this chapter will trace the change of discourse whereby Russian schools have moved from being associated with sites of occupation at the beginning of the 1990s to symbols of multiculturalism by the end of the decade. First, I will briefly describe the historical and political context of the emergence of new discourse. Second, I will trace major shifts of public discourse during the period from 1989 to 1999.11 Third, I will identify a multiplicity of internal and external voices in the creation of new public discourses in a rapidly changing political context to capture the interaction between the global and the local forces. Finally, I will discuss how European pressures for multiculturalization have led to the reconceptualization of separate schooling for Russian and Latvian students in the late 1990s, thus marking a new geopolitical educational space that Latvia politically, economically and socially has been aspiring to inhabit at the turn of the century. 3. THE LEGACIES OF THE PAST In order to understand the conditions of the emergence of a new discourse on multiculturalism in Latvia, it is important to consider pre-Soviet and Soviet nationality policies and their effect on the Latvian education system of separate schooling for different ethnic groups. Though the experience of the 1920s and 1930s might seem far removed from contemporary concerns, that era remains an important reference point for both the Latvian majority and minorities. Similarly, the historical

92

IVETA SILOVA

legacy of the Soviet rule, especially its demographic, linguistic and institutional aspects, continues to shape ethnic relations in the region today. 3.1 Pre-Soviet Multiculturalization Policies (1918–40) During the democratic period of the interwar years, the Baltic States were creating their own models of multicultural societies. Particularly, Latvia and Estonia enacted some of the most liberal minority cultural autonomy laws existing anywhere in Europe during that era. In the education area, the Latvian state policy advocated the principle of “ethnic cultural autonomy,” which meant the preservation and state financing of minority schools inherited from Czarist Russia along with Latvian language schools.12 Furthermore, a Department of National Minority Schools was established in the Ministry of Education and included German, Russian, Jewish, Polish and Belarussian school boards. With the rise of authoritarian tendencies in the late 1920s and early 1930s, however, the scope of minority rights narrowed considerably. After a coup d’état and the imposition of marshal law on 15 May 1934, minority schools became directly subordinated to the general supervision and guidance of the Ministry of Education, and enrolment in Latvian schools was encouraged.13 Subsequently, a gradual assimilation into the Latvian nation ensued, especially in mixed families (Dribins, 1996). Although the state restricted educational and cultural rights of national minorities, minority schools continued to exist until World War II and the Soviet occupation. 3.2 Soviet Russification Policies (1940–90) Following the incorporation of Latvia into the USSR in 1940, the structure of education was radically changed through the establishment of the two school subsystem, one using Russian language instruction and the other using Latvian.14 The separation of schools along language lines, however, did not reflect the previous tradition of “cultural autonomy” for different ethnic and linguistic groups. Quite the opposite, the establishment of separate schools allowed the deployment of “disciplinary techniques” necessary to produce subjective and practised bodies or, as Foucault (1977) would put it, ‘”docile” bodies. Foucault (1977) stated that discipline proceeds from the distribution of the individuals in space, achieved by employing several techniques, including enclosure, partitioning and ranking. Enclosure and partitioning were necessary to “analyze confused, massive or transient pluralities” (p. 143). These disciplinary techniques aimed “to establish absences and presences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits” (Foucault, 1977, p. 143). In the case of Latvia, establishment of separate schools for Russian and indigenous populations allowed the Soviet Government to ensure strict control not only over the content of education, but also over student and teacher behaviour. Thus, separate schools for Latvian students allowed for control of any unwanted nationalistic

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

93

sentiments, while separate schools for Russian students ensured that all students were loyal to their “external” motherland (for example, Russia), rather than the republic they resided in. At the same time, the breakdown of the Soviet Union illustrated how the disciplinary techniques of “enclosure,” “partitioning” and “ranking” has served not only as the instruments of control, but also as the instruments of mobilization and the sites of resistance. Some scholars suggest that it was precisely these institutionalized forms of “Soviet nation-building” that facilitated the preservation and reproduction of the indigenous cultures on the territories of the Soviet Union. As Smith, Law, Wilson, Bohr and Allworth (1998) explain, institutional separation of the indigenous nationalities in the USSR “enabled nationality divisions to remain an integral part and reference point of native public life and an organizational basis for reinforcing local national identities” (p. 6). As a result, the “institutional completeness” reflected in the existence of a parallel set of educational institutions for Latvian and Russian speakers “with little communication across the language divide” (Zaslavsky, 1992, p. 73), had in a way strengthened the already existing form of Latvian nationalism, including the tendency of Latvians for self-defence and ethnic survival. 4. RECREATING THE EUROPEAN SPACE IN LATVIAN EDUCATION

During the transition period leading to Latvian independence, education became the centre of reform, signalling a radical departure from the Soviet practices to Western democratic ideals. As characterized by (1994), education reform was focused on a “4D program,” which included demilitarization, de-ideologization, decentralization and democratization. Whereas the first three initiatives could be easily implemented through education legislation,15 “democratization” of the education system proved to be a long process, and, in the case of Russian language schools, raised major conceptual disputes among different ethnic groups nationally and human rights experts internationally. These disputes revolved around the future of Russian language schools in relation to other minority schools, and involved two attempts to signal Latvia’s “return” to Europe. Initially, there was a strong movement towards the restoration of Latvian pre-war policies of minority education (1920–30), which provided full cultural autonomy to educational institutions for ethnic minorities. Later, however, self-reference to Latvian minority policies of the pre-war period was replaced by the western European reference system, thus giving rise to the emergence of new discourses on ethnic integration and multiculturalism. 4.1 Restoring and Abandoning Pre-Soviet “Multiculturalization” Policies

From the very outset, the issue of minority education was identified as key to the restoration of Latvian independence. The first attempt to address the issue of ethnic minorities was made by the Latvian Popular Front 16 (1988), which advocated the need for “a consistent national policy that would not split, but consolidate people” (p. 5). The programme of the Latvian Popular Front (LPF) stated that “the formation

94

IVETA SILOVA

of a democratic society in Latvia and the restoration of its state independence is possible only with the active participation of all ethnic groups living in the republic” (p. 5). Reflecting a general tendency of the late 1980s to “restore” Latvian historical memory wrecked by the Soviet Government17 (Gundare), the LPF’s vision of national independence included a restoration of Latvian pre-war policies of cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities. Specifically, the LFP advocated its support for “the right of ethnic minorities for comprehensive secondary education in their native language as well as the opening and promotion of minority schools in Latvia” (p. 6). Given successful pre-war minority policies and their wide recognition by an international community at that period, the idea of restoring cultural autonomy for ethnic groups seemed to be a logical step, which signalled Latvia’s transition from Soviet space to European space. Moving to fulfil its promises, the LPF helped to initiate 18 national cultural associations for Jews, Ukrainians, Belarussians, and other ethnic groups at the end of 1988. In the education area, Latvia became the first republic on the territory of the Soviet Union where a non-Russian minority educational institution, Riga Jewish school, was established. Although different cultural minorities were at the centre of public attention at the end of the 1980s, the issue of Russians was discussed very rarely. For example, a review of the Latvian language version of the newspaper Awakening,18 published in 1990, illustrated that while numerous references were made to “small” Latvian minorities such as Poles, Belarussians, Estonians, Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians, there was no mention of Russians living in Latvia. At the same time, the Russian language press featured discussions among Russian educators and politicians about possible ways of reforming Russian schools into “national” schools.19 For example, Pliners (1991) suggested that a “Russian school in Latvia should be different from a Russian school in Arhangelsk or Voronezh20 ensuring that students [in Latvia] can speak fluent Latvian, know Latvian history, geography, Latvian cultural foundations” (p. 6). In addition, these “national” schools would aim to ensure “cultural rebirth and development” of the Russian people. Another way of reconceptualizing the future of Russian schools drew on the pre-war and Soviet experiences, and emphasized the transformation of Russian schools into the centres of “cultural dialogue” among Latvian, Belarussian, Jewish, Polish and other students attending these schools (Shishkin, 1989; Gedrovich, 1989). In other words, at the end of the 1980s Russian-speaking educators followed the idea that the reformed Russian school would be a culturally autonomous institution similar to other minority schools in Latvia. These discussions, however, circulated primarily in the Russian-speaking community, rarely reaching the audience of the Latvian language press.21 Importantly, an analysis of the Latvian language press published at the beginning of the 1990s illustrated that the notion of culturally autonomous minority schools did not include all non-Latvian schools. Some leading government officials and politicians22 began to make a strict distinction between Russian schools and minority schools. For example, the report of the Cabinet of Ministers (1994) concluded that although Russian schools belonged to a category of minority schools officially, they were different from a traditional notion of minority schools in practice. First, the

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

95

number of Russian schools was higher than the number of Latvian schools in all of the biggest cities and in some regions in Latvia. Second, many of the Russian schools were still “USSR type” schools, different from Russian “minority” schools in terms of curriculum and methodology.23 Finally, a large number of Belarussian, Ukrainian, Jewish and Latvian students continued to attend these schools, thus contradicting a traditional definition of minority schools characterized by their “mono-national” orientation (p. 85). In other words, Russian language schools were not perceived as minority schools, but were instead equated with the burdensome Soviet occupation inheritance. Furthermore, public discourse portrayed Russian schools as an unwanted phenomenon threatening the development of the Latvian nation. As (1997) put it, “all Russian was associated with a foreign power, the communist party and forced communist ideology ... the restoration of the Latvian nation and citizenship was primarily based on a strong distrust of Russians, because they represented militarists and the occupation power” (p. 20). Some politicians hoped that the problem of the Russian school would be solved by eliminating the Russian school concept as such. In 1993, Latvian parliament member Abikis (quoted in Sergeev, 1993) stated that there was “no need to talk about a clear state policy towards the Russian school” given that the number of these schools would rapidly decrease as a result of the demographic changes caused by the repatriation of the Russian speakers to their “external” homelands. For the remaining Russian schools, the policy of “re-ethnification” would be pursued to encourage the diversification of the education system by splitting big Russian language schools into smaller “national” schools for Polish, Ukrainian, Estonian, and other ethnic groups (Locis, 1996; 1997). In this way, a gradual decrease and elimination of the Russian school concept was officially presented as a “logical” process 1997). In 1993, the Minister of Education, Janis Vaivads, (1993) made it clear by saying: I do not think that we need to have two different school concepts in Latvia [one for Russian and one for Latvian language schools]. When the state becomes mono-national, it will be impossible to maintain different education systems ... However, it is true that the process of rolling back the Russian school will be very long-winded and gradual. (p. 3)

To summarize, the idea of restoring Latvian pre-war policies to address the “national problem” of post-Soviet Latvia began to gradually fade away at the beginning of the 1990s as there was no agreement among the leading politicians about whether the Russian school should belong to the category of minority schools. Associated with the Soviet occupation regime, the concept of the Russian school as a culturally autonomous institution did not appeal to nationalistically oriented politicians. Although some political party programmes continued to promote the goal of restoring Latvian pre-war minority policies during the 1993 election campaign, they had largely dropped the idea by 1996.24 Furthermore, the Latvian language press had completely abandoned the historical discourse on cultural autonomy in relation to Russian schools, while the attempts of the Russian language press to “reanimate” this discourse did not catch up with a larger Latvian audience. As Kamenska (1995)

96

IVETA SILOVA

put it, the idea of Russian schools as ethnic minority institutions was “buried” in official public discourse for several reasons, some of which were clearly political.

5.

SEARCHING FOR THE EUROPEAN MODEL OF MINORITY EDUCATION

At the beginning of the 1990s, there was an increasing awareness among the Latvian politicians and education policy-makers that neither the “voluntary repatriation” of the Russian speakers nor the re-ethnification of the Russian schools were feasible options for solving the “national problem.” The majority of Russian speakers stayed in Latvia25 and only 0.5% of the student population attended “traditional” minority schools.26 In short, the problem of the Russian school remained. Furthermore, it was soon reframed as one of the problems impeding Latvian accession into the European Union. As a representative of the Latvian Foreign Affairs Institute, Atis Lejinsh (quoted in 1997), put it, “it is known both here and in Brussels” that “Latvia’s biggest problem of getting into the European Union is the large population of the Russian minority” (p. 3). As Latvia had formally expressed its interest in “returning to Europe,” various international agencies27 insisted that development of a cohesive, multicultural society was a necessary prerequisite for joining the Western alliance. Education was perceived as one of the most important instruments for achieving this goal in that it would “seed such unifying European values as cohesion and equivalence” (Birkavs, quoted in 1999, p. 3). Emphasizing the symbolic importance of Latvia’s affiliation with the West, Janis Urbanovics (interviewed by Fridrihsone, 1999) stated: We need to be prepared to take into consideration the recommendations of the European experts, even though they seem unacceptable at times. It is not profitable for Latvia to wait tens of years to be integrated into European Union structures. There are still wars going on in the world. If we are not together with Europe, then with whom will we be? (p. 3) The aspiration of Latvia to “return to Europe” presented the European Union with an opportunity to influence local policies by including minority rights in a broad definition of political conditionality (Amato & Batt, 1998). Specifically, the linguistic rights of minorities became the subject of a variety of international instruments, including specific OSCE instruments, more general treaties (including universal agreements, European agreements, and special agreements), customary international law, and other documents (OSCE, 1999). By September 2000, Latvia had already acceded to most of the major international human rights instruments necessary for its accession to the European Union. Of 18 international human rights 28 conventions and protocols, Latvia had ratified 13. Ratification of these international human rights documents became a clear indication of Latvia’s commitment to democratic values and one of the main prerequisites for its “returning” to Europe. Given the considerably broad nature of most international documents in the area of minority education, Latvian politicians and education policy-makers soon realized that there existed no single “European model” of minority education.29 Although the

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

97

Hague Recommendations30 provided a more detailed elaboration of desirable policies for implementing the broad commitments in the Copenhagen Document and the Framework Convention, they were presented as a form of advice and, therefore, are not legally binding to member states. As OSCE (1999) observed, the drafters of these international documents “took cognizance of the financial and administrative difficulties” involved in minority education, thus providing states with considerable flexibility over the issue of minority education. 6. RECONCEPTUALIZING MINORITY EDUCATION USING EUROPEAN REFERENCES Although different options were discussed with regard to the future of Russian schools—ranging from Latvianization to the closure of Russian schools—it was decided by the end of the 1990s to leave separate educational structures intact. Given the increasing international pressures, the official explanation emphasized the importance of recognizing “the uniqueness and specific development” of Russian schools and a need “to take into account the psychology and mentality of the children and to avoid threatening their identity” (UNDP, 1997, p. 62). In this way, Russian language schools began to be referred to by some government officials and Latvian media as “symbols of multiculturalism and pluralism.” Some scholars, for example, characterized the continuing existence of separate schools for the Russianspeaking students as “the linchpin guaranteeing ethnic peace,” safeguarding Latvians and non-Latvians alike (Karklins, 1998, p. 283). In practice, however, education reform was aimed at Latvianization of the nonLatvian educational institutions. In the context of the new education reform, the Latvian language was presented as the main mechanism that would ensure the effective integration of Russian and other minority students into Latvian society. In the second half of the 1990s, reform initiatives included introducing Latvian as the only language of instruction in state-financed higher education institutions, increasing the number of Latvian language classes in non-Latvian schools, introducing obligatory Latvian language examinations for high school graduates, requiring all teachers to pass the highest level of the state language test, as well as prohibiting the use of textbooks published outside of Latvia. In 1995, for example, Latvian was introduced at Russian language schools as the language of instruction for two subjects in primary schools (grades 1–9) and three subjects in secondary schools (grades 10–12) from 1 September 1996.31 The new Education Law passed in 1998 announced that state-financed secondary education would only be available in the Latvian language from 2004, while primary education would be reformed to introduce transitional bilingual education programmes in the state and minority languages.32 At the same time, several political party programmes continued to promote the further increase of Latvian language teaching in minority schools, with some parties advocating a complete transition to Latvian language instruction at all levels of education.33 The idea of Latvianizing Russian schools through bilingual education programmes triggered strong opposition from NGOs representing Russian-speaking

98

IVETA SILOVA

and other minority communities in Latvia. Some leaders of the Russian-speaking community (Arshavskaya, Gushin & Pimenov, 2000) stated, for example, that the transitional bilingual education policy “could not ensure the preservation of cultural and linguistic identity of minorities.” Pointing to the absence of state support for introducing the new reform, they emphasized that the promotion of bilingual education was not “a value in itself, but a cover-up of a gradual establishment of education in Latvian language only” (p. 7). Moreover, A Declaration of Public Organizations (1999), signed by the representatives of the Latvian Human Rights Committee, the Russian Community of Latvia, the Baltic Slavic Society for Cultural Development and other NGOs, appealed to the international community by stating that the Latvianization of Russian schools involved “a threat to assimilation” and, therefore, contradicted Hague recommendations regarding minority education. Evidently, the emergence of a new discourse on ethnic integration and the resulting education reform initiatives triggered a replacement of the internal references to Latvian pre-war minority policies by the external references to western European practices. The use of the external references, however, raised serious conceptual disputes about the meaning of “ethnic integration” and “multiculturalism” among different ethnic groups in Latvia. An amalgam of different, often conflicting values with regard to minority education was reflected in the circulation of a “hybridity” of discourses that were both multiple and multidirectional. For example, the analysis of press reviews in the 1990s illustrated that external references to Europe were used selectively by different groups in Latvia for reaching their specific purposes. On the one hand, the Latvian language press used numerous references to western European practices to justify the idea of promoting Latvian as a sole language of instruction in all state-financed schools.34 On the other hand, the Russian language press used references to Europe as an instrument of leveraging their arguments for more cultural autonomy rights.35 Furthermore, while claiming that separate schools were an illustration of the multicultural character of Latvian society, the Ministry of Education made an attempt to clarify that “multicultural” schools meant “separate,” not necessarily “mixed” schools. As some Russian parents began to send their children to Latvian schools,36 it was officially stated that the creation of ethnically and linguistically “mixed” schools and classes was “not recommended.” For example, in a letter sent to school principals in 1995 (No. 4-37), the Ministry of Education recommended that non-Latvian children be accepted to Latvian schools only if the child and at least one of the parents had fluent command of the Latvian language and if Latvian was regularly spoken with the child at home. Furthermore, a leading Latvian sociolinguist and policy-maker, Druviete (1998), stated that the creation of ethnically and linguistically mixed classrooms and schools would not produce “the expected results in Latvia” as in the case of other European countries: Children arrive at the education establishment without any knowledge of Latvian, and progress is very slow. The language barrier becomes an obstacle to knowledge, the teachers have to switch to Russian quite often, and usually Latvian children learn Russian before non-Latvians learn Latvian. The communication among children takes place in Russian even if there are only two or three Russian children among twenty Latvian. Therefore, the simple mixing of children with different native languages has

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

99

not been considered as an optimal solution. Instead, the emphasis is put on the strengthening of Latvian language teaching in minority schools and kindergartens so we can expect significant changes in education policy in Latvia during coming years. (p. 178)

In other words, the emergence of a new discourse on multiculturalism at the end of the 1990s was characterized by a multiplicity of voices, which circulated within the context of partially shared assumptions, concepts and commitments. This “hybridity” of discourses, however, entailed considerable differences in perspectives and illustrated how the “old” structures of separate schooling established during the Soviet period have been utilized by local discourses and their initiators for very specific, often conflicting purposes. For some ethnic Latvians, for example, the transfer of discourse on multiculturalism was primarily used as a protection of the Latvian school from the invasion of Russian-speaking students. Continuing to perceive themselves as a national minority, many ethnic Latvians feared that incorporation, integration or even assimilation of others into the Latvian identity would require losing or changing their existing “Latvianness” (Silova & Catlaks, 2001). At the same time, internalization of the Western reference system by ethnic Latvians indicated that “the higher the international profile they can maintain, the greater are their chances for enhancing their security”37 (Raun, 1994, p. 175). For Russian speakers, on the other hand, the new discourse provided a mechanism to externalize problematic minority issues—including the efforts for more cultural autonomy—in order to gain international support for their demands locally. As Tsilevich (1993) explained, the Latvian Government is more often concerned “about what the West will say rather than about the opinion of its own ‘stateless’ residents” (P. 214). 7. DISCOURSE SHIFT AS A MARKER OF CONSTRUCTING A NEW EUROPEAN SPACE Today marks an important milestone in Latvia’s return to Europe ... Latvia has set a positive example of how a country, through determination and commitment to Council of Europe standards, can emerge from the dark shadows of Soviet occupation into the bright light of freedom and democracy.38

Overall, the process of reconceptualizing minority education in post-Soviet Latvia was based on a shift from the Soviet to the western European reference system as a marker for the new geopolitical educational space that Latvia has been aspiring to inhabit since 1991. The shift of the reference system involved two attempts to signal Latvia’s “return” to Europe, including the use of retrospective and prospective considerations in minority education reform. Initially, Latvia sought to restore its pre-war policies of minority education, which provided full cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities. This attempt, however, contradicted the Latvianization tendencies of the early 1990s and resulted in exclusionary practices towards the large Russianspeaking population. As a result, references to Latvian pre-war policies of cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities began to disappear in public discourse in the early 1990s and were completely dropped by the middle of the decade.

100

IVETA SILOVA

As a result of political conditionality advanced by the European Union institutions during the 1990s, self-reference to Latvian minority policies of the prewar period (1920–30) was replaced by the western European reference system, giving rise to the emergence of a new discourse on ethnic integration and multiculturalism. Given the absence of clear internal policies for minority education within the European Union, the use of European references in Latvia was characterized by the circulation of a “hybridity” of discourses, which have been transferred selectively and shared inconsistently among the different ethnic groups locally. As a result, “borrowing” of the European discourse on multiculturalism did not necessarily lead to “multiculturalization” or homogenization of the state, as would have been traditionally argued by consensus and conflict theorists. Instead, it reflected the continuing existence of the two competing tendencies in Latvian political life that emerged in the late 1980s and became more pronounced by the end of the 1990s. On the one hand, ethnic Latvians have sought to assert their political and cultural rights by reversing the decades of Russification and Soviet assimilation. On the other hand, ethnic minorities have struggled to revive the cultural pluralism of the Latvian pre-war years, and, more recently, to draw attention to the minority rights discourses advanced by the European institutions. Given the increasing international pressures for multiculturalization and local politics of Latvianization, the transfer of global discourse has not necessarily solved the “national problem” in Latvia, but has instead reconceptualized it using the semantics of western Europe. Emerging from an amalgam of competing global and local discourses, the new reconceptualization of minority education has helped to legitimize keeping separate schooling structures for Latvian- and Russian-speaking students intact, thus maintaining complex educational spaces that are at once hierarchical, functional and divisive. Similarly, Bloch and Blessing (2000) suggest that the new patterns of global, national and local discourses in eastern and central Europe, which are based on the use of selective images39 borrowed from the West, represent power/knowledge relationships that have differential effects that include and exclude, allowing different opportunities for participation in different social groups. In this way, application of “new” semantics borrowed from the West to the “old” education structures inherited from the communist past contributes simultaneously to the production of the new ways of reasoning and new power dynamics in a society. Furthermore, a complex interaction between “new” discourses and “old” education structures reveals a disjunction between semantic and structural developments in education reform. The semantics of education reform are particularly important in the context of eastern and central Europe and the former Soviet Union as they symbolize a radical departure from the Soviet past towards the western European future. In “Transferring education, displacing reforms,” SteinerKhamsi (2000) describes how global discourses are often used as “political campaigns that attempt to signal a particular development to the rest of the world” (p. 180). For example, many countries in eastern and central Europe use the global discourse of “education for democracy” to signal that “political and economic stability for the purpose of international cooperation, economic investment, and integration into the European Union has been achieved” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2000, p.

