Short Story of Converting People into Digits

by Miroslaw Krzanik

Very few precisely understand processes that are ongoing and how the different institutions are interacting. Can we then expect that the great dream of ever closer cooperation between peoples of Europe become some day true? Maybe yes, but then the European Union should start being present among its citizens not only among politicians and eurocrats. But for some reasons the European Commission tries to jeopardise work of the very few programmes that addresses directly citizens – programmes for education, youth and mobility.

Since mid ‘80s (back then) the European Communities, with the European Commission taking a lead in the process, has agreed upon creating a programme that aimed to increase exchange between students around Europe. The incentive was not only based on demands of the labour market for mobile and multilingual young employees, but also to actually start implementing the dream of bringing Europeans closer to each other. That was the beginning of the Erasmus programme.

Not much later the European Commission proposed also to create another scheme, this time for youth in general, which would allow youngsters across the continent to learn from their peers and socialise with them. Ever since then the amount of programmes has been only growing, addressing more and more groups of people for whom the most important issue was their self-development.

Throughout the years the programmes have changed, some of them have been grouped to limit costs of running them. But the most important distinction has never been questioned. Formal education has always stayed in separation from non-formal education. As commonly agreed they are complimentary to each other, but due to the fact that they addressed different groups and were implemented by different institutions a separation was needed. And the reasoning for it is obvious. How can we expect non-formal education being effectively implemented at universities in the environment being far from non-formal? Or on contrary, would we ever imagine to see an NGO providing a certified degree as a university? The European Commission has always seemed to understand that these programmes are a notion of something much more important than the objectives of increasing mobility of improving educational portfolios of young Europeans. These programmes have been teaching them how to look beyond borders of their nation states as something as normal and equal as their home. These programmes have taught people things they would have never learnt in formal education, starting with soft skills on languages finishing.

But in 2008 the global crises emerged. High ideals stopped being important and people started to look for short-term outcomes. The more measurable the better, the more obvious assessment of advantages is, the better for the project or programme. But the problem with education is that there is no other more long-term investment. Young people are the future of all societies and in most cases it is extremely hard to look at them and say that within 10 years they would achieve this and that. But on the wave of rationalisation and measuring everything the European Commission changed its expectations towards its programmes for education and youth. What could not have been changed within the current programmes, has been changed in the new multiannual financial framework which will be implemented between 2014 and 2020.

In November last year the European Commission presented a proposal for the new generation of the programmes. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call it The Programme ever since then. All the, independent and focused on different aims and objectives, programmes of the past were merged in one super-programme, with common goals, similar procedures and joint administration. The European Commission assumed that an objective for non-formal education for young people, scholars investigating stem cells and teachers going with their students for an exchange abroad are the same and that it is worth to put all that different groups under one umbrella. Sounds surprising on the first sight. But the justification stays in-line with everything that happens all around the world.

Economical incentives on here and now became more important than long-term investments in youth and education. Young people are now just digits in statistics of how many of them travel abroad, how many get a scholarship, how many trainings, how many researches… Values and being an active member of the society stopped being important. We cannot measure it. The European Commission proposed a programme which in principle puts accountability and measurement over perspectives. And what is even worse is the fact that very few people tend to disagree with that strive for numbers, for converting everything and everybody into digits.

But if this is the trend, if at any point we, young Europeans, have to be measured, I am asking: is my education worth more or less than 100 meters of a new highway? Is a training implemented by a youth NGO on intercultural communication worth more or less than a new train? Is a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a disabled child to travel abroad and meet his peers more or less valuable than a new tractor for a farmer?
Measurements are good, as statistics taught us, but only as long as outcomes are comparable. Wherever such a reliable comparison is impossible one should abandon the idea of comparing it in absolute numbers. Because how can we collate one euro invested in education or youth with the same euro invested in infrastructure? We have to strive and fight for programmes that will support not only quantitative outcomes but above all qualitative, these programmes should stimulate development of young people to make out of them future leaders. And this is not always that easy to count.