ICH learning, values and implications for the Reference Framework

The European Framework acknowledges the role of education in ensuring the strategic objectives of employability, social cohesion (integration into the labor market); active citizenship in a multicultural Europe and personal fulfilment.

The strategic goal of personal fulfilment is defined as a sucessful component for an EU citizen’s life in a knowledge society and it is described as a by-product of employment and social cohesion.

This notion of personal fulfilment in education linked to economic imperatives seems to leave no place for the individual’s own personal goals of learning (i.e. what is an individual willing to learn to succeed as a human being?).
The humanistic notion of Bildung relates personal fulfilment in education as a learning process between an individual and society in which the realization of the self can only take place through socialization.

This project takes in the notion of Bildung for highlighting that the humanistic approach to education and the learning of the culture in which an individual’s personality is integrated are the basis for not only addressing EU economic challenges but also other EU challenges such as cultural diversity and negative consequences such as xenophobia.

ICH resources are a reservoir of culturally-relevant knowledge, skills and values that a community has developed over time and which addresses basic questions in life such as security, love, trust, freedom and sustainability from local resources. When this repository of knowledge and skills is transmitted, individuals can learn through the experience of previous generations how to manage those basic questions. In this sense, ICH learning and the notion of personal fulfilment related to Bildung is interrelated. ICH reinforces personal fulfilment about how to manage critical existential issues in life.

The contribution of ICH learning to personal fulfilment lies on the narrative power behind ICH resources. Traditional cultural expressions and practices provide people with a sense of identity, continuity and can even help them to cope with social changes.