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

101

181). In other words, transfer of global discourses may not necessarily involve transfer of education practices associated with it. Emphasizing the importance of a semantic development of education reform during the transition period and building on Schriewer’s (2000) definition of globalization as a “semantic construction of a world society,” this chapter suggests that current reorganization of the post-Soviet education space represents a semantic construction of the New Europe. On the one hand, “borrowing” of western European discourses is used as a symbol of reterritorializing many eastern and central Europe and former Soviet Union countries from the Soviet space to the western European space. On the other hand, “an abstract universalism” of western European education discourses results in the hybridity of discursive practices wherever these transnationally disseminated discourses interact with the constrains imposed by the Soviet structural, institutional and ethnodemographic legacies. An examination of the intricate connections between the “borrowing” of global discourses, constraints imposed by the Soviet legacies, and the resulting production of new meanings presents a unique opportunity to examine a dynamic interplay between the global and the local. Furthermore, it helps to understand why certain discourses but not others emerge at particular times, places and institutional locations. NOTES 1

I would like to thank António Nóvoa, Martin Lawn, Ieva Gundare and Neil McGurty for their insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this chapter. I owe special thanks to Gita Steiner-Khamsi for her ongoing support and inspiration. 2 Chinn & Kaiser (1996) refer to the Russian-speaking population in the former Soviet Union as the latest and potentially most explosive “national problem.” The status of formerly more advantaged and dominant Russian-speakers in the non-Russian republics is increasingly being challenged as the newly independent states reorient themselves towards serving the interests of the titular nation rather than the interests of Moscow. 3 The only larger Russian population in terms of percentage of the overall population in the former Soviet Union is Kazakhstan (Open Society Institute, 1997). An analysis of the census data (Vebers, 1994) over the period of SO years suggests that the Russian population increased from 9% in 1935 to 34% in 1989, while the Latvian population decreased from 77% in 1935 to 52% in 1989 (pp. 96–140). Although the share of Russian-speakers has declined over the last nine years, ethnic Latvians still only comprise 55.7% of the country’s population (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2000). Furthermore, in seven out of the eight largest Latvian cities, Latvians do not constitute a majority (European Forum, 2000). 4 According to the census data of 1989, 71% of the Latvians in cities and 57% in the countryside spoke Russian as a second language, whereas only 22% of the Russian nationals and 18% of other nonLatvians spoke Latvian, resulting in “asymmetric bilingualism” between Latvian and Russianspeaking groups (Vebers, 1994). 5 For a more detailed discussion of the consensus, conflict, and culturalist approaches to the study of globalization processes in education, see Steiner-Khamsi (2000). 6 A consensus model argues that there is an agreement among policy-makers worldwide regarding what constitutes the best and most effective educational practices. Based on the assumption that there is a common ideological driving force guiding convergence in educational policy, a consensus model does not provide a space for conflict, difference, and disagreement to reveal itself in the outcomes as well as in the processes of a globalization movement. Within the framework of a conflict model, educational transfer is primarily perceived as an imposition of hegemonic political, economic, and cultural ideologies on periphery states, which contributes to the strengthening of “core” states and further breakdown of local communities. As a result, globalization is perceived to lead to the creation

102

IVETA SILOVA

of new forms of inequalities, poverty, and social exclusion and the local agency is usually described as “victims of globalization” (Morrow &Torres, 2000, p. 48). Although a conflict model challenges most of the assumptions underlying a consensus model, including the recognition of unequal power structures in a global community, it fails to capture a dynamic interaction between the global pressures and the local practices. 7 Most comparative studies of education transfer examine recontextualization of specific educational practices in order to identify what aspects of the “borrowed” educational models have been modified, omitted, or accepted by the local agency in a different political, economic, and social context. 8 These agents may include politicians, state institutions, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), different ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups, international agencies, as well as national and international media. 9 This definition is based on the conceptualization proposed by Musolff, Schaffner and Townson (1996) that defines political discourse as covering internal discourses (politicians talking to politicians) and external discourses (politicians talking to the wider public, mainly argumentative and persuasive texts) (p. 9). 10 To illustrate internal complexity and contestability of concepts, Connolly (1993) uses the term “cluster concept,” which points to the existence of a broad and variable set of criteria applicable to each concept. For example, it is possible that various people jointly employing a cluster concept weigh the importance of shared criteria differently; they may also interpret the meaning of particular criteria jointly accepted in different ways; and some people may find it adventurous to add or drop certain criteria from the cluster concept (p. 14). 11 The shifts of discourse have been identified based on the press reviews, including both Russian and Latvian language newspapers published from 1989 until 1999. 12 The Law on Education passed in December of 1919 stated that the educational system for minorities was “in its organizational capacities autonomous” (Dribins, 1996, p. 8). State and municipal institutions were required to open and maintain as many schools for national minorities as were necessary to educate minority children. In locations with a small number of national minorities, minority language classes in Latvian schools were opened to provide an opportunity for minority students to learn in their native languages. 13 The 1934 Law on Education (Ministry of Education, 1934) stated that children of Latvian citizenship were required to attend Latvian schools, even if one of their parents belonged to a minority group (p. 3). 14 First, Russian language departments were established in institutions of higher education in 1944. In the autumn of 1945, all departments had sections with Russian as the language of instruction, and each school in which Russian children enrolled had separate classes with Russian language of instruction. Second, in 1945, Russian-language schools were founded alongside Latvian-language schools, and children in Russian schools were educated according to the Russian 10-year school programme while Latvian students had to study 11 years. Third, schools for Latvia’s historical minorities were closed by the Soviet Government and all minority children, especially those of Slavic origin, had to attend Russian schools. In this context, the Soviet Government presented the promotion of Russian language and schools as the major mechanism for “bringing closer together” all Soviet nationalities and making accessible to them “the riches of world civilization” (Andropov, cited in Hazard, 1992, p. 115). 15 For example, (1994) writes that demilitarization of education was reflected in abolishing military training in schools; de-ideologization was implemented through closing ideological youth organizations such as Young Pioneers and Komsomol; finally, decentralization was reflected in granting more autonomy and responsibility to schools (p. 4). 16 Originated in the Baltic States, the initial goal of the popular fronts was to create a nationwide political movement that would not challenge the single party regime, but would support the party reformers led by Gorbachev against the old guard of the party–state apparatus (Lapidus, Zaslavsky & Goldman, 1992). Calling for democratization and pluralism, the popular fronts ultimately turned against the Soviet leadership and played a key role in regaining independence. 17 Gundare writes that the restoration of Latvian historical memory at the end of the 1980s served as a foundation for the national independence movement. Restoration of historical memory included reintroducing the Latvian pre-war constitution, flag, anthem, cultural traditions, and national holidays; re-establishing social organizations and political parties; replacing Soviet street names with Latvian pre-war ones; and restoring Latvian pre-war buildings and museums.

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA 18

103

“Awakening” or Atmoda was a newspaper published by the LPF from 1988 until 1993 in three languages, including Latvian, Russian and English. It was widely read by the Latvian- and Russianspeaking population, as well as the international audience interested in following Latvian efforts for independence. 19 See publications in Sovetskaia Latviia (14 November 1989), SM-Segodna, Panorama Latvii, etc. 20 Cities in Russia. 21 One of the legacies of the Soviet Union is a parallel structure of mass media, which rarely overlaps in featuring events and opinions. Some describe these as two “parallel worlds” in Latvia, i.e. Latvianand Russian-speaking. 22 As a result of the restrictive citizenship law, Latvians dominated politics in the 1990s. In 1994, with only 54.2% of the population, ethnic Latvians constituted 78.7% of all citizens, 88% of all deputies in parliament, and 100% of all ministers (Muiznieks, 1996, p. 46). 23 At the beginning of the 1990s, the issue of Russian schools was further politicized as the Russian Foreign Minister, Kozyrev, listed protection of Russians abroad as a Russian foreign policy priority. As a result of this policy, Russian schools in Latvia were receiving support from their “external” homeland, i.e. Russia, in the form of stipends, and history, geography, and civic education textbooks, which contained historical facts contrary to those taught in Latvian texts. 24 See political party programmes published in 1993 by the “Latvian Popular Front,” “Latvia’s Way,” and “People’s Harmony Party.” In 1996, the only party that continued to refer to Latvian pre-war policies for minority education was the “People’s Harmony Party.” By the 1998 elections, however, these internal references were replaced by external references to the European Union standards. 25 Emigration peaked in 1992 when more than 53,000 people left Latvia, primarily as a result of the recession in the Soviet-type industries and the redeployment of Latvian-based Soviet army units to Russia (Antane & Tsilevich, 1997). 26 Data compiled by UNDP (1995). 27 OSCE, Council of Europe, United States Information Agency (USIA), and UN agencies. While some international organizations attempted to influence the development of a “multicultural society” indirectly through small grants to local NGOs and individuals, as in the case of UNESCO and USIA, other international agencies, particularly the OSCE and the Council of Europe, aimed to directly intervene in policy development and implementation regarding such issues as citizenship, language, and education. 28 The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Social Charter remained among those international human rights instruments which have still not been ratified by Latvia. 29 For example, the Copenhagen Document states that “participating States will endeavor to ensure that persons belonging to national minorities, notwithstanding the need to learn the official language or languages of the State concerned, have adequate opportunities for instruction of their mother tongue or in their mother tongue” (para. 34). Similarly, the Framework Convention states that every person belonging to a national minority “has the right to learn his or her minority language” (article 14). Based on general statements and vague affirmations, these international documents provided overall direction rather than specific recommendations for minority education development. For example, these documents contain broad statements such as “endeavor to ensure as far as possible ... adequate opportunities” (Framework Convention), “adequate advancement” (International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination), and “where appropriate ... encourage knowledge of the history, traditions, language and culture of minorities” (UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities). 30 Deriving from international documents that are legally binding for most states, the Hague Recommendations were elaborated to develop more detailed provisions for education policies. 31 This policy was based on the assumption that it was impossible to gain fluency in the language that was taught as a second language only and that it was necessary to introduce Latvian as the language of instruction for several school subjects (Antane & Tsilevich, 1999). 32 The Ministry of Education developed four models of transitional bilingual education programmes, also referred to as “minority education programmes.” These models differ in the suggested proportion of classes held in the minority and Latvian languages. For example, the first model is based on a rapid increase of the Latvian language and is meant for students with a high level of Latvian language knowledge, whereas the fourth model is a more gradual transition to studying in the Latvian language and is more appropriate for students with no previous Latvian language skills. In addition, the

104

IVETA SILOVA

Ministry of Education provided an opportunity for schools to also elaborate their own transitional bilingual education models, which would then require approval by the Ministry officials. For example, see political party programmes for the 1998 election. 34 Returning from a European conference on minority education, one of the Riga School Board members compared the situation of Russians in Latvia to Turks in Germany to illustrate that a state does not have an obligation to provide education in the minority languages (Grunte, 1994). 35 For example, it was discussed that integration can happen on the basis of language, but providing opportunities for learning other languages as well, similar to education practices in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada. 36 Statistics provided by the Ministry of Education show that since 1990 there has been a steady decrease in the number of students attending Russian language schools and an increase in the number of students in Latvian language schools. For instance, during the last seven years, the number of children being taught in Latvian has increased by 15.4%. Furthermore, the number of Russian students and schools is sharply on the decline in Latvian rural areas, but not as much in the large towns and cities. 37 Here, the reference is made to Russia as a security threat for Latvia and Estonia. For example, Raun (1994) specifically states that there is not a “minority” problem in Latvia and Estonia today, but a Russian “colonist” problem (p. 177). 38 Excerpt from the speech given by Latvian Saeima member Mrs Vaira Paegle on 23 January 2001 at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly meeting, announcing the termination of CE monitoring procedures in Latvia based on Latvia’s compliance with the commitments made on joining the organization. 39 Bloch and Blessing (2000) argue that reforms currently taking place in eastern and central Europe embody selective notions of liberalism, welfare, the market, democracy, and the role of the state and civil society in governance related to the family, women, and education of the young child as citizen (p. 60). 33

REFERENCES Amato, G. & Batt, J. (1998, September). Minority rights and EU enlargement to the East: Report of the first meeting of the reflection group on the long-term implications of EU enlargement [Online]. Available at: http://www.iue.il/RSC/Amato98-PP.htm Antane, A. & Tsilevich, B. (1999). Nation-building and ethnic integration in Latvia. In P. Kolsto (Ed.), Nation-building and ethnic integration in post-Soviet societies: An investigation of Latvia and Kazakhstan (pp. 63–152). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization._Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Arshavskaya, T., Gushin, V. & Pimenov, I. (2000, June). Obrazovanie na russkom yazike v Latvii: Analiz situacii [Education in Russian language in Latvia: Situation analysis]. Obrazovanie i Karjera, 12 (063), 7–8. Axford, B. (1995). The global system: Economics, politics and culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Barkey, K. (1997). Thinking about consequences of empire. In K. Barkey & M. Von Hagen (Eds.), After empire: Multiethnic societies and nation-building (pp. 99–114). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Barkey, K. & von Hagen, M. (Eds.) (1997). After empire: Multiethnic societies and nation-building. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Birzea, C. (1994). Educational policies of the countries in transition. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Press. Bloch, M. & Blessing, B. (2000). Restructuring the state in Eastern Europe: Women, child care, and early education. In T. Popkewitz (Ed.), Educational knowledge: Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 59–82). New York: SUNY Press. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. Burbules, N. & Torres, A. (2000). Globalization and education: An introduction. In N. Burbules & A. Torres (Eds.), Globalization and education: Critical perspectives (pp. 1–26). New York: Routledge. Cabinet of Ministers (1994). darba gada [Annual review of governmental activities]. Riga: Cabinet of Ministers.

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

105

(1997, 8 April). katram [About education for all in their native language]. Latvijas 1, 6. Chinn J. & Kaiser, R. (1996). Russians as the new minority: Ethnicity and nationalism in the Soviet successor states. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Connolly, W.E. (1993). The terms of political discourse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cowen, R. (2000). Comparing futures or comparing pasts? Comparative Education, 36 (3), 333–342. Declaration of public organizations: Framework document concerning a national program of integration of society in Latvia (1999). [Online]. Available at: http://www.lhrc.lv/integr.html Dribins, L. (1994). A nation state and its ethnic policies. Humanities and Social Sciences, 2, 70–91. Dribins, L. (1996). National and ethnic groups in Latvia. Riga: Ministry of Justice. Druviete, I. (1998). Republic of Latvia. In B. Paulston & D. Peckham (Eds.), Linguistic minorities in central and eastern Europe. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. European Forum (2000). Latvia: The political developments since 1989. [Online]. Available at: http://www.europeanforum.bot-consult.se/cup/latvia/develop.htm Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 87–104). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fridrihsone, M. (1999, 9 December). Valodas likuma jauno redakciju Saeimas frakciju [Four Saeima deputies evaluate the new draft of the Language Law]. 3. Gedrovich, A. (1989, 26 July). Patiesi skola [A truly international school]. Skolotaju Avize, p. 4. Grunte, M. (1994, 6 January). Eiropas tikai valsts [In European countries, minorities can be educated in state language only]. un 16. Gundare, I. History and society in Latvia: 1985–1991. Unpublished PhD dissertation in History. Riga, University of Latvia. Halpin, D. & Troyna. D. (1995). The politics of educational policy borrowing. Comparative Education, 31 (3), 303–310. Hazard, J. N. (1992). Managing nationalism: State, law and the national question in the USSR. In A. Motyl (Ed.), The Post-Soviet nations: Perspectives on the demise of the USSR (pp. 96–140). New York: Columbia University Press. Kamenska, A. (1995). The state language in Latvia: Achievements, problems and prospects. Riga: Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies. Karklins, R. (1998). Ethnic integration and school policies in Latvia. Nationalities papers, 26 (2), 283– 302. Lapidus, G., Zaslavsky, V. & Goldman, P. (Eds.) (1992). From union to common wealth: Nationalism and separatism in the Soviet republics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Latvian Popular Front Programme (1988). Riga: LPF. Limberg, W. P. (1994). World turned upside down: Ethnic conflict in the former Soviet Union. In W. R. Duncan & G. P. Holman (Eds.), Ethnic nationalism and ethnic conflict: The former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (pp. 53–76). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Locis, D. (19%, 13–19 March). Atbalstam [We support the development of minority schools]. N. (1997, 12 April). Saasina [A delicate issue of noncitizens has been aggravated]. Diena, 3. N. (1999, 6 December). [Integration—a personal decision]. Diena, 3. Luhmann, N. (1990). Essays on self-reference. New York: Columbia University Press. Ministry of Education (1934). Law of education. Riga: Ministry of Education. Mitter, W. (1992). Education in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in a period of revolutionary change. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 2 (1), 15–28. Mitter, W. (1997). Education, democracy and development in a period of revolutionary change. In R. Ryba (Ed.), Education, democracy and development: An international perspective (pp. 1–11). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Morrow, R. & Torres, A. (2000). The state, globalization, and education policy. In N. Burbules & A. Torres (Eds.), Globalization and education: Critical perspectives (pp. 27–56). New York: Routledge.

106

IVETA SILOVA

Muiznieks, N. (1996)._Minorities and human rights in Latvia. In C. Birzea (Ed.), Human rights and minorities in the new European democracies: Educational and cultural aspects (pp. 46–50). Netherlands: Council of Europe Press. Musolff, A., Schaffner, C. & Townson, M. (Eds.), (1996). Conceiving Europe: Diversity in unity. VT: Dartmouth Publishing Company. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) (1999). Report on the linguistic rights of persons belonging to national minorities in the OSCE area [Online]. Available at: http://www.osce.org/hcnm/dpcuments/linguistic_rights/report.html Offe, C. (1991). Capitalism by democratic design? Facing triple transition in East Central Europe. Social Research, 58 (4), pp. 866–892. Open Society Institute (OSI) (1997). Estonia and Latvia: Citizenship, language and conflict prevention. [A special report by the Forced Migration Projects]. New York: OSI. Peet, R. & Watts, M. (1996) Liberation ecologies: Environment, development, social movements. London: Routledge. B. (1997, 18 December). Latvija etniski [Latvia will not be ethnically homogeneous]. Diena, 20. Phillips, D. (1993). Borrowing education policy. In D. Finegold, L. MacFarland & W. Richardson (Eds.), Something borrowed, something learned? The transatlantic market in education and training reform (pp. 13–20). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Pliners, J. (1991, 19 September). dialogs [A national school in Latvia— a cultural dialogue]. Popkewitz, T. (2000). Globalizatoin/regionalization, knowledge, and the educational practices: Some notes on comparative strategies for educational research. In T. Popkewitz (Ed.), Educational knowledge: Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 3–30). New York: SUNY Press. Popkewitz, T. & Pereyra, M. (1993). An eight country study of reform practices in teacher education: An outline of the problematic. In T. Popkewitz (Ed.), Changing patterns of power: Social regulation and teacher education reform (pp. 1–52). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Raun, T. (1994). Ethnic relations and conflict in the Baltic States. In W. R. Duncan & G. P. Holman (Eds.), Ethnic nationalism and ethnic conflict: The former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (pp. 155– 182). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ritchie, J. (1997). Europe and the European dimension in a multicultural context. European Journal of Intercultural Studies, 8 (3), 291–303. Ritzer, G. (1993). The McDonaldization thesis: Is expansion inevitable? International Sociology, 11 (3), 291–308. Robertson, D. & Waltman, J. (1993). The politics of policy borrowing. In D. Finegold, L. MacFarland, & W. Richardson (Eds.), Something borrowed, something learned? The transatlantic market in education and training reform (pp. 21–46). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Schriewer, J. (1988). The method of comparison and the need for externalization: Methodological criteria and sociological concepts. In J. Schriewer& B. Holmes (Eds.), Theories and methods in comparative education (pp. 25–86). New York: Peter Lang. Schriewer, J. (2000). World system and interrelationship networks: The internationalization of education and the role of comparative inquiry. In T. Popkewitz (Ed.), Educational knowledge: Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 305–349). New York: SUNY Press. Sergeev, A. (1993, 20 March). Russkaia schkola: Raznie podhodi [Russian school—Different approaches]. Russkii Putj, 3. Shishkin, T. (1989, 14 October). Ot ideii k voploscheniiu [From idea to implementation]. Sovetskaia Latviia, 2 Silova, I. & Catlaks, G. (2001). Minority education in post-Soviet Latvia: Balancing the legacies of the past and a vision for the future. In F. Salili & R. Hoosain (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues, policies and practices (pp. 125–149). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Smith, G., Law, V., Wilson, A., Bohr, A. & Allworth, E. (1998). Nation-building in the post-Soviet borderlands: The politics of national identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spreen, C. A. (2001). Globalization and educational policy borrowing: Mapping outcomes based education in South Africa. Unpublished PhD dissertation in Comparative and International Education. New York, Columbia University.

