An analysis of pertinent issues in education in Southern Europe : rhythms of life, environmental sustainability and migration

Abstract

This region has been under the influence of Northern colonialism and subject to influences in education coming from the North. Of course, countries such as Italy have had influences, in both provision (especially its much-lauded early childhood education) and critique, emerging from within the country itself, namely the Emilia Romagna experiments with regard to Early Childhood Education (Lazzari, 2012), the work of important practitioners such as Danilo Dolci regarding community learning and action, Aldo Capitini regarding grassroots democracy, and Don Lorenzo Milani and the students at Barbiana with respect to critique of (and also provision of alternatives to) the bourgeoisie-oriented public school system (Guimarães et al., 2018). Other countries in the region have also produced their own forms of critique and educational possibilities but many, such as Malta, have imported models from colonial centres, either Paris or London. Of course, colonial educational influences in education do not occur in a straightforward manner as many intermediary factors come into play, rendering the process of colonial cultural transmission messier than one would prima facie be led to believe. Compromises with local concerns and conditions, as well as religious mores, have always taken place. Most importantly, this region has offered its own contributions to education. These contributions are often conditioned by climatic conditions, including open air cultural manifestations that involve a certain degree of learning (think of the suk and gatherings there, amphitheatres associated with the Greco-Roman traditions or fiestas and community celebrations). They are also associated with popular education which manifests itself in different ways in various parts of the geographical global South. They include epistemologies that have been appropriated by the North and West, often patented and without recognition of the sources from which they derive, thus leading to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2017) terms cognitive injustice. It is heartening to see sociologists who, like him, have worked in Southern contexts (in de Sousa Santos’s case in his native Portugal and Brazil), thereby affirming southern epistemologies in this regard and their potential for alternative approaches to education ranging from community to higher education. It is even more heartening to see sociologists of similar standing, located in the Anglophone world, namely Raewyn Connell, affirm the importance of Southern theory and epistemology as antidotes to the neoliberal juggernaut present in formal education, including Higher Education (Connell, 2019), in many parts of the world under the spell of what Santos (2006) calls ‘hegemonic globalisation’. In this chapter we identify and discuss education issues that are pertinent in Southern Europe (and the Mediterranean), namely rhythms of life and congenial educational systems, environmental sustainability and migration – the last two being quite intertwined. Further to this discussion of the impact of colonialism on the region a critical examination of Southern European social movements with educational outcomes and country-specific examples of education contexts will follow leading to flagging the pertinence of rhythms of life and congenial educational systems, environmental sustainability and migration. The chapter concludes with a Gramscian-informed invitation to consider a critical engagement with essentialism, alterity, caricatures, exoticization and (mis)representation as salient points of an agenda for studies on education in Southern Europe in a post-crisis context.