“In questioning the self-evidence of such concepts as nation building, national belonging and national identity we contributed to pave the way to a broader European point of view. In comparing the different paths toward and across modernity of the various European countries, we showed that that nation building, far from being a national achievement, is a broader European process linked to larger processes of socio-economic and political change. In bringing students to know more about each other country’s history, we stimulated them to reflect on the similarities of the processes of nation building and to consider Europe as a common frame of reference. In so doing the way is opened not only to a common European public space, but also to the sharing of values beyond the nation state.”
(L@E scientific committee)

“Before starting Learning@Europe, my students felt just French. Now they feel French AND European.”
(a French teacher)

Learning@Europe provides an important contribution to shaping European Citizenship in a number of ways:

• Deeper understanding of the historical processes underlying each student’s national and local identity.
• Better knowledge of the identities of students from other countries, fostering curiosity and acceptance.
• Understanding of the process of acquiring new identities: a new European identity can coexist with pre-existing ones, within a notion of multiple identities.

L@E provides the conceptual tools to understand the history of the different European countries as well as common historical processes that affected the whole of Europe; moreover, it shows the arbitrariness and complexity of historical processes. The format of the content – interviews to historians from different European countries – is effective in this sense: as a teacher reported,
“[students] have realized that some historical events can be considered from different perspectives.”

Collaboration with peers across national borders provides motivation for presenting one’s own national identity to other students, and at the same time it stimulates curiosity and acceptance for different identities. At the end of a L@E experience an Italian student wrote: “I have found that some nations that I didn't know much about are very interesting”, and a Latvian one commented: “I feel friendly towards other nations”. Working together with foreign peers leads to a better understanding of different cultures and life-styles, and to the “discovery” that students are not so different after all. An Estonian student commented after L@E:
“I think people, in all Europe are the same”.

The combination of all these factors leads to the shaping of a better European citizenship: L@E does not take any explicit stance on the process of integration in Europe, but it places students into a trans-national context, where borders and barriers become blurred. The underlying motif is that each one of us has several identities, and an additional one could be added: the European identity. “Now I feel that I'm a part of European culture and history”
(a Polish student)