Abstract:

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
George Orwell

Revisionism, that gained momentum in the 1960s and ’70s, is a popular trend today, giving, as L.S. Stavrianos suggests, each generation the opportunity to “write its own history, not because past histories are untrue, but because in a rapidly changing world new questions arise and new answers are needed”.
As recent events worldwide have shown, undergoing reformation in the aging schooling systems in order to prepare children to lead productive lives seems to be moving slowly, compared to the unexpected rhythms of the socio-economic changes.

Increasing research into education and the ways in which people learn has resulted in an alternative, more progressive attitude towards learning through arts and culture.

Alongside, inter-generational schools and projects, such as for example EAGLE (European Approaches to Inter-Generational Lifelong Learning) in EU, gain ground and start to form an alternative attitude towards learning.

Taking in consideration those facts, a new research educational project has been initiated, bridging young pupils from primary schools, university students at their final year of studies before becoming schoolteachers and elder people, who spend their day at Open Care Centres. Either by visiting together cultural spaces (museums, etc.) or by working alongside on an art@platform (an innovative online self-educational platform that can contribute to the dissemination of knowledge in arts and culture) these three groups are united in order to promote intercultural as well as multicultural knowledge in schools, integrate unknown aspects and offer interesting, more provocative and appealing interpretations of European and global history. Cultural phenomena, artifacts and the arts serve as a reservoir of ‘unofficial’ knowledge, a critique of history and an affirmation of life in this shared lifelong learning approach. Moreover, they are considered a form of primary source material for interdisciplinary -intergenerational ‘education’ in which objects are understood as both a product of history and potential agents of ideas sharing and –among other things- of history revisionism.

This paper will present an early assessment of the first “experiments”, explaining at the same time the value parameters as well as the methodological tools and the expected outcomes of the proposed project. This hopefully will set the ground for the development and expansion of the programme on several aspects of the curriculum as well as of the countries involved. Finally, it aims to define more specifically what culture can do in times of wider societal crisis in order to aid Education, when the fabric of society is itself at risk.

Keywords:

Innovative learning methods, art and Cultural education, multicultural education, intergenerational learning, life-long learning, learning through the arts.