Educating Europe's citizens: moving from national to post-national models of educating for European citizenship

The relationship between the EU institutions and its citizens is once again foremost in the minds of European policymakers and commentators. Recent referenda on European institutional reform have been rejected by the citizens of France, the Netherlands and, most recently, Ireland, thus re-igniting debates across Europe about the quality of European democracy and the limits and possibilities of European integration. Educational reforms and initiatives are often suggested as means of fostering stronger ties between political institutions and their citizens. This article therefore considers how European policies for fostering citizenship through education have fared thus far, focusing in particular on two questions: what sort of citizenship has been offered by European education policies; and how have these policies sought to construct a sense of community amid the diverse peoples of Europe? These questions are examined from a socio-historical perspective, which illustrates that European institutions have long sought to harness education as a means of fostering European citizenship. However, this process also illustrates that European education policies have evolved over time from an ethnocentric ‘national’ model of citizenship education towards a post-national model in which the citizens of Europe are united not (only) by a common culture or history, but also civic values, educational skills, and a shared future. This post-national model, the author suggests, avoids many of the pitfalls of the national model of educating citizens, but nonetheless creates a new set of challenges for the citizens and institutions of Europe.