In every training course, there is one morning where you wake up with a terrible headache.

While trying to orient yourself – Where am I? Where is my head? Is this my room? Who are you?! – you vaguely remember the previous night, and the enlightenment hits you right there and then: it was the Polish Vodka.

During the next training, you stay away from the vodka, but the Armenian Brandy is just the same… In fact, you can easily recognise regular training course participants – they are the ones who stay away from most of the drinks during the infamous, obligatory, intercultural night.

A night of drinks and snacks, songs and dances.

A night that is rightfully confronted with some fundamental questions: How to make sure that intercultural evenings do not become a parody of what intercultural learning is about? How to avoid the nationalization of culture in an international environment?

These are just two questions asked in the introduction to the seminar on

«Intercultural Learning – which ways forward?»

organised by the Directorate of Youth of the Council of Europe at the end of November 2007 in the European Youth Centre Budapest.

And it seems as if such questions are not asked very often: most intercultural evenings indeed are a parody of what intercultural learning is about.

They have little to do with the people,
they reinforce stereotypes,
they have no educational meaning.

As Laimonas writes in an article for Coyote
to be published in the beginning of next year:

«Recently hardly anyone takes into consideration whether or why such an evening is really needed.»

Laimonas uses the widely known – and also widely disputed – iceberg concept of culture to make his point in saying that

«the majority of intercultural evenings are keeping people just on top of the iceberg. The underwater parts of the iceberg simply remain undiscovered.»

You can dislike the iceberg concept as much as you want, Laimonas does have a point.

So we ask you: how can we do better?

Fire away with ideas – and in January, hold them against Laimonas ideas and experiences on how to get from floating on top of the iceberg to diving into the depth of the cold water underneath.

We can’t say no more but this: it is worth the wait (and we will obviously link to the article once it has appeared in print)!

Happily co-written by Laimonas Ragauskas, Bastian Küntzel and Andreas Karsten.

She suggests that the target-driven approach of New Labour is the reason why the British education system fails more than 150.000 school students every year, who leave primary school without understanding even the basics of numeracy.

«The fact that so many pupils aren’t grasping maths is just one symptom of a much deeper problem. There’s a great deal of determined teaching going on in schools, but much less learning. The way lessons are constructed leaves huge numbers of children baffled, disengaged, bored or angry. [...] Education is not about discovery, but the dutiful repetition of precisely what you have been told.»

Russel goes on to observe that

«the problems in schools stem from the conveyor-belt attitude to education. The curriculum and the literacy and numeracy strategies have been developed in the belief that children can be stuffed with a little more information every day, and that this amounts to education.»

She describes that

«lessons are structured so rigidly that teachers must move on to the next topic, regardless of whether it’s been understood. An experienced primary teacher has a despairing analogy for what she feels forced into. “It’s as if a train is leaving the station at the end of every lesson, and every time some of the children are being left behind.”»

According to Russell, the number of NEETS — «teenagers not in education or training» — has not really changed despite millions the government has poured into education:

«[...] there’s been no improvement in literacy or numeracy scores for several years, and half of all children are still leaving school at 16 with no worthwhile qualifications. Truancy has not fallen.»

Russel quotes Geoff Mulgan, a former head of the policy unit at No 10, who says that «schools aren’t developing the abilities people need for their lives or for their work.» She concludes that

«what’s needed is an honest evaluation of the limitations of our target-driven, exam-dominated, box-ticking system, and the development of a much more productive model.»

In a letter to the editor, Professor Michael Bassey from Nottinghamshire observes that

«it is the whole educational experience, not just numeracy, that should concern him [Gordon Brown]. Our young people need much more than the government’s obsession with numeracy and literacy: they also need to learn to be supportive of each other and able to work cooperatively; to develop their intelligence, creativity and other talents to their full potential; to be immersed in the culture of our time and to become proficient in branches of knowledge according to their aptitude and interests; to be adventurous and self-confident; to understand themselves and through all this to be joyful.»

The professor goes on to say:

«This kind of preparation for the future can only come from the humanity, insights, values, culture, empathy and hard work of dedicated teachers working in schools that are free to think about the future, make their own assessments of pupils’ needs and construct their curricula accordingly. If even half the money spent on assessment and inspection instead went on increasing the numbers of teachers and improving the resources of the more challenging schools, so much would be achieved. Accountability should be local, not pseudo-national.»

