Teaching European Citizenship - Europe at home and abroad
Since “Europe” is part of the Austrian curriculum for the 18-year-olds, we tried to dedicate the best part of the summer term 2005 to a new approach to this sometimes rather controversial topic. A class of 18 students were split into three groups dealing with the following topics: Where do we come from?, Countries and their anthems, and Comparison of European newspapers.
Where do we come from?
This activity was run by girls of non-Austrian descent who carried out interviews both in school and at home, filled in questionnaires and evaluated them.
The results were of no real surprise since they showed the generation and education gaps primarily between first generation immigrants (mainly from Turkey and former Yugoslavia) and their descendants. Yet they also gave a prominent reflection of the younger generation’s desire for education, their readiness to take on the challenges of foreign cultures, their quest to realise the best of both worlds, and their readiness to be “Europeans”, all this in view of sometimes quite critical remarks on the gaps between European politicians and European citizens. The result of this activity was recorded on a CD-ROM, available for further use in school.
Countries and their anthems
This group used the Internet as a source of information for the lyrics (and music) of the 25 individual anthems of all EU member countries. The students analysed the lyrics for the following features: • What’s the main theme of the text? – references to history, geography, distinguished personalities and their achievements, is it mainly an expression of hope for the future or glorifying a great but often war-torn past. • If available – to which extent does the music reinforce the ideas, visions and ideals in the lyrics.
The overall response was fascinating to watch as this work took my students off the beaten track into regions of thinking they had not been familiar with. They were particularly surprised by - as they saw it – highly inappropriate words of glorification and praise of battles and wars. The question of suitability of such words and images in a united Europe remained unanswered, however, was preceded by quite a fervent debate.
Comparison of European newspapers
In order to find useful sample papers from various member countries in English my students went to www.mondotimes.com which they described as a huge warehouse of international papers.
The main problem here was to find a topic that most newspapers dealt with in common so to elicit different points of view on one issue. Since this took place around the NO-votes on the European Constitution in France in the Netherlands my students received quite an astounding insight into a wide range of different views which had mainly one fact in common: they bore hardly any resemblance to explanations given by the politicians.
At the same time, students realised that there is no such thing as an independent newspaper, no matter where in Europe, as every journalist takes his very personal approach to the issue. The final statement of this group culminated in the unanimous statement that it will be quite a while before Europe gets something like a constitution. However, what’s far more important, it reinforced awareness that Europe needs obligatory contracts and rules. According to the students, people are to a large extent ready for them, but it’s the politicians who need to be convinced rather than the citizens.
