Mod. 5 evaluation

Group 9 - Anna Palva (SF), Bart Ketelslegers (B), Melissa Verkley (NL), Mira Van Olmen (B)

The two models of social policy have been the main subject of this module. We saw many descriptions and we often worked with them. We want therefore to give the picture of these models that we developed during these four days of class. We connect the social democratic model to the building of the welfare state after WWII. It’s a product of modern times in which policymakers believed that the state had an important role to play in the preventing of any further wars, in rebuilding the country by emancipating the people. The social democratic model is based on the idea that the state has to intervene, has to build structures so that her citizens have equal opportunities to make use of the provision of formal education. Griffin calls this model reductionist, mostly because the concept of ‘learning’ is seen in a narrow way, namely as learning in educational settings. This means that the state has to take responsability for these educational settings and that they have to control them. They believe that learning this way can be measured. Griffin proves this by referring to their concept of the learning society. This is for social democratics shown in ‘mathematical’ studies about adult participation. They don’t interprete the data, but they only look at the numbers which can, according to Griffin, only indicate if a society is better educated and trained or not.

The neo-liberal model is put at the opposite side of the social democratic model. We feel that it’s more born out of today’s post-modern society with concerns as globalisation, individualisation and the economical market that rules everything. This model stresses the individual freedom and the competitiveness which they see as essential in today’s market ruled world. They therefore ask a much more permissive role of the state. It’s up to the individual to prove himself and to make something of his life. People have to get used to learning as a part of their life and their fulfilment. It’s not the state who has to controle and regulate this. They talk about learning as an important individual and social function, which you don’t necessarily reach through organised education. Let the market organise learning and the people to consume out of the offerings. It are these consumers who have the most important role to play, in choosing certain courses, in integrating the learning and in giving meaning to it. The state has her duty to fulfil in just stimulating people and realising the necessary conditions for the market to play.

Although we also stress the differences between these two models, we experienced that they also have common grounds. Reflecting about discourse and practice, we immediately felt the vague borders between them. Thinking about the politics in our countries, we noticed that the different government-parties move towards each other. Also in having to defend or chose a certain model, we felt the importance of power. In order to have power and to change something, politicians turn themselves very easily towards the opinion of their voters. And since the economy plays such an important role today, social democratics have to move towards a more liberal point of view. The liberals also have to present less radical statements, or the voters won’t trust them. Social security is still a right in most European countries, which can’t be touched easily.

Global economy, changes within technology, competition and qualifications influence the social policy in adult education. The principle from the human capital theory is followed. If one stresses on high skills, the productivity will increase and furthermore the economical growth will be greater. Finally the entire population will experience profit of it. By using this principle, the basic ideas of Faure are easily forgotten and put aside. These ideas to realise a learning society connects three concepts, namely vertical and horizontal integration and democratisation. Though these concepts are used to speak about lifelong education, we want to see them in a broader way. With the framework we refer to lifelong learning.

The first concept deals with vertical integration and refers to the life-span aspect of learning. Learning throughout all your life is the aim. Horizontal integration stresses the need to learn in in-formal, non-formal and formal settings. What counts is what is learnt, not where it was learnt. Though to realise the principle of a learning society, it's also important to work on the democratisation. Everybody should have the possibility to learn and learners should be involved in designing and managing their learning process. We refer to some examples to make this idea more clear.

In South Africa one stresses on lifelong learning to solve racism and differences in social class, but a few comments could be made on it. The formal education is very important, so we can conclude that only one aspect of the horizontal integration is practised. People who are not participating in this system and disadvantaged persons are forgotten, so the aim of democratisation isn't reached. Learning throughout life is for these reasons only possible for high-qualified or privileged persons. Another example we want to describe, is the commonly used concept of the learning organisation. From the point of the individual employee, learning hasn't always the same meaning. It makes a difference if you belong to the core of a company or if you are just a temporarily employee who's specialised in a certain topic. Organisations with high-skilled workers, expect these flexible workers to be experts in their field, without having to invest time and money in training for them. So they can't follow training during working-hours, although learning is an essential element for their job. The horizontal integration therefore isn't fully realised. With regard to the concept of democratisation, we can criticise the fact that not everybody can enter the company. If you don't fulfil the required qualifications or the ability to learn, access is denied.

These examples show that education is often used to reach many purposes, like improving the socio-economic situation. They also teach us that education isn't enough to resolve these problems. We need a broader conceptualisation of learning within this post-modern society. Learning has to be considered as a part of individual and social life. Therefore values, attitudes and habits have to change. We recognise a gap between the discourse stressing the wellbeing of humans and the implementation in daily life. In the end coping with competition and being effective seems to be the main goal.

We don't think either one of the presented models is appropriate, but we find a possible solution with Collin Griffin. The model that stresses learning, instead of education, which can be a subject of social policy seems to be the most challenging one. Within this model, the individual has enough freedom and independence to learn. The model therefore is adapted to the post-modern society in which individuals have to take responsibility for their lives. At the same time, the state can develop a policy in protecting the consumers, while still giving the opportunity to the market to play his role. It's up to the state to make sure that all citizens have the same chances to learn and to stimulate people to use them. If we connect this to self-directed learning, the state should provide possibilities for mentorship.

At the end, we question though what changes policy. Are it the politicians, the voters, the market, certain events or a combination of these forces? And of course, another problem emerges when this bright ideas have to be put in practice. We can refer here to the Belgian professor Delmartino, who once said that the process of a policy-proposition becoming a law, can be compared to a sheep turning into a camel.

Group 2 members: Anke Engling, Noe Blanco, Inger Osterlund- Oller, Cathy Camertijn

Adult education is one part of the social- and education policy in the European countries. So it is not possible to consider adult education without policy and social values, norms and beliefs. In the sense of Paulo Freire every teacher is a political actor because he choose values, directions and also political modules. He talks about the political nature of the education (not neutral), there is an intellectual and politic compromise because, for him, the educational aim is the transformation and not the reproduction or adaptation to the society.

2 Discription of the two political moduels (social democratic and neo- liberal)

Nowadays are fighting, in many European countries, two political models, the social democratic and the neo- liberal, against each other. You can be aware of the importance of this in the adult education field too.

The social democratic and neoliberal models have their origins in the "modernity values" that the French Revolution defended against the absolutistic system: freedom, fraternity and equality; but each one emphasised one of those values and nowadays, after the society evolution, seem to be irreconcilable.

With this scheme we can see the relation of those models at that time with the education, and after we will analyse the situation nowadays (in the post-modern society).

FREEDOM

FRATERNITY

EQUALITY

The freedom value was stressed by the liberal tendencies and the equality by the socialists. The first approach defended the rationalism of the education (for instance Vienna School, positivist approach), and the second one the same opportunities for everybody (Frankfurt School, critic philosophy approach).

In the evolution to the post-modern society we find these two models: neo liberal and welfare reform model, and progressive and social democratic model, that in a way come from those perspectives, but the characteristics are related also with the new situation. We will describe now the differences between both and the consequences in educational policies.

