|
|
The Context and the Challenge
|
|
Mobilising Civil Society Paul Belanger, UNESCO Institute of Education, Hamburg Before dealing with the emerging active civil societies and the need for new policies I would like to talk to you about the changes in education in the post-industrial era. There has been a true transformation of the education we have seen in most of our countries, the post-industrial societies. In industrial countries about a third or even, in Sweden, more than half of the adult population is involved every year in some form of adult learning or continuing education. If you add to these numbers the people who want to participate you can see the figures you are looking at: 52% for Sweden; 44% for the UK; 37% for the Netherlands; a quarter of the population in Ireland. If you add to these figures the adults that said they want to take part in adult training but have not managed it because of a number of barriers you reach about two thirds of the European population. In other words, in post-industrial countries today the number of adults involved in organised training is well over the number of young people that you will find in primary and secondary schools. The educational scene in Europe is today made up of the active participation of the adult population. The problem is that it is difficult to monitor the participation of the adults in education and there we have difficulties in determining what this education scene really is. Funding Studies show that the main financier of adult education seems to be the employer. The second source of financing is the individuals and then comes the state. Therefore it is possible to get some help with funding at local or national level; but aid coming from the companies is considered as the main financing source for men, whereas individual financing is considered as the main means of financing education for women. All this is linked to the actual state of society and the unevenness between men and women. There are also differences between big companies and small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs. SMEs are the main creators of jobs in our societies. However, those companies participate less than big companies in the financing of adult learning. There is a growing gap between the people who have got the income to get education and those who have not. This contributes to widening the gap between those who are in and those who are out of the educational society and this is quite a challenge. But, and this is my second point, the uneven development of adult learning should not hide another phenomenon - the growth in demand for education among men and women in industrial countries. If you look at the growth in demand, we are now reaching a historical moment. The potential of the players in the economy have a strategic importance these days. There are uncertainties at economic level, at social level and the cultural level. These represent all opportunities and this is why the civil society is becoming critical for the future economic, social democratic future of post-industrial societies. The autonomy of individuals is not only a name, it is a pre-condition in advanced society. Post-industrial societies cannot meet the challenge, they now know, if there are not any new skills generated in all sectors of the population. I am talking about skills to manage uncertainty, skills to speak foreign languages, skills to face up to the multicultural nature of the society, skills to face up to any conflicts, so it is not only experts but the population in general that must show intelligence in post-industrial societies. The individual must understand technical information, must be able to use the expertise that exists through local communities, through local unions, through the local authorities etc. To produce things today is to ask questions in order to improve. Production is not only formal production it is intelligent men and women that have a potential and want to develop their creativity. You can not face up to today's challenges without developing the skills and the active participation of the individuals, employees in companies but also citizens in society. New Policies You will need new policies to face up to these challenges. You need to face up to criminality; you need new policies to reintegrate criminals. You cannot have solutions to environmental risks if the local communities are not stronger, if they are not part of the civil society and if they cannot act in that civil society. Racism cannot be dealt with by forbidding it either. You have to deal with it from the inside of civil societies, through education, through the action of those civil societies. We are talking about democratising democracy: that means the citizen must be stronger, there should be a new culture of citizenship. The right of the individual is not defined at the level of parliament but at each level of society. The emergence of active civil societies means that the welfare state will change, we are not moving from a welfare state to a state that does not want to get involved anymore, or that just wants to be a minimalist state. What we want is a participatory welfare state and it is important that there should be a new contract between the state and the civil society. We are talking about the national state or the European union. It is important that there should be a social contract so that the active participation of the citizens is guaranteed. So what does that mean for the level of the new policies? The new policies of education and adult learning are not first and foremost educational policies. If you want active policies for the labour market, active policies in the health field, active policies at the level of sustainable development, these new policies will have to be reflected in the new policies in education. Obviously you can have purely educational policies to take into account the education for adults. That's one point. But the policy for adult education tends to focus on the expression of a need at educational level and that is the main point and the Learning Age prospectus explains that clearly. Looking at the needs of adults means that you have to support education for those adults. In the '70s we looked at continuing education. There was a great debate then, and we must not forget the conclusions of this great debate, now there are new factors. For example, in Tuscany we are talking about the 40 week working week where you will go to work for 35 hours and you go and train for 5 hours. There are other developments in the field of training that go beyond continuing education. This is an important point. Role of the State We must not forget either the role of the state in the provision of education and the main point is partnership. It is a new phenomenon. It has become obvious that the Ministries have to work in partnership and we are seeing this partnership idea developing, partnerships with the labour market, partnerships with the union movement. Trade unions in Europe have an extremely important role to play because the associative life can generate all sorts of training activities. In Europe millions of people get some training, get some education through trade unions. It is estimated that one citizen out of 7 in Europe takes part in education through trade unions, but it is also important to look at the new role of the state. Adult learning and adult education is not the same thing as the initial education of young people. Ministries for Education, for Social Affairs, for Culture, for Labour are all important and you have to get all these players together so that you have a state, a government policy. This is quite a challenge. Lifelong learning crosses sectors and you can not export a model of initial learning into lifelong learning. The state has also a corrective role, You cannot reverse the main trend that already exist if the state does not take some actions in association with its partners. The under- privileged populations in some countries participate much more than in other countries, which proves that if you change the policy you can get different results. But changing at state level does not only mean national states or local authorities it also means the European Union. There are emerging active and educational societies in Europe but these educational societies could be lifelong learning societies that would mean that their population must repetitively have access to new knowledge, to new technologies, but it could also be a society that transmits knowledge on a continuous basis. The Europe of Knowledge is rather an ambiguous expression because an emerging educational society can be a truly integrated active society that focuses on the player. Instead of the Europe of Knowledge, what I would have liked to see was Europe of Creative Active Citizens. Democratisation of creativity is a name but also a necessity if 20th Century societies want to survive. The active civil society which is the core of lifelong learning is not a clientele that you will serve or that you will subject to your power. An active civil society is the gathering of active individuals that have and enormous creative potential. It is a society which has an active economy that can negotiate within its self more equal share of the wealth. An active civil society is also a society that acts, that thinks and that frees the potential of productive forces within itself, the core of a lifelong learning policy.
|
