LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

Editorial Peter Jarvis: Learning to live together

This issue of LLinE is important because it helps us look to parts of Europe that we only read about in the media. Most of us are rather narrow in our perspectives on European education and so journal issues like this help broaden our knowledge. We in Western Europe, and especially in the North, rather tend to assume that when we write about the European perspective, it is ours that represents the whole of Europe. It is rather the same as the accusation I would make about a great deal of American educational literature – it tends to assume that everything that happens in America is Western and that there is little need for Americans to read what happens in the rest of the world! Naturally we know that this is not true! It is, therefore, important for us to learn about the East and the South of Europe and so this issue with papers from the Baltic and the Balkans points us to this broader perspective.

We, in Europe, are in the midst of a great experiment – that of learning to live together – one of Delors’(1996) four pillars of learning. As the European Union broadens, so we have to learn both to welcome our similarities and our differences: cultural diversity must lead to tolerance – social, cultural and religious – and a willingness to learn from each other. This is not only the ideal of the European Union – it should be a world perspective. Recently, we have had European portrayals of Mohamed in the Danish media, falsely linking him and Islam to terrorism, and, thereafter, other countries’ media have followed suit claiming the freedom of the Press – rather than owning up to their own insensitivity and intolerance. Cartoons are incisive ways of carrying a message but their use has to be an honest perspective, intolerant of wrong-doing but honest, thoughtful and well-intentioned. Following these incidents we have had a brave apology by e-mail from a Danish adult educator, ashamed of the antics of the Danish media. Then, unfortunately, we have seen and received e-mail correspondence from another educator that has reflected the same intolerance and insensitivities as the media. But educators, especially those involved in lifelong education, must take the lead in condemning such intolerance and such so-called media freedom. It was Martin Buber, having established the centre for adult education in Jerusalem in the 1950s – not a peaceful time in that part of the world, who said that adult education ‘is very important in order that we can converse and dream together’ (Eisenstadt, 1992, 16). Eisenstadt goes on to write that for Buber:

Adult education (is) able, if properly constructed, to generate frameworks of common discourse between different, often disparate, sectors of society. Such possibility could, however, materialize in institutions of adult education only insofar as it was constructed as a situation of open dialogue, inter-subjective dialogue, and dialogue between man (sic) and the sacred, the transcendental.

One of my privileges at the moment is to be supervising two PhD research theses in adult education written from a Muslim and a Jewish perspective about learning religion and the sacred – I have learned a great deal from and learned to share many insights with both of my students not only into religion but also into our common humanity.

Learning to live together, to know each other and to learn about each other’s culture and educational systems should be at the heart of our work. This issue of LLinE offers us a good opportunity – it opens the door just a little for us to learn just a little more.


Peter Jarvis
Professor, University of Surrey, Member of the LLinE editorial board

References
Delors J. (chair) (1996) in Learning – the treasure within Paris: UNESCO.
Eisenstadt S. (ed) (1992) Martin Buber – on Inter-Subjectivity and Cultural Creativity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.