MINORITY EDUCATION IN POST-SOVIET LATVIA

107

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2000). Transferring education, displacing reforms (pp. 155–189). In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formation in comparative education. New York: Peter Lang. Stoer, S. & Cortesao, L. (2000). Multiculturalism and education policy in a global context (European perspectives). In N. Burbules & A. Torres (Eds.), Globalization and education: Critical perspectives (pp. 253–274). New York: Routledge. A. (1994, 5 July). Etnisko skolas [Ethnic minority schools in Latvia]. Latvijas A. (1997, 8 April). Par katram [About education for all in their own languages]. Latvijas 6. Tsilevich, B. (1993). Vremia zhestkih reschenii [A time of hard decisions]. Riga: Insight. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (1995). Latvia human development report. Riga: UNDP. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (1996). Latvia human development report. Riga: UNDP. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (1997). Latvia human development report. Riga: UNDP. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2000). Latvia human development report. Riga: UNDP. Vaivads, J. (1993, 31 August). Po skladu uma i haraktera ja—uchenii [According to my intellect and character—I am an academic]. Panorama Latvii, 1,3. E. (1994). The ethnic situation in Latvia: Facts and commentary. Riga: Ethnic Study Center, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology. Vike-Freiberga, V. (2001, 23 January). Statement by Mrs Vaira Vike Freiberga, President of Latvia at the Council of Europe meeting [Online]. Available at: http://stars.coe.fr/verbatim/200101/e/0101231000e.htm#1 Zaslavsky, V. (1992). The evolution of separatism in Soviet society under Gorbachev. In G. Lapidus, V. Zaslavsky & P. Goldman (Eds.), From union to common wealth: Nationalism and separatism in the Soviet republics (pp. 71–97). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Teachers College, Columbia University

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

RONALD G. SULTANA

7. QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW'S EUROPE A Contrapuntal Reading of European Commission Documents

1. INTRODUCTION Five key words form the focus of this chapter, namely, “quality,” “education,” “training,” “Europe” and the “future.” It is important to immediately highlight the fact that what ties these five words together is their constructed nature—in other words, each of the words is a bearer of several possible meanings, meanings which are dependent on one’s own value system, vision and ideology. It is therefore essential to clarify what, for me, will constitute the referents of all five words in this particular context. In focusing on each word in turn, I will be referring to two of the European Commission’s key documents on education, namely, Teaching and Learning: towards the learning society (Commission of the European Communities, 1996), as well as Accomplishing Europe through Education and Training (Reiffers et al., 1997). The reason for doing so is to develop contrapuntal readings of the contemporary educational project, as this is being hegemonically defined within the present European space.

2. QUALITY The first key word that appears in the title of the chapter is “quality.” If, in the future, philologists and linguists had to study the evolution of the meanings of this word, they will certainly point out to the highly significant shifts and changes it has gone through over time. Not only has quality come to have a set of particular referents, but its use has travelled in sociologically interesting ways between one context and another. “Quality circles,” “quality assurance,” “quality auditing,” "quality control,” “quality management,” “quality indicators,” “quality labels,” “quality bench-marking”—one and all are related to the industrial and production field—and one and all have been adopted by the field of education. I will not go into what can only be considered as the rather tedious—and, as Young (1998a, 1998b) argues, (probably) misguided—exercise of contrasting into binary oppositions the world of education with that of production. Indeed, the rich Latinate word “formazione ”/“formation” signals a link, not a disjunctive between those two worlds, a link that will be considered in some detail later on in this chapter.

109 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 109-130. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

110

RONALD G. SULTANA

What I will emphasize, however, is the way the ideological component of the word “quality,” as used in industrial settings, has sometimes been unreflectively adopted in educational settings. In industry, “quality” is linked to the production process: it is also linked to a very specific set of relations within that production process, where one set of values—led by the quest for profit—ultimately becomes the compass North to which all other values must look—at the cost of damage to human and natural ecology, for instance. Indeed, if we had to unpack the word “quality,” we find hidden within it other elements of the same ideology, signalled by such sister words as “competition,” “competitive edge,” “standards,” “restructuring,” “downsizing,” as well as “free market,” “open market,” “liberalization,” and the rest of the slogans that to many in Europe and internationally constitute the world tout court. For far too many, too, these words have spelled the end of security, of a life marked by the dignity that a more prosperous and generous Europe had offered its citizens at the tail end of modernity. In front of such transformations, the role of the critical educator is to problematize issues, and to ask questions in a Socratic manner—hoping, of course, that this will lead us closer to our destination, and not take us round in circles. And here Habermas—perhaps the last remaining defendant of the project of the Enlightenment—is very useful. Habermas has pointed out the extent to which our life-world has been colonized by what he refers to as “technocratic rationality” (Habermas, 1976). The same energy and genius which catapulted Europe and the rest of the world into modernity—technology—has fascinated humanity to such a degree that the “means–ends” rationality which so successfully led to particular forms of progress has been adopted indiscriminately in other fields of human activity. And with the benefit of hindsight, we all know how dysfunctional technocratic rationality can be to the quest for the “good life.” As we set about trying to justify the last two hundred years to the future generations, we will find it very difficult to explain how, as custodians and stewards of the earth, we have managed to so effectively poison the environment and to create such effective— yes—but such destructive machines of war (UNESCO, 1999). Against technocratic rationality Habermas opposes other forms of “being-in-theworld”—hermeneutic rationality highlights man’s and woman’s interpretative, meaning-making abilities, while emancipatory rationality signals humanity’s mission to consider the world as it is, in order to imagine a world as it could, and should be. This is indeed the backbone of the social philosophy developed by the Frankfurt School, and of its key exponent theorists such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. The three types of rationality are not necessarily mutually exclusive, of course—indeed, and as has already been noted, the point made by Habermas is that spheres of life—such as education—become dominated by the questionable values that operate in other spheres of life—such as production. Nor is techne to be demonized or vilified—as long as it represents a worthy means to achieve a worthy end. Now, my contention is that, unless we are careful, “quality” in education becomes unproblematically linked to sets of practices that are anathema to the values humanist educators most often associate themselves with. Suffice it at this point to remind ourselves of the most crass forms of “quality assurance”

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

111

programmes that have been tried out over the past decade in education—including the idea of setting up a “market” between schools, each of which publishes the results obtained by its students in national examinations, in order to create a sort of “league table” which is supposed to somehow signal the distance between each school community and “quality” (Henig, 1994; Whitty, 1996); or the equally educationally unsound idea—which is making a comeback—namely, of channelling students into tracks, and establishing ability grouping so that instruction can proceed more smoothly, and standards raised (Ireson & Hallam, 1999). The logic behind these and several other practices is that which marks “input-output” models of mass production systems—which, as we will have occasion to note, is not only questionable on moral grounds, but on pragmatic grounds as well. How, then, to define quality in education? What is an education of quality? Are we to attempt to measure “quality,” nationally and internationally, setting up international standards organizations for education, and comparing the ability of different nations to approximate to those international standards—this time creating a league table on a world scale, to gauge which country is achieving the best results in teaching reading, science, or mathematics? Of course, I am not saying that there is no value in embarking on this exercise—indeed, some educational good may have come out of such projects as the Third International Mathematics and Science Study or the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement studies (Plomp, 1998), for instance, though questions about the methodology of comparing learning environments that differ so dramatically between one country and another do arise (International Assessment of Achievement, 1988; International Assessment of Educational Progress, 1992). What I will be arguing is that there are other, competing ways of approaching the issue of quality in education, ones that are not caught up exclusively or predominantly in the technocratic mode of thought that has assumed a “common sense” quality about it in contemporary educational discourse. 3. EDUCATION That leads to a consideration of the second of the key words that constitute the focus of this chapter: education. Let me link it to a reconstructed notion of “quality,” in order both to conclude what I have been saying about that first key term, and to introduce my definition of an education for tomorrow’s Europe. For me, education is about learning the art, stance and skills of communicating with as many different communities as possible: reading, for instance, opens up to us possibilities of communicating with communities across time and space. Learning mathematics provides us with a language that knows few, if any, boundaries. History, geography, social studies, languages—one and all enable us to talk to each other, making us citizens not only of Europe, but of the world. This communicative dimension of education has most recently been highlighted by the Delors Report (UNESCO, 1996) entitled Education: the treasure within, where the authors emphasize the importance of not only savoir, savoir faire, and savoir être, but also savoir être ensemble—with education being a process that induces citizens into the skills and

112

RONALD G. SULTANA

art of living together. It was Habermas (1981), to refer to him again, who noted that the act of communication has both emancipatory and dominating moments, and that the former can only be guaranteed in what he refers to as an “ideal speech situation,” where discourse is regulated by such principles as honesty, equal right to express one’s thoughts without fear of reprisal, and transparency. Taking the idea of education as a communicative action, and inspired by Habermas’s insight that communication always happens in a context marked by power relations, we can perhaps propose an alternative to the currently dominant technocratic view of what constitutes quality in education. For me, then, an education that is marked by quality is inscribed in a practice that is regulated by five principles, here referred to as the five Es—namely, Entitlement, Effectiveness, Equity, Economy and Empowerment. They are closely linked to some of the ideas highlighted in the Commission’s White Paper (1996, pp. 44–43). Let us briefly consider each in turn, for they serve as a shorthand to several important issues that I would want to raise in this context. It is important to note that the first four of the five Es were proposed as a framework to guide educational reform in Malta, in a document which I wrote in the name of a team of educators (Wain et al., 1996). The fifth “E”—“empowerment”—was proposed during a series of discussions about the document held with a number of educators, and particularly Abdel Jalil Akkari, who noted the appropriateness of the term given the “critical pedagogy” dimension adopted by the whole framework. The principle of Entitlement establishes the right for a quality education for all students. Once this principle is accepted, a number of others follow. First, there is a shift from a stress on opportunities to one on outcomes. We are less concerned with considering what the system claims to be providing, and rather more with considering what the effect of the system is on the learner. What has the student learnt after a number of years at the primary school level? What has s/he learnt after a further number of years at the secondary school level? What ought to have been learnt? What are the needs of the learner at the different stages of growth, and how effectively is the school community responding to those needs? To what extent are the special needs of children with disabilities being catered for? What environment is most conducive to learning, and to what extent is the school adequately resourced to provide that environment? What are considered to be the basic requirements for a quality education—one that is meaningful, worthwhile, responsive to individual and social needs—and does each and every student, without fail, get those requirements, regulated as these are by the principle of entitlement? What range of strategies is available to ensure a high degree of accountability, and what forms of evaluation can one put into practice in order to ensure that the principle of entitlement has been respected? This same principle is inextricably linked to a second one, that of Effectiveness. In bureaucracies sanctioned by tradition and fixed modes of responding, decisions and actions will tend to be justified in terms of the internal logic of the system itself. Rather than questioning its own effectiveness in delivering a quality education to all, the system, faced as it is by so many signs of malfunction—absenteeism, the diploma disease, school-related stress in teachers and students, lack of identification with the process of education—blames students for being unmotivated and

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

113

unintelligent, blames parents for being uncaring and uninterested, and blames teachers for being unprofessional and unenthusiastic. Within the current framework of thought and practice, the education authorities in several countries blame teachers, the latter blame the former, and parents blame both. Guaranteeing quality in education would mean that those that have collective responsibility for providing what the children are entitled to—a meaningful and sound education—will assume this responsibility. They will have to assume collective ownership of the challenge and ask, what can and should be done so that all students get, effectively, what they are entitled to? Since teaching is a moral enterprise exercised in a relationship of power between adults on the one hand, and children on the other, accountability must necessarily play a part to safeguard the rights of all minors. Which is why a third regulatory principle, that of Equity, must also prevail in any consideration of a quality education for the future. By equity, I am not referencing “sameness,” or even “equal resourcing for all.” Students will bring different intellectual, cultural, social and financial resources to the school, and as Bourdieu has so famously pointed out, when we ignore these differences, hoping to conjure away distinctions, by treating all students equally, we inadvertently reinforce these same differences, and create new ones along the way (Bourdieu & Passeron, [1976] 1990). In the conceptualization of quality education that is being proposed, the issue of outcomes is central. That is, differently endowed students, whatever their abilities and disabilities, are all entitled to similar outcomes in terms of a quality education, but the process by which they achieve that entitlement can be differentiated. I would wish to maintain the value of an education which encourages social, ability and other forms of mixing during a number of learning programmes, but would also wish to include within this model a flexibility that ensures that the different learning styles and needs of students are catered for. There is much educational value in mainstreaming students with special learning needs, in dismantling inter- and intraschool streaming, channelling and segregation processes that effectively jeopardize notions of solidarity between groups. But this must be accompanied by a recognition and acknowledgement of difference, and resources must be mobilized to cater for difference in such a way that, within a context of cooperative learning, students can follow different paths which ultimately lead to similar goals. This multiple delivery system, which remains sensitive to differences while striving to ensure effective educational outcomes that all students are entitled to, is characterized by a limited pool of resources. While a government that really values education will provide whatever is necessary for the successful running of schools, that provision is doubtless constrained, particularly when confronted with rising aspirations and higher standards of living, where parents, students and teachers expect their work and study environments to be as congenial as those they enjoy in their homes. These aspirations are legitimate and certainly the state cannot but respond, engaged as it is to the mandate of its citizens. In the provision of such resources, the principle of Economy becomes linked to that of equity in such a manner that those learners who are rendered most “at risk” by the present social order receive the larger and best share of what the state can offer, in terms of both human and material resources. This principle of positive discrimination follows logically from the preoccupation with entitlement, since what must be safeguarded is

114

RONALD G. SULTANA

the successful outcome of a quality education at all levels and for all persons. The Commission’s recommendation of this principle (1996, p. 47) is particularly praiseworthy, as is the commitment to combating the widening social rift through the concentration of public funds and resources in at-risk areas—even though there is here no apparent awareness of the way the “at-risk” status is socially constructed, and not a “deficit” of the victim. Needless to say, the expectation is that an education guided by these four principles leads to the empowerment of students. Empowerment is here defined, in typically Freirian terms, as the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable learners to become subjects rather than objects of history. It is about having an understanding of the complexities of the world we inhabit, knowing how to “decode” structures and processes in terms of that vitally important question, “In whose interests is all this working?” Of course, within the context of the other principles governing what we are here referring to as a “quality education,” that question is not pedantic: rather, it is a question that cuts through the hegemonically “managed” world in order to challenge it in view of our aspirations for justice, equity and human dignity. Empowerment is also linked to the Deweyan idea of creating contexts where democracy is learnt through being involved in democratic environments. In our idea of quality education, schools, as learning institutions, empower students to participate in the decision-making process regarding curriculum, ethos, and so on. This is where the idea of “subsidiarity,” much vaunted by the European Community, acquires a renewed and reinvigorated meaning, and where the principle of “empowerment” connects—albeit dialectically—with the practice of “decentralization.” An educational system structured in such a way as to regulate and monitor the successful implementation of the Five Es, as outlined above, can afford to decentralize a number of aspects of the educational process to the school site, without divesting itself of the ultimate responsibility it has, as an apparatus of the state, towards the nation’s citizens. The challenge therefore, as currently being conceptualized, is to develop a flexible centralization which conjugates together, in an innovative manner, the strengths of bureaucracy with those of delegation of responsibilities. What this means in practice is that an overall sense of direction can be achieved without discouraging schools, teachers and parents from taking initiatives and creating improved environments for learning to take place in. Such decentralization should stress the role and expertise of educational leaders in schools to develop curricula, choose textbooks, engage staff, prepare school evaluation packages, organize staff and parent development programmes, and so on. Resources should, needless to say, be responsive to the community’s expectations of the school. This view is therefore less sanguine about devolution than is, for instance, that promoted by the Commission’s White Paper (1996, p. 46), which claims that “the most decentralized systems are also the most flexible, the quickest to adapt and hence have the greatest propensity to develop new forms of social partnership.” That may be true, but it does fail to problematize some of the issues I have highlighted, and particularly the challenge of ensuring entitlement in all learning communities, including those that are most disadvantaged. It also flies in the face of evidence coming from a wide variety of countries, and which Green (1997) has usefully put

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

115

together in a seminal article on educational achievement in centralized and decentralized systems. Focusing on educational outcomes in France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, the UK and the USA, Green is able to conclude that there are very broad cultural characteristics which seem to underlie national educational achievement, and that these can be seen to be manifested in a set of related institutional characteristics. He notes that high-achieving countries have what he calls an “inclusive learning culture,” which is “characterized by the high premium which society places on learning for all groups” (p. 296). He goes on to argue that high aspirations for the majority are reinforced by the way in which “the education and training systems institutionalize norms and expectations for everyone, and not just the elites, and the way in which the labour markets reward those doing well in education and training” (p. 296). Most importantly for our argument, Green observes that such inclusive norms and opportunities can only be ensured in systems that employ different devices which “act to standardize certain practices which would otherwise, in an unregulated market situation, become highly differentiated as a result of unequal market endowments” (p. 296). Among such devices, Green refers to institutional structures which are fairly uniform, standardized funding systems, the use of national curricula, a degree of prescription in methods of assessment and teaching, and the erection of national systems of qualifications or some alternative manner through which attainment and allocation of rewards takes place in a transparent and predictable manner. This does not necessarily require all decisions to be made at a central government level, or that the government makes all such decisions on its own—but it does require “a high degree of state ‘regulation’ where government acts in a concerted fashion at different levels to define and operationalize the system, including defining and enabling the roles of the different social partners within it” (p. 296). Contrary, therefore, to the present vogue for decentralized systems and the development of “markets” and “quasi-markets” in order to supposedly enhance “quality” in education, Green’s important comparative work suggests quite strongly that the most effective education systems “appear to show signs of ‘tight regulation’ in the critical areas, with high levels of policy coherence, institutional systematization, and close articulation between levels of the education and training system and between this system and the labour market” (p. 296). 4. TRAINING The discussion of education up till now has been largely dedicated to the larger notion of education as knowledge and values—but of course, as has already been pointed out, education is also about savoir faire—i.e. the actual skills that are required by the community in order to develop the services and means of production that it needs to survive and to attain standards of living that safeguard our present conceptualization of human dignity. In that sense, the English idiom has tended to differentiate between “education”—which is broadly humanist and an exercise of learning for its own sake, and “training”—which is largely technical in nature, and

116

RONALD G. SULTANA

applied to production environments. The Italian word “formazione” (and the French equivalent “formation”) does away with this largely inappropriate and dated dichotomy, signalling that of course, a good education conjugates all elements of knowledge together in a dynamic and effective manner: the distinctions between savoir, savoir faire and savoir être in the British tradition of education have much more to do with their particular history of class stratification and differentiation than with any epistemological understanding of what education is about (Young, 1998b). Increasingly too, the distinctions between education and training are disappearing because of presumed changes in the processes of wealth generation in the contemporary world. This is a point made forcefully by the EC document Achieving Europe through Education and Training, where Reiffers and his colleagues (1997) rehearse the by now well-known argument that in information societies, the skills required by workers are those that are best inculcated through general education rather than through specialized and narrowly technical training which many a humanist educator found objection to in the Fordist phase of the development of schools. Post-Fordist, high-ability societies require their workers to be innovative, flexible, creative and autonomous. They are expected to be able to communicate effectively, to work in teams and in groups, to know how to evaluate themselves and each other, and to identify and articulate work goals in a proactive and intelligent manner (see Brown & Lauder, 1991). Needless to say, only the more naïve among us will accept this Disney-world image of future societies, given the preponderance of low-skilled, low-ability jobs that persist, despite all utopian forecastings, in enormous numbers in highly developed economies. Various authors have pointed out the extent to which optimistic scenarios attempting to drum up support for painful restructuring do not correspond to empirical reality (Avis Bloomer, Esland & Gleeson., 1996; Livingstone, 1999). Needless to say also, only those among us who are most gullible to political rhetoric will remain blind to the processes of global economic relations that facilitate the development of high-ability societies only to the extent that the repetitive, soul-destroying, demeaning and poorly paid work is exported on to the “Other,” who is either in our midst, or who is on the peripheries of Europe (Ganderton, 1996). As Ascherson (1988, p. 12—cited by Slowinski, 1998) notes: If there ever was an all-European house, it had an upstairs and a downstairs ... There was the industrialized West, and there was another, underdeveloped Europe to provide meals and servants—raw materials, food and cheap migrant labour ... and Europe in 2018 will consist of a Western superstate whose floors are scrubbed by Romanians or Poles, and a periphery of beggarly Bantustans.

