On October 26 and 27, 2006, a conference entitled: Entrepreneurial Education in Europe was held in Oslo. The conference was held as a result and as an extension of the European Commission’s communication on
The conference echoed policies and practices that fostered entrepreneurial mindsets in young people at all levels of education, “from primary school to university.” Coverage was also given to the financial instruments that the EU has put in place to support entrepreneurial education projects.
Advocacy was made for “better integration of programs and activities into established curricula” but also for maintaining “flexibility in participation and content.” That is, entrepreneurial education projects have curricular validity but their contents are decided by the agents that carry them out and whether or not to take them is a decision of the students. It is also suggested that entrepreneurship be integrated as a horizontal element in all areas of study (especially in primary and secondary education) or as a discipline in its own right (especially in higher education). The report notes that, “in any case, innovative pedagogies should be introduced in all courses as a necessary basis for building an entrepreneurial spirit.”
It is also said that “the tutoring or coaching of people with experience in the business world should be a basic element in all entrepreneurial training.” Thus, “it is necessary to increase the association between the public and private sectors. In any case, “it is not enough to just bring entrepreneurs into the classroom: students must be directly involved in business projects.”
The 94-page report includes experiences and initiatives in entrepreneurial education throughout Europe. In this way we have learned that the Principality of Asturias is a pioneer in the Spanish state in matters of entrepreneurial education thanks to the programs European Young Company (EJE) and A Company in My School (EME). The programs arise as an integral part of the transformation of Valnalón into a ‘Technological City’ and is supported by the creation of a public company for the management of the integral project of regeneration, promotion and industrial revitalization that includes educational policies and programs.
For some time now we have been thinking (and saying) that the main problem of the school is the gap between its practices, arising from the training needs in the early days of the industrial era, and the reality of current production systems. It seems that someone in the European Commission has decided to take action on the matter. What is surprising is that this intervention occurs, mainly, in the curricular contents and not in the ‘hidden curriculum’ as has been usual for decades. It is evident that, sooner or later, the school will need to readjust its habits and routines to be useful to the informational production system; on the other hand, it seems that less and less people are needed to produce wealth (information, knowledge and creativity) so that the school produces an excess of trained people who, in the meantime, must be screened by stimulating competitiveness (here we do find an action inscribed in the hidden curriculum that adapts to the needs of the system).
The truth is that the report points out educational practices and policies and pedagogical innovations that we would fully subscribe to, such as the association of the school with external agents and groups, the implementation of transversal projects that cross the different areas of knowledge or the permeabilization, in general, from inside to outside and from outside to inside, of the school institution, to say some like that, on the fly. What we do not subscribe to is the folding of the educational system to the needs of the production system, especially when it is given in an incontestable way and camouflaged as educational reform with a social alibi.
Perhaps it should be added that entrepreneurship is ceasing to be a freely chosen option to be a structural imperative derived in part from the dismantling of the welfare state, the inclusion of intangible goods in the market system or the subsumption of public policies in the dynamics of the global market (a paradigmatic case is that of the cultural industries, we know something about that). That is, we will be entrepreneurs by force or we will be nobody.
Via Firgoa.
