I was lucky, and honoured, in late October to visit Vechta, Lower Saxony, to give a keynote at the Gemeinsame Werte in Europa? (Common values in Europe?) conference as part of a European-wide celebration of 30 years of Erasmus funding and exchanges. Having acted as part of a European-wide panel on the future of Erasmus – especially post-Brexit – my keynote address dealt with the challenges of ‘precarity’ for many of our citizens throughout Europe and the need for radical social action to confront the increasing insecurities, uncertainties and inequities within contemporary society. It was a plea for European solidarity and action against neoliberal atomisation and its debilitating effects on the communitas, something that resonated with the European and international audience.
Last week my colleague from Universität Vechta, Magnus Frampton, continued the dialogue begun in Germany by offering an important seminar ‘What’s in a word? Bildung and pedagogy: two German understandings of education’ which explored, amongst other things, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s legacy to education. This was important in reminding us that education specifically focusing on the requirements of the economy or business is potentially damaging to the individual. It reminds us that the human and the social is central.
So, as we contribute to developing education, meaning and society, not as a linear project of the enlightenment but as a means of cultivating the self and the social and in shaping and creating anew who we are as human beings, we need to challenge and to question, to resist and make new rather than to be moulded as economic units for those with power. Long may the potential of Erasmus offer this academic freedom!
Jonathan Parker
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