"afblazen" or calling it off: study trip to Berlin

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Practical and fun website if you decide to learn some Dutch !
By coincidence today's Dutch word of the day is "afblazen", in English to call off (a plan). Why a coincidence you may ask.... well, last Friday was supposed to have been the day that a group of our students from the minor Media & Culture departed from Rotterdam en route to Berlin.
However, due to recent developments in Germany, the study trip was cancelled the day before departure. Germany is on heightened alert following a recent announcement that a terrorist attack was being planned for the country. Daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reported that the United States had told Berlin that between two to four al-Qaeda militants were on their way to Germany and Britain to attempt attacks at the end of November. Among the targets are said to be Germany's popular Christmas markets, scheduled to open in the coming days. Security has been stepped up at airports and train stations across the country.
On the other hand, the German government has urged citizens to remain calm and not to let the recent terror alerts affect their daily lives.
"There is reason for concern, but no reason for hysteria", German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said at a gathering in the northern city of Hamburg.
In these circumstances, what would you have done facing this dilemma: go ahead as planned or cancel the study trip? Feel free to respond !

Full of impressions

With the international conference on Ethical Competences in Adult Education coming to an end this week, my head is spinning with all of the impressions I got in the last two days: an enormous variety of people, activities, presentations, visits to schools and other places, discussions, informal chats in between, networking, sampling the typically Romanian dishes and drinks that were kindly offered to us by the many Romanian hosts.
I was impressed with the ambitious training programmes that had been carried out by our Romanian partner, the Galati County House of Educational Staff. They had been using a whole range of methods and materials to train and evaluate adult ethical competences. An afternoon visit to the Botanical Garden and most of all the mindboggling experience in the Planetarium of the Natural Sciences Museum made me feel such a tiny element of the universe.
Heartwarming was the typically Romanian reception at the two schools that we visited. On both occasions we were welcomed with a small bouquet of flowers and some bread dipped in salt. The Costache Negri National College presented us with creative and stimulating learning activities to be discussed in small groups, relating to 3 of the ethical competences, before we got a sumptuous 4 course meal.
The next day, an interesting change of scene: we were taken to the gymnasium school in Independenta, Galati County where we were treated to an enthusiastic demonstration of some typically Romanian dances by children of different ages. It didn’t end there though …. Within minutes after their dances had ended they took the hands of people in the audience and before we knew, we had joined them in their communal dance, a group of around 35 visitors hand in hand with the children! This was undoubtedly the cultural highlight of our visit.
It was apparent that the school had well prepared their pupils for our visit. Each one of us received a colourful handicraft pendant, beautifully painted and decorated, attached to the neatly printed programme of our afternoon visit.
Most of us felt that the school and its pupils had given us a royalty treatment.
All in all, in retrospect it was a superbly organised visit to look back on. Besides, we are well on the road to concluding the project with good results, a common framework on ethical competences in adult education. A draft version is envisaged to be ready at the end of April 2011, when we have our final meeting Yozgat, Turkey.

people are the real wealth of nations

That is the final line of a video launched yesterday on the UNDP website, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Human Development Report. People are healthier, wealthier and better educated, according to the 2010 edition of the HDP report.

Most developing countries made dramatic yet often underestimated progress in health, education and basic living standards in recent decades, with many of the poorest countries posting the greatest gains.
Yet patterns of achievement vary greatly, with some countries losing ground since 1970. The 2010 edition of the HD Report documents wide inequalities within and among countries, deep disparities between women and men on a wide range of development indicators, and the prevalence of extreme multidimensional poverty in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
The dominant trend in life expectancy globally is convergence, with average life spans in most poor countries getting increasingly close to those in developed countries. However, in income the pattern remains one of divergence, with most rich countries getting steadily richer, while sustained growth eludes many poor countries.
The Human Development Reports and the HD Indicators challenged purely economic measures of national achievement and helped lay the conceptual foundation for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, calling for consistent global tracking of progress in health, education and overall living standards. “The Human Development Reports have changed the way we see the world,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday. “We have learned that while economic growth is very important, what ultimately matters is using national income to give all people a chance at a longer, healthier and more productive life.” UNDP Administrator Helen Clark added: "While not all trends are positive, there is much that countries can do to improve people’s lives, even in adverse conditions. This requires courageous local leadership as well as the continuing commitment of the international community."
Overall conclusions of the authors: “We see great advances, but changes over the past few decades have by no means been wholly positive. Some countries have suffered serious setbacks, particularly in health, sometimes erasing in a few years the gains accumulated over several decades. Economic growth has been extremely unequal, both in countries experiencing fast growth and in groups benefiting from national progress. And the gaps in human development across the world, while narrowing, remain huge.”
Here is the link to the recent Human Development Reports and its many statistics and indicators, a helpful resource for us in higher education to work on the concept of global citizenship.
Interestingly, the report pinpoints the Netherlands as the most gender-balanced country in the Gender Inequality Index, an index designed to help advance human development progress by objectively measuring the extent and impact of the persistent social disparities between men and women.
Jeni Klugman, the HD Report’s lead author: “Providing girls and women with equal educational opportunities, medical care, legal rights and political representation is not only socially just, but one of the best possible investments in development for all people.”

