From the HREA staff: European Year of Citizenship through Education

2005 is the European Year of Citizenship through Education. The aim is to launch throughout Europe a campaign to popularise and put into practice existing education for democratic citizenship policies and programmes.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 a lot has happened in the area of curricular reform, policy development, text development and professional development in subject matters like civic education and history, both in Central/Eastern Europe and Western Europe. It is our hope that this European Year will particularly place education for citizenship and democracy higher on the agenda of policy makers and create more awareness in the media about the importance of our field. HREA will be actively involved in the European Year through activities of the Democracy and Human Rights Education in Europe (DARE) Network.

It will be interesting to see if the European Year will also spark the necessary dialogue about the essence, and differences and similarities, of human rights education, education for democratic citizenship, peace education, global education and other closely related fields. To get a taste of what such a discussion might result in, please take a look at the Global Human Rights Education listserv on which a lively discussion is currently taking place among educators about the relation between human rights education and citizenship education.

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