The social democratic model has the equality of the citizens as a main goal, so the way to make it sure is with the state interventionism and educational prevision with the same opportunities for everybody in an emancipatorical thinking. This model is related to a social justice orientation, public services and also prescriptive legislation. The education has intrinsic value.

On the other hand, the neo-liberal model stands up for a welfare reform because of the freedom value as the most important. Their argument is the individual freedom to achieve higher individual responsibility, so the government intervention has to be less and are needed more permissive legislation and more flexible learning organizations. The orientation is more consumerist, so the education has an instrumental value for the competition and the employability. They see people not longer as citizens of a democratic state, but more as a consumer who can chose an "educative product".

In the last day of the module "Policy and adult education" we had a discussion with the teachers about the relation between two concepts (equity and equality) and these two models. The relations were different depending on the different meanings that everyone had and the use of these terms. We have developed a scheme to try to clarify these relations.

To explain that we will start with the social democratic approach. As we have seen the main value is the equality, this is the goal of that model, but the reality and the start point is the existent inequality of power, opportunities, etc. So the method to achieve the equality of the citizens is using the equity: giving to everyone what they need to equilibrate the balance, not giving the same things to everybody, because there are people who really need that and others not.

In the case of the neo-liberals we see that the freedom is the main value, it is that everybody has to be responsible of their acts, so each one will chose what they need, and everyone will have what they are working to (equity). But their method is based in equality as the starting point. They sups that with that freedom everybody has the same opportunities and rights to do what people want. But we will see later (see contradictions and paradoxes), that this is not the reality, because there is inequality in the society, so that is "relative freedom".

The main paradoxes that we have seen between these two models in relation of education and lifelong learning are:

The learnig organizations are suposed to be a tool for the empowerment of the workers in the company in an humanistic aproach, but depending on the use that the company does, the employees can be in a situation of desempowerment, because the company can ask for more responsibility, but also more demands. Here is the union’s work to not let it happen.

How to deal in a learning organisation where the main strategy is the teamwork and the co-operation if the main value outside the company and between companies is the competition?

This is the eternal contradiction between the determinism that can reach the state responsibility of the individuals and the inequality and injustices that appeal with a total freedom.

5. Decentralisation as a local empowerment and emancipation / Decentralisation as market freedom.

6. Lifelong learning for equal opportunities (emancipatory and democratic thinking)/ Lifelong learning for the economic effectiveness.

1. Social democratic policies but neoliberal practises (example of South Africa)

The neo- liberalism way seems often more attractive because you have a more freedom, but it is only a "relative freedom". People want to be autonomic individuals, but the freedom depends on your social background, promotion, trends and, in the first line, of Money!!! Everybody has the freedom to choose, but you are not realy free to choose. It is a kind of "relative freedom".

Neo- liberalism creates a "new underclass" and "second class Citicenship" (Licinio C. Lima) , it creates a new form of discrimination and social exclusion, such kind of political model can of this reason also create extreme groups of People (i.e. right radicalism if they are outside of the society they look for people who are more outside than themselves and you fight against them because you need it for your self-confidence).

5. Does it really mean less cost for the state? In a long term not because there are more problems of marginalisation and duality.

6. Only emphasise the vocational training and not the general training, the social and leisure education.

Culture- and education policy in Germany is made by the different federal states. That’s why there are many differences between the states.

One example of an adult education institution is the community adult education centre (c.a.e.c., Volkshochschule) which exist in the whole country. There are more than 1000 (1994: 1064) and their main subjects are foreign languages, culture and general education. These centres will be financed through a particular finance policy. They get main subsidies from the communities and federal states. The original goal of these c.a.e.c. is to reach a higher level of higher general education for everybody. Thus they have a social democratic tradition. Everybody can get in this institution for low cost education in many fields.

Nevertheless also here you can notice a shift. The content of the programme is changing. There are less and less general and political courses, but more and more market orientated like computer courses, esoteric and economic courses. Even so in the c.a.e.c. supply and demand determine the programme. Thus the sense of higher general education for everybody turns to market orientated education which you can use for better opportunities of the labour market. Here the value of public spirit gets lost and turns to a individual spirit. The new goal is to be more competitive.

But nevertheless there also still now efforts in the social democratic way. For instance they offer language courses for target groups like refuges or special courses for women with children. In spite of it the c.a.e.c. has to exist in the more and more market orientated educational field and there is a competition with many private offers which have really good but expensive supplies. That’s the reason why their discourse with the state or official authorities is nowadays more in a neo liberal way. They try to find more and more neo liberals reasons and discuss in a more neo liberal terminology like flexibly, individual freedom, efficiency, competition.... to get more aid.

Although they cannot close their eyes for the new development I see a great danger for the future. If the c.a.e.c. follow further this direction we will have more specific labour market orientated abilities and less general and political abilities. This way cannot lead towards emancipatory and general educated citizens. But if these social democratic values get lost, where will the social educational responsibility be which is the main basis for a democratic state?

I think a good example to make clear the pros and cons of the different political models is the unification of the two German states. The East- German people have the advantage to have the experience of both political models, even though the socialistic way is not really comparable with the social democratic political model, because it was a dictatorship and not really democratic. Nevertheless there are many similar ideas and that’s why I want to do it.

The German Democratic Public tried to develop a social democratic system. The main goal was equality for everybody, the responsibility of the state for the whole educational system connected strong regulations. The state appeared as as alone educator.

The equality has already begun in the kindergarten where nearly everybody was because almost in every case both parents were working. The women were allowed to stay at home if they got a child for one year....(further explanations follow)

In this new liberal sense I found an article about the education reform in Germany in the newspaper "The World" (14.April 1999)

In this articled the Federal President of Germany "Roman Herzog" speaks about the new direction of education of the German education congress.

He says we need in the system of education more competition and efficiency, more self-responsibility and transparency and more possibilities to compare educational institutions. Further he says we need a new system to finance the universities in the sense of the "plan economic". He stands up indirectly for study fees and new forms of performance orientated financing. Herzog also stresses the necessity of life long learning, but he does not say who has to be responsible for it. In his opinion you can only be successful through a competition from innovation and ideas. Nowadays one needs a flexible state framework and more own responsibilities for institutions and organisations.

But more hope we can have from the words of the SPD (Social Democratic Party) expert of education "Peter Glotz", because he stresses also the responsibility of the state especially for life long learning. He says in this time chiefly the enterprises carry out the further education in Germany, but if the state does not built up opportunities for life long learning it will create a "two class society"

On this article one can see the really close relation between our model about political education and the reality. Even the terminology is almost the same and is is a alarming sign that the new role as an adult educator has to be to try to intervene this development and so fast as possible to search for a third more social more fair way.

- If you create a market of education there are only customers and education will be degraded as a product of the market, but a product loses automatically its ethical values if there is an "oversupply"

- The market combine (verbindet) somebody who offers something and somebody who needs something (offer and demand) ((Angebot und nachfrage))

- goal could be to create a balance between equality of people related to the s.d. pol. m. and the individual freedom related to the n.l. model. There is a contradiction between both terms. If the people have more individual freedom they can choose different educational chances and this leads to inequality. If education of the other side is a public service regulated by the state than the people have less individual freedom. Thus the role of the educator could be to create a balance between both. In this way can be the adult educator a kind of mediator.

