'Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife' – John Dewey.

In the aftermath of the shocking attacks in Paris and Copenhagen in early 2015, the Ministries of Education of the European Union met to discuss the role that education could play in countering the terror brought to our cities. The result was the Paris declaration, a text focusing on the promotion of citizenship and the common values of freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination through education. Ministries agreed that education's primary purpose 'is not only to develop knowledge, skills, competences and attitudes' but to nourish and transmit the fundamental values of our societies. With even more deadly terrorist acts following in Paris last November, and with the crisis that Europe lives as a result of the exodus of populations fleeing wars and extremism, the messages contained in that declaration are becoming ever more relevant.

Various Education for All Global Monitoring Reports show that education plays a crucial role in enhancing mutual respect, understanding and tolerance, and in reducing feelings of injustice in society. Eurydice is but one organisation that has responded to today's challenges by developing a new project on citizenship education, following a previous report published in 2012. But collectively, could we do more?

In recent decades, skills, competences and employment have been key words in the discourse around education. Cyclical global economic crises have focused attention on measuring education outputs. Accountability of education systems has been restricted to such goals with the view that an education system that is not able to produce more and better jobs is a non-functioning system.

Preparing people for their future professional life remains a necessity – there is no young unemployed person in Europe who would disagree. However, education does more than prepare people for jobs, and the Paris declaration opens a discussion on education's other purposes. So, what are the purposes of education?

John Dewey talked about growth. In his view educative experiences would give learners the capacity, confidence and opportunity to engage in new experiences without a pre-ordered aim. Rather, by involving students in setting the learning objectives, the educational experience would become meaningful and relevant to the needs and interests of the new generations. His thinking was very much in line with those who see education at the heart of innovation and societal development.

Many critical theorists, however, have illustrated how education serves to reproduce societal structures with its inequalities and power struggles, while also carrying the potential to achieve more inclusive and equal societies. Thus Antonio Gramsci looked at how literacy can both emancipate people and perpetuate cultural hegemony; Paulo Freire pleaded for the pedagogy of the oppressed, while Pierre Bourdieu saw education as a means to reinforce and perpetuate difference between social classes. Such thinkers have contributed to our understanding that education is anything but neutral, and that the idealism that animates many working in education should be tempered by the realisation that certain approaches may reproduce the inequity that educators strive to combat.

For example, while most people would agree that education should aim to reduce social inequalities, they might have different ideas on how to achieve this. Some focus on standardized testing, aiming to ensure comparable outcomes for all learners. The Eurydice publication on national tests shows that this is the practice in most European countries, and this is especially true when it comes to the basic skills. Others counter that we should talk about equal opportunities, allowing each individual to make free choices in line with personal interest and talent. Sir Ken Robinson, for example, is the digital age's high preacher for an education that allows people to fulfil their personal passion and talent.

However, it is easier to identify a problem than to solve it, and no one has yet provided a feasible blueprint of an education system that guarantees equal opportunities despite the efforts put in place in many European countries, for example to reduce drop-out rates.  

So where do these ideas lead us? First of all, we should recognise that education is called upon to fulfil many personal and societal demands that may at times be incompatible. So collectively we need to find a way of prioritising what we want from our education systems. Secondly, education needs to adapt to changing priorities in societies: there is no single purpose and we should stop expecting that what we have learned should necessarily be learned by our children. Thirdly, the view on the purposes of education will inevitably inform structures, curriculum, teacher training programmes, assessment, and so on. We must ensure at all times that the vision on education is relevant for the people we are educating and the world they will be living in.

Dewey was certainly right in stating that every generation must reinvent democracy, and education must remain at the heart of our democracies, with educators ensuring that the new-born comes to life.

Authors: Peter Birch and Elisa Simeoni