Philles.be

I once read a quote from Henry Ford:

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

In other words: it’s not about stuff, it’s about skills. In that mindset, if I were at one point given the reign of a country I would commit a large part of its resources to education, as most (financially) healthy democratic nations do nowadays. It is after all a very noble and worthwhile investment. A large one perhaps, but one that, on a global scale and in the long term, always delivers the best (all be it intangible) return on investment: talented, skilled people with the capabilities and confidence to change the world bit by bit.

Now, I consider myself to be educated and also very lucky to have gotten the chance to learn. I also consider myself lucky that I got to learn here, in Europe, because it is a continent with much diversity on many different levels but in which it is very easy to go from one member state to the other, thanks to the European Union.

Given these two aspects it is not very hard to see why I have a particular interest in any news from the European Directorate-General for Education and Culture. This is the department at the European Commission responsible for a series of programmes (including but not limited to Erasmus) with the mission:

To reinforce and promote lifelong learning, linguistic and cultural diversity, mobility and the engagement of European citizens, in particular the young.

In other words, to ensure that the E.U. is more than just an economic and/or semi-political union between its member states, but a European Union in which citizens are able to enrich themselves by understanding each other’s differences and learning from them. Poetic words they may be, but isn’t that what the most remarkable, desirable and challenging goal in the world?

And credit where credit’s due, when it comes to education Europe is trying hard to improve their position, as illustrated by the growing short-term budget (source) for “Competitiveness for growth and employment”, which includes education, training, research and innovation. And I am glad to hear this trend will continue on the longer term, as the budget for the education sector is planned to grow 71% by 2020, of which the largest part will go to the highly popular Erasmus programme (source).

So again, for the God-knows-how-manieth time, I applaud the initiatives taken by Europe amidst political and economical turmoil. My advice to them: keep the resources coming, it is money well spent! My advice to students everywhere: keep looking for opportunities offered by Europe, your country or by the private sector; it is well worth the effort!