- Another possibility could be that the educator works together with the trade unions. The trade unions have an important role in this new situation. On the one hand they are a product of the social democratic time but on the other hand they realise the advantages and chances of the new liberal way. They deal between the citizens and the enterprises that are often responsible for retraining and further education in general. Thus they can support the positive things of both models without that the democratic values get lost.

- educators can stress the importance of collectivism, and democratic values, mutual responsibility

Almost every country in Europe has shift from the social democratic model to the neo-liberal one. If the society does not find a new way increases the danger that the democratic values in the society get lost.

We have seen the pros and cons of the two models if those are taken in a extreme way. For the future we must find a third way. It’s important that this one take into account the sustainability of the whole world. The individual development is vey important, but the equality also, is not possible the dual model, with the development of some countries or persons and de desempowerment of others. The freedom has some limitations when we deal with others. We want freedom but, for what? If our option is the emancipation (not the determinism of the states or the money) and the free transformation of the communities, we must chose the politic freedom, but not the economical one. This political freedom doesn’t mean that the state ignores its responsibilities, it means that the civil society must work in his own way, but with the governmental help and ask for its responsibilities (P.Freire).

This model has to take into account the globalisation process, but not only the economical one, but also the repercussion that have the own actions as a person, as a community or as a country (for example the ecology between others).

In this first part of the paper, our goal is to give an short and objective description of the two policy models. In the two other parts of this paper, our personal opinions and values are more present: in the selection of the contradictions and paradoxes and in our perspective for the future.

In this model the state has a redistributive role and is focused on obtaining equality and emancipation of the citizens (welfare). To reach these goals, the state develops a strong regulation and defines both the means and the ends of education and training. The state guarantees the educational provision wherefore it is responsible. To ensure this offer, a strong developed organization and administration is needed, and therefore an intact welfare state is needed to provide the necessary means.

The Neo-liberal policy model must be seen in the light of the globalized market and fast technological change and the social and economic crisis of the welfare state. The goal of learning is economic growth and increased productivity and competitiveness. The underlying assumptions are: 'Learning is the crucial factor for economic growth', 'Economic growth is, if not a necessary condition, certainly a facilitator for achieving equity' and 'A high-skilled labour force will be cause a high wage economy' (Soobrayan, p.106-110). The individual has to adapt himself the demands of the competitive market. Learning is seen as an instrument for the economic competitiveness, this means that the notions with an intrinsic value like citizenship and emancipation are excluded from the discourse. Learning is also focused to create opportunities for individuals to be better integrated into society (through labour). Due to the economic crisis of the welfare state, the state is withdrawing itself more and more from public policy-making as part of a strategy to reform the welfare state. By giving the responsibility to the individuals, the market and the civil society, the state can reduce it's expenses on education. The role of the state is reduced to correcting the most exuberant excesses of the free market (workfare and post-welfare). Because the state has abandonment it's redistributive role, the differences between groups in society become larger and the labour market becomes highly segmented.

We see both in the discourses as in the practices a shift from the Social-Democratic to the Neo-Liberal side of the spectrum. The justification for the shift often are the social and economic crisis of the welfare state and the competition on the global market. In the Neo-liberal model, the demands of the global economy are accepted without any kind of questioning.

In this part of the paper we want to do more than only presenting a list of contradicting and paradoxes. In a first step, we will categorise the different kinds of contradictions. The second step is a search for an underlying general principle; the conclusion (Þ ).

We can distinguish two main categories of contradictions: contradictions in one model and contradictions between discourses and practices. The last kind of contradiction it that between the different levels of policy formation. This means that there are five categories:

Þ Due to the fact that most countries (and organizations) are maintaining their Social-Democratic discourse and only incorporate some elements of the Neo-Liberal discourse, it's more difficult to find examples of contradictions between a Neo-Liberal discourse and Social-Democratic practice.

The concept of employability is focused on the training of people so they can get a job and/or keep their job.

The competition on the global market forced enterprises to rationalise and this often means that they have to fire employees.

So the same discourse is in the same time trying to reduce unemployment and creating unemployment.

The learner is free to chose the education he wants, but the goal is almost always adaptation to the prescribed goals of the competitive market. Only functional goals are profitable, emancipatory goal don't pay-of for the organizations and thereby, they aren't offered on the market. The goal is fixed: adaptation to the demands of the market. There is only freedom of choice concerning the means to obtain this goal. There is no choice but to adapt in order to survive (Griffin, text 1, p.1). This idea is often expressed by the following sentence "There is no alternative.". Globalism, technology and the market have narrowed our scope for individual choice (Griffin, text 2, p.6).

the individual curriculum (in higher education) really is an example that freedom of choice is an intrinsic value. We believe that it can also be seen as an instrument to create more specialized workers for the market. Specialization isn't only an opportunity, but also a must.

In the learning organization co-operation and teamwork are strongly valued, and at the same time they compete with other organizations, and even with other teams inside the same company.

We believe that a state that still give the necessary means to oganizations, still has a lot of power, a thereby its' role stays, even if it's smaller then in the Social-democratic model, significant.

Þ Generalising these contradictions, we believe the cause of most of the contradictions are created by the main characteristic of the Neo-liberal discourse: economic growth. All the other characteristics are secondary, and even instrumental to reach the goal of economic growth. Nice looking objectives like educational choice, de-politisation, the learning society, individual responsibility, employability and flexibility aren't the primarily

concerns of the Neo-liberal discourse, but rather instruments for the often hidden agenda of economic growth.

This is not really a contradiction, but a failure of the welfare state in it's aims, because it did not remove the social inequalities it was intended to remedy (Griffin, text 1, p.5).

We believe that if a learning process pretends to be emancipatory, there has to be a strong participation of the learners. In a policy model where the state regulates and offers a prescribed program, there is a big danger that the patronization will be the result, in stead of emancipation (what also was the case in the role play).

MEGA

world-wide, international

MACRO

nation-state

MESO

organizations

MICRO

groups

We aren't focused on restoring the social-democratic model in it's pure form. We believe that an important part of a way out should consist of an acknowledgement of the role of the market.

In our way out, we want to place to principals in the centre: sociale justice and personal responsibility.

Because nobody want to be born in a poor family, handicapped, or without language skills. We believe that the individual can't be responsible for the negative consequences of things that he didn't chose for. But we can say that an individual is responsible for the decision -if it is really a matter of free choice- to work for example part-time in stead of full-time. This goes beyond the notion of equity in the Neo-liberal discourse, where people have the same starting point, but in the process of competition everybody is on their own. Equal starting points aren't sufficient because there is no real freedom nor equality. Choice are determined by the personal situation and the evolution's and circumstances in society. Because of this the individual can't always be held responsible for his own choices.

If we take these principals into account, we can conclude that the role of the state can't be limited to focus only on riskgroups and on correcting the most exuberant excesses of the market, but has a responsibility for society as a whole.

