Or should I write “hello citizens”? Do you see yourself as a citizen? If so, what makes you a citizen? How did you become one? What rights do you have? Where do your responsibilities for other citizens start and where do they end? And where does learning fit into all this, particularly for young people?
For this issue on Citizenship Education Revisited, a suitably experienced editorial team dove into the Conference “Learning to live together: a shared commitment to democracy” at the Council of Europe in June 2017 and came up with lots of material and contacts for possible authors. So much so that this is the biggest issue of Coyote ever!
You will find a rich assortment of articles here, as we have really tried to cover the essentials, such as:
what differences and convergences are there between Human Rights Education (HRE) and Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC)?
young peoples’ experiences of putting their learning into action
different European institutions’ and agencies’ policies and actions to support human rights and citizenship education for and with young people – and what are prospects for the future?
the stance of an educator in these fields
NGO viewpoints and practice
Vocational Education and Training (VET), how far does it contribute?
work at the local level by schools and municipal authorities
what’s LOVE got to do with it all?
and knowing that we cannot cover everything – we list resources which are readily available to explore further
Technical note:
Although we do not have a printed edition of Coyote anymore, we do realise that some people like to be able to read articles on paper – so just click on the pdf icon at the top right of each page and you will be able to obtain a pdf of the relevant article.
Looking forward to reading your feedback on both the contents and format of this issue! Use the feedback form to give your comments and/or visit our Facebook page!
Obviously the answer to the title question is: Parce qu’on l’a peint!
Q: “Why is the rabbit blue?” A: “Because someone has painted it!” - the sounds of the words “lapin” and “l’a peint” are the same.
Obvious? Yes, if you speak French to the level where simple word play is understandable. No, if your French is only very basic or non-existent. It is very easy to divide an international group of, say, Youthpass Contact Persons (YPCP’s) just on the basis of this “joke”. Funny, here; not funny, there; understood, here; not understood, there; etcetera etcetera. And you also have to deal with the mock protests of the French YPCP in the informal times, who claims JOKINGLY that the mere fact of telling this joke in this context makes a mockery of French culture.
Even in this tiny example, it is possible to see that the use of humour in training contexts can give rise to a number of questions: what happens if there are participants who simply don’t understand the words used? How do they feel? Excluded? Bored? How do you deal with participants who are offended by your supposed joke?
A conversation about humour and trainers in training
Many of those points have been buzzing around in my Emmental brain for years, so I was very happy to accept colleague Simona Molari’s invitation to join her in an online chat about these subjects with the participants of the annual E+ Training of Trainers course. Luckily she and I had discussed the topic beforehand because she got sick on the day – but we agreed on most things. Sara Paolazzo had an enthusiastic conversational interviewing style and we covered a lot of essential points. Maybe it’s useful to share some of them with you here:
training in non-formal learning requires the creation of an atmosphere which helps people feel ready, take risks, maybe even feel comfortable with a certain amount of failure - humour helps to create that learning space
humour is risky in itself and can have the opposite effect of the aim of using it – this is often because the so-called humorous remark or action is not related directly to the context
humour often works because it is related to a shared set of experiences and/or references – this means that you can have great effects by using what is happening in the training course itself
trainers who make jokes about themselves, particularly near the beginning of a course, will help the process by showing their own vulnerability and thereby allowing participants to empathise with the situation
sometimes just about the worst thing you can do as a trainer is to use humour! For example, there are times when a group has to go through some tension or conflictual feelings in order to come out the other side and learn from the experience. A joke at that moment will destroy the learning possibilities. So, hold that space and see what happens
a trainers team does not have to be a team of jokers! Each trainer needs to make their own choice in the use of humour, to be authentic in their role and to themselves. A team works because of complementarity between trainers.
don’t try to make everything funny because, in the end, nothing will be funny! If you get the reputation as “the funny trainer” then no-one will take you seriously!
some trainers use humour in order to provoke a reaction from participants – if there is a good conversation at the end, this may be defensible; but you need to have a lot of experience to know how to handle those reactions!
I try to find a balance in order to reach the goal of being “seriously funny” – people enjoy things, even laugh, AND they get the point
listen to your belly and your “intercultural antennae” to check if your humour is really working – get feedback from other trainers and participants
I would be delighted to hear what YOUR thoughts are on all of this! What makes you laugh in training? What would you never do?
Some of you may have discovered a recent slim volume produced by the Partnership called Thinking Seriously About Youth Work. And how to prepare people to do it. A mammoth work, in 38 sections with some 40 distinguished contributors and, as Fergal Barr points out in his blog there is but one reference to humour in the whole book! Shurely shome mishtake?
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Looking forward to reading your feedback on both the contents and format of this issue! Use the feedback form to give your comments and/or visit our Facebook page!
training in non-formal learning requires the creation of an atmosphere which helps people feel ready, take risks, maybe even feel comfortable with a certain amount of failure - humour helps to create that learning space