LICEO SCIENTIFICO STATALE “ENRICO BOGGIO LERA” CATANIA

IMPLEMENTING EUROPE IN SCHOOLS In our school, the necessity to focus on the European dimension in the educational context, started to be felt even before our involvement in the Elos Project, with the consequent reflection on what to take into account in the changing European scenery and the way to introduce it into the scholastic institution. Starting from the premises that cooperating means sharing common values, rights and duties and that estimating diversity and the pluralism of experiences may contribute to the achievement of a concrete European dimension, we thought we had, first, to revise the daily teaching routine, and then, to extend our contacts to other school institutions, included the ones from far European countries. Strictly concerned with the teaching process revision is the concept according to which no Education to European Citizenship, in fact, can take place without conveying the basic educational principles aimed at making human beings civil and responsible, wherever they come from, whatever their social context may be. Most often teaching develops into exterior, fictitious results achieved by uncritical, passive students whose lack of autonomy and creative skills should make teachers stop and reflect. This means that in the educational work, instead, priority is to be given to such objectives as: critical sense, an adequate working method, the full awareness of the concept of freedom, the active, responsible role to be played inside the democratic social context we live in and in which social relations are continuously set. Whenever all of these aims are attained we can speak of European Education, being the last, completion of a wider teaching/learning process. For this reason, the extension of our contacts to European schools has acquired more and more importance and the need and pleasure to share with them international experiences, ideas, initiatives has definitely contributed to widen our horizons and perspectives from a wide range of points of view. With some schools, in particular, the mutual understanding and factual cooperation, have given life to concrete results oriented to introduce Europe and European matters into the daily didactic work. With one, in particular, Eijkhagen College, we have carried on a lasting process of internationalization that, in the year 2000, led to the foundation of a network named Euroschoolnet 2000, including European Schools that have gathered under the same ideals of cooperation, open- mindedness, overcoming of prejudices, implementation of the use and diffusion of foreign languages. Moreover, thanks to the good relation and deep friendship with Eijkhagen College, we have had the chance of being involved in our Elos experience since 2004. Once again our school underwent a process of reflection on how much Europe was present in our curricula, with specific reference to some subjects as Foreign Languages, Law, History, Geography, Civic Education, Religion. Surprisingly enough, not too much makes both our syllabuses and school attitudes European, whence, the shared need to change, innovate, promote the Elos proposals. In 2004, once back from Leiden where the launch conference of the Elos project was held, on one side, we extended the invitation to take part in the initiative to other local schools, on the other we tried to attract the attention of Local Authorities, apparently available to support the project even though we are still waiting for a concrete follow – up in terms of funds not to be undervalued in the setting up of in-service training courses or in providing schools with all the material and instruments required of innovative processes. And in the light of what has just been said, we would like to address a particular invitation to National Agencies to revise the principle that rules the fixed number of Comenius projects schools can apply for. In our opinion, in fact, what emerges is the lack of proportion among schools with totally different numbers of students that can ask grants for only one project of the different kinds:our impression is that this procedure limits the real implementation of Elos that in National Agencies should find its main financial support. Thank you for the attention and let’s hope our strong determination will help us reach satisfactory results. ROME, 6th November 2006 (Mr Giovanni Torrisi – Headmaster )