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EU Presents ”Rethinking Education”

20 November 2012, Brussels/Strasbourg
 
Europe believe that it needs a radical rethink on how education and training systems: the youth unemployment rate is close to 23% BUT at the same time there are more than 2 million vacancies that cannot be filled.
 
Some of the ”Rethinking Education” issues presented in brief:
 
– A much stronger focus on developing transversal skills and basic skills, especially to entrepreneurial and IT skills.
– A new benchmark on foreign language learning.
– Investment in world-class vocational education and training systems and increase levels of work-based learning.
– Member States need to improve the recognition of qualifications and skills
– Technology, in particular the internet, must be fully exploited.
 
Please read more here.
 

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This entry was posted on November 22, 2012, 5:11 PM and is filed under European Union Issues, Labour & Employment, Population & Human Rights, Sustainable Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. #1 by stephenbrown1 on November 22, 2012 - 6:15 PM

    I believe one cause of the educational curriculum unhappiness is that originally, education was for priests to learn the bible in monasteries and seminaries.

    and then various people over time, got the idea and built schools or put a bunch of seminaries together as in the case of the University of Toronto. So the cause of the lack of practical job ready skills, for people leaving universities, is that they were never originally designed for jobs or business in the first place. And traces of the historical set up still remain with us. the DNA of universities is seminary or monastery.

    Thus schools get the nickname ivory tower.

    Another cause of the lack of practical or marketable skills for young people is that a teacher, will teach anything as long as the student pays him. It is just a job. So even job training centers in Toronto base their curriculum not on what they KNOW works, but on what is popular with the students. Who have no jobs. You have a demad driven school, however the people demanding the classes don’t really know what they need. They just want a job.

    In the University of Toronto, which I respect, there used to be a class called Old Norse. learning ancient Norwegian. so I asked people why they offered this class. They told me that students wanted the prestige of having studies something that you have no idea about. the course is simply for the prestige. That IS the purpose of it.

    Finally, there is a story in the book of Chinese idioms about a student that goes away for three years and learns how to slay dragons and returns to his hometown with a degree in dragon slaying. Unfortunately there are no dragons.

    So i find that is what poeple are unhappy with about the curriculum of schools. They have a seminary, DNA for the purpose of bible exegesis, heuristics and bible analysis emphasizing learning languages, some courses are plainly fillers such as Old Norse, but popular for some reason, and the students graduate with the confidence that they can get a job when in fact, they didn’t study IT, or how to get a job, or are too other worldly.

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    • #2 by Bogdan Marius Beleuz on November 23, 2012 - 11:37 AM

      The educational system need to be reformed, which is very clear for all.

      First of all, the instructional education, a part of a scientific formation, should help the young people to get and develop their talents, skills and abilities.

      I appreciated to share your comments and opinions with us.

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  2. #3 by vliesha on November 22, 2012 - 7:54 PM

    If there are that much vacancies in Europe that cannot be full filled yet, it is easy for foreigners (like me) to work there? I mean, I’m a hard working person who have the love for travel, so I’m really interested in having a work in a new country.

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    • #4 by Bogdan Marius Beleuz on November 23, 2012 - 10:53 AM

      Hi, it seems there is a problem of specialization, because in the same time there is 23% of unemployment rate in the EU countries. If your professional profile does not adjust to the employer requests, EU is not a recommended place to search for a job. Good look!…

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  3. #5 by Wilhelmina on November 23, 2012 - 2:49 AM

    There are a thousand things that could be said about this, but point blank this is more mindless technocratic engineering. It’s questionable to what extent ‘education’ (i.e. indoctrination) is useful and to what extent most people are even educable. Not only would private schooling be better, schooling is a WASTE OF TIME for most people.

    I’ll just throw out a few quotes on the subject I utterly endorse.

    “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.” – Peter Thiel

    “Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made. He does not owe anything to the favor of those in power.”
    – Ludwig von Mises, “Bureaucracy”

    “Any man who tried to contend that public education could “work very well” couldn’t rationally defend his case in one hundred billion pages.” – R.C. Hoiles in a letter to Ludwig von Mises

    “There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions.” – Ludwig von Mises, “Liberalism”

    “State-controlled and standardized education is, in fact, a forced stultification of the masses. All governments which set courses of education in terms of formal curricula and force people to learn those courses coerce their citizens. All methods of education prevailing in the world should be destroyed through a universal cultural revolution that frees the human mind from curricula of fanaticism which dictate a process of deliberate distortion of man’s tastes, conceptual ability and mentality.” – Moammar Gadhafi, Green Book v. 3

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    • #6 by Bogdan Marius Beleuz on November 23, 2012 - 11:02 AM

      Thank you for the quotes, I really enjoyed reading them.

      I agreed that the institutional education not always stimulate the young people and it always must be completed by family, autodidacticism and society models.
      As some quotes state, the talent and the genius cannot be thought, just developed.

      Thank you for your attention.

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  4. #7 by genomega1 on November 23, 2012 - 5:38 PM

    Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
    EU Presents ”Rethinking Education”

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  5. #8 by Dr Tony Marshall on November 28, 2012 - 12:33 AM

    I think that education should be viewed from in Latin roots, being “leading out”. Education should aim at self worth, self confidence, self discipline, and self reliance. You cannot teach that. It has to drawn out and it has to be learnt. Doesn’t really matter whether philosophy or plumbing; at some point you are going to have to stand up and convince someone that you are the one to believe and be the one to follow.

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  6. #9 by Bogdan Marius Beleuz on December 8, 2012 - 1:04 PM

    EU Skills Panorama – a website presenting quantitative and qualitative information on short- and medium-term skills needs, skills supply and skills mismatches.

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