PROJET CULTUREL EUROPEEN

While Europe does have a certain identity, to affirm it firmly it lacks a common culture and, in particular, shared ethical and aesthetic values, which are the only things capable of uniting peopl...

The project had a number of objectives. - To highlight, by means of a double questionnaire in the 10 countries, what ‘curators’ - qualified people from the worlds of education, culture and politics, as well as students and parents - considered to be a European culture in which everyone could identify. - Then translate this common corpus into a reference framework of knowledge, skills and attitudes that would serve as a basis for teachers. - To experiment simultaneously in the 10 countries with integrating this European content into the teaching provided at primary and secondary level; - draw lessons on how to extend this European dimension to teaching and be in a position to propose tools to facilitate it. - More generally, the aim was to enhance the partners' knowledge of European culture, develop future working relationships between them and promote the opportunities offered by the Erasmus programme to the experimental schools.

While Europe does have a certain identity, to affirm it firmly it lacks a common culture and, in particular, shared ethical and aesthetic values, which are the only things capable of uniting people around mobilising objectives. The part reserved for Europe and its culture is still too symbolic in the curricula for the feeling of European belonging and identity to be present at the various levels of schooling. Initially, the project consisted of cooperation between the ten European partners to bring out the ‘European culture’, the fruit of a shared reflection first at national level and then synthesised during meetings. The next objective was to translate this common or shared European culture into a reference framework that could be integrated into a trial conducted in year 2 of the project at the various experimental sites. It was hoped that, by the end of the experiment, pupils and teachers would be more aware of their European identity and that the European dimension given to teaching would strengthen the feeling of belonging to Europe and open up new prospects.

The partnership had committed itself to 5 intellectual productions, all of which have been completed and are accessible on the project website in all the languages of the partnership and on the websites of each partner. In addition to these products, the working sessions have led to the production of a number of resources for the classroom, which can also be accessed on the website, and what is probably the most important achievement, the development of a multi-annual work programme to integrate the European dimension into teaching at primary level. This material, which has also been translated into all languages, is already being used in schools. It is the result of an observation of the experiment carried out in all the classes and of the effects on the pupils and their teachers of this European approach to teaching. All of them confirmed, as shown in the results presented in the appendix, the added value brought to the pupils' learning as well as to their attitude to their daily work. For the teachers involved in the project, this was the most obvious result.