Antenna Europe Direct Assemblea legislativa della Regione Emilia-Romagna
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How much distance between the students and the professors….but it’s not the same at the Meeting
The European Union Fundamental Rights Charter comprises VI chapters, 54 articles preceded by the Preamble and by the signatures of the European Parliament, Council and Commission, which on the 7th of December 2000 in Nice solemnly proclaimed the fundamental rights and values appropriate to every European citizen.
How could one not passively absorb a document like this one? The 200 students participators at the Youth European Meeting together with the 50 professors managed through the non formal education formula to tackle the Charter.
From Andrea Messori’s words, one of the tutors of ICAME, Information Centre on Academic Mobility and Equality, one can manage to see that this way of interacting with the students is in his nature and comes out automatically. Tye students as the tutors didn’t passively react to the Charter, but they first reflected upon and described how they actually live in their countries each of the particular situations exposed in the Charter. Their everyday life experience is not underestimated in this way, but each of them is free to choose from their experience the appropriate words and explanations and then to pass to the analysis in a formal approach.
But which could be here the difference between this type of education and the formal, classic one? There are no rows of benches for pairs of students and there’s no professor to sit in front at his desk while with a flat tone indicating on the political map the progresses made by Europe, there are also no threatening looks while looking into the directory for calling to the blackboard the unlucky one who was whispering at his bench colleague’s ears. Totally different in our case, the tutors sit among the students and make them proposals of exercises/activities to get to know each other better, to be able to express their own point of view, to successfully manage to made up a well-thought common proposal.
How Dalila Ferhaoui, the kind tutor I had the pleasure to attend the Meeting with, explained me, the students are not obliged to work, they know the purpose of the meeting so, the work develops step by step under the tutors’ supervision: she cannot go on without the students’ involvement, at the same time the students following her. It is actually the idea of starting from the personal experience that makes up the “lesson”.
The students didn’t just felt in their everyday life how exactly the rights apply, but they actually had to learn how to perceive them and reflect on. The texts they created made them choose the words that can better express their their opinion, they had to attentively select and pass over interests that were not at all less importants to give their exclusive attention to the central point. In this way the Charter would have seemed less unknown to them as they had to reproduce the institutional mechanism up to the approval of their final document.
Therefore, after the first sceptical impressions and the general confusion, the class does not lack the participative element. Slowly the funny comments took the place of the initial embarrass’ silence moments and half amusements. Confronting themselves on so differently perceived matters from country to country was not at all easy. Never though, the students identified in this method the most ingenious and suitable one and were convinced that information and attention on the issues they have tackled should pass from young to young thorough the non formal education formula.
There are no better words than thse of Katerina Chrostoforou, a 18 years old Cypriot girl, who at my question, “What did you most appreciate at the Meeting lessons?" she answered, “Knowing that we can work together”.
Laura Solinas
translated by Paula Benea