01 April, 2011

What do you learn from

a European project about ethical competence? That's the question we asked a few students when we were mid-way in a European Grundtvig project. The answers encompassed more than I had ever imagined. It's difficult to put it in a nutshell, still here's an attempt, quoting from the students' work:
"You tend to take your own behaviour for granted, you don't normally give your social competences and actions a moment's thought. But it's in live exchanges like these that you actually become aware of "the Dutch way of life"."
"The fact that we are one Europe and yet so different in the way we think and act made an immense impression. Experiencing a great deal of freedom yourself in your own country, you don't realise that other people elsewhere are faced with corruption, oppression or the maffia."
"You start to become aware of how lazy or how rude you can be from time to time, how easily you complain about things, despite the liberty and openness at our university. Educational systems across Europe differ hugely in the way they treat students and in student - lecturer relationships in general, I learned. We should be proud of the Dutch way of teaching and learning, but that's hard to notice from what I see and hear."

"Most of the European project partners gave longish and tiring powerpoint presentations with around 60 sheets. Sometimes these presentations were given in their own language, which meant that they had to be translated by someone else, which took quite some time all in all. These often theoretically and academically oriented talks were quite unsettling to me at first. I simply wanted to hear about their methods, the way they implemented ethical competence training. It made me realise that we were in fact the only partner who showed, by way of concrete examples, how we develop ethical competences in a practical sense, and moreover, how we transfer that into the workplace after graduation.
It makes you realise how hard it can be for others to implement concrete actions and change elsewhere Europe and in the world."
"I have come to realise that our Dutch mentality is one of acting quickly and efficiently without dawdling. Persistence is another trait of ours."
"Getting to know other European people and discussing similarities and differences have definitely helped me in understanding that there's still a lot to be done.
A project such as this one makes you realise how important it is to talk to each other and cooperate internationally. There is so much to learn from each other."

"I was offered a unique opportunity to catch a glimpse of how things work in other countries in the field of ethics."
"I was able to build up good contacts with the people I met in the two project meetings in Italy and Romania and I'm still in touch with them via facebook."
"Creating your own radio show is something I teach to primary school children; it was fascinating to see how they did this in another country and the issues they were faced with."


To put it concisely, it's a culturally and socially enriching experience that will stay with you forever: this appears to be the overall feeling.

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