Education and the Internal Market

Abstract

The internal market fever is gradually invading the Federal Republic, of course not as Brussels would like to see it, namely, as a happy expectation—especially among youth—of new opportunities for mobility and new qualifications. The fever has hit those who formulate educational policy, as well as organizational officials: Graduates of Federal Republic secondary schools and colleges must be prepared to compete in the internal market. This is how Hesse's Minister of Education Christean Wagner justifies his initiative to reduce school years, and why Jürgen Möllemann would like to make college and university graduates more competitive so they can stand on their own two feet at the tender age of twenty-three and twenty-four, as do doctors, lawyers, and engineers in Great Britain. Of course, in Great Britain, a structured curriculum has just been introduced for the first time, and the anxiety about competition in the future internal market played a critical role in this [see no. 3 of the series "Schulentwicklung in Europa," Pädagogik, no. 10 (1989)]. Moreover, there is the necessity of learning more foreign languages. In the meantime, even employer organizations have come to the conclusion that a foreign language must be mandatory for everyone even in the Hauptschule and in the vocational schools. The GEW (Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft [The Union of Educators]) is demanding more initiatives for learning languages, as well as teacher mobility, from the state ministers of education. The Philologists Society has come out with proposals on a European reader and a more European-oriented history curricula—projects that no one would oppose. However, should unified curricula or even a standard reader be used from Lisbon to Athens? In light of the differences that exist even among the separate states within the Federal Republic, this is an illusory idea. Does the internal market threaten the cultural sovereignty of the states?