Report - Salto

24
Bridges for Recognition | Sketching the Framework - Offi cial Opening
The Council of Europe and its efforts for recognition – Peter Lauritzen
Peter Lauritzen gave conference an historical perspective on youth work and non formal education:
At the beginning of the twentieth century a typical 14 year old boy in Munich worked twelve
hours a day, seven days and week. In these conditions, 90% of young people were excluded
from knowledge.
Youth organisations were formed during the first part of the century with the single aim
of reducing work time to give more time for learning and culture. The 1920’s German youth
movements were not protest movements; they were “more like a long term Woodstock”. Sadly
they were taken over by first the fascists and later the communists.
Over the years, youth work and young people have become associated with change. NFE has
indeed helped to bring about change – not least the increase in access to education for young
people.
There have been those who believed that NFE should promote confrontation with the formal
education sector; others have taken a compensatory approach to NFE, others a complimentary
approach. There are some who take a workers approach and others and emancipatory approach
(women, third world). All this goes to highlight the complexity of the issue of recognition.
In some senses, recognition is not new (Education Populaire involved 100,000 people), however
some of the problems of recognition are new. For example the breakdown of solidarity in society,
the breakdown of communism; the adoption by some schools of NFE approaches, technological
developments, migration movements and the demise of the old contract between education and
jobs.
NFE is now working from a more timid position. The approach has become one of looking up to
see if we can help rather than demonstrating the confidence of earlier years.
Reconstruction is underway though; the 1998 Ministerial conference in Bucharest and the 2001
meeting of the Council of ministers helped to reconnect some of the links between formal and
non formal education at the political level in the Council of Europe.