The “Europe for Citizens” project “Education: The Key of Democracy” aim to:
- promote a common memory and mutual understanding between citizens of different EU countries;
- reflect on the relevance and consequences of authoritarian regimes in Europe;
- underline the role of civil society and the importance of education in democracies, and how its control has been one of the purposes of autocratic regimes in different European countries.
For these reasons, the project focuses on the situation of some educational systems subjected, in different periods and countries, to an authoritarian regime.
During the twentieth century, all the countries involved in the project were subjected to authoritarian regimes that limited the rights of civil society by influencing different aspects of daily life, starting with education.
The project activities are divided into three phases:
- each group collected information about the education system present in their country during the regime, preparing a presentation and a short video;
- transnational meeting in Treviso and presentation of the research carried out. Debates will follow to analyse similarities and differences between countries;
- collection and online publication of the material produced.
The project, through the examples of the recent past of the countries involved, will allow to raise awareness and make known to civil society, in particular to young people, how an autocratic regime acts to influence consensus, going so far as to distort the educational system of a country to indoctrinate young people and turn them into pawns loyal to the regime.
