Normally I speak Luxemburgish, my mother tongue.
And when the year 2001 was decided to become the European Year of Languages, people asked me, what the important languages were.
I said: There is only one important language, and that is the mother tongue. Wether it is spoken by 200,000 people or wether it is spoken by 200 Million people, it does not matter. This is the language, which shapes the human being, which shapes personality, and shows that the person has a context, and that really is the only thing that counts. And it is, I think, an important thing to say, because it is a very strong symbol of Europe. Europe, which is made of so many different cultures, culures which may be shared by many, or cultures which may be shared of very few, but all of them are important, because any form this great mosaik of European peoples. This cultural diversity is a true welth and we need to preserve it. We need to preserve it throughout all the policies we persue and at all levels.
And we need to see, how important it is, that we preserve the roots of every single individual. We saw this in fact on the 11th of September. Because roots which are badly understood, badly comprehended, give life to plants, which do not open up towards others, and this leads to incomprehension, and finaly to death. And I think, that we as Europeans, have a huge responsibility here. We have to enjoy our differences and enjoy them through dialogue, because there is no point in living my identity alone. I have to live it through those, who surround me. And if I want people to respect my identity, then I have to respect their identity. And so there is a dual task that we have to perform in this – our – Europe, we have to preserve the roots of the human beeing and we have to build bridges between cultures. And I just suggested to president Prodi, that we should act quickly, because for the moment to combat terrorism and combat violence, we have to put in place all the measures which you are well aware of. Short time measures, which are measures to try to root out and eradicate terrorism, but once we have done that, we really have only just started. Because in the medium and long term there is a whole new system of dialogue and education, we have to set up. And I think it is time, to start that now. We have not done enough so far as Europeans. I think we have been focused too much on economic issues - with a great deal of success, but we have been concentrating on finance and the Euro, the baby which will be born on 1st of January. But we have left aside the idea, that both economy and finance is the service of human beings and the only thing that counts are relationships between men and that men feel at home. And when I say men I mean human beings, I’m talking about the human being. And so we have to start this dialogue here, dialogue between different cultures, between different religions, but also between ourselfes and other continents. For example we have set up a process, called the Barcellona Process and that is to bring together around the mediterranean European people and people from the Maghreb. Now this process is there on paper, but we have never actually put it into practice, and maybe now it is high time, that we do start building that bridge and that we start that dialogue between civilisations, because when we speak, once you are speaking, you are not killing each other and when we are speaking, we try to understand, and when we understand then we are no longer afraid, and when we are no longer afraid, then there is no need to be violent. And I really think that we have to get this dialogue going. It is really a depelled conviction of mine.
And I think with that all instruments, everything we have available, we do not need to start reinventing things. All these instruments we have available need to be used. And what are they? Yesterday and today I met in Bruxelles with all kinds of sporting federations from Europe. European faderations, national ones, regional ones, all those, who manage sport together with president Jacque Rogue. And sport is very lucky to have him. And so we can use sport, why not. Sport can teach fair play, can teach respect for rules, can teach respect for the adversery, can teach respect for fair competition and this is something we could use to pass on the massage that we want to get across. And the year 2004 will be the European Year for Education through Sport. So it will be a year that we are going to start preparing now, not just for the question of physical culture in our schools, and god knows we do need that, because our children are becoming more count potatoes than athletes. So we do need to have more physical education in our schools, that is quite clear, but we also need to ensure, that the values that sport represents have to be put into our heads and that’s what I will be trying to do in the next few months and years with the pinacle of that being the European Year for Education through Sport. And toghether with the president of the International Olympic Committee, I have started put together some pilot projects to try to teach the true values of the Olympics, which are the values of humanity, these are values which our children need to learn and I would like to use these major sporting events to try to create the right kind of symbol. There is the olympic flame for example, a very powerful symbol, that is the symbol of union and around that symbol of union we can talk of course about our differences, about our cultures, but we can also talk about what unies us. And when we all assemble around that flame, we will understand, that we are very similar whilst being different. And from the Organisation Committee of the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and in Torino in 2006, I have managed to ensure that the olympic flame can go through the countries of Europe, carried by all citicens, old and young, big and small, women, men, disabled people, abled bodied people, by political leaders, by those who have no material power. And we will bring people together around this idea. And I think that Europe needs symbols of this type. Europe needs to remember that it is something more than just a large market place. We need European citizens to remember that they are more than just consumers and this is a symbol which I would like to use to try to move ahead.