Nevertheless, despite these important caveats, it is important to acknowledge that developments in the information society could potentially spell the end of the rather uninteresting debate between proponents of “education” and those of “training,” so that, in a sense, morality can be said to have become pragmatic: what is good education is also good training. As the Commission’s White Paper notes, this signals the end of debate on educational principles, since “A broad knowledge base and training for employment are no longer two contradictory or separate things. There is increasing recognition for the importance of general knowledge in using vocational skills” (1996, p. 42). That this is not just a case of verbal or metaphysical gymnastics

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

117

can be seen in the fact that new structures of education and training are being busily adopted across Europe, with the post-16 sector in particular developing either as a unified track, or else as a two-track system—one dedicated to general, the other to more vocational education—within, however, a logic that promotes parity of esteem, to the extent that students can switch between tracks and are subject to a curriculum with a significant overlap in the general education area, with the same or an interchangeable certification framework (Lasonen, 1996; Raffe, 1996). In this regard, the White Paper refers to the development of open, more flexible approaches—based on the notion of profiling key skills—in parallel and as an alternative to the traditional route of paper qualifications, correctly arguing that having only the latter causes “substantial wastage by locking out talent which does not correspond to standard profiles” (1996, p. 7). This, to me, represents a positive and major development in education in Europe, one that is closely linked to the regulative principles that surround quality education in terms of entitlement, effectiveness, and equity, for instance. However, the litmus test for all new economic and industrial arrangements, and their link with education remains, despite the acclamation of the arrival of a brave new world, the point that Dewey made close to a century ago when he was furiously contesting the reforms in vocational education that were being proposed by technocrats of his time. Dewey (1915) had argued that “the kind of vocational education which I am interested in is not one which will ‘adapt’ workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that” (pp. 38–39). As educators, therefore, we must be ever on our guard not to find ourselves offering a “quality” education that leads to a work environment that betrays our notion of a “quality life” marked by dignity. In other words, to what extent will the search for profit allow employers to deliver on their promise of providing more meaningful work environments to tomorrow’s citizens in Europe and worldwide? 5. EUROPE The fourth key word that marks the conceptual terrain of this paper is “Europe,” which, of course, is not a reified but a constructed object of our concern. That “Europe” is a construction is more than clear now that the process of European integration has been on the agenda since the most recent—hopefully the last— “great” war, and has intensified and broadened in scope over the last two decades. That process of integration has led to asking questions about the nature of Europe, the extent of Europe, the relation between the little Europe of the 15 to the larger Europe and indeed the rest of the world (see Morin, 1987; Dahrendorf et al., 1989; Nelson, Roberts & Veit, 1992). It has raised delicate issues regarding enlargement, l’Europe à deux vitesses, the relationship between “west and east” as well as “north” and “south,” and consequently, the confrontation of the fortress Europe syndrome. It has been challenged from the “outside”—such as when Morocco applied to join the European Union—and from the “inside”—when any attempt at identifying or glorifying aspects of presumably “essential” European values or traits have been confounded by the heterogeneous nature of its populations, that far from being

118

RONALD G. SULTANA

parasitic, as the New Right would have it, have unquestionably and in the most fundamental manner contributed to the wealth—both material and cultural—that it today boasts. If, in a previous section of this chapter, I have attempted to address the question, “How have we tended to construct education in European discourse?” then it is now propitious to ask, “How have we tended to construct Europe in educational discourse?” As I have had occasion to note in greater detail in other contexts (Sultana, 1995, 1996), a short answer to this question is: rather superficially and inadequately—largely because we have generally failed to engage the profound debates that have evolved in other areas and disciplines, including those of political economy, public policy-making, and diplomacy. I will, in this necessarily brief context, limit myself to just a few points which might appear needlessly provocative, but which I feel should be carefully and, of course, critically considered since they reflect views held by those—or at any rate some of those—who, like myself, stand (geographically, ideologically) on the periphery of Europe. Some of the questions we as educators should be asking when focusing on Europe, the European Union (EU) and Education, include the following: What is the EU’s agenda for education, particularly in the post-Maastricht era? In whose interests does this agenda work? How does the EU, as a supranational body, go about asserting that agenda? In trying to address such questions, I have carried out a literature review of publications which appeared in English, French or Italian, and which dealt with the theme of education and the EU. While I cannot claim that my exercise is comprehensive (see the bibliography published by Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung [1996] for a very broad coverage of international writings on education in Europe), I can report with a fair degree of confidence that much of the literature is made up of mostly bland comparative pieces, generally shorn of sociological imagination, often highlighting similarities and differences in the education systems of the member states without developing a carefully structured analytic framework. More importantly, most of the literature that addresses the subject has been marked by an uncritical acceptance of the goals and processes of European integration, and an approbation of the presumed positive implications of these for educational practice. Nóvoa, who engaged in a similar exercise in 1994, arrived at the same conclusion, stating that there is often an “undiscriminating appropriation of Brussels discourse” (p. 5) on the part of education specialists. Similarly, Pereyra (1993) notes that reference to education in the context of the EU debate is shaped by a proEuropean rhetoric “impregnated and determined by an eschatological view of Europe” (p. 12). This eschatological rhetoric is, indeed, a characteristic of much of the discourse that marks the writing about Europe in many other disciplines and fields, as references are made to “culture” and “history” in the description of an essential “European identity” (Wilterdink, 1993). My argument is that educators, as cultural intellectuals, must refuse to accept the politics of identity as given, but must, rather, critically examine how representations of Europe and Europeans are constructed, for what purpose, by whom and with what components. In other words, who stands to gain and who to lose by the current construction of Europe, and what are the implications of this for education? Of

QUALITY EDUCATION

AND TRAINING FOR

TOMORROW’S EUROPE

119

course, the situation is complex, and does not allow for simple polarities, with the “good” being clearly distinguishable from the “bad,” whatever that might mean in our postmodern world. To start with the more positive moments of the so-called European dimension in education, the generally progressive tenor of the European Commission’s activity in the field of education, marked as this is by a concern with higher achievement levels in education, needs to be immediately acknowledged. Such a concern has led to the development of action programmes geared at the better integration of children of migrants (in 1977), of gypsies and circus performers (in 1989), and of students with handicaps and with special learning needs in schools (in 1985). Action programmes such as these, it could be argued, have not only been effective in raising consciousness about the plight of hitherto marginalized and at-risk students, but in some cases have led governments to adopt progressive educational practices that they would not normally have considered. A case in point would be Directive 77/486/EEC (Articles 2 and 3), which imposes an obligation on the authorities of member states of the EU to provide children of migrant workers not only with intensive tuition in an official language, but also to promote the teaching of the mother tongue and the culture of the country of origin of the child (Barnard, 1992). Other progressive action programmes (launched in 1985) have aimed at the better representation of female students in scientific and technical courses. Generally speaking, most of the activities of the Commission of the European Communities have contributed to the fight against school failure, and have placed a premium on the development of effective pedagogies on the part of teachers, to attract, retain and facilitate the success of students in schools. Some educators have pointed to the similarities between multicultural education and the promotion of a European dimension in education, which also has mutual understanding as a goal (Luchtenberg, 1994), though this understanding is addressed rather too narrowly as Western culture. The emphasis on the learning of other European languages and on becoming more sensitive to the European dimension, while dangerous because of their Eurocentric focus, do represent opportunities for students to live in and with diversity (Palomba, 1993), to be exposed to a process of “tertiary socialization,” where learners “know and experience that, from other people’s point of view, they are the ‘foreigners,’ their mode of thinking and acting seems unnatural” (Byram, 1992, p. 11). As Coulby (1994) has argued: Against the National Curriculum of England and Wales or the language obsessions of the current French government, the European theme [is] a breath of fresh air. At least through Europeanization some sense of a wider international community, a richer and less certain history, a more heterogeneous and interactive culture may be accessed, (pp. 11-12)

It is noteworthy, for instance, that one of the Lingua programme’s predispositions is to privilege minority languages, such as Danish and Portuguese, rather than English, French or German in its recommendations for foreign language learning in member states. It also needs to be acknowledged that the dynamics of the EU process have enabled a number of educators to intercept the discourse on European identity in order to define education on the continent in terms of progressive values that are

120

RONALD G. SULTANA

purported to be characteristically European. Some of the efforts of these educators have been particularly influential. One could here mention the Vanbergen Report (Commission of the European Communities, 1988), as well as analyses carried out in different countries of the EU which identify the essential elements of a European education, what Ryba (1994) has referred to as “what is best about Europe.” Such elements would include a respect for democracy, human rights, freedom and cultural pluralism; acceptance of a common cultural heritage and a world order supporting the development of mankind; a recognition that the European cultural model is not intended to supersede existing national cultures but to respect their diversity; and increased cooperation and dialogue between the countries of the EU and of the world. The focus of a European-inspired education would be “democracy as a political-cum-pedagogical parameter for a life lived in freedom” (Rohrs, 1992, p. 61). But, as educators, we cannot simply and unproblematically celebrate these opportunities, including the mobility and intercultural experiences that some of us have benefited from when participating in EU programmes, without also acknowledging the dangers that the very idea of “Europe” contains. Edward Said’s work is very useful here, especially when he urges us to engage in a contrapuntal reading of the construction of Europe, since the present fabrication marginalizes: all the non-European regions, whose inhabitants, societies, histories, and beings represent a non-European essence, are made subservient to Europe, which in turn demonstrably continues to control what is not Europe, and represents the non-European in such a way as to sustain control. (Said, 1993, p. 127)

Neither must we superficially conclude that every social phenomenon has “the good, the bad and the ugly,” without dialectically asking how what appears to be positive serves to mask other, more fundamental processes. The fact of the matter is that the economic interests of a uniting Europe are creating centripetal forces of Europeanization “pulling culture and knowledge towards the metropolitan centre,” and this lies in direct conflict with “the centrifugal forces of local, regional and even national identities pulling towards the preservation and reformulation of heterogeneity” (Coulby, 1994, p. 6). Balibar (1991) does not mince words in his analysis of what he calls the “new European racism,” a phenomenon which is given “added momentum by the ‘construction of Europe’ and sustained by an ideal image of Europe itself” (p. 6). Other critics have noted the extent to which the growth of a “Fortress Europe” in increasing—indeed “harmonizing”—the control strategies over immigrant workers, for the peoples of the South, the Iron Curtain is still there (inter alia, Allen & Macey, 1990; Webber, 1991). In the attempt to identify what Europe is, that is, in the attempt to establish identity through difference, there is a very real danger of peripheralizing countries, belief systems, and languages, rendering invisible the histories and concerns of the politically and economically weak regions. Or, to put it very succinctly, learning “for Europe” carries with it an implication of learning “against others,” and these “others” are both outside the little Europe and inside it. An analysis of directives on the European dimension indicates that, in fact, they seldom refer to non-European aspects, and the unproblematized referent is a Christian, middle European world

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

121

view (see Kuitunen, 1999). Some educators consider that the EU has derailed curricular development away from an “international education” dimension towards a narrower “European education” dimension (Chistolini, 1994). Certainly, to my mind, the “global education” initiatives of the 1970s seem to carry much more transformative education potential (Selby & Pike, 2000; Sultana, 2001). It is therefore both worthwhile and wise to not only celebrate the positive moments inherent in the so-called “European dimension” which brings added value to our educational initiatives, but to also attend to the fundamental problems inherent to the whole project itself. For, after all, we need to remember and stress the fact that ultimately, as an economic space or bloc, the aspirations of a single market which facilitates the free flow of capital, goods, persons and services represents the offensive of a capitalist class in the face of international competition, mainly from North America and the Pacific Rim. As educators, we should not forget for one moment that the “struggle over the future of Europe is largely about developing more promising environments for capitalist success” (Ross, 1992, p. 65), even if the formulation of new options is being most overtly carried out by political rather than economic entrepreneurs. Neither should we forget that the EU’s vision is informed by the assumptions of orthodox market economics, which, with the routing of alternative forms of social arrangements to capitalism, are generally accepted as self-evident truths. In such a scenario, Europe has seen a severe weakening of labour due to rising unemployment and capital’s restructuring efforts. Indeed, from the point of view of some of the representatives of the social democratic left in Europe, there is a fear that the project of a united Europe will set new limitations on the national economic–political scope for action, especially in such areas as the maintenance of a welfare state. It is also feared that the project will change the relative strength of capital and labour in favour of the former, and will lead to a downward spiralling of wages and social standards as different EU member states attempt to provide the most attractive packages for mobile capital (Haahr, 1992; Christiansen, 1992). The European Trade Union Council, for instance, expressed its concern that the harmonization of workers’ rights in the European Community’s social contract will take place according to the principle of the lowest common denominator. Concerns about the coincidence of the Commission’s agendas and the interests of international capital with a European base are not figments of an overactive or paranoid imagination. Ramsay (1992, p. 25), for instance, refers to the extraordinary influence wielded by the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) in the lobbying for “European market integration to be completed as a prerequisite for the formation of Euro-companies capable of meeting the challenge from abroad.” “The fact,” notes Ramsay, “that this group include[s] many of the largest, most successful and most influential companies in the region signal[s] the coincidence of the Commission’s strategy and the interests of international capital with a European base” (p. 25). The lobbying power of ERT, and the impact this has on the field of education, is addressed at some length by Slowinski (1998). Representing 46 companies—12 of which are listed in the top one hundred corporations worldwide— and meeting twice annually, ERT presents reports to the EU on a regular basis, in order to attempt to steer policy decisions. Certainly, in the field of education, they

122

RONALD G. SULTANA

do not seem to be failing! In March 1995, notes Slowinski, ERT published a report entitled Education for Europeans: towards the learning society. Two years later, the EU released a White Paper entitled Teaching and Learning: towards the learning society. In 1997, ERT published Investing in Knowledge: the integration of technology in European education. This was echoed by a document put out by the European Commission that very same year, with the title Towards a Europe of Knowledge. The similarity of agendas is more than skin-deep, indicating a tightly woven policy network that extends at all levels of education, higher levels included. These sorts of concerns are heightened given the political context in which these are taking place. I am here alluding to two issues. The first refers to what is euphemistically called the EU’s “democratic deficit,” a situation which partly explains the emphasis in the Community on developing a “Citizens’ Europe”—to be promoted, among other ways, through an intensification of a “European dimension” in and through school curricula. The second issue is related, if rather more complex, in that agendas that affect citizens are being increasingly set by what we have already referred to as a “supra-state” entity. It is worth delving a little more deeply into this, and examining the potential impact on the educational field. 6. THE “SUPRANATIONAL” STATUS OF THE EU The argument I am trying to make here is that despite the fact that the EU has no direct state capability, it is nevertheless an important social actor in a number of fields, including not only economics, finance and politics, but social policy (Leibfried, 1993; Manning, 1993), policy-making (Majone, 1994) and education (Sultana, 1994, 1995) as well. The difficulty in determining the extent of this influence lies partly in the fact that the EU represents a new social form, an entity that is larger than the nation state, and yet not quite supranational in its executive powers. Some commentators consider that the EU represents a unique historic opportunity “as the first truly novel state-form in history since the invention of the nation-state,” arguing that the concept of “federalism” affords the possibility of “creatively absorbing the traditional antinomy between union and autonomy, uniformity and diversity, union and non-centralization, independence and interdependence in a way to accommodate both elements” (Miller, 1988, para.6.3.2., quoted in Heater, 1992, p. 59). In a less enthusiastic register, others point out the amorphous nature of the EU, and note the difference between the Community’s post-Maastricht phase and the original vision for a united Europe embraced by the signatories of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 (Bryant, 1991; Balibar, 1991). Bryant (1991, p. 190) in fact argues that the EU’s very contours remain shaped by such a multiplicity of forces that novel social, economic and political forms, some of them hard even to conceptualize, may be expected. This is especially true given the intensification of the unification process in Europe and the trend towards supranationalism. In this regard, he concludes that: the future of the state, the rights of the citizen, the relation of the state to civil society, and the relations of both the state and the citizen to supranational institutions, are at stake throughout Europe. The common factor is the circumscription of the state. In the

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

123

EC, the single market is itself generating a shift in the balance of power from member states to community institutions, irrespective of other proposals for European union.

This shift is signalled by the fact that by 1991 over 50% of the 282 directives required to enact the Single Market had been passed by the EU’s legislative machinery (Funnell & Muller (1991, p. 22), and Jacques Delors had declared that the EU would be responsible for “80% of economic and social legislation” by the new millennium (Palmer, 1989, p. 8). We have here, therefore, the makings of a new social form, which needs to be contrasted to national units, those pillars of modern society that arose in the fifteenth century, and which were upheld by the school, the army and the factory. This is not specific to the newest of “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1982), the European Union. A number of social commentators (Giddens, 1985; Kennedy, 1989; Haller, 1990; Bryant, 1991; Balibar, 1991; Kurth, 1993) have pointed out the extent to which the postmodern world, while still containing old states, is increasingly becoming reorganised along multinational non-state lines. As Featherstone (1991, p. 146) has argued, “the increased international flows of money, goods, people, images and information have given rise to ‘third cultures,’ which are transnational and mediate between national cultures.” The deconstruction of the “old” modern world and its reconstruction into new forms and new organizations which are not states— the European Community, international organizations, international law, global financial markets, multinational enterprises, and global media—presents new challenges for sociologists as we attempt to illuminate the meaning and significance of processes in a world marked by economic, political and cultural internationalization. Let us look more closely at how the supranational character of the EU is evolving, in order to better understand the kinds of challenges that this might present to educational sociologists. It must be recognized at the very outset that the EU is premised on the belief that the “nation state” is no longer functional to general economic interests, and hence the aspiration is to facilitate the free flow of capital, goods, labour and services through the reduction or removal of physical, technical and fiscal barriers to free trade. As Marquand (1988, p. 212, cited in Bryant, 1991) notes: The aim is to strengthen the Community’s competitiveness in world markets, particularly in the area of high technology where European companies seemed to be losing ground to their Japanese and American competitors, so as to prevent a relative decline in the economic and ultimately political power and influence of Western Europe vis-à-vis Japan and the United States. The assumption is that the chief obstacle to greater competitiveness lies in the barriers to genuinely free competition within Europe, and that the way to reach the goal is to remove those barriers. Free competition internally is assumed to be a necessary (and, in some interpretations, perhaps even a sufficient) condition of competitiveness externally.

In its attempts to meet these new challenges and objectives, the EU has not only encouraged processes of convergence in a number of diverse fields, but has also intensified its control over these very same processes, creating a supranational order that has raised concerns among the likes of Prime Ministers Thatcher and, more recently, Major, in the UK, even though these support the economic liberalism of the

124

RONALD G. SULTANA

single market. As Muller and Wright (1994) note in their analysis of the reshaping of the state in Europe, the pressure for Europeanization, both at formal and informal levels, has had a remarkable influence on the parameters of state activity not only in the financial and industrial sectors, but also in such sensitive areas as health, education, social welfare and environmental issues, which “in spite of vague promises to respect the principle of subsidiarity,” “have been slowly dragged into the regulatory net of Brussels” (p. 6). Muller and Wright (1994, p. 6) conclude: To an extent which is not fully appreciated, the EU is slowly redefining existing political arrangements, altering traditional policy networks, triggering institutional change, reshaping the opportunity structures of member states and their major interests. These interests are now increasingly entangled in relationships at four territorial levels: the international, the European, the national and the local, and for some of those interests it is by no means clear that the national level is the most important.

Of course, national states are not being wiped out: rather, they are still central actors, remaining for most citizens “a primary source of welfare, order, authority, legitimacy, identity and loyalty” (Muller & Wright, 1994, p. 10). But there is clearly a change, so that while it is possible to counter the thesis that the state is “retreating,” there is much evidence to uphold the hypothesis that what we have in fact is a “redefinition” rather than a “rolling back” of European states. These are becoming “increasingly prisoners of an interlocking network of bargained solutions: they are not by-passed or eliminated but rather more constrained. They retain a nodal decision-making position but their action is more indirect, more discreet and more bartered” (Muller & Wright, 1994, pp. 7–8). Balibar (1991, p. 16) goes further, using terms like “decomposition” and “deficiency” of the nation state vis-à-vis the Community, “a deficiency in power, in responsibility and in public qualities.” “The ‘state’ in Europe,“ aruges Balibar, “is tending to disappear as a power-centralizing institution, one to which responsibility for policy can be ascribed and which exercises ‘public’ mediation (in both senses of the term) between social interests and forces.” We need to ask the extent to which this redefinition of the European state has implications for the field of education, and whether new pressures are being—and will be—exerted on the definition of the educational project for the future. In asking this question, we need, of course, to keep in mind that Brussels regulatory strategies are filtered through the different and distinctive “histories, traditions, constitutions, institutions, opportunity structures and tissues of constraints, policy networks and styles” (Muller & Wright, 1994, p. 10; Moon, 1990; Ryba, 1994; Sultana, 1994, 1995; Watson, 1994) of each member state. But this awareness of complexity in the ways in which different policy regimes of member states facilitate or filter the EU’s activity should not blind us to the overall agenda of the European Union, and to the extent the structural integration of the EU and the growth of pan-European consciousness of European elites will lead to convergence of national policies in different fields, including education. The point, of course, is that, as noted earlier, such European agendas are being extensively lobbied and influenced by capital. And again, the key question here would be: who stands to gain and who to lose in this new “European space” that is currently being delimited?

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

125

Of course, compared to the savage capitalism we see in the USA, the EU has to be credited with its attempt to hold on to more progressive models of social welfare and industrial relations regimes on the continent. After all, it is not without reason that Delors’s attempt to carve out a “social space” to complement the common economic space and to strengthen the social dimension of the internal market through the promulgation of the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers—the “Social Charter”—was lambasted by the European Right. Thatcher, for instance, considered that the values which informed the Social Charter were those of “Marx and the class struggle” (Palmer, 1989). But, as educators, we need to temper our optimism and consider carefully the extent to which the present construction of Europe does indeed reflect our vision for the education of the future, and the extent to which it supports the kind of values that we would like to promote among future generations. These questions are far from easy, nor the answers straightforward. My point is that by approaching the issues in a dialectical manner, the possibility of making some sense of the complexity—or “super-complexity,” as it is now being referred to—may be enhanced, and that is, of course, crucial for us as educators, since we are in the sensitive and delicate position of mediating meaning between one generation and the next. 7. EDUCATION IN TOMORROW’S EUROPE That note neatly introduces the final section of this chapter, one which I feel less than comfortable with, not only because I am personally not blessed with the gift of prophecy, but also because a historical sensitivity to the last two centuries of educational development cannot but leave us rather sceptical about any major changes in the way we go about schooling the masses. Whenever I project transparencies portraying drawings, lithographs, paintings and photographs of different educational contexts, starting from classical times, right through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and modem Europe, the element which invariably strikes my classes most of all is the similarity with past schooling, rather than any radical rupture. Of course, there have been changes between, say, the monitorial system so popular at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the open classrooms of the 1960s, but what is astonishing is rather more the “regularities of schooling” rather than any major shifts in the grammar or paradigms of what we consider to be teaching and learning. Much hope has been invested in the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a tool in radically transforming the lifelong task of learning. The Commission of the European Communities has only recently issued a report on the matter, displaying the same optimism in its document entitled Designing Tomorrow’s Education: promoting innovation with new technologies (Commission of European Communities, 2000). ICTs do, indeed, offer a great deal of possibilities, though, if we put aside for a moment the political rhetoric that surrounds the massive capital investment required in introducing ICTs into classrooms, and consider what research is telling us, then a fair degree of that optimism seems unwarranted. Salomon & Almog (1998) have noted, for instance, that new

126

RONALD G. SULTANA

technologies have not quite changed mainstream pedagogical concepts. As with the advent of radio, television and film in the classroom, computer-based instruction, intelligent tutoring systems, and more recently, hypermedia programmes, Internet, and computer-mediated communication, have all, paradoxically, been integrated but their effect on pedagogy has in fact been minimal. Despite the technology, the fundamental philosophy has often tended to remain unchanged: namely, that a single type of learning programme suffices for all, and that knowledge should be handed down from on high, from those who know to those who don’t. In a way, as Papert has noted, the more quickly a new technology is acclaimed and integrated, the more swiftly is it assimilated in the dominant logic of learning which, as a result, remains largely the same (1987). As an Egyptian colleague put it when describing his experience of the introduction of ICT in his country, teachers simply shifted from the “chalk and talk” method to the “pick and click” one. This should not, however, lead us to despair of change, for school and educational contexts will have to change, even if one is tempted to agree with the claim that no sector of society is more conservative and chained to the past than the education one. Education will have to change—and, indeed, one can already perceive the areas where shifts are taking place. In perusing material on the future of education, there is some agreement that a number of sociopolitical and technological trends will impact on education in the twenty-first century. Mitchell (1998) has usefully summarized these as being (a) globalization, leading to the demise of the nation state; (b) demographic transitions, which will have a major impact on the structure of societies and the transactions that occur within them; (c) the rise of multicultural societies with pluralistic epistemologies; (d) the ICT revolution, which is already transforming the nature of work, business, entertainment, leisure, interpersonal interactions, and community; and (e) the transformation of mass production economies to Information Age economies. There is also some agreement that, conservative as education systems might be, embryonic changes are already visible for those who are perceptive enough to see them. The work of Günther Kress (2000) is particularly useful because, by utilizing the concept of “frame” developed by Basil Bernstein, he provides us with a vocabulary to better articulate some of the important shifts that are in evidence. Like Mitchell, Kress relates the issue of educational development very closely to both economic and cultural transformations in the postmodern age. Like Mitchell too, Kress speaks of weakening of borders and blurring of definitions of roles and sites for education. The modern school, which looks back at the nineteenth century, reflects the main concern of the industrial era, which was “reproduction.” Schooling in the mass production age provided strong framings of values and knowledge, with the curriculum serving the needs of the nation state, the labour force and the professions. Kress argues that we are now in a situation where the framing of what constituted education over the past century and a half is shifting. Several of the shifts Kress refers to are visible in Europe and beyond. There is a shift in the frame around the institution of education itself, with the strong distinctions between different institutions being eroded, partly as a result of changing conceptions of learning, and partly due to the fact that education has become more market-driven, with institutions having to capture their own clientele.