Griffin, C. Lifelong learning as educational policy. (text 1; unfinished draft).

Lima, L. C. (1995). Political education. Towards a European democracy. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. p.38-44.

Schied, F. M., Howell, S. L., Carter, V. K. & Preston, J. A. Creating contingency workers: A critical study of the learning organization. p.280-290.

Soobrayan, B. From apartheid education to lifelong: Assessing the ameliorative potential of emerging education policy in South Africa. p. 103-114.

In the last decade, a shift towards more economic effectiveness and efficiency is being observed in every level of society. Two policy models, namely the progressive social-democratic model and the neo-liberal model, can describe this shift. We will give a clarification of those models in the first paragraph. Those two opposites are models, which simplify the reality. Often we see that the discourses and practices can not be categorised in the same way. Examples of such contradictions will follow in the second part. We will use examples of different countries to make clear the differences in the main paradigm. The last part describes ways out to deal with this debate.

Nowadays, people everywhere are confronted with concepts like "efficiency", "competitiveness", and "privatisation" et cetera. Those words manifest a neo-liberal tendency. In this module, two models of social policy have been clarified. Two models that are very opposite, namely the (progressive) social democratic model and the neo-liberal reform model. The two models presented during the week are extremes. In reality you find a lot of mixtures and it is not always easy to categorise certain situations or trends in one of the two ways. It is possible to find different combinations.

The models differ in three aspects: the role of the state, the role of individuals in society and social midfield and the education-system.

Also in the field of education, we see the tension between those two models. While the social-democratic model is stressing the educational choice and freedom, the neo-liberal model is stressing educational provision of the state. In the first model is the state conceived as the most important provider of education. Learning and education have an intrinsic value. In the second model, we see autonomous individuals responsible for their own learning trajectories. The goal of education and learning is directed towards the labour market. Learning has an instrumental orientation. While in the social-democratic model, education is seen as an instrument for democracy, education in the neo-liberal model is viewed as an instrument for economic competitiveness.

According to this distinction, we can make a distinction between the terms "education" and "learning". According to Griffin, we can associate "education" with the social-democratic and "learning" with the neo-liberal model. "Education" is seen as provision of educational opportunities and what is controllable, while "learning" is something attributed to people without being able to mandate it or secure it (Griffin, 1998, p.3). We see learning as a function of individual and social life (Griffin, 1998, p.6).

An illustration of this neo-liberal-tendency is found in an article of Boshier. The author focuses on the 21 principles of Faure which were created as an instrument for developing civil society and democratisation. But now 25 years later, we see a strong neo-liberal influence. Those principles have become an instrument to enhance economic effectiveness.

In the next paragraph, we will give some examples of different countries that show that there are a lot of paradoxes and contradictions in the way those models are used.

In this paragraph, we demonstrate that there can be a contradiction between the practice and discourse. According to Lima, four combinations are possible.

In Finland, a contradiction between discourse and practice can be found in the University of Helsinki. Both the discourse and the practice of the university are mixtures of the two models. In Finland, everyone is allowed to go to university, which is a characteristic of social-democratic orientation. So in discourse this is social-democratic. This is also social-democratic in the way that the government pays the university and partly the students fees. So education is under governmental responsibility. But on the other hand, we see that the university is really oriented on the labour market. An entrance-examination limits the number of students. This number is depending on the needs of the labour market. Here we see a very strong neo-liberal influence.

Also Open University shows a contradiction. While their discourse and practice is really social-democratic, we can see a neo-liberal influence in the whole concept of Open University. Open University allows open access for everyone and it is very cheap to enter this university. The state provides that educational system and gives everybody the same opportunities. It is a public service and equality is stressed. The learning also has an intrinsic value, is not instrumental because the Open University do not give certificates on the same level as the higher education institutes. But if people did courses in the Open University, they can take their credits to the (normal) university.

But on the other hand, the concept of an Open University has also an influence of the neo-liberals. This institution allows people to choose what courses they want to follow and where they want to follow courses. People are also responsible for their own learning process.

In Belgium, we see the shift from a social-democratic to a more neo-liberal model also reflected in the Catholic University of Leuven, more specific the department of Social Pedagogic. During the years, courses are more oriented on vocational training. Now, courses are organised about vocational training, permanent training and this (maybe) will be enhanced in the next years. We also think that our professors our more and more doing researches for companies. So the instrumental value is increased. Another thing that shows the neo-liberal influence is that the department itself is more responsible for their own finances. But in practice, we think that our department is still working in a more social-democratic way in comparison with other departments in our university. Although we think that earlier our department was still more emancipatory then it is now. Also the accreditation-system should be changed if learning really want to be an intrinsic value.

In Germany: Community Adult Education Centres (Volkshochschulen) are due to their history more influenced by a social democratic model. The concept of the community adult education centres in the 19^th century is strongly linked to the working class. The idea behind was to empower the workers. It was a reaction to the reading circles and education activities of the bourgeoisie.

This notion was still existing in the 20^th century, especially in the 70's where the movement of `68 influenced the discourse. The main goals were to give people access to education, to empower people, to support their emancipation and to make them able to participate in a democracy actively. In the last 80's and more extreme in the 90's a new trend can be noticed. The market idea is taken over: Community Adult Education Centres speak about services (Dienstleistungen) and customers. The terminology they use is the same like in economy.

Nevertheless they still have the feeling of social responsibility. They want to keep the fees low so that people without much money like old or unemployed people are able to attend courses.

So the community adult education centres have a paradox strategy. While negotiating with the policy-makers to get some money for the financing they use the neo-liberal model. In the practice they are still remaining the social democratic model. But there are some signs of mixing both models. Community Adult Education centres are forced to think competitive because in Germany many private schools are existing for instance in the sector of languages.

Indirectly the demands of the participants move the program planning towards the neo-liberal model. People like to attend courses, which are relevant for entering the labour market for instance, computer courses or language courses.

Community Adult Education Centres are still offering course in this sector but if there are not enough participants they cancel the courses and this is often the case.

Another example of a paradox is the German Unification. Before the German Unification adult education took place in the companies. Companies had their own education-departments. A big part of education was vocational training. The employees get their special skills and knowledge according to the demands of their jobs. Employees therefore where high qualified and specialised.

After the unification many companies were not able to survive in the market. They had to cope with the double transformation process: They had to take over the West-German system and to go through the process from a modern society to a post-modern society. Because their technology was old-fashioned and because of their general lack of experience in the market many companies went bankrupt and were forced to dismiss their employees.

Suddenly Germany faced the situation to have many unemployed people with high education and high qualification. To solve the problem two measures, which were developed and used in West Germany, were taken over. One was the extensive retraining and the other was the idea of the second labour market (Arbeitsbeschaffungsmassnahmen = ABM). The first one was a measure to qualify (less educated) people for the new modern jobs and the other measure had the purpose to create new jobs. In West Germany the target group were woman who wanted to return to the job after having children, long-term unemployed people and youth without work experience. Now the target group of the ABM were high-qualified people. ABM is paid or partly paid by the state. Often NGO's are able to create ABM-jobs if a part of the salary is paid by the state.

