It was inevitable that the European integration process would lead, at some point in its development, to the search for homogeneity and coherence at the level of national educational policies. Equally evident is the fact that the functioning of public and compulsory education is geared towards the production and integration of students into the labor market, and therefore education is approached, in national political action, as a means to envisage, in the long-term, its own role and weight on the global economic chessboard. Alternatively, to envision its own economic competitiveness through the performativity of students and educational systems, using the language employed by the European Commission. The 2021 European Education and Training Monitor report, coordinated by the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel – the latest report to the Commission on the state of education in the Union – explicitly states, in case the logic of the relationship between schools and production in market economies is not sufficient proof. Beyond the good intentions to ensure equal opportunities in education and employment for all citizens, intentions that we will revisit, the objective that emerges at this stage, especially through the Next Generation EU project, is openly focused on increasing performativity and competitiveness. These two words are continually reiterated in the national investment projects of funds destined for post-COVID recovery, as axes to be reinforced and investment objectives. Among other elements, digitalization is the most prominently emphasized aspect. Once we have observed, with a slightly naive surprise, the hypocrisy of the universalist discourse of European institutions on education, we will try to examine what the real objectives of Member States have been and are, the concrete active policies pursued and to be pursued by European democracies in the construction of the central instrument for guaranteeing and advancing genuine democracy: public education. In the very political language of the social-liberal European sacred unions, a free and high-quality school that functions as an equalizer of opportunities is the essential premise of the advanced Western free and democratic regime, despite the freedom of opinion and habeas corpus, which are easily sacrificed even in discourse. The European myth is built on the public school system as the cornerstone of a democratic, peaceful, and happy world. But beyond universalism and formal rights, what have we done and what are we doing? (We will consider, among the 27 member states of the EU, exclusively Spain, France, Germany, and Italy: the most populous countries in the Union and among which it is easier to identify parallels.)
According to Nico Hirtt, a Belgian-Luxembourgish professor and essayist, and founder of the Aped (Appel pour une école démocratique), European education policies began outside the institutional framework, through private initiative of an industrial lobby that brought together the CEOs of the main groups on the continent, from Lufthansa to Nestlé, which later became an integral part of the Union’s political-economic mechanisms. The first meeting of the ERT (European Round Table of Industrialists) took place in 1983, and in 1989 “an éducation task force” was formed which published a report that same year entitled “Education and soft skills in Europe”. The concept of “competence” and its implementation in relation to “knowledge” became the mantra of recent European school reform. A more subtle and less vulgar way to set the objective of “competitiveness,” in which the perspective of saving on labor costs is explicit. The emphasis on competencies, in discourse and beyond their actual pedagogical value, is presented as a revolutionary element of didactic dynamism, almost reminiscent of the 1968 spirit, opposing traditional “notionism”. An ambiguous and broad term, the essential didactic meaning of which is the development of soft skills, flexibility, and efficiency that enable the execution of more “complex” operations where progress in terms of “digital skills” plays a decisive role. The ’89 report of the ERT working group complained of an excessive gap between national education policies, concentrated by a centralized bureaucracy, and the interests of industry and entrepreneurship, interests ignored during the legislation of the countries on the continent. By taking up passages quoted by Hirtt in an article from 2002, one can note how this relationship described “the vital strategic importance of training and education for European competitiveness” and demanded “an accelerated renewal of education systems and their curricula.” However, it was also noted that “industry has very limited influence on study programs” and that teachers have “insufficient understanding of the economic environment, business, and profit,” as well as a lack of comprehension of the “demands of industry.” The educational reforms implemented in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain over the past two decades can be viewed as a clear manifestation of a political, economic, and social agenda driven directly by the oligarchies that manipulate the threads of European capitalism. This plan, which emerged victorious from the Cold War and perceived the end of history with the demise of real socialism, has sought to reorganize society from its foundations. As Francis Fukuyama famously declared, communism had become a relegated nightmare of the past. These educational reforms are therefore reflective of a larger neoliberal perspective that seeks to shape society in accordance with the interests and goals of European capitalism. The educational reforms implemented in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain over the last two decades, when compared to the perspective of neoliberalism during the collapse of real socialism, are a clear result of a political, economic, and social agenda directly dictated by the oligarchies that manipulate the threads of European capitalism. This plan, which emerged victorious from the Cold War, sought to reorganize society from its foundations once history had come to an end, as Francis Fukuyama famously declared, and communism had become a relegated nightmare of the past. Following the implementation of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, European institutions began to directly address education, giving the Commission the possibility of direct interventions. The Europe of Maastricht produced a vast literature on education as a strategic sector and made it incontrovertibly clear what its objectives were and in whose interests the Commission would act. While it would be of little use to reconstruct everything that has been said and decided at the European level, it would be more interesting to examine, from an internal perspective, the active policies that have been executed by national governments in the field of education since Maastricht.
