European Citizenship: A Bridge To European Understanding?

The European Year for Education for Democratic Citizenship in 2005 left us with a lot of useful analysis, examples of good practices and challenges for the future. There are continuous silent cut backs in this traditional “high profile” area. Adult learning professionals in municipal and regional, church and social partner based adult education and their institutions and budgets are giving way to fragile constructions fighting each year for their survival. This trend generates great discontinuities, losses of professionals, their experience and memory and proclamations of non-responsibility for this development. “Investment” in social capital has become popular in economic theory and European policy making but it did not reach educational policy makers who continue talking about “costs” when it comes to adult learning. However, the enthusiastic standard discourses which policy and decision makers deliver on adult learning for democratic citizenship remain the same thus representing a virtual pillar of a bridge to future perspectives and visions.