This is a typical social-democratic strategy. It was not really successful. In many cases people were not able to find a new job neither after retraining nor after having an ABM-job for 2 or 3 years. The measures cost a lot of money and they did not create any new jobs. It was a short-term-thinking.

But the results from the research show that these measures softened the bad social impacts of unemployment and this is really an important point because people in East Germany never experienced unemployment before. People say that it was an important experience even if they were qualified down. They recognised that it was not their individual fault that they are now unemployed but a structural problem and the measures gave them their self- confidence back.

Unfortunately our policy-makers only see the bad outcomes of these measures and this is one of the factors why the discourse now is very neo-liberal. It is a consensus between all political parties except the PDS (former socialist party).

If we take in consideration that we have in East-Germany now a problem of growing xenophobia among social excluded young people it is important to remind the policy-makers that political information is very important and cannot be neglected. Now the government started a programme (Sofortprogramm) for this youth to help them to integrate in the labour market. But this is probably not enough to change attitudes. Like Spoering claims education cannot be used instrumentally to solve labour-market problems or to reduce unemployment. Education is a long-term-investment and it has an intrinsic value

In our group discussion it was clear that we prefer a mixture of both models. In reality both strategies are often mixed up like we have shown in our examples. An idealtypen is not existing but the trend in all European countries moves to the neo-liberal model. Especially in Germany is the public discussion at the moment very one-sided. Nevertheless practice has still social- democratic influences the trend goes to the neo- liberal system. We think it would be better to keep a balance between both models. It is conceivable to prevent social exclusion by using social-democratic elements like the free and equal access to education but also to stimulate individual and private efforts with the elements of the neo-liberal model like the concept of lifelong-learning.

As there is a growing importance of expert knowledge in post-modern societies it would be better if experts or intellectuals would comment critically the policy-making in the present discourse. If experts were more involved it could be a way to create new values or find old ones for instance to conceive learning not as an instrument to survive in the learning-society but to re-find the intrinsic value of learning. From the point of view of the constructivsm we think it is important to pay attention which language we use. Language creates reality and if we talk about education in economic terms then education will become a market product.

Talking about experts it is necessary that adult educators are involved in education-policy-making and creating strategies. We should not forget that education is a long-term-investment (Spoering). If this notion is neglected other problems will arise like less cohesion in society; extreme tendencies in society like xenophobia, social exclusion and so on. In the worst case these bad developments could even threaten the stability of our democracies similar to the events in the Republic of Weimar.

Measures in the past were not that bad like they are often described now. They had good impacts: They enhanced the quality of life, they strengthened the self-confidence of the people, and they gave people background information about the society/ about politics and so on.

Now in a post-modern society individuals have the freedom of choice and more self-responsibility and these are also positive developments. But to ensure that choice is a really a choice and not only a word, the state cannot withdraw himself from his intervening role totally. Nevertheless the development of private institution has also advantages like the research in Germany shows. They can react to the needs of individuals, the demands of the markets and they are high innovative, creative and produce a lot of knowledge.

According to our Belgium group member who experienced strong regulations from the state as a hindering factor in the practice it might be better if the adult educators would have more freedom and responsibility. With more deregulation adult educators are able to react faster and more flexible to the demands of the people.

We can conclude that overall-regulation is necessary but regional or individual responsibility is necessary. Talking about overall-regulation the international organisations like UNESCO could play a role in finding a way out – especially in a globalised world. The UNESCO now votes for a contract between state and individuals. The state cannot be longer a policy-maker. His influence in the post-modern globalised world is diminished but he has still the responsibility to develop strategies and to facilitate learning. To burden less the budget of the state the UNESCO proposes that more money from private resources either from organisations/companies or individuals be used.

To emphasise it once more overall-regulation cannot given up otherwise we get a «economised world» with many risks but the responsibility should be deconcentrated. Probably it will be one of the most challenging tasks of the future to harmonise the different levels where decisions are made like international organisations, European Union, states, federal states, communities and individuals and the different often opposite interest-groups like adult educators, employers and citizens. We are convinced that only confronting discussions between supporters of both models can be fruitful and produce good results.

There are many changes in the development of education and learning systems in the past decades. These shifts can be seen in national and international policies. The 2 major political streams are the neo-liberal reform model and the progressive social democratic one. The meaning of these streams becomes clear when we look at the way adult education is organised and which methods are used to reach the targets.

The social-democratic model keeps thinking in terms of the welfare state. Life long learning is seen in this model as a form of educational and training provision. The role of the state in this respect is one of redistribution of educational opportunities in global market conditions. The main goal of this policy is to create equality in the society. This fits in a social justice orientation, where education serves as an instrument for democracy and emancipation.

The neo-liberal model thinks more in terms of reforming the welfare state. In this respect the role of the state gets more limited and civil society and quasi-markets come in the front floor. Life long learning is seen as an instrument for economic competitiveness, employability and economic growth. Central keyword in this policy is individual freedom in educational choice. The principle of equity is ruling here, this means there is no use of positive discrimination for risk-groups, everybody is responsible for their own learning.

If we now look a bit closer to reality itself, we notice that the models presented earlier are not so clearly to recognise. Because of the ongoing change-processes in society itself, it is reasonable to expect that social (educational) policy will follow some of the same evolutions; but always one step behind. We can see what is happening now. Because of the pressure of globalisation and individualisation processes, policies with an original social-democratic orientation are in a way forced to shift to a more neo-liberal one, as well in discourses as in practices but not necessarily in a congruent way and not at the same time. So while trying to cope with reflexive modernisation processes elements of the social democratic orientation are mixed with neo liberal aspects or there is a radical flip-over in terms of the neo liberal model. We will now describe some examples of developments in this respect.

When policy-makers talk about education they have as well social-democratic as neo-liberal ideas in mind. An example on the macro-level : adult education is defined by policy-makers in Holland like this : " Education will point at the promotion of personal development of adults with the goal to promote the functioning in society of these adults. Education will enlarge the choices on the labour market and the social competencies of adults, who participate insufficiently in the society. " In Holland the situation is as following. The municipalities get money from the national government on behalf of the adult education. Within the framework of the law " education and vocational training ‘WEB 1996)", the municipalities are responsible for the planning of as well the adult education in general as the offer of basic education. They will buy the adult education. The available means for adult education are becoming less powerful. The municipalities get the freedom to decide how to divide the money. One condition is that the municipalities have to buy the education by " Regional education centres ". In the ideal situation the municipality will ask specific questions about schooling and the educational institutions will give a suitable offer (" demand-oriented offer ").

An example on the meso-level is the growing interest within company policies in the concept of the " learning organisation ". Talking about the topic of life long learning, politics and business life have to co-operate. The enterprises have to deliver a contribution (money for organising training in companies) of their own. Life long learning is in the interest of the individuals, business and the country itself.

