Comment les lycéens perçoivent-ils l’ Union européenne ? Erasmus Project

Project Title

Comment les lycéens perçoivent-ils l’ Union européenne ?

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Social dialogue

Project Summary

The Erasmus+ project “How do high school students perceive the European Union?” will run from October 2019 to October 2021. This is the third project for Aron Szilady High School, whose two previous projects, of type KA1, have greatly bolstered the internationalisation of said institution, so that an application of type KA229 appears as a logical follow-up. The partner school is the French Lycée Jacques Prévert which has already taken part in several Erasmus+ KA 229 projects , the latest of which is scheduled to be over by the end of the school year. The opportunity for this partnership was provided by a former student from Prévert, currently teaching French at the Szilády high school, a fluent Magyar-speaker, who is studying towards a doctoral thesis at both the Universities of Szeged and Paris 1. The meeting initiated with an exchange of ideas which later resulted in the sharing of student work, the setting-up of correspondents and a very successful first mobility to Hungary in February 2019.

From the outset, we came up with working together on the perceptions/representations of the European Union held by the students from both high schools. Let us briefly outline why. First of all, such a trend echoes research carried out by some of the teachers involved in the project (refer to professional profiles). Secondly, these high schools are located in two highly contrasting countries in terms of history and their involvement in the European political project, hence questioning such discrepancies will certainly prove extremely enriching. Such interaction should enable us to gain from our differences while building together a common project, which is congruent with the ambition of the European political project. We would also like this endeavour to be taken up by others, thus helping to underline the concord or discord towards European integration that young Europeans may harbour. If this were the case, it could help shed light on a policy more likely to bring European youths closer to rallying the European political project, a crucial issue at a time when Europe seems to be foundering over its future.

The project will focus on field survey work. The survey will be conducted by the 30 students chosen to participate in the project, i.e. 15 students from each high school. The target audience will be a large sample of high school students provided by our two high schools as well as neighbouring ones. We envisage several steps: building the survey tools, carrying out the survey in the field, discussing and analysing the results, disseminating the findings. Part of the work will be carried out during the mobility: the validation of the survey tools (questionnaires, interviews…) in the course of a first mobility to France and the synthesis of the results during the third mobility back in Hungary. Simultaneously, participants will be offered a series of activities linked to the EU: upgrading knowledge about European integration through various media, strengthening institutional knowledge about the European Union, including an additional joint mobility to Brussels and Strasbourg, the creation and implementation of a mosaic shared by the two institutions… As regards the Áron Szilády establishment, the erection of an outdoor pavilion is planned. It will be circular in shape and will house as many chairs as there are EU Member States. The site will be dedicated to educational purposes and will provide both a long-term structure and a tribute to the project.

The project’s impacts are expected at three levels of scale. Regarding participants, we expect this project to be momentously beneficial in terms of producing enlightened adherence to the European construction, improving fluency in English and broadening awareness of an international environment, as well as developing new skills and study tools. We hope that involvement in the project will lead to vocations in terms of personal incentives and careers’ choices. At school level, spreading the survey among many high school students will avoid the limitations of confining the project to a restricted group. We would like to keep all participants and high school students informed about the work in progress and results of the survey, by posting this data on the high school website for instance and holding an exhibition of the whole project. Besides, we will advertise our venture through the press and by airing it on local television networks. Finally, we will seek a wider audience through the use of TwinSpace eTwinning and the Erasmus+ project results platform. We would like such elucidating research to be made available to other partners throughout numerous EU countries in the wish of uniting with other high schools as of 2021 to be able to pursue it.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 60504 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kiskunhalasi Református Kollégium Szilády Áron Gimnázium és Kollégium & Country: HU

Project Partners

• LYCEE JACQUES PREVERT