European call for a counter summit in Louvain against the Bologna process

international | education | event notice Monday March 23, 2009 10:21 by European Anomalous Wave - Vague Européenne - Vague Européenne

«The worst enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge»

«This is a crisis», is the most uttered sentence during these last months. Yes, this is indeed a crisis. An economic crisis throughout society. But this crisis is also social, cultural and environmental, in one word: a general or structural crisis. If the economic and financial systems’ collapse is used as an excuse to accelerate the commoditation of our lives, goods and public services, responsible for even more precarious working conditions, we won’t bite.

In Greece, the youth and working class revolted in every public space, against government corruption and its neoliberal reforms. In Spain, no need to count anymore the number of occupied universities these last years, mobilised against the Bologna process. In Italy, for three months, now, the world of education is in revolt, and universities are constructing day after day another reform of university structure. In France, highschool students,teachers and researchers are in uproar against government reforms of the educational system, just as university students did last year against the autonomy law of universities.(LRU). In Germany, the idea of a «Global week of action» was born, focusing on the educational issue.

All these mobilisations oppose reforms that are not sectoral, nor national, but the consequences of neoliberal logics imposed in an international scale. We are assisting in a wild privatisation of institutions and the higher education’s enslavement to the present economical mentality, and power. These movements largely overflow the university frame and the educational world. The mental, physical and technical barriers that governments conscientiously construct with bludgeon beats and mediatic fume are but means of restraining our liberties , our emancipation and our aspirations. Civils, students and workers, are gradually finding each other and moving in the same direction: A radical opposition to the commun goods’ «sales» policy. We seek to create university areas for assembing, meeting, free and emancipatory knowledge. Education is indistinguishable from socialisation.

Political measures building and enlisting us into this project, towards an «exploiting until exhaustion» human resources society, through the educational system’s transformations and reforms are described, planned and and commanded by the Bologna process, adapted in 1999 by 46 mainly European states’ governements.

On the 28th and 29th, of April in Louvain and Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium the bi-annual ministerial conference of the Bologna processes will be reassembled «to assess the progress achieved and the new steps to be taken» and to give feedback on university reforms already on their way. Did they ever ask students, teachers and researchers, workers and staff of Europe? In addition to the ministers of education, consulting members such as Business Europe (european patronal organisation) and the ESU (european student union) will be present to evaluate this process.

LETS’S ACT NOW!!!! Education is like freedom: It can’t be given, it can only be taken!! Let’s meet in Louvain.

So Europe’s powers assemble to talk about education and discuss about our future. We, who live within and construct this society, cannot miss this rendez-vous...We are infront a unique opportunity to contest this Process, unite our local mobilisations in a vision that overtakes national frontiers, to start constructing and sharing a knowledge beyond any economic logic, free and accessible to everybody.

Calling all general assemblies, rallies, meetings groups movements, universities, syndical and political organisations, as well as every individual, in a European counter summit. Let’s share our experiences and strategies, establish a network, let’s give our revolts everywhere in Europe a stronger breath.

Calling also to communicate and translate this call in every university general assembly, every national movement coordination, every occupied faculty, every working and educational area.

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