We can recognise this shift from social democratic to neo liberal orientations in respect to the concept of the learning organisation in companies and the educational policy in Europe through several changes. First of all we can see the changes in the role of the state. In companies the role of the state towards educational policy is reduced, companies are organising more and more training themselves (in-company-training-programs). In educational policy the role of the state changes from intervention and regulation to more facilitation (financing). Other indicators of this are decentralisation measures. In companies we can see this in the growing importance of the middle management, in educational policy we see other actors become more involved, like the regions. There is also a shift in responsibilities. Individual workers within the company become responsible for their own learning, on the political level there is a diversification of responsibilities towards the different actors and power relations are changing (the state, the regional councils, the enterprises, trade unions, E.U). Together with all this the structure to organise decision making is changing to. In the companies we see that the learning-units (teams of the workers) are the centre of the organisation, there are more participation possibilities and there is more flat/horizontal organisational structure. In educational policy decision making happens more and more in interdepartmental/interministerial commissions and partnerships and networks with social partners are built.

The learning organisation is a manner to reach the goals of the company by giving more training/learning possibilities and responsibility to the employees. At the first sight this seems to be a more humanistic approach and empowerment of the workers, but in practice the employers get more influence over the workers in this way, they can have higher expectations and put more demands upon the workers. So the position of the workers is weakened this means disempowerment instead of empowerment. The goal of the organisation is always profit (economical approach). The concept of the learning organisation and the in company –training-programs related with this are only for a very select group of adult-workers in the companies themselves. Because : what about those employees who are not able to (who have not the skills, knowledge, attitudes) keep up with the speed of change-processes in companies ? People also have limits to learn new skills and knowledge. Do those people just get fired? Do they loose their job or do they get excluded in another way (get a marginalised position in the company)? So by this way of organising learning the gap between high-skilled and low-skilled people becomes bigger and this is also related to the point of " work-inflation " (high-skilled take workplaces of low-skilled). So this is not the solution for the unemployment-issue. We can also ask what the meaning (social, psychological and economical) and importance is of "work " in peoples lives.

We can recognise another contradiction related with this. By emphasising the individual responsibility within the concept of life-long-learning the neo-liberal model tries to enhance the employability and competitiveness of the workers and to promote economic growth. The ideology behind this is one of equity in the meaning of giving the same opportunities to everyone. In fact, the neo-liberal approach is a selective one, because it creates risks for some groups of people: not everybody has the same capabilities to use this responsibility given in an equal way. So there will be a drop-out of people who can not participate and in this sense inequalities in society are being reproduced. This contradiction includes another one: everyone has the freedom to participate and choose, but in fact if you do not join the system, you will drop out, in this way the so-called freedom becomes a duty.

There is a dominance of the neo-liberal discourse in our society. We have to accept this, because we are living in this society. But, on the other hand it is very important to question this dominance, because of the negative side-effect/hidden agendas (see contradictions and paradoxes).

We can think about two possibilities in this respect. On one hand we can ask how to rebuild the social-democratic model in order to overcome these neo-liberal side effects, or how to safeguard the positive elements of the social-democratic model to correct for the deficiencies of the labour-market? On the other hand we can try to balance the positive and negative elements of both models in order to make a combination, a new model.

We will only describe some elements, ask some questions that are in our opinion useful to take into account in policy-making. Within the context of post-modern society education has to play a very important role in empowering individuals, in their role as employees and citizens. That is why educational policy has to focus as well on a vocational training system as other kinds of adult-education, like community-education, basic-education, and so on. In constructing policies different actors have to be involved in a system of shared responsibilities. The following questions are important to answer: How are the different actors situated towards each other? What are the power-relations between them?

If we look at the society/ the system as a whole social rights and individual freedom have to be recognised. On each level (person, state, company, civil society,…..) individual as well as social responsibility have to be kept in mind. Everyone is, in a certain way, free to choose and act but everybody has also to take his responsibility for those who will drop out of the system.

In accordance to this, adults have different learning-styles (putting it in a life-long-learning-perspective, there are not only differences between people, but also within the lifetime of an individual) so they need to have the possibility to make different educational choices, so different educational provisions have to be created.

We think the development of the "demand-oriented-offer" is a positive one, it is important that the bounds between policy and the educational provisions are strengthened. The concept of life-long-learning has a meaning, not only for specific adaptation-processes to the changing-context (re-active), but can also be used in a pro-active way, e.g. to prevent social exclusion of risk-groups. At last we want to ask a fundamental question about the concept of life-long-learning itself: in the context of the ever-changing-society, life-long-learning sounds reasonable, but implies it really the freedom of members of the society or is it becoming compulsory and do we just have to accept it as it is?

The society is in the change as we have been discussing during all the modules of the program. The main question is to how to handle with the change and what is the role of education in doing it.

The starting point is to notice the shift that is going on in society. After that we can try to take over and understand the change. But first the change should be made discussible and for that we have to conceptualize and analyze it. During this module we have been trying to take over the changes in society by two political concepts: models of social-democratic policy and neo-liberal policy. The danger of conceptualizing is always to simplify things in reality. Also in this presentation we try to be aware of it. The reality is too complicating to fit in two theoretical models but the trend of change can be observed by them and concepts can be used as a tool in clarifying trends in political decision making.

The political aspect is always included into the discourse and practice of education. Educator is a choice-maker weather he likes it or not. Education has important influence to the structure of society as well as to the lives of individuals. So there is not an argument to refute Paolo Freire’s statement of educator as a policy maker and education having the element of politicity.

We start by analyzing and comparing two policy models and go on to a paradoxes they create in the point of view of education policies. The main concentration will be in the issues that we see important to be aware of by every educator as a policy maker.

The debate between social-democratic and neo-liberal policies is strictly connected to the development of post-modern society and process of individualization which are discussed in the chapters before, especially in the module of community education.

We can observe the main characteristics of these two models by three pairs of concepts:

Neither the social-democratic model either than neo-liberal model is good or bad. Both of them are problematic. The worst threats could be in the social democratic model the paternalistic element of education policy and in the neo-liberal policy the threat of abandon.

Next we will go more in to details of the paradoxes that models include. Paradoxes are about the contradictions in the policy discourses and the practices they actually create in the reality. Education should work on the both levels, discourse and practice, and therefore the awareness of both elements is important. The fist two paradoxes concern the social-democratic model and two last ones the neo-liberal model.

This is the main paradox of neo-liberal discourse and practice. In the discourse of education the main interest is to give free choice of opportunities to learn and develop self. But in any case people need certain basic skills to be able to use these opportunities. The clear example of this is already given in the chapter of new technologies and education. If nobody guarantees the skills that are needed for every one the freedom to choose is not real. ...the risk society...people in the risk... EU-paperi, Griffinin paperi.....

After the paradox 3 it looks quite obvious that the group of users of the educational opportunities are not all citizens. The highly skilled, active and motivated citizens are mainly the users of education services. When offering of the education services is left to the shoulders of markets and civil society without interventions of public actors it might happen that the demands of the consumers have so strong influence of education that is offered that in the end there will bee less and less offers for lowly skilled people and more and more offers to the highly skilled consumers. That will increase the gap between highly an lowly skilled people.

