The case of the UK : Homo sapiens europaeus vs Homo quaestuosus atlanticus? European learning citizen or Anglo-American human capitalist?

Abstract

The focus of this volume is on how the relationships between the EU and Member States (MS) are being played out in the fields of education, particularly in respect of how they might be involved in the creation of Homo Sapiens Europæus/European Learning Citizen. In this chapter, we shall address that question in terms of the relationships between the European Union and possibly the most Eurosceptic member state, the United Kingdom (UK). In this chapter we will be arguing that the basis both for the shaping of the European Space of Education (ESE)1 and characterisation of the European Learning Citizen (ELC) has been the declaration at the end of the Lisbon summit (2000). This declaration set the target of Europe becoming, by 2010, ‘the most dynamic, competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world, with sustainable growth, more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’. This introduced three qualitative shifts of vital relevance to the topic of this chapter: in the nature and possibility of a European Space for Education; in conceptions of ‘Europe’; and in the emphasis on the centrality of ‘productive social policy’ in the European Social Model. We shall be arguing in this chapter that these shifts have the potential collectively to provide a basis for a ELC, whose citizenship component is limited to a form of economic citizenship, and that the UK is much less likely to take up such possibilities for a range of structural reasons, centred around its attachment to Anglo-American forms of capitalism and social policy, as well as for historical, institutional and attitudinal reasons. The chapter will proceed as follows. In the first part of the chapter we will discuss some of the ways that the objectives laid out at Lisbon, and the ways that these have been developed since Lisbon, have framed the development of a ESE. We will then turn to the implications of that framing for the development of a ELC. Following this we will focus on, and compare, European and UK understandings of the three eponymous elements of the European Learning Citizen construct. In the final part of the chapter we discuss some conclusions that might be drawn about the ways that the idea of the ELC might be taken in the UK.