Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-08-Speech-5-028"
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"en.20000908.4.5-028"2
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"Mr President, I hope I will not strike too discordant a note, but it seems to me this debate has been excessively self-congratulatory so far. When I picked up the agenda and read the phrase ‘Year of Lifelong Learning’ it seemed to me that this was an oxymoron similar to the phrase ‘military intelligence’. A year seems a short time for the project.
The question is: how valuable are these ‘Year of ...’ enterprises when applications for funding have to be submitted within three months and everything will have to be carried out in one year. I have been at the receiving end of such systems, both as a university teacher and when I was involved in an educational and social charity.
From the point of view of people trying to do the job, these challenges, at very short notice and with very little explanation of how applications are to be made and what criteria are to be applied, can do at least as much harm as good.
One can always point to the fact afterwards that the money was spent and other money came in and that good things have been achieved; but could things have been done better? Both the Committee reports – the Committee report and the subsidiary Committee opinion – draw attention to the fact that the assessment methodology used by the Commission was not very exact and the criteria set were not particularly clear.
This is not to say we should not do these things, but we should do them better and reflect very carefully on what can best be done at Community level and what at lower levels, not even at Member State level or in autonomous regions within the Member States, but right down at the level of schools, colleges and universities.
My constituency has just come through a serious crisis in its educational assessment, partly due to a lack of proper consultation with classroom teachers. Grandiose ideas issued from on high and not adequately and rigorously tested at the sharp end will always fail, sometimes with damaging consequences for individuals and for society. Subsidiarity matters, especially in a field like education and lifelong learning, and we forget that at our peril.
Networking can be useful in disseminating ideas for best practice, but we must not delude ourselves that a Year of Lifelong Learning will make a real difference. That can only come from the commitment of the people on the ground. Those are the people we must respect and encourage and support.
We are all in favour of lifelong learning, but let us not be too self-congratulatory when the evidence is so thin."@en1
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