| The Green Group. The Civic Education by Tommy Håkansson, Komvux, Lund, Sweden The civic education group had its first meeting in Helsinki, 5–7 June, 2002. We attended an LLine (Lifelong learning in Europe) conference named “Social capital and citizenship, adult learning and the future of humanity”. There were a lot of interesting lecturers, including one by Luisa Cortesao from Portugal, who spoke about Paulo Freire: You have to research what the real problems of people are, then teach (reading, writing). That’s how to awaken consciousness. But it is not enough; it also has to lead to action. In that sense, education is always political. Most of the other lecturers (Sylvain Côté, OECD; Seppo Niemilä, Finnish Adult Education Association, Jozsef Katus, Ph.D., Markku T. Hyypää, M.D., Ph.D., Paul J. Ilsley, Professor of Adult Education and Research, Northern Illinois University, USA) spoke about the concept of social capital. No one gave an absolute definition of the term, but we got some clarifications of both civil society and social capital that we want to present to you. Social capital was introduced by Robert Putnam in “Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community” (2000). In his book he statistically proves that the amount of bowlers 1980–93 grew 10 percent, but the amount of bowlers in bowling clubs declined 40 percent. This illustrates more general phenomena in society, i.e. loneliness, loosening of family ties, privatisation, decline of friendship relations, decline of participation in political and non-political activities etc. This means the weakening of social capital. Social Capital
If we understand social capital as the cumulative capacity to work together
for common goals and civil society as the space where these goals are
formed and debated, then there is no other framework we can use to pursue
the visions we hold in our hearts. Completing these visions involves the
state and the market too, but they are the servants of a true civil society
and not its masters. (Michael Edwards)
Active citizenship involves individuals learning to generate networks,
norms and trust “that enable participants to act together more effectively
to pursue shared objectives”. Learning Social Capital Living word:
Living interaction:
Unconditional freedom:
As you can see from the above, adult education can play an important role in promoting the creation of social capital. One of the group members, Vidutė Ališauskaitė, thought that the conference was very interesting and useful for her job. The new concept “social capital” helped her to understand her job more deeply. She found out that she deals a lot with social capital in her job. She conducts groups for unemployed and disabled people, which is her way of enhancing their social capital. She also appreciated the possibilities of creating close personal relationships. She got really close with two colleagues from Russia and will visit them in Novgorod and St. Petersburg. She also learnt from the different lecturers how to communicate with the audience, which will be useful for her in her job. Furthermore, the conference widened her outlook and gave her time to reflect, to share experiences and to find ways of implementing the new knowledge in her home country. The next conference was in Druskininkai in Lithuania, 9–13 October,
2002. We were also filmed and our performances were evaluated in a positive way afterwards. That was very interesting and revealed many things that you otherwise wouldn’t think about. Some of us were in Riga, 30 October – 3 November, 2002. There a seminar was held about the portfolio method in language teaching and broader use, problem-based learning/project method. The most important conclusion of our group is the importance of adult education in matters of social capital, active citizenship and integration of different minority groups (unemployed, disabled, immigrants etc.)
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