I talked about sport, but I could talk about education as well. We have had a great idea for our universities that we recreate the middle ages. Now do not laugh, because in the middle ages things were very good at least as far as universities are concerned, because students could go from one center of excellence to another, they could move from one university to another. There were no frontiers to knowledge then, there were not the artificial frontiers which have been constructed subsiquent to that period and we are going to recreate this possibility. I want in the future us to be able to have a university degree after having gone through a university course in several different universities in several different countries. You could start your studies here in Bruxelles and then move to Berlin and finish them in Bologna and get a degree. And together with my colleague Chris Patten who is responsible for international affairs we have tried to ensure that this system, this network, these bridges between universities will not just be valid here in Europe. We want to also build bridges between European universities and universities on other continents. Not in terms of the old system, the bilateral system, where the Spanish had special relations with South America for example. That is not, what I want. I want there to be meetings of different Europeans in different European cities and that there will be then these meeting with other continents in different countries. Bringing together the universities, bringing them together in a network. To show our young intellectuals that the world is a diverse world, that they should learn about this diversity and that they should build these bridges between civilisations. Last Monday, here together with Jacque Delors, there was a major meeting of the professors of the Jean Monnet Chair. We have hundrets of these here in Europe, in Eastern Europe, in the rest of the world. We have professors, who have done their work in the history of Europe, who talk about the future of Europe, built on the foundations of its past and I want there to be more Jean Monnet Chairs throughout the world. So that there will be more and more young people who can learn about Europe. Because Europe is a unique and marvellous system. We have never seen anything like this in the history of our peoples. Peoples who are voluntarely coming together without being compelled to do so by war. People who are abondoning their power to share it with others. It is a unique model, one that we could not copy anywhere else, because no one has ever done it before. And that is why admittadly sometimes we make mistakes, because we are learning, we are learning because we move ahead, it is by walking that we learn to walk, by building we learn to build. And so we need to use what we have available to us to build these bridges, the bridges between Europeans and Europe and other continents.
And
of course education will play a hughe role in all that. So what is the European
education policy? I’m sure you have wandered about that yourselfes. Because
you know very well, that school, curricular, and education organizations,
these are things which are very much a national or regional propertive, depending
on the country concerned. And yes, that is the way things are and that is
the way they will stay. But – and this is the but – heads of stating government,
at the Lisbon Summit wanted to make Europe into the best knowledge based society
in the world and anyone who says knowledge based society is basicly talking
about knowledge and therefor it is necessary talking about education and training,
it is necessarily talking about men and women, it is necessarily talking pupil,
student, teacher, professor. And it is a very new eliment to our new European
policy, which so far had been primarily focused on economy and finance. And
it is the first time that – and this is almost a cultural revolution – people,
knowledge, education have been put in the center of all our concerns. And
so we looked together at what the problems are and what have we seen: that
problems are not really different from one country to the next. Of course
there are differences, because there are different cultures, because there
are different systems and that is not going to change. But the problems are
the
same. The problem of languages, and who is going to set this. If I look at
the knowledge of foreign languages in our different countries – above from
Luxemburg, which is a major exception, not because we are cleverer than anybody
else, but because we are very small and we are surrounded by big neighbours
– quite francly elsewhere things are not going very well, not at all. So how
can we create a Europe of regions, if we cannot speak the language of the
neighbouring region. I think it is rediculous, that on the border between
France and Germany the French children do not learn German and the German
children do not learn French. And I said to my ministers: What is going on?
