My Ph.D. research in Philosophy of education aims to discuss and criticize some wide-accepted concepts in nowadays education sciences. I try to discover and show which kind of human beings emerge from different sources (anthropological question), especially from the pedagogical academic discourse and the official and international documents on education, as the one about the “Eight European key-competences” of the EU. The main problem going through the different sections of the work is if what is ecumenically assumed about education is able to be defined, really, all what is very important for the personal development of a pupil of an European school. For this conference I'd like to propose a critic about the concept of competence seen as something objective, operative and only functional, to be spent in the “so-done-society” where we live and in order to reach, as best end, knowledges and skills especially directed to the professional world.

I try to demonstrate that something else has to be requested from a human education and as to become really an European citizen means to dedicate some of our learning-time to cultivate inside faculties of our mind and discover as to nourish them (meaning of education). What I'm saying is that an European educated citizen cannot be primary identifiable by as the one that knows how to be successfully employed or simply by the fact that at the end of schools he integrates well in the UE society.

The European citizenship has a sort of responsibility towards the world in telling something about what has been understood about mankind in his huge experience in his history. Concepts as competence, skills and “useful” know ledges risk to mutilate the best of what we can become, and the best of what can be "spent" in the future of our Union. I suggest that the notion of future of the single individual implied is poorly one way connected to his future inside the economical and technological processes, but these, we know, change very quickly.

In addition to this some questions: are nowadays education proposals blind towards the meaning of to be European inside a global world? Really a taxonomy of abilities can expire all what we can expect from an educated European person, is this our single cultural identity passport to the world?

Starting from the official Italian "National Indications For the Compulsory Schools”, document elaborated by the Education Ministry Office, linked to the European key-competence, I try to reflect about the possibility for the European education to do an effort in order to go beyond the "skill-paradigma", which I do not reject in a total sense if it refers to a professional sphere, but in the sense that this has become really a sort of "iper-paradigma" so next to be to be taken as a "dogma". After the critical part I'll propose some issues which could on my opinion bring education to further choices in order to promote trough education an European self-consciousness for a global responsible euro citizen.

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