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

127

There is a shift in the frame around the site of education, with institutions preferring to operate in contexts that are normally associated with leisure, and which imply that the service provider moves to the site of the clientele, rather than the other way around. Another important frame shift is occurring around the time of education, with the concept of lifelong learning becoming ever more real, and with the extension of education beyond organised or institutionally controlled time. There is a shift around the frame concerning the educational audience, with the marshalling of age-specific groups around learning tasks becoming increasingly questioned. There is a shift in the frame of what constitutes educational knowledge, with blurring or abolishment of boundaries between knowledge sanctioned in educational institutions and the knowledge of the everyday, between the “sacred” and the “profane.” The strong framing between education-as-work and education-as-fun is increasingly become blurred, with technological and social developments enhancing the approach to learning as a leisure-type activity, which induces pleasure. There is a change in the frame between the state and the market in the provision of education, so that teaching institutions have to market themselves and then services in order to capture a clientele, rather than expect the financial and logistical support of the state in guaranteeing such a market. There is a shift in the framing and location of authority, with power shifting to the learner, who is now conceived of as a consumer/ client rather than as a “student” or “pupil.” 8. CONCLUDING COMMENTS Clearly, these are not the only shifts in frames that one can detect. What most futurists seem to be saying is that while the nation state with its command economy provided an overarching frame of coherence through its authority and its needs, that frame is becoming less available as a stable point of reference and is being replaced by far less stable, less predictable contingencies and requirements. Mitchell, drawing on Giddens, notes that the world we live in today is not subject to tight mastery, but is, rather, one marked by dislocation and uncertainty, a “runaway world.” Kress, drawing on Giddens (1995), points out that the relative stabilities of the class societies of industrialized states, with their economies founded on industrial mass production, are being replaced, or at the very least overlaid, by the highly fluid arrangements of lifestyle groupings. Clearly, Europe is implicated in all these changes, and is trying to come up with its own answers in the face of excruciatingly difficult challenges and questions. Educators too have a major role to play in this: how will we define quality in this context of storm and stress? How shall we prepare citizens to live productively and meaningfully in complex societies, where the frames that we have grown up with and which gave us a degree of comfort—I am referring here to lifetime jobs, a caring state, a sense of identity in a local community, shared value systems in ethnic, religious or other groupings—are fading if not disappearing? It is not unreasonable to expect educational institutions to provide contexts which help individuals and societies to cope with and manage the transformations that have been unleashed. Indeed, educators must be proactive rather than merely reactive, if education is to produce, and not simply reproduce,

128

RONALD G. SULTANA

society. And that is where deliberations about quality education in tomorrow’s Europe should lead us, namely, in a search for educational method that engages Europe and the world as they are, in order to imagine a Europe and a world as they could and should be. To do anything less would be to rescind on our responsibilities towards the present generation and those that are yet to come. REFERENCES Allen, S. & Macey, M. (1990). Race and ethnicity in the European context. British Journal of Sociology, 41 (3), 375–393. Anderson, B. (1982). Imagined communities. London: Verso. Ascherson, N. (1988). Below stairs in Europe’s house. Observer, 11 December, 12. Avis, J., Bloomer, M., Esland, G. & Gleeson, D. (1996). Knowledge and nationhood: Education, politics and work. London: Cassell. Balibar, E. (1991). Es gibt staat in Europe: Racism and politics in Europe today. New Left Review, 186, 5–19. Barnard, C. (1992). The Maastricht agreement and education: One step forward, two steps back? Education and the Law, 4, 123–134. Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J. C. (1990 [1976]). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage. Brown, P. & Lauder, H. (1991). Education, economy and social change. International Journal of Sociology of Education, 1,3–23. Byram, M. (1992). Foreign language learning for European citizenship. Language Learning Journal, 6, 10–12. Bryant, C. G. A. (1991). Europe and the European Community 1992. Sociology, 25 (2), 189–207. Chistolini, S. (1994). From the European to worldwide idea of education. Paper presented at the 16th Comparative Education Society in Europe Conference, Copenhagen, 26–29 June. Christiansen, J. F. (1992). The Danish “no” to Maastricht. New Left Review, 195, 97–101. Commission of the European Communities (CEC) (1988). Enhanced treatment of the European dimension in education, V/751,1988-EN. Brussels: CEC, mimeo. Commission of the European Communities (1996). Teaching and learning: Towards the learning society. Luxembourg: Office EUR OP. Commission of the European Communities (2000). Designing tomorrow’s education: Promoting innovation with new technologies. COM(2000), Brussels, 27 January. Coulby, D. (1994). European culture: Unity and fractures. Paper presented at the 16th Comparative Education Society in Europe Conference, Copenhagen, 26–29 June. Dahrendorf, R., Hoskyns, J., Curzon Price, V., Roberts, B., Wood, G., Davis, E. & Sealy, L S. (1989). Whose Europe? Competing visions for 1992. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Dewey, J. (1915). Education vs. training, New Republic, May, as reproduced in Curriculum Inquiry, 7(1), 1977, 33–39. European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) (1995). Education for Europeans: Towards the learning society. Brussels: ERT. European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) (1997). Investing in knowledge: The integration of technology in European education. Brussels: ERT. Featherstone, M. (1991). Consumer culture and postmodernism. London: Sage. Funnell, P. & Muller, D. (1991). Promoting an effective educational response to the challenge of the Single European Market. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 15 (3), 22–29. Ganderton, P. (1996). Concepts of globalisation and their impact upon curriculum policy-making: Rhetoric and reality—a study of Australian reform. International Journal of Educational Development, 16 (4), 393–405. Giddens, A. (1985). The nation-state and violence. Vol. 2 of A contemporary critique of historical materialism. Oxford: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (1995). Beyond the Left and Right: The future of radical politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

QUALITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR TOMORROW’S EUROPE

129

Green, A. (1997). Educational achievement in centralized and decentralized systems. In A. H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown & A. Stuart Wells (Eds.), Education, culture, economy, society (pp. 283–298). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haahr, J. H. (1992). European integration and the Left in Britain and Denmark. Journal of Common Market Studies, 30 (1), 77–100. Habermas, J. (1976). Knowledge and human interests. London: Heinemann. Habermas, J. (1981). The theory of communicative action. Cambridge: Polity Press (2 volumes: 1984, 1989). Haller, M. (1990). The challenge for comparative sociology in the transformation of Europe. International Sociology, 5,183–204. Heater, D. (1992). Education for European citizenship. Westminster Studies in Education, 15, 53–67. Henig, H. R. (1994). Rethinking school choice: Limits of the market metaphor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. International Assessment of Achievement (1988). Science achievement in seventeen countries. London: Pergamon. International Assessment of Educational Progress (1992). Learning mathematics. New Jersey: Educational Testing Service. Ireson, J. & Hallam, S. (1999). Raising standards: Is ability grouping the answer? Oxford Review of Education, 25 (3), 343–358. Kennedy, P. (1989). The rise and fall of the great powers. London: Fontana. Kress, G. (2000). A curriculum for the future. Cambridge Journal of Education, 30(1), 133–145. Kuitunen, J. (1999). Towards an innovative university in the south: Institutionalising Euro-Mediterranean co-operation in research and higher education. In S. Guri-Rosenblit & R. G. Sultana (Eds.), Higher education in the Mediterranean region. A special issue of the Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies, 4 (2), 155–179. Kurth, J. (1993). Toward the postmodern world. Dialogue, 100 (2), 8–13. Lasonen, J. (Ed.) (1996). Reforming upper secondary education in Europe. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä Press. Leibfried, S. (1993). Conceptualising European social policy: The EC as social actor. In L. Hantrais & S. Mangen (Eds.), The policy making process and the social actors (pp. 5–14). Loughborough: Loughborough University of Technology. Livingstone, D. W. (1999). Beyond human capital theory: The underemployment problem. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 36 (2), 163–192. Luchtenberg, S. (1994). The European dimension and multicultural education: Compatible or contradictory concepts? Paper presented at the 16th Comparative Education Society in EuropeConference, Copenhagen, 26–29 June. Majone, G. (1994). The rise of the regulatory state in Europe. Western European Politics, 17(3), 77–101. Manning, N. (1993). The impact of the EC on social policy at the national level: The case of Denmark, France and the United Kingdom. In L. Hantrais & S. Mangen (Eds.), The policy making process and the social actors (pp. 15–32). Loughborough: Loughborough University of Technology. Marquand, D. (1988). The irresistible tide of Europeanisation. In S. Hall & M. Jacques (Eds.), New times: The changing face of politics in the 1980’s. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Miller, G. T. (1988). Citizenship and European Union: A federalist approach. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies, October (mimeo). Mitchell, D. (1998). New borders for education: Redefining the role and sites of education in the future. Discussion Paper No. 3, Center for International Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. Moon, R. (1990). Patterns of control: Reforming west European schools. British Journal of Sociology, 41 (3), pp. 423–444. Morin, E. (1987). Penser l’Europe. Paris: Seuil. Muller, W. C. & Wright, V. (1994). Reshaping the state in western Europe: The limits to retreat. West European Politics, 17 (3), 1–11. Nelson, B., Roberts, D. & Veit, W. (Eds.) (1992). The idea of Europe: Problems of national and transnational identity. New York: Berg. Nóvoa, A. (1994). Une education pour combien d’Europes? Paper presented at the 16th Comparative Education Society in Europe Conference, Copenhagen, 26–29 June. Palmer, J. (1989). 1992 and beyond. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

130

RONALD G. SULTANA

Palomba, D. (1993). Dimension europeénne et pluralisme culturel pour 1’Europe de demain: quelques reflexions. Comparative Education Society in Europe Newsletter, 36, 7–12. Papert, S. (1987). Computer criticism vs. technocentric thinking. Educational Researcher, 16 (1), 22–30. Pereyra, M. (1993). The social participation in the construction of the European dimension in education. Comparative Education Society in Europe Newsletter, 36, 12–21. Plomp, T. (1998). The potential of international comparative studies to monitor the quality of education. Prospects, XXVIII (1), 45–60. Raffe, D. (1996). European strategies for parity of esteem, in J. Lasonen (Ed.), Reforming upper secondary education in Europe (pp. 273–278). Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä Press. Ramsay, H. (1992). Whose champions? Multinationals, labour and industry policy in the European Community after 1992. Capital and Class, 48, 17–39. Reiffers, J. L. et al. (1997). Accomplishing Europe through education and training. Luxembourg: Office EUR OP. Rohrs, H. (1992). A united Europe as a challenge to education. European Journal of Intercultural Studies, 3 (1), 59–70. Ross, G. (1992). Confronting the new Europe. New Left Review, 191, 49–68. Ryba, R. (1994). “Unity in diversity”: The enigma of the European dimension in education. Paper presented at the 16th Comparative Education Society in Europe Conference, Copenhagen, 26–29 June. Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus. Salomon, G. & Almog, T. (1998). Educational psychology and technology: A matter of reciprocal relations. Teachers’ College Record, 100 (1), 222–241. Selby, D. & Pike, G. (2000). Civil global education: Relevant learning for the twenty-first century. Convergence, XXXIII (1–2), 138–149. Slowinski, J. (1998). SOCRATES invades central Europe. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 6 (9), 1– 26; http://www.olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v6n9.html Sultana, R. G. (1994). Conceptualising teachers’ work in a uniting Europe. Compare, 24 (2), 171–182. Sultana, R. G. (1995). A uniting Europe, a dividing education? Supranationalism, Euro-centrism and the curriculum. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 5 (2), 115–144. Sultana, R. G. (1996). The EU’s educational agenda: A wolf in sheep’s clothing? In K. Watson, S. Modgil & C. Modgil (Eds.), Educational dilemmas: Debates and diversity, vol. 3 (pp. 66–87). London: Cassell. Sultana, R.G. (2002). The global education initiative in Syria. In R. G. Sultana (Ed.), Challenge and change in the Euro-Mediterranean region: Case studies in educational innovation (pp. 389–409). New York: Peter Lang. UNESCO (1996). Learning: The treasure within: Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the 21st Century. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. UNESCO (1999). Declaration on our responsibilities towards future generations. Future Generations Journal, 29. Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung (1996). Bibliography on the European dimension of education. Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung. Wain, K., Attard, P. Bezzina, C., Darmanin, M., Farrugia, C., Psaila, A., Sammut, J., Sultana, R. G. & Zammit, L. (1996). Tomorrow’s schools: Developing effective learning cultures. Malta: Ministry of Education. Watson, K. (1994). Educational provision for the 21st century: Who or what is shaping the agenda and influencing developments? Paper delivered at SACHES Regional Conference. Webber, F. (1991). From ethnocentrism to Euro-racism, Race and Class, 31,11–17. Whitty, G. (1996). Creating quasi-markets in education: A review of recent research on parental choice and school autonomy in three countries. Review of Research in Education, 22, 1–83. Wilterdink, N. (1993). The European ideal. Archives Europeen Sociologiques, 34, 119–136. Young, M. F. D. (1998a). Bridging academic/vocational divisions in the 14–19 curriculum: a new perspective on Unking education and work. In M. F. D. Young The Curriculum of the Future (pp. 51– 63). London: Palmer Press. Young, M. F. D. (1998b). The curriculum of the future. London: Falmer Press.

University of Malta

ANTONIO NOVOA

8. WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

A decade ago, when I first began addressing issues of education policy in Europe, I 1 was obliged to justify my inquiry. Why should one speak of these matters if there is no unified European education policy? Why speculate on topics that are the full responsibility of each member state? Although I respect my interlocutors, our conversations failed to acknowledge one important link in the analysis of education policies. We need a closer understanding of the European layer. This is the collective education policy defined, individually and jointly, by decision-makers at all levels in Europe—from local to national, from regional to global—that establishes a basis for a European education. Today, no justification is needed to discuss “ways of thinking about education in Europe.”2 In a short space of time, important changes have taken place in the socalled “European educational space,” opening new perceptions of intertwined and overlapping levels of policy formation. A recent statement by Anders Hingel, head of the education policy unit at the European Commission, clearly asserted: “What is presently happening in co-operation in the field of education tells us, that not only is a European Space of Education in its making, common principles of education are being agreed upon between Member States, leading logically to a European Model of Education” (2001, p. 4; original emphasis). Furthermore, there has been the significant development of the recent and wide growth of European studies. A quick search on the Internet displays thousands of titles that try to explain this new “political entity.” It is true that they mainly address economics, law, and the social and political sciences; education remains an understated topic. Regardless, such studies do provide a theoretical ground to enlighten educational issues and avoid “non-overt debate” and “semi-clandestine policy” (N6voa, 2000), which characterized European Union attitudes and decisions for a long time. I will approach this chapter as follows. In a brief introduction, I will outline the main steps in the formulation of a set of norms and regulations that constitute a European educational policy. In the first section, I will criticize three “influences” that have led to current ways of thinking—the agenda-setting by the media, the new “planetspeak,” and the excesses of past and future—and reveal how they define the educational debate in the European Union.

131 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 131-155. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

132

ANTONIO NOVOA

Using this trilogy, in the second section I will analyse a set of documents recently issued by the European Union (“Brussels”) in an attempt to interpret the main tenets of the European Educational Policy, as they relate to issues of employability, comparability, and mobility. Finally, I will illustrate the arguments raised throughout this chapter by using the Bologna process, and argue for the need to rethink the role of research in reference to the limits of current ways of thinking about education in Europe. 1. PATHS TOWARDS A EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION A course of action to formulate a set of norms and regulations for a European educational policy is well established. It has been, and will remain, a very complex process, which began in 1971 at the first meeting of the Ministers of Education. The most recent (at the time of writing) document approved by the Stockholm European Council, The Concrete Future Objectives of Education and Training Systems (March 2001), continues to outline these steps. Education has been one of the most contested arenas in Europe, not only due to its symbolic value in national imaginaries but also because of public resistance to a “common policy.” The results of the Eurobarometer3 reveal that a majority of European citizens believe that the formulation of educational policies should remain at the level of each member state. The European Union put forward some measures in education and training, but simultaneously reiterated in its literature, namely in the Treaties, that the formation of educational policies should remain at a national level. One of the first rules young historians are taught is to mistrust “sentences” written in successive laws or documents. In general, such reiteration merely highlights the gap between rhetorical statements and what actually happens. This helps us to understand the systematic reference, in the documents issued by Brussels, to the action of the European Commission “within the limits of its powers,” “while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States,” and “excluding any harmonization of the laws and regulations of the Member States.” Does this mean that there has been a harmonization of laws or a unification of educational systems? Not necessarily. Several studies, such as that by Green, Wolf and Leney, have shown that there is not “any marked convergence in the details of policy formulation across countries, or in the actual structures and practices of education and training” (1999, p. 234). Yet, we cannot ignore the signs that are in front of us, as expressed in the official document, The Concrete Future Objectives of Education and Training Systems: While we must preserve the differences of structure and system which reflect the identities of the countries and regions of Europe, we must also recognize that our main objectives, and the results we all seek, are strikingly similar. We should build on those similarities to learn from each other, to share our successes and failures, and to use education together to advance European citizens and European society into the new millennium.

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

133

In reality, from the middle of the 1980s, and especially in recent years, the programmes and guidelines that have been implemented at the European level reflect a consensus of thought about education.4 New ways of governing have been defined which have proven to be extremely attractive, and have tended to delegitimize all alternative positions and dispositions. Of course, no country will abdicate a rhetoric affirming its “national identity.” Yet, all countries are incorporating the same guidelines and discourses presented as the only way to overcome educational and social difficulties. The strength of these guidelines is seen in their acceptance by member states with a “sense of inevitability.” In the years to come we will invariably witness the deepening of this contradiction: national politicians will proclaim that education is an exclusive matter for each member state, as they adopt common programmes and policies. Allow me to describe an “episode” that is symptomatic of this situation. In 1998, the Portuguese Minister for Education gave vigorous statements to the press opposing the Sorbonne Declaration on the “harmonization of the European higher education system.” The Minister said, “This is a dangerous step. We are beginning with a harmonization of the academic degrees, next we will move on to the duration of studies and the programs, and we won’t know when to stop.” Yet, he later concluded his press statement with a curious comment, “In fact, Portugal is in a comfortable position to criticize this homogenization given that our academic degrees are already set up in the way that this Joint Declaration outlines.” It is worth again quoting the head of the education policy unit in Brussels, elaborating on the decisions taken during the Lisbon European Council, held in March 2000: Since the very beginning of European co-operation in the field of education, Ministers of Education have underlined the diversity of their systems of education. The very reason why they met was in fact that their systems were diverse. Any mentioning of common denominators was considered of lesser importance and mainly used in national debates. The Lisbon conclusions break with this by asking the Ministers to concentrate their reflection on what is common. ... The Lisbon conclusions implicitly give the Union the mandate to develop a common interest approach in education going beyond national diversities as can already be seen in the demand to Ministers of Education to debate common objectives of educational systems. This mandate will lead to an increase in the European dimension of national educational policies. (Hingel, 2001, pp. 15 & 19)

My argument is that Europe functions like a regulatory ideal that tends to influence, if not organize, national policies. It is obvious that no “homogenization” will occur. Talk of the diversity of national education systems is almost a tautology, although it will not eliminate tendencies towards defining common goals, similar strategies and, therefore, identical policies. Thus, it is no surprise that “knowledge-based policies” are about to form one of the four fundamental pillars of the Union’s internal policies, as put forward in the Agenda 2000. The Education Council has also established a “rolling agenda,” which is a prevailing and recurrent agenda on educational issues. European citizens are persuaded to accept these decisions through rhetoric in the media, such as “A Europe of Knowledge is being created at high speed,” or “In the field of education, Europe—a Europe of citizens—is on the move,” and even the need to build “The European House of Education.”