Please find a solution! And they have decided at the last Franco-German-Summit
that there would be an exchange of teachers and that is logical. You start
learning languages in the craddle and the Luxembugis have shown, how that
can happen. People learn languages by playing in Luxemburg, which does not
destroy Luxemburgish at all. When we speak together we would never occur to
speak French to each other, of course we speak Luxemburgish, because that
is our language. We speak it more and more. Which does not mean that we do
not speak French and German as well. We learn to speak and write German at
the age of 6 and at 7 we learn French. And so that means that our children
are trilingual and more because we have Portoguise citizens, we have Italians,
who speak their language as well. So you can see: if Luxemburgers can do it,
you can do it. Because as I said: Luxemburgers are not necessarily cleverer
than everybody else. And that is what I said to the minister. And in France
incredible things have happened, because the French tended to be the most
inclosed, they thought it was French and nothing else. And then Jacque Lange
decided that for the school year, which has just started, there would be introduced
from the very youngest age language lessons. But there were problems with
that, because they did not have enough teachers, but he did it none the less.
And this again is a cultural revolution. He decided that he would finance
bilingual schools, french-breton-schools, which again is a cultural revolution.
But it is the right path to take and what did he do to get help and support
- given that there were not enough teachers trained, because it takes time
obviously to train teachers. What he did was to sign an agreement with the
BBC for example, so that French schools could use educational programs made
by the BBC, obviously therefor in English. And that went someway to covering
the gap because of the lack of teachers. And he has had another idea, which
I think is an extraordinary one as well: he is going to give to non-french
students, who come to France to study, a special grant – a language grant
– if they agree that for several hours a week they will go and teach their
mother tongue in a French school. And voilà - things are moving, it
works. And in the European Year of Language I have talked to one country,
which is a difficult country as far as language learning is concerned, but
you can see: things can move. Look what Europe can do. Europe is making these
changes in mentality. It is causing these changings in systems.
And perhaps I should give another example: We have seen, that there are major deficits as far as science is concerned – in all our countries. And that is why I brought together ministers of education and ministers of research in Uppsala, so that we could get together and 30 ministers and commissioners could discuss what is going on, why we are so far behind in scientific studies. And we found out why – it is very simple. In Europe 50 percent of science teachers are over 50. Now, chairman, please do not misunderstand me here, I’m not saying that that is a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with being over 50 - as I can testify -, but to teach children cool science of today we need young cool teachers who are committed. And we have not got them for the moment. And what is missed serious is that the cat is biting it’s own tail. Children tend to think about what they are going to do when they grow up, when they are about 9 or 10 years old. If at the age of 9 or 10 the young people have no contact with somebody who teaches them science enthusisticly then they are not going to choose to become science teachers themselfes, or research scientists. It is a vicious circle. So we have got to start somewhere. We have to shake up our education methods and find teachers and research scientists available to find the best methods to teach science. So that young people have a real interest and they can choose to go into sciences. The other day when I gave a speech in Luxemburg for the 50th anniversery of the European Assosiation of Junior Doctors I said: get out of your offices, get out of your labs, go to the schools, speak about your enthusiasm for sciences and scientology to give rise to some interest. And I think that you too have a role to play, to encourage children to choose evocation and to speak with enthusiasm what you have done. You cannot leave everything to the institutions. Civil society has to deal with things and move on. We have noticed that in Europe – Europe which is to become the best knowledge based society in the world – we are also lacking people who can work on computers. We have a deficit of 1.7 million posts of work which could be filled if we had qualified staff. Green cards and so on are not the solution. The solution is to train these people at home. And it is not simply technological training, do not believe that! Because technological training is what young people have in their genes, they are much better on computers than we older ones are. But we have seen in our analisis, that to be a good specialist in IT, 80 percent of knowledge is social knowledge and experience of work in a team. So it is human knowledge, human personal relations and we have to ask our schools to teach this, these human relations. So these are the reflections which the ministers discussed together and Europe makes experts available to look at possible solutions. And when ministers go home and decide what to do they make a reform or not. They are free to choose. All 15 of us together decided to analyse the quality of our education regularely. That too is a revolution. Imagine five years ago any minister accepting a foreign minister coming to modeling his own education system, that was inconsiderable. But we are doing that today. What do we do? We go all over Europe to look at the spelling and grammar skills of ten year olds.