Learning makes you happy, says study

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Learning makes you healthy, satisfied and happy and improves social solidarity, according to the first results of the European Lifelong Learning Indicators (ELLI) study.
ELLI is the first European comparative lifelong learning index and as such provides a useful tool for gaining an overview of the situation of lifelong learning across the EU.
The ELLI project was launched by Bertelsmann Stiftung in January 2008 in an effort to make the concept of lifelong learning more understandable and transparent. It is meant as a resource for political decision makers and educational institutions, private industry, academics and journalists, as well as all of Europe’s citizens who want to know more about learning in their own country and the rest of Europe – what it entails, and the impact it has.
ELLI measures learning throughout the different stages of life from ‘cradle to grave’ and across the different learning environments of school, community, work and home life, so even taking into account relevant activities, such as sport, culture, voluntary involvement as well as participation in courses within adult education centres.
The overall results show that the Nordic countries Denmark, Sweden and Finland and, in addition, the Netherlands rank highest. Particularly Denmark and Sweden have been the most successful countries in Europe at implementing the idea of lifelong learning. The top performers are followed by a group of countries that consist of mainly Central European and Anglo-Saxon countries. The next group of countries, which are below the EU average, are from Southern and Eastern Europe and range from the Czech Republic to Poland, with Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania at the bottom end of the table.
It was especially the preface to the publication that I found inspiring, under the heading: "Learning, lifting the treasure within". Here's a relevant paragraph I'd like to quote: "Lifelong and life-wide learning is about the whole person. It is about allowing every individual to participate in society and making our society more cohesive. Learning enables people to develop to their full potential and to play an active role in their environments. It allows them to try new things and to harness untapped talents. Along with enhancing employment opportunities and professional standing, learning lays the groundwork for fulfillment in life.
Moreover, learning cannot and should not start or end in the classroom or in other educational institutions. We learn on the job, as members of associations or political organizations, in our families, during our leisure time and in our communities as well. In order to make lifelong learning a reality, it is important to embrace and connect all learning stages, types and places and to link this process with the wider spectrum of benefits that flow from it."
In my view, far too often and too long learning has only been associated with teaching and instruction within schools or prescribed learning frameworks. Fortunately, we now see increasing recognition of learning achieved outside the formal curriculum, e.g. also via so-called Recognition of Acquired Competencies procedures. A most welcome development in the right direction, providing easier access to other learning tracks! However, generally speaking there is still insufficient appreciation for informal, experiential or non formal learning overall. Let's hope the ELLI study and its preface will be read widely across Europe.

OECD report 2010, education at a glance

Today the annual OECD report appeared, providing us with the current state of affairs in education in all the OECD countries. Pages and pages of numbers and statistics to study and analyse who participates in education, what is spent on it, how education systems operate and what results are achieved. Interesting, but time consuming, so I just had a look at some of the summaries available and picked a selection of conclusions from the report.
For starters, the article on the OECD site attracts anyone's attention with the heading: "Governments should expand tertiary studies to boost jobs and tax revenues" Sounds to me as a most welcome piece of advice. With demand for tertiary courses rising, public resources invested in university education also pay off handsomely by bringing in additional tax revenues. It goes on to say that besides higher tax revenues, social contributions from people with university degrees also make tertiary education a good long-term investment.
Also, adults with higher educational attainment are more likely to participate in formal and/or non-formal education than adults with lower attainment. On average for the OECD, individuals with tertiary education have an advantage in the involvement in educational activities – they are almost three times more likely to be involved in educational activities than those with low levels of education.
Another interesting development is this: "As more and more people look beyond their home countries’ borders for university education, both academic and commercial benefits accrue from attracting foreign students. In 2008, the latest year for which complete figures are available, over 3.3 million tertiary students were enrolled outside their country of citizenship, a 10.7% increase on the previous year. So student mobility is still on the rise !

Sadly, the report also indicates that women in most countries and at most education levels still earn much less than men, potentially discouraging women from making full use of the skills they have learned and hampering economic growth. On average in OECD countries, a woman aged between 35 and 44 with upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education can expect to earn 76% of male earnings. This ratio falls to 74% for those who have not completed an upper secondary education and to 71% for those who have completed a tertiary education. Obviously, we still have a long way to go to achieving equity regarding salaries. I wonder to what extent education can contribute to solving that issue.