By these paradoxes or examples we can see that both of the models have difficulties in the carrying out the discourse in practice. The social-democratic model seems to bee some kind on daydreaming of equal citizens in the world of solidarity and good will. Neo-liberalistics take the needs of all the different individuals in the middle and dress the emperor with the discource of the open opportunities. But in the end the practice seems to be naked.

(Three slogans of the new president of Venezuela during his election campaign in the beginning of the year.)

The change is unavoidable. Everything flows and you can not stop it. But what is left is a choice. What kind of change are we willing to have in our society? The function of policy is to use power by making choices and as a educator you already are involved with it.

Sociology can usually be seen as a describing science, which takes care of the seeing and conceptualizing the change in society. For educator it is not enough. After taking over the change it is inevitable to have influence to the change of the society in the levels of discourse and practice. We need new suggestions and new practices in stead of emphty critics.

In the paper of community education we have been describing the utopia of "the new society"; the society of strong individuals with the sense of social responsibility. Realizing of this utopia needs to be made by a mixture of two policy models.

In the previous papers we talked about the different roles of the adult educator. In this paper we want to stress the influence of the policy in many educational actions. As Freire says every educator is a political actor whether or not he is aware of the consequences of his values and way of acting in designing and teaching programme’s of adult education. Even though an adult educator chooses to stay neutral, he takes position in the political debate. Therefore we think it is important to be aware of the consequences the policy has towards education.

We will explain the influence of social policy within adult education by using the two models of Griffin of lifelong learning. The goal is not to explain the different levels of policy and decision making which are the international, national, organisational and group level. We want to explain the social-democratic and neo- liberal discourse to show the contradictions and paradoxes that may appear in practice. These we will explain by using examples from the educational field.

In general the role of the state can be seen as redistributive because the social-democrats want to create a welfare state, where every citizen is offered equal opportunities in health care, education, social security,... Their goal is to combat social exclusion and reinforce a common culture and citizenship. Therefore they pay attention to the social responsibility and social rights to every citizen on every policy level. The state provides a lot of opportunities for everyone and by giving these opportunities the state wants to control the citizens if they use them in appropriate way. Therefore there is a tendency towards centralisation and bureaucracy.

In a post-modern society there is a general tendency towards neo-liberalism and individualisation. There is a new way of life established, where we see that the individual is seen as a consumer and competitor in a free market. The stress in this kind of policy is on the market where the state plays a minimal role. The market supports the equal rights of every consumer to take their own individual responsibility but in the end it's up to the individuals whether or not they want to use their individual freedom.

Our main interest as future adult educators is the influence of the different policy models on education in general. Therefore we explain the model of Griffin as seen here below.

Griffin distinguishes two dimensions to reflect the educational policy. On the one hand he sees the political meanings of the concepts education and learning and on the other hand of social policy and social function.

The social democratic model concentrates on providing education on all levels for every citizen. The social democratic model seeks to achieve redistributive educational provision through increased educational opportunities that are in fact compulsory. This gives every citizen equal opportunities to follow training. The educational system and designing the programmes are based on rational planning. This makes it possible for the state to provide courses for the citizens. As a consequence the state wants to control and measure the outcomes of education.

The neo-liberals pay attention to the centrality of learning in the lives of individuals. They think that providing education is not enough to guarantee that an individual will learn. Therefore they concentrate on the learning process itself and not on the outcomes. They stress more on vocational training to give capabilities for individuals to compete in the free market. The stress is also on the individuals and companies to create courses to reinforce the learning society and learning organisations. The state chooses to play a minimal role because it wants to give every individual the responsibility and freedom to choose his own individual learning plan. So every individual has equal rights to follow the courses if he wants to.

The social-democrats want to control the educational field. Therefore they develop a complete educational policy to plan in a rational way to provide educational facilities. So fundamentally, policies for education and training have their roots in existing systems of provision.

The neo-liberals see learning more as a function of social and cultural life, rather than as an object of public policy. Learning eludes social policy because it cannot, like educational provision, be directly controlled. (Griffin,1998, p. 3) Therefore the government takes a strategic role in creating the conditions in which the individuals have opportunities to learn. In this model learning is seen as a way of life.

In our opinion choosing between the two models will always lead to a extreme positions that are never satisfying. We believe that there has to be a development in both models towards a dialogue.

If we only choose the neo-liberal policy there might be a danger in extreme individualisation. We believe that there is no future in this Darwinist way of seeing learning as a function of survival of the fittest and not paying attention to the community. On the other hand if we only choose a pure social-democratic policy, the extreme control of the state does not leave any space for individual growth which we think is needed to be able to participate in communal life.

We think that Beck's reflexive modernity is one way to solve the contradictions of the models described above. On the one hand this term refers to the individual growth and self-reflexivity in defining one's own biography. This can be seen as a neo-liberal aspect of individual responsibility of one's own life. On the other hand the need for communal life in reflexive modernity is strong. This stresses the social responsibility of the citizens in a social democratic way.

In reflexive modernity both the individual reflexivity and the social responsibility to communal life are important. In our opinion there needs to be a concentration to individual learning processes and also to community education. Therefore the challenge for adult educators is to stress on the social responsibility as well as on the individual reflexivity in designing and teaching programmes. More radical we believe that the role of the adult educator is to take part in political debate on educational questions.

As we look at two main policy models, the social-democratic and the neo-liberal model, we see some important differences between them. We will not stress all the possible differences between them, but select some aspects that seem really important to us.

First, we think the two models can be situated in a different socio-economic period. The social-democratic model was more dominant in the modern society, while the neo-liberal model comes up now in the postmodern society. Of course this does not mean that in a modern society there were no neo-liberal elements or vice versa.

The two models also have a different content, a different way of building up and structuring society.

The social-democrats define the state as an redistributing instance that distributes and provides goods, education, social care,…The state is an institution that offers a lot of things to the citizens to reach more equality in society. A good side of this approach is that it mostly leads to more equality between people. But on the other hand, this model often is linked with bureaucratic practices, because the state as a large, global actor intervenes in and controls a lot of domains of society which leads towards a complicated administrative apparatus.

The neo-liberals stress that the state should play a minimal role and give as much freedom as possible to private initiatives of the citizens. This also is applicable to education and training. The citizens are free to choose what kind of education they want to have, when they want to follow courses, how much, and so on. The state does not provide this education, but has an open attitude towards private initiatives. In this way, they do not really take care of equal chances for everyone to participate in these private educational offers, but they stress more on equity. Because most decisions are taken on a decentralised, local level, organisations can act more flexible than in a social-democratic state.

If we are to consider recent developments in educational policies, it might be necessary to first take a look at policies in general. Liberalisation of the market and competition are of course not just developments of the last decades, for they were already part of public policies -at least- since world war II (for example with the GATT agreements). However, what is new nowadays is that these processes are increasing and globalising to such an extent that measures taken in the past (the social-democratic welfare state) to protect people from possible negative effects are no longer affordable. These processes can both be looked at on a practical level (for example the delocalisation of multinationals as clearly can be seen in the automobile industry) as on the level of discourse (for example the use of terms as ‘competitiveness’, ‘privatization’, … but also –although not yet official- the MAI-plans

Back to education (or should we say ‘learning’?), this neo-liberal discourse is also recognized for recently there is a strong emphasis on learning as an instrument for economical competitiveness, on individual freedom and responsibility for learning,…

In practice on the one hand more and more private organisations provide education in language, word-processing, … mostly for other enterprises. Sometimes governments even reinforce them by for example using a voucher- system.