134

ANTONIO NOVOA

The complexity of the debate calls for more theoretical tools and approaches. It is useless to reproduce distinctions and dichotomies that cannot help bring about new understandings. We must not look at this issue as a conflict between “national states” and “European institutions.” This is not a zero-sum game, where giving more power to “Europe” will automatically lead to a weakening of the “nation state,” or vice versa; an arithmetical conception of power is totally inaccurate. One can also argue that, in several cases (e.g. southern European countries), participation in the European process has been the only way to relegitimize states weakened by long periods of dictatorship. In fact, it is possible to look at the European Union as a political form that “strengthens the state,” acknowledging that between its institutions and levels of decision-making the most powerful are the member states and their representatives (Peterson, 2001). Furthermore, it is important not to forget that in most national states the local or regional authorities hold responsibility for the majority of educational decisions. No dualistic or simplistic analysis will allow us to understand such an intricate situation. Another vain approach may be found in the obsession to name the “new political form” that is being constructed in Europe: Is it a federation of nation states? Union of states? Association of sovereign states? This nominalistic approach intends to fix and stabilize a form that can only be understood in its plasticity. Adopted by some political scientists working in the context of the so-called “European studies,” these forms encircle us in a never-ending search for typologies and configurations (e.g. Hantrais, 2000; Wallace, 2001). Here, I will adopt a more theoretical and pragmatic perspective in this interpretation of the European educational debate. 2. THREE “INFLUENCES” THAT HAVE LED TO CURRENT WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Let me begin by explaining three overlapping and interconnected ways of thinking, which give rise to an undefined “magma” that is later transformed into a “raw discourse” about Europe. I will argue that they are present in texts and policies, and represent a vision to reconstruct the educational “space.” I will begin by addressing the consequences of agenda-setting by the media, then analyse the new “planetspeak” of the international expert’s discourse and, finally, criticize the excesses of past and future in discussions about Europe. 2.1 The Agenda-setting by the Media

The agenda-setting by the media is one of the most significant “influences” in current European debates.5 We are witnessing a spread of discourses that dramatize educational matters, imposing “solutions” through the structure of questions and portrayal of problems. Dressed in an impressive “moral conformity,” there is an interesting unanimity in this debate, which is fuelled by opposing pedagogy and educational theories, and uses hackneyed terminology such as rigour, efficiency, accountability, responsibility, autonomy, market, choice, customers, etc. As Pierre

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

135

Bourdieu (1996) explains well, the “newspaper intellectuals” read each other’s viewpoints, meet on a regular basis, frequent the same places and transform the media universe into a closed world where the logic of mutual choice reigns. This logic leads to an even more effective censuring and exclusion than that of a “central bureaucracy,” given that it is invisible and legitimized by the rhetoric of freedom. It is important to acknowledge two further consequences of the agenda-setting by the media. The first one relates to the adoption of an “instant democracy” based on a regular estimation of public opinion. The “democratic deficit,” denounced, for instance, by Jürgen Habermas (2001), obliges European Union officials to an overwhelming exercise of auto-justification. It leads to conceptions confined by the limits of a new doxa, and also to institutional activism at the European level. The second consequence is connected to the “society of the spectacle,” as it was first characterized by Guy Debord (1994). In a recent work, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri elaborated on the ideas of this French philosopher, and argued that “the spectacle destroys any collective form of sociality and at the same time imposes a new mass sociality, a new uniformity of action and thought” (2000, pp. 321-322). Addressing the media manipulation of public opinion and political action, they maintain that, even if there is no single locus of control, “the spectacle functions as if there were such a point of central control” (2000, p. 323). In fact, “surveillance” and “spectacle” are not divergent positions. On the one hand, surveillance is exercised through an exposure to media, which creates new forms of auditing and controlling. On the other hand, spectacle is subject to rules of surveillance (measures, indicators, rates, etc.) that define its own characteristics (N6voa, 2001). This background is obviously not conducive to serious thinking about education. Intellectual reflection cannot be done on the spur of the moment and without suitable research tools, techniques and methods. We are confronted with the dissemination of set ideas, intended to be neutral and consensual, that occupy the public educational space, but ignore or devalue all other contributions. This “uniformity of action and thought” tends to hide ideological stances as well as create the illusion of a single course for educational issues. I will argue that one of the first tasks for educational research is to deconstruct these “evidences.” 2.2

The New Planetspeak of the International Expert’s Discourse

A second tendency, which partly overlaps the previous one, concerns the figure of the expert and his/her mobilization in a manner that transcends national boundaries. This movement of experts creates and circulates international discourse, without structural roots or social locations. We are faced with a strange “worldwide bible” whose vocabulary, of unknown origin, is on the tip of every tongue: globalization and flexibility, new economy and governance, underclass and exclusion, zero tolerance and multiculturalism, etc. (Bourdieu, 2000). In order to spread these concepts around the world, they need to be transformed into topoi, that is, banalities universally accepted to become truth that do not need to be questioned. Such topoi support a reasoning that represents no author. They are then transformed into magic concepts; magic, because they are seen as “the solution” for most of the problems.

136

ANTONIO NOVOA

In recent years, governance has become one of these magic concepts applied to reform European institutions. The European Commission is addressing the “need for urgent action to adapt governance under the existing treaties” to contend with “disenchantment” and “alienation” from the Union’s work.6 Political scientists are trying to grasp this concept, even if their attempts are often more confusing than elucidating. That is the case, for instance, for Philippe Schmitter: “Governance is not a goal in itself, but a means for achieving a variety of goals that are chosen independently by the actors involved and affected” (2001, p. 8); “Governance is a method/mechanism for dealing with a broad range of problems/conflicts in which actors regularly arrive at mutually satisfactory and binding decisions by negotiating and deliberating with each other and cooperating in the implementation of these decisions” (2001, p. 8). With these “definitions” in mind, he arrives at the following conclusion: “My (untested) presumption is that, if the EU were to elaborate and defend such principles and, then, design its arrangements of governance accordingly, it would improve their legitimacy” (2001, p. 10). “Legitimacy” is the word one should retain. This new approach to European affairs is, in fact, a strategy to move the discussion away from matters of government (habited by citizens, elections, representation, etc.) and place it in the more diffused level of governance (habited by networks, peer review, agreements, etc.) The idea that the “European Union is a polity that operates with multilevel governance and functions as a regulatory state” lies beyond these assumptions (Roberts & Springer, 2001, p. 2). Despite the numerous efforts to define governance, one must recognize that the popularity of the concept resides in its imprecision and fluidity, allowing different uses and understandings. Thus, it is without surprise that we see another concept being mobilized for the same purpose: soft-regulation. Curiously enough, it is often defined through a series of related terms and expressions, such as contract culture, flexible frameworks, benchmarking, targetsetting, auditing, open-ended processes (Sisson & Marginson, 2001a). In both cases, we are witnessing reconstruction of the political field. Benchmarking practices, initially used in management, are now one of the most successful tools for implementing governance policies. Keith Sisson and Paul Margison consider that benchmarking offers a way to achieve coordination without “apparently” (sic) threatening national sovereignty. They quote the President of the European Commission in a speech to the European Round Table of Industrialists who said, “We are all benchmarkers now,” concluding with the following comment: “Increasingly, rather than legal regulation and collective bargaining being the main engines of Europeanization, it is developments involving benchmarking that are to the fore. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that, in terms of EU policy making, benchmarking is acquiring quasi-regulatory status, raising major questions for theory and practice” (2001b, p. 2). In fact, one needs to look at “benchmarking” not as technique or method, but as a political position. At the Lisbon European Council (March 2000), some of these discourses and practices have been put under the umbrella of the “open method of coordination.” Dermot Hodson and Imelda Maher argue that this “method offers a new approach to governance of the EU as heterarchical, decentred and dynamic process. It supports

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

137

and radicalizes the principle of subsidiarity; offers an alternative to the treaty rules on enhanced co-operation; and addresses some of the legitimacy issues inherent in the EU” (2001, pp. 719-720). Their claim is that the European Union is an experimental process, and that our minds must be open to new political and social forms of organization. Nevertheless, these “approaches” are being constructed as the only solution to European problems, a solution that is defined by its flexibility and adaptability. Historians are well acquainted with the “gardening metaphor” that was employed by educators at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is not surprising to notice the rebirth of this metaphor as a way to illustrate EU politics: “gardening in the face of climate change, the turns of the seasons, the predators and the diseases that invade, as well as the changing tastes and fashions that influence garden design” (Olsen, cited in Wallace, 2001, p. 583). But once again, as in the former pedagogical illustration, the tools and the actions of the gardener are forgotten: to prune, to weed, etc. The metaphor loses its attractiveness and naivety. My argument is that this conceptual amalgamation creates the illusion of a common agenda, spreading worldwide definitions and principles that are relocated in each political context. If we treat discourses about educational reform as governing practices—in line with the works of Thomas Popkewitz (2000)—we realize the importance of these “ways of thinking.” Then, it will be possible to consider how the rules, standards and styles of reasoning are also injunctions as to how individuals should speak, think, and act in the educational field. We are, indeed, faced with new ways of governing with significant consequences in each country, but also within the framework of the “European construction,” as it is termed in Brussels. For this reason, I reiterate that one of the main tasks of comparative research is to break out of the limits imposed by these ways of thinking. 2.3 The Excesses of Past and Future

This new millennium is rife with exaggerations and prophecies. In the case of the European Union, the excess of past and the excess of future both constitute part of the same “discursive formation.” One imagines a “past” that legitimizes current European institutions, yet at the same time invents a “future” that gives support to political decisions. Discussion relates directly to issues of identity. The citizens are not evoked as a “whole,” but as fragments where past and future are fused in the same movement to imagine the nation-Europe. It is possible to find a large number of works analysing principles of citizenship in Europe, but most of them are caught in a dichotomy of thinking that opposes “fixed” and “multiple” identities. On the one hand, we find different, and often contradictory, critiques of supranational citizenship, which “encourages a form of politics in which citizens are managed and manipulated by distant, unaccountable and almost unfathomable powers” (Rabkin, 2001, p. 3). We also have critiques of cosmopolitan theories of citizenship, because the virtues required by republican citizens “are likely to be cultivated only within national borders” (Smith, 2000, p. 5). On the other hand, there is a call for an integration of fragmented identities and a post-national collective identity: “a fluid collective identity to be constructed permanently” (Eder & Giesen, 2001, p. 13). It is

138

ANTONIO NOVOA

necessary to situate this debate as we redefine our concepts of time and space, and therefore, become aware of its historical dimension. Excesses of past and future will not help us to develop new understandings. The excess of past manifests itself in grand and eloquent speech about tradition and the destiny of Europe. These accounts, which are very active in the European context, sometimes infuse a mythical and unified vision of European “civilization.” At other times, they focus more precisely on the heroic perspective of recent accomplishments, such as the White Paper on European Governance: “European integration has delivered 50 years of stability, peace and economic prosperity” (2001, p. 5). In fact, the excess of past can be conceived as “empty history,” as it is called by Walter Benjamin (1999). He argues that history is the critical engagement of the present, producing collective memories available for scrutiny and revision. This is a totally different concept from nourishing nostalgic or Unitarian narratives of the past to use as justification for present actions. The excess of future manifests itself in recurring rhetoric about the “new millennium” and is patently evident in the strategic planning and prospective studies that are so much to the liking of the European Union. The announcement of the “learning society” or the “Europe of knowledge,” in addition to other terms coined in Brussels, compose part of this “passion for the future,” and very often translate to a deficit of the present. In fact, state attempts to control temporality have produced not only the “invention of tradition,” as analysed by Eric Hobsbawm (1990) in his historical treatment of nationalism, but also attempts to control interpretations of the future. An identical process is taking place at the European level, where considerable energy has been put into managing anticipation as well as historical memory. The main trend is towards creating “positive illusions” that nurture an unrealistically optimistic view of the future, “believing that it will bring what is personally or socially desirable rather than what is objectively likely” (Bennett, 2001, p. 194). Inside European debates, we need to understand politics of memory and forgetting, but also politics of prediction and forecasting. They establish relations to historical time through new configurations and fabrications in the dual sense of fictions and making. This explains why current tales about the European “soul”—a word that has become very popular—are again so powerful. Nevertheless, as Homi Bhabha (1990) has argued, the writing of the nation is not merely a unity but involves a “double time,” as people are both historical “objects” who construct a memory of constituted historical origin, and the “subjects” of a process of signification through which redemption and reproduction occur. Furthermore—and this is very important in the writing of the nation-Europe—the production of new memories embodies forgetfulness as new feelings of attachment and identity inscribe anxieties and displacements. Then, the questions raised by Rogers Brubaker take on a new meaning: “We should not ask what is a nation: but rather how is nationhood as a political and cultural form institutionalized within and among states? ... What makes the nation-evoking, nation-invoking efforts of political entrepreneurs more or less likely to succeed?” (1996, p. 16). It is almost redundant to stress that education and schooling are directly related to imaginaries and fabrication of identities. John Meyer, in a lecture on

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

139

“Globalization and the Curriculum” (1999), showed that the reorientation of education towards global rather than national society involves shifts in curricular perspectives. He highlighted the editing out of the past of the school and the editing in of a brave new future. Education is still a very powerful myth. It is extremely symptomatic that the two foundation stones of the mass schooling systems—the training of “efficient workers” and of “good citizens”—continue to be present in the European make-up. I will argue that we need to move from “geographical” forms of citizenship—as they have been discussed by authors such as Ernest Gellner (1983) or Anthony Smith (1991)—to an interpretation of new journeys and itineraries (by refugees, exiles, illegal aliens, migrant workers, intellectuals, etc.) that encourages non-territorial forms of affiliation and solidarity. A perspective that intends to “replicate” national endeavours at a European level will not allow us to grasp an accurate understanding of a situation that needs to be analysed in its own terms. The three “ways of thinking” to which I have just referred—the agenda-setting by the media, the new planetspeak of the international expert’s discourse, and the excesses of past and future—are present in the formulation and justification of European educational policies. In the second section of this chapter, I intend to develop this argument and suggest new analyses of the so-called “European educational space.” I will try to show that these “ways of thinking” influence the construction of systems of reason and principles of action inside the educational field. I would like to suggest that we dedicate ourselves to an intellectual reflection of understanding Europe—the various Europes—in its complexity and diversity. The European present calls for a style of investigation that is modest: “It encourages an attention to the humble, the mundane, the little shifts in our ways of thinking and understanding, the small and contingent struggles, tensions and negotiations that give rise to something new and unexpected” (Rose, 1999, p. 11). I have no ambition to provide a total account of such a complex situation. However, I do not decline to engage myself in an effort to open up the “repertoire of possibilities” for thinking about education in Europe. 3.

ANALYSING THE EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY: EMPLOYABILITY, COMPARABILITY AND MOBILITY

In the introduction, I provided a brief overview of the main documents and decisions that contributed to the building of a European educational policy. It is clear that an important change was taking place by the mid-1990s with the diffusion of texts such as the White Paper, Teaching and Learning: towards the learning society (1995), or the Study Group Report, Accomplishing Europe through Education and Training (1997). These texts were very powerful in constructing ways of thinking and talking about education, but their “legal status” was relatively weak. In fact, the framework set out in articles 149 and 150 of the Treaty of the EU7 did not authorize the European Commission to go further in its intervention in the educational field. The ground was, however, being prepared for the decisive turn that took place by the year 2000.

140

ANTONIO NOVOA

Several discussions and decisions led to the approval of the Agenda 2000, allowing subsequent discussions to include “knowledge-based policies” as the fourth pillar of the Union’s internal policies. Meanwhile, the Education Council set up a “rolling agenda,” with three priority themes: (a) the role of education and training in employment policies; (b) the development of quality education; and (c) the promotion of mobility, including recognition of qualifications and periods of study. Taking another important step, the conclusions of the Lisbon European Council (March 2000) stated the following: “The European Council asks the Council (Education) to undertake a general reflection on the concrete future objectives of education systems, focusing on common concerns and priorities while respecting national diversity” The door was opened to allow more overt intervention by the European Commission in the field of education. Thus, it is not surprising that European institutions during the years 2000-2001 approved an important set of documents. Furthermore, the Stockholm European Council (March 2001) asked the Education Council to present a detailed work programme as follow-up to execute the objectives of education and training systems, including an assessment of their achievement at the national level, to be approved in 2002. There is no doubt that we are witnessing a profound change in European educational policy. Given this activity, my analysis will focus mainly on the materials issued during 2000 and 2001.8 I will examine these documents through a triple lens, organized according to the three priority themes of the Education Council “rolling agenda,” in order to develop an understanding of issues of employability, comparability and mobility. At the same time, I will argue that these issues are related to the “ways of thinking” portrayed earlier in this chapter. My intention is to critically address some of the main topics that are being discussed, but some significant dimensions, most importantly e-learning, will not be systematically addressed in this inquiry. In fact, recent European Councils have been consistent in repeating the need to build a “knowledge-based economy” or a “knowledge-based society” and have used these two terms interchangeably. The Stockholm European Council, for instance, stated in the section entitled “Education, training and skills,” that “Improving basic skills, particularly IT and digital skills, is a top priority to make the Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” (2001, § 10). One must not ignore the importance of the document eLeaming: designing tomorrow’s education, approved in 2000, as well as various follow-up documents underlining how education and training will change under the conditions of the new information and communication technologies.9 Manuel Castells’s perspective is sufficient to understand European policies in this area: The third major challenge [of the network society] is the installation of informationprocessing and knowledge-generation capacity in every one of us—and particularly in every child. By this I obviously do not mean literacy in using the Internet in its evolving forms (this is presupposed). I mean education. But in its broader, fundamental sense; that is, to acquire the intellectual capacity of learning to learn throughout one’s whole life, retrieving the information that is digitally stored, recombining it, and using it to produce knowledge for whatever purpose we want. This simple statement calls into

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

141

question the entire education system developed during the industrial era. (2001, pp. 277-278)

Nevertheless, this “fundamental restructuring” deserves special attention, and it would be unreasonable to try to embrace it all in a single chapter. 3.1 Employability as a Problem for Each Citizen New Europe-wide employment markets are emerging, driven by technological change and globalization. ... The Commission has recently adopted a strategy ... for the generalization of mobility and the acquisition of modern work skills at European level. This can now be built on, in a context of lifelong learning that sets great challenges to our traditional education and training systems. ... Whatever forms this new method finally takes, the Commission will continue to play a key role of anticipation, awareness-raising and, critically, creating the mechanisms to put policies into practical effect and making the concept of lifelong learning an everyday reality. (Lenarduzzi, 2001, p. 2)

The words of Domenico Lenarduzzi, Honorary Director-General (Education and Culture DG, European Commission), appear at the beginning of issue 14 of the journal published by the European Commission, Le Magazine. They illustrate well the mainstream discourse about lifelong learning in European institutions: on the one hand, it redefines “employment” as a learning problem that should be solved by each individual; on the other hand, it creates the illusion that the “crisis of schooling” can be answered through a long life of education and training. The uses and abuses of this concept must be understood in the overall framework of providing a “magical solution” for some of the deeper concerns of European public opinion. Unemployment has been portrayed, namely by the media, as one of the main European problems—it is no surprise that the European Union places it at the heart of its agenda to eliminate “social exclusion.” It is essential to understand the social relevance of these issues, as European states need to deal with persistent high levels of unemployment and low rates of job creation. In all European guidelines for improving employability, the emphasis is placed on education and training for young people, as well as on lifelong learning. In fact, the concept of employability was recently reinvented as a way to link employment and education, or to see unemployment as a problem of uneducated people. The mobilization of this concept in political discourse entailed its transition from the social or economic sphere to the individual sphere. Therefore, it is easy to understand the decision to “give higher priority to lifelong learning as a basic component of the European social model.” It means that the crisis of the welfare state (and/or of the European social model) should be solved by the citizens, who are invited to become responsible for “constantly updating their knowledge both in order to enhance employability, by acquiring skills attuned to developments in the nature and organization of work, and also in order to serve as a framework for the process of consolidating European citizenship.”10 This phenomenon brings with it a new relation of individuals to society and to work, a relation strongly mediated by education and training. As Nikolas Rose argues in Powers of Freedom, “The new citizen is required to engage in a ceaseless

142

ANTONIO NOVOA

work of training and retraining, skilling and reskilling, enhancement of credentials and preparation for a life of incessant job seeking: life is to become a continuous economic capitalization of the self” (1999, p. 161). Thus, striving “to raise the level of knowledge and skills” and to prepare oneself for “integration into a rapidly changing world of work” is a problem transferred to the individual sphere, with each citizen having the “responsibility” to solve it for him/herself. When the European Union set up a “new strategic goal”—“to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world”—the spread of lifelong learning was considered essential to the strategy to achieve this goal. Since then, documents issued by Brussels are systematically reiterating lifelong learning as “the cornerstone of the knowledge-based society developing in Europe.” Ulrich Beck introduces a broader understanding of these issues, when he outlines 15 points about “Living your own life in a runaway world.” I want to highlight two of these points: (Five) The other side of this obligation to be active is that failure becomes personal failure, no longer perceived as class experience in a culture of poverty. ft goes hand in hand with forms of self-responsibility; (Six) Your own life—your own failure. Consequently, social crisis phenomena such as structural unemployment can be shifted as a burden of risk onto the shoulders of individuals. (2001, p. 167)

That is why active citizenship, entrepreneurial culture, lifelong learning or reflexive life are part of the same reconfiguration of the self. Furthermore, we need to understand how the economics involve multiple overlapping discourses that include not only the economic, but also social, cultural and political dimensions. Peter Wagner, in his book about Theorizing Modernity (2001), explains that it would be misleading to talk about the notion of “entrepreneurial self only as an economic injunction. Relying on these perspectives, the European educational policies are creating new conceptions of the “reasonable” and “responsible” lifelong learner and, at the same time, constructing an ideology that blames individuals who are unable to take care of their “own life,” that is, their “own education.” The new journeys of lifelong learners in Europe are illustrated in the adoption of the “Europass training” established in 1999. Taken as a metaphor, this new passport permits the right to freely circulate around Europe following itineraries of training and job seeking. As the European Commission often recalls, “lifelong learning is not imposed from above” because it “needs to be provided as close to the learners as possible” and it depends on “personal motivation” (Le Magazine, 2001, p. 3). At the same time, however, it is said that this is the only way out, the only option that individuals and societies have to face the “challenges of the future.” European citizens are free to choose: between one alternative and the same, as if no other option could even be imagined. 3.2 Comparability as a Mode of Governance The “Europeanization” of education has provoked the development of a strong feeling of “mutual accountability” between Ministers of Education. ... The “politicization” of

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

143

initiatives during the last few years in the field of education of injecting, “from the top,” an acceleration and deepening of European co-operation might have been an answer to the more slow and more conservative development of Ministries and National education authorities. (Hingel, 2001, pp. 18–19)

The words of Anders Hingel, head of the education policy unit at the European Commission, are extremely interesting for two main reasons. First, they construct an idea of “Europeanization” based on a logic of “mutual accountability” developed through an evaluation of, or a comparison between, the national systems of education, using a series of indicators, outcomes, benchmarks or guidelines. Despite their differences, these concepts seem to be generated as making part of the same “discursive formation.” Second, they define “politicization” as a reinforcement of decisions “from the top”—that is, directly by the heads of state—breaking down resistance and inertia at the level of national authorities. Curiously enough, this perspective looks at the “educational space” as a field of expertise where the main objective is to reach obvious and consensual “outcomes.” In fact, a second dimension of Community action can be symbolized in the term “quality,” but mainly in the way “quality” can be evaluated through comparable benchmarks and indicators. Indeed, it was this very word that enabled education, for the first time, to be included in a European Treaty in Maastricht. Today, it is one of the three subjects of the rolling agenda: “the development of quality education and training at all levels.” If issues of employability are deeply embedded in ways of thinking driven by a media discourse, then issues of quality, carried out through politics of comparison, are impregnated by an expert discourse that is developed on a worldwide scale. European policies are clearly moving to promote greater cooperation between the member states, but also to achieve “a strengthening of the political impact of the Community” in the field of education. In order to do this, two lines of action have been defined: “the dissemination of best practice and the enhancement of joint reflection” (2000, p. 10). With respect to best practice, which is repeatedly mentioned in the European documents, the importance of its exchange, transfer and wide dissemination is emphasized. Tackled implicitly, the concept of best practice gathers full force when it is mentioned in the same breath as the new technologies. The concept is always approached in order to prepare “people for tomorrow’s trades” and “in order to speed up changes in the education and training systems for Europe’s move to a knowledge-based society” (2000, p. 3). “Change” is viewed as a technological device, and the European documents are brimming with references to innovation, autonomy, flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit in the new learning environment. In this sense, the European Commission differentiates between the industrial societies that “set themselves the aim of ensuring that all citizens were properly versed in the three Rs,” and the knowledge-based society that “implies that every citizen must be digitally literate” (2000, p. 4).12 With regard to joint reflection, it is very interesting to note the recent effort to build up “a limited number of indicators or benchmarks for school standards to assist national evaluation of systems.” In fact, the European Report on Quality of School Education (May 2000) clearly identifies “the need to set quantifiable targets,