What are their abilities in foreign languages for 14 year olds, what is the maths like of a nine year old? And we find grating qualities. Not all countries are bad at everything, not all are good at everything. But often we have subjects in which we are very strong and subjects in which we are not so strong. And if we make this quality analisis, we are not doing it to say this country is marvellous and the other country is rubbish, we are doing this to say: well, you are very good in your country in all subjects except that one, so try to make corrections to improve quality. What ministers of education can do - which pupils cannot do - is copy from their neighbour. Ministers in countries who are not much good in language teaching can be brought to Luxemburg, because there we have the experience. And in other countries – well we are not so good at maths in Luxemburg – we learn from another. And by copying from a neighbour we can make much more rapid progress together, because the purpose is very simple. It is to have good quality education for everybody. So we have young generations who produce a good performance, so we can build a knowledge based society together, as requested by our heads of statern government in Luxemburg. I have given you some examples to show, what we can do in an area which is and will always be in the hands of regional or national governments. It is not up to me to reform Belgian education, it is up to the flemish or wallone minister to do so. But they will be able to learn together from the other ministers how this can be done. Doing it is an absolutely national thing. But if we all begin together to look at what works and what does not work and what should be done to make improvements, we do that, because nobody then can say that they cannot do something. They will be reproached with us saying: No, you do not want to! So there will be pressure from the national parliaments and pressure from the media who will be asking: Well, you ministers have a deficit in mathematics, why are you not carrying out a reform? Our neighbours are better at language teaching, why don’t we make an effort. So we are making progress together.
And then there is another area which I wanted to talk about: it is the European area that we are dealing with together and that is the fact that in our societies technical knowledge lives for about five or ten years at the moment and will only last for three years in future. So if we want people, who have studied until they are starting out in the job, not to loose their ability as workers after five or ten years then we have to continue to train them. That is one aspect of things and the 2nd aspect is that we are entering times in which young people will become a rare commodity. We cannot allow ourselfes to have young people who have not been trained, it costs too much money and we do not have enough young people on the markets. So we have to recycle them. I have got three boys myself and they do not understand the importance of going to school every day and sometimes they realise - when they come to the age of 25 or 30 - that it would have been better for them to pay attention when they were young. We are going to try to recycle them. We are going to give them a second or third chance. So as to train them and integrate them into the labour market instead of financing them as unemployed workers. And then there is a third area, if I say, we do not have enough young people. We have a population which is beginning to have a high percentage of the elderly for whom school day were in the dimm and distant past. So we have to be able to be strong participants in the future society. So for all these reasons and to reenforce people’s ability to take part in the society as citizens, training and lifelong learning and apprenticeship in the years to come will be an absolute need. It is a major issue and it is a difficult one. Why is it difficult? Because in most of our countries lifelong learning does not exist, it is not a tradition. Some nordic countries have been doing this to greater extend, but in Central and Southern Europe it is relatively unknown. Whereas it is a state of mind. As I said the other day when I opened the Academic Year in Paris: Well you believe now, that you are going to get your degree and then that’s it! No no, once you’ve got your degree, that’s just the start of it. And you’ll continue the whole of your life.
So it is not only vocational training, and why is it so difficult? Simply because it is not the kind of training given at school. It is informal and that is where I have to ask for your help. It is not the type of training which schools have traditionally provided. It is training, which the social partners will have to get involved in. The assosiations, the political parties will have to play a role as well. So we will have to rethink training completely. At the next council of ministers of education we are going to discuss my practical proposals in depth, regarding lifelong learning, and we are going to get going with the new method called “open coordination”. We coordinate our efforts and learn from one another while safeguarding subsidiarity. That is the power of the states or the reagions to organise their education. And we need your commitment as well. So chairman, I count on your organisation which is made up of politicians, those who built Europe, those who built European policies in their regions, in their countries, people with experience, which is what we need to create this new part of Europe – and that is our duty.
(Summary
by Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Walter PAUL, using also the tape recording by the simultaneous
translaters)