European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

DILEMMAS AND TASK IN THE FORMATION OF EDUCATION-BASED ... 167develop and put forward their own views and opinions, not simply tolearn what is in their teachers (or parents, or politician’s) mind, and toreproduce this. We are concerned with developing the sense thatopinions and viewpoints matter, that they are indeed vastly important.This means that we have to conduct the work of education ininstitutions that are themselves democratic, sensitive to viewpoints andopinions, respectful of the rights of their members. This implies, formany educational institutions, a reversal of current hierarchies of“knowledge” and power. I referred much earlier to the tensions anddichotomies in this area: here we see tensions between the roles ofteachers and learners, between knowledge and empowerment.Benedict Anderson (1991) argued that our national communities areimaginary. By this he meant the reality of a modern nation-state existedprimarily in the shared imagination of its members, that we constructourselves as good members of our national community through holdinga shared picture that represents a linked history, language, culture andidentity. “Europe” is as much a mutual imaginary icon as are each ofour individual nations. Norman Davies’ history of Europe (1996)emphasises this: Europe in any objective description is no more that theextreme end of the great Eurasian landmass. Hobsbawm points outthat much contemporary “history” is pure invented tradition: manufacturedby political-historians to «make the punters feel good» (2002,also Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1986). But what we mean when we usethe term Europe is some sense of collective bond, some shared culture,history, set of values. However, when it comes to definition, we can nomore define what is shared than we can delimit the geography. Europefor many years was used to mean what we now call Western Europe,with a fragile and indeterminate eastern boundary —this might be theVistula, or the Dneiper, or the Don, or the Volga, or the Urals. RobertStradling (2001) points to the divergence between those who defineEurope by its shared cultural heritage, and those who emphasise itsdiversity. The former stress Graeco-Roman philosophy and Judaeo-Christian ethics and beliefs, and focus on shared historical experiences(the Crusades, feudalism, the Enlightenment), while the later highlightthe variety of ethnic and linguistic groups, the shared loyalties, conflicts,nationalism and the political a and economic dynamics that arise fromfragmented, rather than centralised power. There are horizontal,transnational bonds that unite the continent run concurrent withvertical particularist nationalisms. Today, Europe is often used as asynonym for the European Community: one of us recently heard aLatvian complain that when arrived at immigration in Brussels or Parishe was often “And how long do you intend to stay in Europe?” To