Before proceeding, it is necessary to recall how, for several factors, during the second half of the twentieth century, many European countries underwent an unprecedented mass education process. This allowed the working classes to access key cultural and social roles that were previously denied to them, leading to a profound democratization of industrialized Europe. Works such as “The Inheritors” (1964) by Pierre Bourdieu or “Letters to a Teacher” by Lorenzo Milani symbolize the changes in the education system during this period, and the student and worker movements of 1968 and the years that followed can be interpreted, depending on the specific context, as a consequence or a cause of this process. The combination of the need for skilled labor, subjective efforts towards building real democracy, and the social and political tension of the Cold War, in an old continent that was the political and ideological battlefield of the two blocs, led to education becoming an ecumenical reality that belonged to all sectors of society, and also opened up the possibility for the poorer segments of society to pursue higher education. Measures in this direction included the Faure Law of 1968 in France and the reforms implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in Italy, but also in the Federal Republic of Germany. Looking back to the 1990s, we can observe how legislative activity, at least since the Maastricht Treaty, has taken a different direction. In Italy, as early as 1995, a reform promoted by a center-left government inaugurated a path of in-depth educational policies pursued by subsequent education ministers under Silvio Berlusconi’s governments, including Letizia Moratti in 2003 and Mariastella Gelmini in 2008.
Presented by the Cavaliere as a modernizing renewal, these reforms revolved around an emblematic slogan: “Business, English, and computer science.” In 2005, in France, the Fillon Law, under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, implemented changes in the same direction: a fundamental approach to the requirements of companies and an implementation of STEM disciplines, at the expense of humanities and literature. This policy was also pursued during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, who was one of the first European political leaders to talk about the alternation of the entire school world with the world of work, and a strategic administrative decentralization of institutions. In Spain, on the other hand, the alternation between center-left and center-right governments has focused the public debate on axiological problems that will leave the discussion on apparently less technical aspects in the background, which, ultimately, are the most decisive. Thus, the secularization of the education system and the achievement of a failed democratization due to the Franco dictatorship have been on the agenda in Aznar (Partido Popular) et Zapatero (Partido Socialista y Obrero Español) governments. However, under the government of Mariano Rajoy (PP), la Ley orgánica parala mejora de la calidad educativa (LOMCE) of 2013 made heavy budget cuts and applied a policy of transforming public schools into a business model, as in other European countries, in line with the austerity directives of the Union after the 2008 crisis. As for Germany, Germany was the first to inaugurate this wave of privatization and professionalization of public schools. The education ministers of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the father of a united Germany and Europe and the “victor” of the GDR, worked from the outset of reunification in 1990 to develop the aforementioned strategic assets of European education policy, always remaining at the forefront in this field. But a remarkable acceleration has taken place in the past six years. n Italy, the “jewel” of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s reformist policy, called the “Good School” of 2017, made mandatory the school-to-work alternation for access to the baccalaureate for all high school students, among other measures in the same direction : while practicing it three students died in 2022. In France, an acceleration of the privatization and professionalization of the school system was carried out by the policies of the controversial Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer during Emmanuel Macron’s first term. Following Macron’s reelection in 2022, it was announced that a reform of vocational high schools would be carried out with the new Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, which includes a 50% increase in internships. Similar elements are also present in Spain, in the current policies being pursued by the government of Pedro Sanchez. In 2018, the socialist prime minister of Spain renamed the Ministry of Education as the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, and implemented policies that profoundly reorganized didactic content by removing the chronological criteria in education and basing it on a thematic path, which reduced the cultivation of knowledge in favor of the development of skills. The fruit of the policies implemented in Europe over the past twenty to thirty years, which have been observed to be consistent and homogeneous, is alarming. From 2008 to 2018, according to PISA tests (the highly questionable statistical institution that guides educational policies in OECD countries), there has been an overall decline in reading and natural science abilities, while mathematical abilities have remained fundamentally stable.
This is surely the political realization of the ERT’s plan in ’89, and it is evident how the political orientation of governments is indifferent to the content of active policies implemented. Nico Hirtt talked about “massification without democratization”: once universal education was achieved, it became impossible to tackle formal equality. It was necessary to revolutionize didactic and pedagogical contents, starting from the way of being together. The English philosopher Mark Fisher in his book “Capitalist Realism” reflected, as a high school teacher, on the evolution of British students and the effects of Thatcherite and Tony Blair policies. He not only agreed with Hirtt’s thesis, but also observed how schools had rapidly changed their social function, becoming a vector of alienation and isolation of individuals, inexplicable in relation to its essential function as an aggregative space, noting how education had become a remarkable tool for ideological indoctrination through the new centrality of wild hyper-competitiveness and performativity. After World War II, schools functioned differently also due to the economic expansion of Western capitalism, which allowed for social advancement through education. But once neoliberalism emerged as a universal economic and ideological model, economic growth prospects were hampered, and global crises followed at a frenetic pace, including financial collapses, pandemics, climate apocalypse, and wars. The same goes for opportunities for individual emancipation, to become aware of being an essential part of the development of productive forces. These crisis elements were already present in embryos with the advent of Taylorism. After the war, mass schooling directly raised the question of power. The working classes, once educated during the Cold War, did not hesitate to revolt: it is no coincidence that in Europe there was an acceleration and hardening of social struggles just after the student gains of ’68. Contrary to what we are told, history is still to be written: despite technocracy and the apparent malfunctioning of parliamentarism, interstices of democracy can be conquered by the establishment of power relations that defend the interests of the working classes.
Ismaele Calciura Errante
Bibliography : https://www.skolo.org/2002/09/21/leurope-lecole-et-le-profit/
Translated from French by Pavle Erić.
Ismaele Calaciura Errante was born in Rome in 2003. He is a double degree student in Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and in Modern Literature at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. He participates in the French and Italian social and student movements.