European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

244 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYThe first sense of belonging to be strengthened is that of belongingto the school community which is itself in its turn embedded in thelocal community and which is built and developed taking into accountthe family community. Then interaction between those three communities—the school, the family and the local community— is essentialto promote active and democratic citizenship Thus every form ofexclusion has to be avoided and youngsters which are in a situation ofsocial, intellectual, spiritual, material etc. exclusion have to besupported and helped. A community which a spirit of belonging to acommunity has to celebrate at regular moments the fact that it is acommunity. Schools have to celebrate especially their diversity if theyare multicultural as this strengthens the senses of belonging togetherof different cultures within the same community. Such celebrationsdefinitely have an impact on the affective dimension. The affectivedimension is also greatly promoted by what is mentioned under thenext dimension.Promote pragmatic citizenship is done by giving the opportunity toyoungsters to invest themselves actively in their local community or inconstituent bodies or organizations of that local community. The cooperationwith different organizations at local level has already beenrepeatedly emphasized as a key element of the learning community. Ithas to be stressed again that co-operation between the school and allthose local partners offers many possibilities to put citizenship intopractice in concrete events. If young people see that there activitieshave an impact on the development of the local community they willdefinitely be motivated to invest themselves even more in that localcommunity. The activities of the youngsters can be very different; theycan be social, cultural, intercultural, environmental, related to humanrights, to peace education, etc., but it is important that they are putinto an active citizenship perspective. Strengthening the pragmaticdimension of citizenship education, has definitely an effect on the twoother dimensions, the affective and the cognitive one. To strengthencommitment of youngsters it is important that their commitment andactivities are recognized, evaluated, praised and if need be celebratedin the local community. The three dimensions of active citizenship areFrançois Audigier; Basic concepts and core competencies for education fordemocratic citizenship; Strasbourg 2000, 31 pages.Karlheinz Duerr, Vedrana Spajic-Vrkas and Isabell Ferreira Martins; Strategies forlearning democratic citizenship, Strasbourg, 2000 78 pages.Liam Carey and Keith Forrester; Sites of citizenship: empowerment, participation andpartnerships, Strasbourg, 2000, 42 pages.