And he concludes that

«the next education act should free all schools from government interference, release the creativity and insights of their teachers and foster the all-round development of young people.»

Well said, Professor. Thank you.

Dr. Peter Scott from the Centre for New Media, Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University, UK predicts that “the future will show that formal and informal models of learning will start to combine powerfully into a joint strand which is some way between both; something like ‘non-formal’ learning.”

Something like, eh?!

The most important resource of the twentyfirst century, politicians say, is education. How fatally wrong: The most important resource, being the most scarcely one, is willpower.

In a nutshell, the article argues that transformation and change will happen not through education alone.

So how do we reach for the stars now?

Pictures courtesy of Lida Rose and Carf.

“Education is a gateway to employment and in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels continue to rise, with many countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications in particular, according to data in the 2006 edition of the OECD’s annual publication “Education at a Glance”.

[For your convenience: Direct Links to 2006 - Main Site and Tables of Indicators]

But while more than one third of students across OECD countries – and around 50% in some countries — now obtain university degrees – a persistently large share of young people do not complete secondary school, today’s baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

On average across OECD countries, only 56% of adults without upper secondary qualifications are in employment. Of those who are, 26% earn one-half or less than one-half of the national median earnings. While many countries have seen steeply rising benefits from university education, including some of those where university education has expanded most, people who have not completed upper secondary school, and particularly women, continue to face serious labour-market penalties.

To address this, OECD analysts say, countries will need to scale back inherently class-biased and often regressive ways of funding educational opportunities, the effects of which often show up in educational attainment measurements. On average across OECD countries, for example, students from the most socio-economically disadvantaged quartile of the population are 3.5 times more likely than their peers to be in the bottom quartile of mathematics performers, and in no country is this less than twice as likely to be the case.

A compendium of national education statistics on indicators ranging from class sizes to teacher salaries, Education at a Glance provides governments and education specialists with internationally comparable data as a basis for policy debate and decisions. Among other things, this year’s edition shows that:

• On average in OECD countries, 84% of people who have achieved a tertiary education qualification are in employment. By contrast, only 56% of people without even an upper secondary qualification have jobs.
• Public funding of education remains a social priority, even in OECD countries with relatively little public involvement in other areas: between 1995 and 2003, education took a growing share of total public expenditure in most countries, with Denmark, Greece, New Zealand, the Slovak Republic and Sweden showing particularly significant shifts in public funding in favour of education.
• At the tertiary level, however, the proportion of public expenditure as a share of total spending has fallen from an average of 81.2% in OECD countries in 1995 to an average 76.2% in 2003, with only the Czech Republic, Ireland, Norway and Spain showing an increase. The proportion of tertiary education funded privately varies from more than 50% in Australia, Japan, Korea and the United States as well as the partner country Chile to less than 5% in Denmark, Finland, Greece, Norway and Turkey. Most of private funding comes from households, notably through tuition fees which are charged in three-quarters of OECD countries, though at widely varying levels.
• Rapidly growing numbers of students are enrolling in tertiary education outside their home country. In 2004, they comprised 2.7 million students worldwide, an 8% increase on the previous year and more than twice as many as in 1995. More than half of these students are enrolled in four OECD countries – the United States (22%), the United Kingdom (11%), Germany (10%), and France (9%).
• Annual salaries of teachers with at least 15 years experience at lower secondary level range from around USD 10,000 in Poland to USD48 000 or more in Germany, Korea and Switzerland and more than USD 80,000 in Luxembourg.
• Gender differences in educational qualification rates are shifting in favour of women. For 55-to-64-year-olds, average duration of formal study favours women in only three countries, but for 25-to-34-year-olds, the average number of years of study completed is higher among women in 20 out of 30 OECD countries, and of the remaining 10 countries only Switzerland and Turkey register differences of more than six months in favour of men.

Education at a Glance 2006 can be purchased in paper or electronic form through the OECD’s Online Bookshop.

Further information on Education at a Glance 2006 can be found directly at the OECD’s website here http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2006, as can country chapters on Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

Source: Low educational attainments continue to penalise people in many OECD countries, Copyright OECD 2006.