144

ANTONIO NOVOA

indicators and benchmarks as a means of comparing best practice and as instruments for monitoring and reviewing the progress achieved,” contributing to “educational policy making.” The 16 indicators cover four broad areas: attainment levels; educational success and transition; monitoring of school education; and educational resources and structures. The need for justification, acknowledged by the European Commission, is very interesting because it shows the types of problems that exist beyond this policy: “If Europe is to have a society of educated citizens—a society based on knowledge—all its countries must engage in a united effort to share information on national educational practices. This means telling it the way it is and not hiding any weakness, for the purpose of the exercise is to learn from one another, not to single out the good pupils from the bad” (Le Magazine, 2001, p. 5). In fact, the question is not if it makes sense to organize a league table for schools or for nations, but to create an educational discourse—a discourse that includes indicators, outcomes, data and knowledge and becomes a regulating rule obliging everyone to refer back to it. Cohesion and configuration of policies are not achieved through sanctions, but through much more sophisticated and complex means. Voluntary participation by each national state, without any compulsory obligation, legitimizes these arguments. It is difficult to imagine how a national state could stand outside of this “playing field.” One of the main objectives of this policy is to place “less emphasis on the control of input” and “greater emphasis on the control of output.” The practices of audit and accountability seek “to provide policy makers with reference points” by rendering visible their “failures” and “success” in terms of indicators and standards that have been “commonly” defined and “freely” accepted. In this sense, they are governing principles that construct an educational policy that lies in specific forms of knowledge and expertise. This explains why the European Report on Quality of School Education (May 2000) clearly addresses the “challenge of data and comparability,” claiming that its intention is “to create an open and positive climate for dialogue,” and, “to provide a strong basis to learn from one another.” These words sound strangely like the first statements by comparativists at the end of the nineteenth century when the building of national mass education systems was at a crucial stage. But, we need to understand this “learning from one another” as a process of constructing a way of thought and action in the educational field. Nevertheless, inside the European Union, comparability is not organized through a traditional logic of borrowing or lending, nor is it even defined on the basis of the “international argument.” Now, comparability is not only being promoted as a way of knowing or legitimizing, but mainly as a way of governing. That is why “comparing” must not be seen as a method, but as a policy. In fact, it is one of the most powerful modes of governance being administered in the European space. If one returns to the first and forgotten meanings of comparatio, we are introduced to two main definitions: on the one hand, preparation, construction, combination and arrangement; on the other hand, comparison and relationship (cf. Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1969, p. 372). These different meanings are both present in the current strategies for restructuring the educational space. One of the main roles asked of those participating in the formation of a European space is to implement new educational policies: not through “laws,” but through “governance.“ In this sense,

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

145

one can argue that the expert discourse builds its proposals through “comparative” strategies that tend to impose “naturally” similar answers in the different national settings. 3.3 Mobility as a Means to Imagine European Citizenship The first, and most obvious, of such mechanisms [to build a European identity] is education. We must introduce at all levels of the educational system of every country, some common elements, including the history, culture, and language of other countries in the programs of all schools. (Castells, 2000)

My thoughts concerning “excesses” (of past and future) are constantly present in the analysis of the politics of citizenship in the European Union. A wide consensus seems to have been established regarding the role of education in the drive towards imagining and building this sense of belonging and identity. The European Union documents go even further in establishing a close “link between citizenship and education.” In the report Learning for Active Citizenship (1998), a parallel is drawn between “the introduction of mass public education [as] a key element in the emergence of modern citizenship” and the current importance of education given that “people need to be equipped to manage their lives as best they may in the mosaic-like cultural and political environments in which they find themselves.” In fact, this view of the link between education and citizenship is strongly influenced by an attempt to replicate the processes of nation building at a European level. The political vision that goes beyond this conception can still be illustrated by the famous words of Rousseau: “It is education that must give souls a national formation, and direct their opinions and tastes in such a way that they will be patriotic by inclination, by passion, by necessity” (cited in Miller, 2000, p. 87). Reflecting on the construction of a European demos, Lars-Erik Cederman says that “public education serves a central function not just as knowledge producer but also as a creator of citizens” (2001, p. 140). In truth, Brussels’s effort to imagine a European identity can be compared to the fabrication of the nation states in the nineteenth century. Images put forward in some of the educational documents reflect an old fiction, which more closely resembles “an imaginary liturgy” (Lourenço, 1994). But, this is a misleading perspective. As “democratic legitimacy within the EU cannot be obtained by modeling its institutions on those of the nation-state” (Bellamy & Warleigh, 2001, p. 10), it is likewise useless to expect education systems to accomplish the same kind of missions as they did in the past. Currently—in Europe—issues of citizenship are much more complex, both at individual and collective levels: on the one hand, the restructuring of memories is a cultural practice “that forges narratives to instantiate visions of the citizen, the nation, and the new intra-national state of the European Union,” and on the other hand, “old images of nation and self are dissociated from the new memories as people re-imagine themselves with a new collective narrative that relates to political projects bound to cultural identities” (Popkewitz, Lindblad & Strandberg, 1999, pp. 52-53). Citizenship is moving from political and social arenas to the individual sphere, yet, at the same time, constructing new “territories” of affiliation and

146

ANTONIO NOVOA

identity. That is why the documents issued by Brussels combine an attempt to replicate a traditional sense of “nationhood” at the European level with hybrid discourses permeated by expressions such as “diverse and overlapping values and identities,” “variable geometry,” “complexity and fluidity,” “multiple identities,” “flexible citizenship,” and even “that no value or behavior is prima facie excluded.” One should realize that these politics of identity are provoking dynamics of qualification and disqualification, leading to the formation of a “new educated subject” that is included in the frame of the knowledge-driven society. Yet, at the same time, the frame excludes all the groups and individuals who do not possess the “skills” or the “attributes” required to play the knowledge-based game. A decade ago, when a deeper attention to education was dedicated at the European level, leading to the approval of articles 126 and 127 of the Maastricht Treaty, the European dimension of education was the main focus. The Green Paper issued in 1993 reflected this perspective. Its intention was to “strengthen in young people a sense of European identity and to make clear to them the value of European civilization” and to “prepare young people to take part” in the development of the European Union. The presence of the “past” and the “future” is obvious in this way of thinking. The intended consequences were mainly expected to be in curriculum issues, incorporating “more Europe” in national guidelines in subjects such as history, geography or civics education. By the first half of the 1990s, a substantial amount of literature was promoting a strong rhetoric about citizenship in relation to curriculum and education. Adapting the words of Michel Foucault to this situation, from one of his last interviews, one could say that the ambition was for children from all countries to learn everything that makes a nation entitled to ask someone to die for it (cf. Lotringer, 1996). In this case, the imagined community was the nationEurope (Anderson, 1991). This discourse proved to be inaccurate and unable to address European educational issues. Obviously, the tendency towards a European curriculum has not disappeared in recent years, as is clear in the current attempts, for instance, to develop school textbooks impregnated with a European history or geography. Several groups of scholars within Europe are working together to create a cooperative framework to address these topics. An important shift has taken place over the last half-decade, moving from a “rhetorical” to a more “pragmatic” approach. I have already discussed this shift, speaking about “employability” and “comparability,” and this trend can easily be illustrated by numerous other objectives specified in the document The Concrete Future Objectives of Education Systems (2001); for example: “19. Information and communication technologies for everyone”; “23. Foreign language teaching”; “24. Increasing mobility and exchange.” Instead of confronting cultural and national resistance, European educational policy is moving towards the construction of languages and methods aiming to undertake “common goals“ and, thereby, taking similar approaches to the organization and evaluation of school systems. For this purpose, the concept of mobility has been crucial. Not only does it contain an imaginary of past journeys and cultural travels, but it also suggests a sense of freedom and openness towards the future. The importance conceded to programmes like Erasmus or Socrates is well established in several articles and

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

147

books. At this point, it is not my intention to give further thought to these programmes. I would, however, like to accentuate the symbolic role that they have been playing as part of wider movements towards the inscription of an experience of Europe in each citizen. Indeed, whether the focus is on markets and national states, or on debates over intergovernmental versus supranational modes of authority within the European Union, one needs to recognize that scholarship has done little to comprehend what might be called the “itineraries of European integration.” It is worth recalling two ideas included in the presentation of a workshop with this same title : first, the opinion of anthropologist James Clifford, who argues that all cultures are “traveling cultures” insofar as their members gain a sense of common history and shared values by movement and interaction with one another, and with “others” whose difference highlights connections with one’s own culture; and second, the suggestion that despite the modern nation state’s insistence on territorial boundedness and cultural-historical “roots,” a sense of nationality depends on movement and displacement, and the constant crossing not only of territorial but also social and cultural borders. A process of constructing identities depends on experiencing new journeys and itineraries, on living through borders and contact zones, and on participating in groups and networks that bring together people from different countries. It is in this sense that mobility can be regarded as a means to imagine European citizenship. 4. (IN)CONCLUSION: FURTHER COMMENTS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

In the remaining paragraphs it is my intention to address two issues: firstly, I will demonstrate the arguments raised throughout this chapter by using the Bologna process as an illustration, highlighting the actual processes and consequences of employability, competitiveness and mobility. I will then argue for the need to rethink the role and scope of research, namely comparative education research, with reference to the limits of current ways of thinking about Europe alluded to above. 4.1 The Bologna Process as an Illustration of “Ways of Thinking” about Education in Europe

The so-called Bologna process, initiated with the signing of two important declarations (Sorbonne, 1998, and Bologna, 1999), aims to establish a common “European Higher Education Area,” wherein the policies and practices of tertiarylevel academic institutions across Europe will become more standardized or compatible with one another. In what follows, I use the Bologna process as a means to further illustrate Europe’s regulatory ideal function, with its tendency toward defining common goals, similar strategies and identical policies. As will be revealed below, the overarching goals of the Bologna Declaration curiously coincide with the main tenets of European policy comprising the framework of this chapter. The Bologna Declaration is somewhat of an anomaly in that EU member states are autonomous with regard to the formulation of educational policies, and also

148

ANTONIO NOVOA

because of the historical autonomy characteristic of the universities. It is interesting, however, that these two strong layers of autonomy do not present obstacles to the adoption of a “system of easily readable and comparable degrees,” to the agreement upon an identical “degree structure based on two main cycles,” to the establishment of a common “system of credits,” or to the enforcement of “quality assurance systems” which are the hallmarks of the Bologna process. The strategic use of the word system in this document is intended to stress the existence of different “positions” that are arranged in order to form a unified “system,” but it is built inside a rhetoric that celebrates the richness and diversity of cultures and languages. Indeed, it would be unacceptable to draw a top–down policy that is not sensitive to the different traditions and perspectives. In fact, the strength of the Bologna process resides precisely in its bottom-up approach. Rather than laws or mandatory statutes, Bologna operates as a series of agreements and accords that are freely accepted and implemented. From this perspective, Foucault’s concept of governmentality is crucial to our understanding of the reconfiguration of educational policies taking place within the European space. We need to ask how debates and strategies concerning the exercise of political power have delineated the proper relations in the general field of “conduct of conduct,” engendering the emergence of programmes of government. The main issue is to understand the rise of expert systems of knowledge: “The power of such expert knowledge is that it is not only knowledge. Ideas function to shape and fashion how we participate as active, responsible individuals” (Popkewitz, 1998, p. 5). That is to say—as Nikolas Rose puts it—we are inhabitants of regimes that act upon our own conduct in the proclaimed interest of our individual and collective well-being: “we are governed in our own name” (1999, p. 284). The Bologna process, by constructing new ways of thinking about higher education, diffusing languages and imposing solutions for educational problems, serves as a very real example of the phenomena alluded to in the first part of this chapter. Discussions taking place within universities are impregnated with a “sense of inevitability,” as if it were no longer worthwhile to ask fundamental questions, because every institution will be moving along the same lines, independently of concerns they may have about this “inevitable” progression. The last report commissioned by the follow-up group of the Bologna process acknowledges the “unanimous support” that this process is receiving, even if it “has been conducted on a rather informal basis.” The report indicates the numerous seminars and conferences that dealt with the Bologna Declaration, saying that these are “the best indicator of its impact on European higher education” and that it has “received a wider acceptance from the academic community than was possible to anticipate.”15 Another report prepared by Guy Haug and Christian Tauch for the Prague Conference, Trends in Learning Structures in Higher Education (2001), corroborates the “strong consensus on the core objectives of the process,” revealing how it has been integrated into “the higher education agenda of all signatory countries” and evoked widespread interest even in non-signatory countries.

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

149

As mentioned above, the Bologna Declaration has three general goals: employability, competitiveness and mobility, which neatly coincide with the three ways of thinking that have been stressed in this chapter. Employability is conceived as a goal that needs to be achieved by European universities. It means that the programmes of study are to be organized in such a manner that they are “relevant to the European labor market.” Intrinsic to this discourse is the concept of lifelong learning, which serves as an endeavour to allow that “the education and training systems are open to new publics, and offer alternative learning paths to standard qualifications, as well as a variety of non 16 formal learning opportunities.” In this sense, lifelong learning is conceived, both at individual and institutional levels, as a strategy that calls for a restructuring of the “labor market” and for a new relationship between learning and employment. Competitiveness is understood as one of the main conditions to attract students from around the world. It is alleged that “quality assurance systems” and “accreditation” are prerequisites that need to be fulfilled. Readability of degrees, acceptance of qualifications in academic and professional terms, and clear information on the objectives and learning outcomes are identified as some of the strategies to guarantee “international competitiveness.”17 Furthermore, the importance of “monitoring” the development of the Bologna process is asserted; namely, through the gathering of comparable data. Mobility is considered to be of one of the utmost objectives of the European Higher Education Area. The free movement of students is perceived as part of “active citizenship” as well as a form of experiencing different national traditions and cultures. At the same time, actions are taken to “foster the desired convergence.” The tension between “autonomy” (leading to differentiation according to historical and cultural diversity), and “responsibility” (leading to a unified system of assessment and accountability), is well addressed in the first conclusion of the Convention of Higher Education Institutions, held in Salamanca, in March 2001: “Universities need new freedom if they are to adjust rapidly to environmental changes and to new local, national and international partners. ... Universities are not just requesting more freedom, however. They are also willing to accept the corresponding responsibility: they want to be held accountable for what they are doing and for how they use the freedom granted to them.”18 These goals are developed within the European space, creating new ways of thinking and talking about higher education. They are not only new words to describe facts and realities; they are new policies, built around a “planetspeak” that is organized around concepts that are being translated into most of the European languages: networks and governance, standards and accreditation, employability and accountability. It is interesting to observe that several of these concepts were imported from American institutions, where they have had a long tradition, carrying on specific meanings. Nevertheless, they are being mobilized as part of a European strategy that identifies its competitor in the global world: “The leading competitor is clearly the United States, as the main international provider of educational 19 services.”

150

ANTONIO NOVOA

Even if the European Union occupies a central position in this debate, it is important to reiterate that the signatories of the Bologna Declaration already comprise a total of 32 states; participating states are therefore not confined only to EU member states. This influenced the European Ministers’ decision to choose Prague for the location of the 2001 meeting, as “a symbol of their will to involve the whole of Europe in this process in the light of enlargement of the European Union.”20 Even more so, the follow-up group of the Bologna process presents a broader sense of “unification” when asking if “there is a limit to the geographical 21 reach of the European Higher Education Area.” What we are witnessing here are changes in the relationship between states, universities, academic communities and employers. These dislocations and displacements are essential to our understanding of the construction of Europe as a new political entity. Sometimes we have the feeling of an “emptiness of meaning.” It is a false impression. The meaning is being created through movement itself, in the way in which “ways of saying” are always “ways of seeing” the world, repositioning our own beliefs, affiliations and identities. 4.2 Education in Europe as a Field of Study

Elaborating on the three ways of thinking previously discussed, it is my intention to underline some consequences for future research. My purpose is to start a theoretical and methodological discussion about the possibility of building new programmes of research. Firstly, I want to underline the importance of problematizing “Education in Europe” as an object of inquiry. It is true that there already exists an abundance of legal texts and policy-making books on this issue. These, however, tend to reproduce an “intentional language,” created by EU officialdom, and therefore lacking a theoretical or critical perspective. Rather, these existing texts are intertwined with ideas presented in the media, and constitute an amalgamation of discourses that asphyxiate alternative ways of thinking. My argument is that we need to deconstruct these “evidences” through intellectual thinking that crosses the boundaries of different disciplines in order to understand the new educational problems with which we are being confronted in Europe. I acknowledge the fact that an important change is taking place, not only in terms of the increased opportunities for cooperation in Europe, but also in the development of research programmes in the so-called European Research Area. At the same time, the literature that has been published to date provides us only with an incomplete and fragmented picture. That is why we need to re-encounter the coherence of intellectual thinking, and to rediscover the sense of shared reflection that renews the “intellectual commitment”: not as a “prophecy,” which has the right to map out paths and prescribe solutions, but as an analysis that questions the evidence, puts into doubt the ways of speaking and thinking, and rocks current habits (Foucault, 1994). “Europe” is a fascinating subject for critical inquiry. Important social and cultural changes are taking place, but we currently lack both the words and the theories to fully comprehend them. Within the European Union, legal texts always

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

151

look at the “added value of the Community action.” Perhaps we can apply this metaphor to research, asking, what is the explanatory layer specific to Europe? Without ignoring the importance of global approaches and local and cultural analyses, this focus will help us to define “Europe” as a field of study. Secondly, I want to direct my attention to the importance of reinforcing theoretical approaches to comparative research in education. I will argue that this is the only way to avoid an international expert discourse that circulates without being conceptually structured and historically located. This expert discourse dissolves in the agenda set by the media, raising a doxa that obscures rather than illuminates. In the last two years important steps have been taking place Towards a European Research Area (title of a document approved by the European Commission, in 2000). This initiative is part of an effort to create a common approach to research, primarily through data collection and organization strategies, with the aim of establishing “a common system of scientific and technical reference for the implementation of policies.” There is a clear intention to stimulate comparative studies, which are deemed useful “to inform policy and practice.” We are witnessing an attempt to build languages and methods, that do not contribute merely to “sharing and learning from one another,” but which legitimize/delegitimize systems of action and thought. Creating a uniformed way of talking constructs inclusions and exclusions and defines ways of talking that are not acceptable. There is no doubt about the significance of those documents recently published, as a result of research projects organized under the auspices of the European Union. Nevertheless, most of these studies are mere juxtapositions of national cases, productions of typologies or other forms of classification, or displays of statistical data. Whereas occasionally the introductions and the conclusions of these texts attempt to raise some comparative analysis, they do so in a very superficial manner. For a long time, comparative education has been regarded as one of the less prestigious disciplines among educational sciences. Its current popularity is not based on a critique of the traditions of the field, or on the elaboration of new methods and theories, but rather, on its ability to seize the opportunity to bring together scholars from different countries and to raise funding for research. To this extent, these studies are failing to build sound comparative approaches. It is my understanding that we need to invert this tendency if we are willing to constitute not only a “research area,” but an “interpretative space,” which does not constitute what can only be currently conceived of as “soft comparisons,” but comparative research that is both theoretically and methodologically grounded. Thirdly, I wish to advocate the need for a deeper historical perspective on European debates. Here, I am referring to an analysis of the present as part of historical practices that produce ways of thinking, acting and feeling. In this sense, as Popkewitz, Franklin and Pereyra argue, history is not the movement toward some form of reliable representation, it is rather a part of the present: “A cultural history as a history of the present considers reason as a field of cultural practices that orders the ways that problems are defined, and possibilities and innovations sought” (2001, p. 4). My intellectual interest is in reconciling history and comparison, in order to avoid a parochial account of educational phenomena. The project of raising an understanding of the historical specificity of educational phenomena and

152

ANTONIO NOVOA

simultaneously acknowledging the radical presence of the other(s) defines a new agenda for comparative research (Schriewer & Nóvoa, 2001). European narratives are often filled with images of a “unitary past” directly connected with visions of an “inexorable future.” Citizens and countries from different regions of Europe share this sense of having no escape, or other plausible alternatives. This fatalist fiction is the worst foundation upon which to base the discussion of Europe. That is why I advocate a historical perspective that reveals how problems have been constructed and reconstructed throughout time and space, in an effort to open up our intelligibility and understanding. The process of fabricating Europe, both as a make-up and as a making, is far from drawing to a close. That is why we need a European-wide public sphere—that is, “a network that gives citizens of all Member States an equal opportunity to take part in an encompassing process of focused political communication” (Habermas, 2001, p. 17)—that includes an intellectual and critical approach to social, cultural and educational problems. Spatial metaphors are conspicuous in European debates. But as Goran Therborn recalls, “the space itself decides nothing” (2001, p. 87). New conceptions of the cosmopolitan citizen—constructivist, active, flexible, independent, autonomous, responsible—are being elaborated upon around the world: “the images of democracy and participation that are evoked are not a freedom separated from the problems of social administration and governing” (Popkewitz, 2001, p. 203). These conceptions bound the citizen to the “whole world,” but through local and national affiliations. Europe is playing an important role in the governing of these different forms of identity. It is a role that needs to be elucidated through intellectual inquiry, through comparative-historical research. NOTES 1

The chapter was finished during a stay as Visiting Professor at Teachers’ College (Columbia University, New York), due to a grant given by the Fulbright Foundation. I am indebted to several colleagues who commented on the first drafts of this chapter, mainly to Thomas Popkewitz, Francisco Ramirez and Stephen Stoer. I want also to express my gratitude to Kimberly Ochs, Tali Yariv-Mashal and Audrey Bryan who helped me in the final revision of the text. 2 I am mainly referring to the European Union, but use some examples (e.g. the Bologna Declaration) that go beyond institutional frontiers. 3 The Eurobarometer publishes results from various surveys and research instruments used to measure “public opinion” on European issues (http://europe.eu.int/comm/public_opinion). 4 Within the past few years alone, over a hundred education and training documents have been produced, some of which are of vital significance, e.g. Green Paper, European Dimension of Education (1993); White Paper, Growth, Competitiveness, Employment (1994); White Paper, Teaching and Learning: towards the learning society (1995); Documents of the European Year of Lifelong Learning (1996); Green Paper, Education-Training-Research: obstacles to transnational mobility (1996); Study Group Report, Accomplishing Europe through Education and Training (1997); Communication from the Commission, Towards a Europe of Knowledge (1997); Report, Learning for Active Citizenship (1998); Memorandum on Lifelong Learning (2000); European Report on Quality of School Education (2000). 5 I am referring to “agenda-setting by the media” in the sense portrayed in theories of communication: “The power of the media to both heighten the importance of particular issues in public consciousness and to set the parameters of debate around these issues by framing them in such a way as to promote

