Young Europeans practice Democracy Erasmus Project

Project Title

Young Europeans practice Democracy

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Three schools participated in the project: EKS in Bochum (Germany), ZSU in Rybnik (Poland) and IES Barañain (Spain). The German and the Polish school have collaborated successfully within international programmes for many years; the Spanish school is highly motivated and up to date – especially as to brand new IT tools.
Due to the current situation in Europe it seemed to all of us more urgent than ever to strengthen our students to inform themselves about their rights and duties and to stand up for them actively.
As citizens of a united Europe who create their future in a responsible way
– they need to be instructed about historical contexts
– they must inform themselves about current political events using reliable sources, which means that they must adopt a critical attitude towards biased media reporting and manipulative operations
– they must learn to develop a respectful, tolerant, open and constructive attitude towards people from different origins, nationalities and religions who have different premises, interests and opinions (corresponding to the horizontal priority „social inclusion“)
– it is a great advantage for them if they can communicate fluently in English and use it as lingua franca
– they need to get an overview of all the areas that they can commit themselves to.
These goals could only be reached if we motivated students by making use of a variety of methods and media.
The project dealt with three topics: 1. “the history of democracy” (from Ancient Greek to the French Revolution, to the totalitarian regimes of the 30s and 40s of the last century up to the foundation of the EU and its present meaning); 2. “current threats to democracy and to the EU (as Brexit, the conflicts with Turkey, nationalistic tendencies in many countries etc.) and 3. “possibilities for students to create society actively“ (school councils, young political democratic parties, local charity organisations, refugee aid, international Human Rights Organisations etc.) .
The interactive game could not be developed in the course of the two project years because of digital difficulties and lack of time. The two fictitious figures, who lead through it: a teenage girl and a teenage boy from Ancient Greek had nevertheless played a pivot role. At the beginning of the project they were invented within an online competition (name, age, biographies, outward appearance, interests, character traits etc. and agreed upon).
This trick of inventing two historic figures of the students’age (i.e. between 15 and 18) who travel through time and space enabled a change of perspective and thus a chance of self-reflection. In addition to this all students could be involved at any stage of the project: these two figures ran through all the project activities like a thread. They were part of the action during theatre and dance performances and role-plays, they are retained on murals, they are the ones to ask the students questions about the democratic barometer, during trivia quizzez about democracy and in questionnaires.
Teachers of various subjects were involved regardless of their participation in transnational meetings. They worked on the project theme in different contexts with different groups of students aged from 15 to 18 according to the corresponding curricular standards. This lead to an implementation of the project’s topic, i.e. “democracy” and a sustainability that went far beyond the end of the project. A pool of all the activities to strengthen the students’ positive attitude towards a European democracy was created, which supports collaboration and networking in each school. This could only be realized under the condition that work groups, that have already been established at each school, have met regularly in order to agree upon activities and evaluate them. The conception of this project involved nealry all the members of the school community. Due to its relevance and political topicality it was not too difficult to enthuse and involve the local press, local institutions and other stakeholders.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 69175 Eur

Project Coordinator

Erich Kästner Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IES Barañain
• Zespol Szkol Urszulanskich