Secondly, in many countries, governments are not so active anymore in determining educational policies for schools. Whereas before, they used to give money for each specific function of a school, determining how to use the money, nowadays it is very common to give a global budget and let the school decide what to do with it ( this kind of decentralisation is of course not per se neo-liberal). Also municipalities are rather talking about buying education than to organise it themselves.

Education however sometimes is reduced in its meaning. At least if we look at the importance of education as expressed by the money educational programs receive, there certainly is a trend to spend more and more money on practical, useful vocational training, and maybe less and less on other forms of education….

Another very fashionable development is the growing co-operation between educational systems and the labour market (enterprises, companies,…). Sometimes, states even set up completely new educational systems to support local companies. So, for instance in many European countries there is the PLATO-network.

However, state-supported educational systems for vocational and professional training certainly don’t always fit into a neo-liberal discourse. Rather, some initiatives for specific target-groups can be seen as a social- democratic correction in a neo-liberal market. However, this is a difficult topic, for in many countries unemployed people are obliged to vocational training, not just to help them, but to prevent the social security to be overloaded by too many unemployed.

But after all, still there do exist a lot of social-democratic practices in education, as for example Erasmus-exchanges, grants for studying, initiatives for community education (they are nowadays increasingly encouraged by some governments as for example in The Netherlands), …

This is of course not surprising, because there is still –in spite of a growing neo-liberal discourse- a very important social-democratic discourse. Just the fact tat the majority of the European countries nowadays have a socialist government says enough here.

Still, an important question can raise here: neo-liberal policies and practices are certainly increasing, but are they also replacing social-democratic initiatives or are both initiatives complementary at the moment? Probably they are (generally spoken) complementary at the moment, but whether the neo-liberal policies will completely replace social-democratic policies or not, the future will decide

During the courses of this week we discussed a lot of contradictions and paradoxes. Here in this paper, we want to stress one particular paradox that, in our opinion, might form an underlying basis for other contradictions.

We want to look more at the relation between freedom and equality. Both are important values in a democratic society, and are explicitly formulated during the French Revolution as two main values to build society upon. But it seems as if they exclude each other. If you take freedom as a basis to build up society, if all people are free to do what they want to, without intervention or limits of the state or governmental instances, you create or strengthen inequality, because not everyone has in fact the same opportunities. Differences in income, skills, social background,... lead to inequality if there is no intervention of the state but a big freedom of all individuals.

On the other hand, if equality of everyone is a basic principle of society, if everyone is treated in the same way, there doesn't exist much freedom of choice anymore. If the state, for example, organises all education, people can only choose between what the state offers them. This is no real freedom anymore.

But what does this paradox mean? Do we have, does the state have to make a choice between them? Does the state have to decide to diminish freedom in favour of equality? Or should they stimulate freedom and diminish equality?

We think that neither freedom nor equality are absolute values. Because people always live in a certain context, in a certain time period, together with certain others, their freedom and equality will always be situated and relative. Absolute equality and absolute freedom don't exist in reality. We think there only exists freedom or equality in a certain domain or on a certain level. This concrete filling in of equality and freedom and the definition of the domain where they can be situated on makes the difference between the social-democratic model and the neo-liberal model. The neo-liberals see freedom for example as freedom of the market, as the freedom to choose. They do not stress on freedom in the social or political domain. The social-democrats, on the other hand, try to establish equality mainly on the social domain with social measurements.

We think we can find an example of this relative filling in of equality and freedom in the discourses and practices of the Labour party in the United Kingdom. We can recognise there a real social-democratic discourse but with a more neo-liberal practice. For example, they avoid the term ‘voucher’ (too neo-liberal), but in practice they apply a similar system (the ILLAs). The Labour party is a very clear example, but this tension can also be recognised in other European countries. A lot of social-democratic governments have more neo-liberal practices because of the competition on the global market. They have to do this in fact to hold their place in the global economical world. This means that in fact the global market takes over the decision making of the state. We think you can't call this real freedom anymore, but this phenomenon can be seen as a kind of 'bound freedom'. It is bound to globalisation and the global market.

It is clear that the neo-liberal model is winning ground on the social-democratic one. It certainly has got its strong points (freedom to choose, stimulation of the private initiatives of people,…), but we might also fear some very negative outcomes, as for example unequal possibilities for people, reduction of education towards vocational training, economical domination in the educational field and the loss of a critical stance towards economy, etc.

We want to develop an alternative for the neo-liberal model, but we doubt about the possibility and the desirability of a complete return to the social-democratic model, because we now live in a post-modern society in which a social-democratic model would not easily fit. And on the other hand, the social-democratic model also has its disadvantages, like bureaucracy, etc.

Educational policy in our point of view can not be disconnected from economical policies. In a very neo-liberal market, you can not find a complete alternative that has no links at all with this market system. Corrections of course can be made, but if we really want to change the educational system, we should change economy. The way economy is globalised nowadays, we think it is impossible to make changes only on a local level (thus also major educational changes on a local level are hard to reach).

Of course there are very valid philosophical alternatives, but in practice, they are not always easy to realise. However, we do see a path towards an alternative in the (non-profit) civil society.

‘Act locally, think globally’ seems to be the motto for many NGO’s nowadays. And some of them are really working for an alternative economy, and although they still have little influence, they can function as an example for new economical structures, and directly or indirectly they also provide education about what is happening in the economy. In concrete we think about fair-trade initiatives like Oxfam, ethical banking like Triodos, food teams of Vredeseilanden-Coopibo (see paper 4), the Lentz system, ‘Hefboom’ in Belgium, … By working on an alternative economy, they might have an indirect influence on the educational system as well.

Working on the economy to change education, even using educational programs to change the economy, is a very important but rather long-term approach. However it is also possible to focus on education on itself. Examples are community work, educational non-profit network building like for example I. Illich proposed, intercultural happenings with an educational function (they work on ‘Bildung’). The advantages here are freedom to organise and to participate, less bureaucracy, social responsibility and a non-competitive approach of organising education.

However sometimes rather social-democratic oriented measures towards certain target groups can also be very inspiring. Social services organised in Leuven (Belgium) a training centre for low skilled people which at the same time is a recycling centre where they sell recycled materials and goods. This training centre, called SPIT, is subsidised by the state. Nevertheless, it doesn’t bring about that much bureaucracy, neither is it a workfare measure, because the first goal of SPIT is not to make unemployed people to find a job so that they are independent from a social security income, but to reach social integration (Û pure economic integration).

We want to stress that these educational initiatives only work on a local basis and that they are just traces, pathways for an alternative educational system.

Module 5