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

153

particular representations or responses as valid and legitimate, thereby excluding or marginalizing others” (Roscoe, Marshall & Gleeson, 1995). I am quoting the White Paper, European Governance, issued by the European Commission in 2001, where the following definition is given: “Governance means rules, processes and behaviour that affect the way in which powers are exercised at European level, particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence” (2001, p. 5). 7 These articles were first included as articles 126 and 127 of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), and were subsequently ratified as articles 149 and 150 of the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997). 8 The analysis focuses mainly on the following documents: Decisions establishing a “new generation of programmes” in the field of Education, Training, and Youth (January 2000); Report from the Commission: Implementation of the White Paper, Teaching and Learning: towards the learning society (January 2000); Conclusions of the Lisbon European Council (March 2000); Working Paper, Implementing Lifelong Learning for Active Citizenship in a Europe of Knowledge (March 2000); European Report on Quality of School Education (May 2000); Decisions of the Luxembourg Education Council (June 2000); Conclusions of the Feira European Council (June 2000); Decision on Guidelines for Member States’ Employment Policies for the Year 2001 (January 2001); Report from the Commission on The Concrete Future Objectives of Education Systems (January 2001); Conclusions of the Stockholm European Council (March 2001). 9 I am quoting from the Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, The eLeaming Action Plan: designing tomorrow’s education (COM/2001/0172, 28.03.2001). 10 Commission communication of 12 November 1997: Towards a Europe of Knowledge. 11 Communication from the Commission: e-Learning: designing tomorrow’s education (2000). 12 Communication from the Commission: e-Leaming: designing tomorrow’s education (2000). 13 I am quoting the text from a workshop presentation on “Itineraries of European Integration,” organised by the European Union Center—University of Wisconsin-Madison (April 2001), where a earlier version of this chapter was presented. 14 I am quoting from the document Towards the European Higher Education Area—Communiqué of the meeting of European Ministers in charge of higher education in Prague on 19 May 2001. 15 Furthering the Bologna Process—Report to the Ministers of Education of the signatory countries (Prague, May 2001). This report, prepared by Pedro Lourtie, and other documents related to the Bologna process can be found on several websites (e.g. www.esib.org). 16 Furthering the Bologna Process, 2001, p. 16. 17 Furthering the Bologna Process, 2001, pp. 5 and 9. 18 Cf. Furthering the Bologna Process, 2001, p. 28. 19 Furthering the Bologna Process, 2001, p. 10. 20 Towards the European Higher Education Area—Communiqué of the meeting of European Ministers in charge of higher education in Prague on 19 May 2001. 21 Furthering the Bologna Process, 2001, p. 20. 6

REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities. London: Verso. Beck, U. (2001). Living your own life in a runaway world: Individualisation, globalisation and politics. In A. Giddens & W. Hutton (Eds.), On the edge: Living with global capitalism (pp. 164–174). London: Vintage. Bellamy, R. & Warleigh, A. (2001). Citizenship governance in the European Union. London: Continuum. Benjamin, W. (1999). Illuminations. London: Pimlico. Bennett, O. (2001). Cultural pessimism: Narratives of decline in the postmodern world. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bhabha, H. (1990). Nation and narration. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1996). Sur la télévision. Paris: Liber-Raisons d’agir. Bourdieu, P. (2000). La nouvelle vulgate planétaire. Le monde diplomatique, 554, May. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

154

ANTONIO NOVOA

Castells, M. (2000). European identity (Preliminary remarks). Lisbon: Paper prepared at the request of the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union. Castells, M. (2001). The Internet galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, business, and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cederman, L-E. (2001). Nationalism and bounded integration: What it would take to construct a European Demos. European Journal of International Relations, 7 (2), 139–174. Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle. New York: Zone Books. Eder, K. & Giesen, B. (2001). European citizenship between national legacies and postnational projects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. European Commission, Le Magazine, 14, 2001. Foucault, M. (1994). Dits et écrits. Paris: Gallimard. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Green, A., Wolf, A. & Leney, T. (1999). Convergence and divergence in European education and training systems. London: Institute of Education, University of London. Habermas, J. (2001). Why Europe needs a constitution. New Left Review, 11, 5–26. Hantrais, L. (2000). Social policy in the European Union, 2nd edn. London: Macmillan. Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haug, G. & Tauch, C. (2001). Trends in learning structures in higher education. Follow-up report prepared for the Salamanca and Prague Conferences of March/May 2001 (www.unige.ch/eua). Hingel, A. (2001). Education policies and European governance. Brussels: European Commission, Directorate-Generale for Education and Culture. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodson, D. & Maher, L (2001). The open method as a new method of governance: The case of soft economic policy co-ordination. Journal of Common Market Studies, 39 (4), 719–746. Lenarduzzi, D. (2001). Editorial. Le Magazine, 14, 2. Lotringer, S. (Ed.) (1996). Foucault live: Collected interviews, 1961–1984. New York: Semiotext(e). Lourenço, E. (1994). Nós e a Europa ou as duas razões. Lisboa: Imprensa National. Meyer, J. (1999). Globalization and the curriculum: Problems for theory in the sociology of education. Lisbon: Lecture given at the University of Lisbon. Miller, D. (2000). Citizenship and national identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. N6voa, A. (2000). The restructuring of the European educational space. In T. Popkewitz (Ed.), Educational knowledge: Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 31–57). New York: SUNY Press. Nóvoa, A. (2001). Texts, images, and memories: Writing new histories of education. In T. Popkewitz, B. Franklin & M. Pereyra (Eds.), Cultural history and education: Critical studies on knowledge and schooling (pp. 45–66). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Peterson, J. (2001). The choice for EU theorists: Establishing a common framework for analysis. European Journal of Political Research, 39, 289–318. Popkewitz, T. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press. Popkewitz, T. (Ed.) (2000). Educational knowledge. New York: SUNY Press. Popkewitz, T. (2001). Rethinking the political: Reconstituting national imaginaries and producing difference in the practices of schooling. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 5 (2/3), 179– 207. Popkewitz, T., Franklin, B. & Pereyra, M. (Eds.) (2001). Cultural history and education: Critical studies on knowledge and schooling. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Popkewitz, T., Lindblad, S. & Strandberg, J. (1999). Review of research on education governance and social integration and exclusion. Uppsala: Department of Education, Uppsala Reports of Education 35. Rabkin, J. (2001). Why supra-national citizenship is a bad idea. Paper presented at the Calouste Gulbenkian Conference, Lisbon, 24–26 October. Roberts, I. & Springer, B. (2001). Social policy in the European Union. London: Boulder. Roscoe, J., Marshall, H. & Gleeson, K. (1995). The television audience: A reconsideration of the takenfor-granted terms active, social and critical. European Journal of Communication, 10 (1), 87–108. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitter, P. (2001). What is there to legitimize in the European Union ... and how might this be accomplished? Paper presented at the Calouste Gulbenkian Conference, Lisbon, 24–26 October.

WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION IN EUROPE

155

Schriewer, J. & Nóvoa, A. (2001). History of education. In International encyclopaedia of social and behavioural sciences (vol. 6, pp. 4217–4223). Oxford: Elsevier. Sisson, K. & Marginson, P. (200la). Soft regulation: Travesty of the real thing or new dimension? Brighton: University of Sussex: Economic and Social Research Council “One Europe or Several” Programme, Working paper 32/01. Sisson, K. & Marginson, P. (2001b). Benchmarking and the “Europeanisation” of social and employment policy. Brighton: University of Sussex: Economic and Social Research Council “One Europe or Several” Programme, Briefing note 3/01. Smith, A. (1991). National identity. Reno, NE: University of Nevada Press. Smith, A. (2000). The Nation in history: Historiographical debates about ethnicity and nationalism. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Therborn, G. (2001). Into the 21st century: The new parameters of global politics. New Left Review, 10, 87–110. Wagner, P. (2001). Theorizing modernity: Inescapability and attainability in social theory. London: Sage. Wallace, H. (2001). The changing politics of the European Union: An overview. Journal of Common Market Studies, 39 (4), 581–594.

EUROPEAN UNION DOCUMENTS 1993: Green Paper European dimension of education. 1995: White Paper Teaching and learning: Towards the learning society. 1997: Study Group on Education and Training Accomplishing Europe through education and training. 1997: Communication from the Commission Towards a Europe of knowledge. 1998: Report from the Commission Learning for active citizenship: A significant challenge in building a Europe of knowledge. 2000: Lisbon European Council: Presidency Conclusions. 2000: European report on quality of school education. 2000: Communication from the Commission e-Leaming: Designing tomorrow’s education. 2000: Decision from the Commission: Towards a European research area. 2001: Stockholm European Council: Presidency Conclusions. 2001: White Paper European governance. 2001: Report from the Commission The concrete future objectives of education and training systems. 2001: Communication from the Commission The eLearning plan: Designing tomorrow’s education. 2001: Furthering the Bologna process: Report to the Ministers of Education of the signatory countries (Rapporteur: Pedro Lourtie). 2001: Communiqué of the meeting of European Ministers in charge of Higher Education in Prague on 19 May 2001: Towards the European higher education area.

University of Lisbon

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

TERRI SEDDON

9. CODA: EUROPE, SOCIAL SPACE AND THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE

This collection focuses on Europe and, through this lens, offers an array of insights into the contemporary condition of society, education and research. The issues that the authors open up in their chapter are our issues—whether you live in Lisbon or Latvia, Africa or, like me, Australia. The point is that there are different ways of reading this collection and this makes it a very rich resource at a number of levels.

1. EUROPE One way of reading the collection is as a window on contemporary developments and debates within Europe. This sort of perspective highlights the problematic nature of Europe. Even in a geographic sense, Europe is somewhat ill defined. Before the end of the cold war, Europe equalled western Europe because eastern and central Europe were taken up within the USSR. Now, Europe extends across the land mass to Turkey, well into Russia. But Europe is also being defined geopolitically, via membership of the European Union and NATO. These conceptions of Europe offer different geographic administrative constructions, as Coulby indicates. Economically, the concept of Europe is also messy. In the mid-1800s Karl Marx emphasized the unevenness of capitalist development, which created pockets of wealth and of poverty irrespective of nation states and their boundaries. The European Union’s efforts to address these disparities has had mixed effects. Resources have been targeted at regions to support development but this has intensified feelings of difference. The sentiment “Europe is for losers” marks the sense of “them–us” which pervades Europe and is a harbinger of wider and deeper discontents about difference. Managing the difficult and historically rooted social relations of difference, what is usually described by the euphemism “cultural pluralism,” is a critical challenge (See Silova and Steiner-Khamsi). As Ferrarotti argues, European culture has always been premised on difference. The sense of grandeur associated with European liberal humanism sets European culture as a pinnacle against which other cultures are “Othered.” Compared to the other peoples of the world, especially the Americans, the term “European” marks a certain kind of civilized being. Yet, it is a way of being that has its dark side, rooted in racism and illustrated, over and again, in prejudice and violence.

157 A. Nóvoa and M. Lawn (eds.), Fabricating Europe, 157-161. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

158

TERRI SEDDON

Nation states traditionally have sought to manage economic development and cultural dissonance through the orchestration of politics by policy. Education has been critical to this endeavour, providing a nation-building mechanism which supported the development of both good workers and citizens in the national interest. Yet, in this respect, the contemporary reconfiguration of Europe presents major challenges, because as nation states are subsumed within Europe and European policy frameworks, the traditional nation-building role of education is undercut. In the federated European structure, national governments work both as part of Europe and as protectors of their own national interests. Education is caught firmly in these contradictions. The upshot is continuing systemic diversity in terms of education and training, but also some convergence driven by the global “planetspeak” (Nóvoa) of expert opinion currently preoccupied with outcomes, standards and accountability. Lawn argues that the implications are an evacuation of European education policy that sidesteps established interests and seeks to invest responsibility for learning in individuals. Yet, such individualized lifelong learning is in tension with nation states’ continuing efforts to affirm national identity and traditions, if only as a means of oiling the wheels of change (Silova). Simultaneously, global planetspeak, and transnational networks and flows committed to unfettered commodification and trade, come together with the individualizing political strategy in the affirmation of entrepreneurship and the exploitation of public goods. In the race to the future, it is not clear what will win out: the negotiated politics and processes of indigenization (Steiner-Khamsi) that may build a tolerant but differentiated Europe, or the simple commodification of learning as a means to profit.

2. SOCIAL SPACE A second way of reading this collection treats Europe as a metaphor. Europe represents a distinctive social space; a space that is emerging from one configuration of places, boundaries, relationships and practices to another. In its crudest form, this emergence is captured, in N6voa’s terms, by the “excesses of past and future,” which offers delirious exaggerations and prophecies of the future while damning the past in representations that can only be read as a justification for particular futures. The old adages, “onward, ever onward” and “there is no alternative” press towards unceasing effort and change, irrespective of what is being lost and gained, or the transaction costs of such activity. Yet, Europe as a metaphor for social space also opens up opportunities for other kinds of understandings; understandings that acknowledge the historical grounding of social space in society and geography, the ongoing contested processes that have produced social spaces and policed their boundaries, and the multiple agency that struggles to shape alternative futures within the obdurate legacies of the past. These kinds of historical understandings are well represented in the chapters collected here. They give a sense of the complexities that are intrinsic to the production of social space. They emphasize that there is always agency in these processes of spatial formation and re-formation, exercised through collective agency, that take the more

CODA: EUROPE, SOCIAL SPACE AND THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE

159

or less dispersed form of social movement as much as through the formalized agencies of government, corporations, political parties and elite power. They also reveal the historic obduracy of social space, which constrains the agency that seeks to build preferred futures into a practical politics oriented to creating feasible futures. This recognition of the historic fixities of particular social spaces is important. It emphasizes that the relationships of advantage–disadvantage and possession–dispossession, the geography of distance, terrain and resources, the established cultural themes that shape consciousness and possibility, and the established patterns of rules and resources that enable practical politics determine the long-term framing of continuity and change, without denying the openendedness of political struggles and the uncertain and contingent character of their outcomes. As N6voa stresses, there are many possible futures but the constellation of social forces makes some futures more probable than others. Using Europe as a metaphor to analyse and understand the character of social space, its processes of formation and re-formation, provides a basis for wider conversations that reach beyond the fuzzy boundaries of Europe. Understanding the European social space, and its slow construction since the Second World War, provides a good basis for considering the reconfiguration of other geopolitical social spaces. It offers a framework for considering the development and implications of regionalism that is evident with the development of the North American Free Trade Association, parallel but less developed efforts in Asia (e.g. the Association of South East Asian Nations), and also the remaindering of non-regions that fall outside the emerging blocs. In this kind of regional analysis, Europe is a leader, having gone much further down the track than in other parts of the world. There is therefore much to learn from the challenges and contradictions within Europe and its subparts. Social space does not just have to be conceptualized in geopolitical terms. Social spaces exist within governmental jurisdictions as well as between them. For instance, the growing agenda of lifelong learning cuts across the traditional spaces of education and training. Certainly, in Australia, these changes are problematizing the old divisions of schools, universities and Institutes of Technical and Further Education. A remarkable proliferation of new learning spaces is developing. These include new spaces outside the traditional structures of education and training and that are based in industry–education or community–industry partnerships; spaces inside established institutions but which reconfigure and hybridize learning through the development of localized or vocationalized programmes (e.g. vocational education and training in schools, indigenous education, regional studies); and virtual spaces where learning opportunities are shaped by programmes and people who operate through the web but from very different geographical locations—both within Australia and from across wider global communities. These new learning spaces, like Europe, are commonly represented as delirious excesses of past and future. But they too, have their histories, their obduracies, their opportunities and their ongoing politics. These spaces also offer local sites for the negotiation of global–local dynamics. Social spaces are then, an object of study, whether it is Europe, the wider world beyond Europe, or more localized spaces within and beyond Europe. The collection frames up this challenge of extending spatial analysis and the study of social

160

TERRI SEDDON

geography to the spatiality, governance and politics of learning in our times; when the local can never be understood divorced from the global and the global is intimately shaped and constrained by the local. Research on Europe can contribute to this agenda in important ways. There is no doubt that there is a powerful concentration of researchers and there is growing support for research on Europe, much more than in other parts of the world (apart from the USA). Even in simple human resource terms this makes Europe a key site and repository for understanding social space. However, the danger is that this resourcing of research on Europe encourages Eurocentrism: the focus on Europe without acknowledgement of other places; without the conceptually destabilizing effects of stepping outside the takenfor-grantedness of European frames of reference and consciousness; and without the recognition that in a polycentred world the relations of centre and periphery are fundamentally confounded. These are challenges not just for Europeans but for all, although they bite hardest where the resources for sustainability and the sense of being a leader are greatest.

3. POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE This collection on Europe therefore provides some excellent resources for understanding Europe and Europeanness, but it also frames up an important research agenda. As N6voa puts it, the challenge is: to re-encounter the coherence of intellectual thinking, to rediscover the sense of shared reflection that renews the “intellectual commitment”: not as a “prophecy,” which has the right to map out paths and prescribe solutions, but as an analysis that questions the evidence, that puts into doubt the ways of speaking and thinking, that rocks current habits.

The challenge is for researchers to recognize that they do not stand outside the reconfiguration of contemporary social spaces. There is no “outside.” Rather they (we) are inside the processes and this is having an impact on both the character of research and the contribution of researchers. What is at stake in our times of sociospatial reconfiguration, when the tides of political economic benefit run in ways that increase disadvantage and dispossession, is our capacity to retain a critical edge in practical inquiry, to retain a historical sensibility that steps beyond the immediacies of the here and now, to unpick pluralism as entrenched and worsening inequality, and to speak “truth to power.” The commercialization of research and educational entrepreneurship has tended to unseat these research capacities so that researchers become increasingly complicit in the reduction of research to rhetoric and its application within power relations. What is at stake is what counts as “powerful knowledge.” Researchers are implicated in powerful knowledge in a number of ways. One of our social contributions is to produce powerful knowledge as a public resource. We are also responsible, in a more historic sense, for maintaining a capacity for producing and defining powerful knowledge. This means that we have obvious responsibilities to prepare those who will take our places as researchers. It also requires us to protect the social institution of research, its practices of producing and refining knowledge

CODA: EUROPE, SOCIAL SPACE AND THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE

161

through dialogue and critique and its economic sustainability. This last is particularly contentious. It drives us towards the commercialization of research which contributes to the erosion of the place of research within the wider politics of knowledge. Engagement in this politics of place, the place of research, within the wider spatial reconfiguration of knowledge production is a further responsibility for researchers. Today, many would say that there is little difference whether governments buy knowledge through a university or one of the big global accountancy firms. Yet, if research is to be more than rhetoric and to retain a critical edge, it must retain its distinctive contribution. This is not only to investigate and analyse, to bring multiple perspectives together, and to report findings to the research user, be they a contracting party or the public more generally. Research consultancies aspire to these things as much as universities and often gamble their professional reputations on the integrity and objectivity of their research reporting. What differentiates researchers as a professional community is not just their contributions to knowledge or the maintenance of a capacity to produce powerful knowledge. Rather, it is their contribution to protecting powerful knowledge as an open and public dialogue in which what counts as powerful knowledge can be asserted, contested and supported. This means working to support minority voices as well as powerful voices. It means recognizing that powerful knowledge changes over time and that our responsibility is to hold open the possibility of change and contingency over time. As the chapters show, this agenda to reassert research as systematic and disciplined inquiry and collective conversation can be realized through many different perspectives and methodologies. Indeed, interdisciplinary conversations are the most powerful ways of beginning to draw together and understand the complex dimensions of contemporary social and educational change. But it also requires protected public spaces within which research can be conducted and conversations held. This book is one contribution to the practical politics of defending research as critical inquiry. It creates a social space in which critical commentary and modes of analysis of new learning spaces can be made public and open for dialogue. The formation of research networks, specialist conferences and research organizations can all contribute to this creation of “safe spaces” for research and dialogue. They are increasingly important in the current spatial politics of research, becoming increasingly important as universities have become more entangled in the global economy as transnational knowledge corporations. But universities cannot be given away. They remain a crucial space for critical inquiry both because of the obduracies of their history and culture, and because they remain the key institutions of learned labour. The politics for the heart and soul of the universities is fundamental to the reassertion of research over rhetoric. The challenge is for researchers to recognize that their contribution is not just to do research but fight for their conditions of existence, and the conditions that will sustain critical inquiry as a socially troubling activity for the future. Monash University, Australia

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

INDEX

borderless education 19, 20, 28

national 6, 21, 36, 60, 75, 133, 158 political 3, 5, 59

education identity 19 education policy 58, 72, 87, 96, 98, 99, 131, 133, 143, 158 education(al) space 19, 30, 47, 48, 49, 52, 5 Europe as a category of subjectivity 56 as an institutional.unity 56 European culture 37, 44, 47, 54, 55 European educational space 47, 59 European space 35, 37-40, 59, 64, 71, 72, 76, 79, 80, 82, 83, 87-89, 93, 94, 99, 101, 109, 124, 131, 144, 148, 149 europeanization of education 4, 21, 28, 142 europeanization of identity 3, 4, 57, 58 externalization 69-74, 76, 77, 7983, 90

knowledge economy 39, 41, 42, 43 liberalism 123 marketization 22, 26, 27 mass schooling 22, 42, 125, 139 nation-state 3, 10, 42, 57, 122, 145 neo liberalism, networking 41, 59, 80 borderless 17 networks 4, 11, 20, 24-27, 29, 30, 38, 39, 42-44, 58, 124, 136, 147, 149, 158, 161 new technologies 20, 25, 28, 125, 126, 143 partnership 20-22, 25, 29, 30, 77, 114, 159 professionalism 21, 22

global capital and production flows 22, 39, 121, 123 globalization 21, 24, 25, 30, 37, 39, 40, 47, 69, 71, 72, 80, 83, 89, 90, 101, 126, 135, 139, 141 governance 1, 3, 19-22, 25, 26, 29, 30, 55, 57, 77, 78, 135, 136, 138, 142, 144, 149, 160

school administration 21 governance 21, 136 teacher identity 21 professionalism,

identity community 21 cultural 21, 22, 23, 89 democratic 22 European 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 20, 22, 36, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 118, 119, 145, 146

welfare state 11, 121, 141

163