October roses

Vaiva planned her garden to have blooms in all seasons, as I mentioned earlier.

Adamkus

Mama traveled with Adamkus to a number to schools around September 1st to celebrate the start of a new school year. She may or may not have been at the event pictured below, but she kept the photo in her "President" folder.

2005.03.31

The photos below were, I believe, taken at Arlington National Cemetery. Vaiva is on the left, Dainus Numgaudas is on the right, I think. They are visiting a memorial to an American, Samuel Harris, who, after his service to the U.S. in World War I, was part of a contingent that traveled to Lithuania to help in the fight for independence from the Russians. There he was killed. The operation was financed by the Lithuanian-American Community, and they arranged for this memorial. More details, and a photo of his grave, are here.

2004.02 Celebration at the ministry

Emperor Radastų Vėbraitė

Someone in Lithuania has created a Wikipedia page for Vaiva. The facts are reasonably accurate, if not up-to-date about our kids.

Here's google's auto-translation from Lithuanian into English. Lots of mistakes, because the software is far from perfect. For example, "Vaiva" is translated as "Emperor" and is a "he" instead of "she."

The first dance

Actually, we performed the Rezginele first, I believe.
But this was to kick off the generally dancing after dinner.

Our bridal party

It was gorgeous in October that year, wasn't it?

In the park

I posted the post-wedding photo of my family here, last summer, after the death of my grandmother. Here is Vaiva's side of the family. Marius Jakulis and his wife are on left; Marius sent this photo and condolence last December. Vaiva's grandparents are on my left, her aunt is on her right, her mother is in the pink gown. Oddly, Vaiva's father is not in this one. Like Vaiva, he was generally camera-shy.

Leaving the alter

The most important day of my life,
32 years ago today.

October 22, 1977

In our living room, on the second floor of 235 Lawrence Street, in New Haven.

Vaiva is dressed for our wedding, carrying a bouquet of rue, with flowers in her hair.

Complicated grief

According to The New York Times, there are about a million people each year who, like me, are unable to comes to terms with the death of a loved one within six months. The phenomenon differs from depression, and from post traumatic stress. They are thinking about classifying as a new psychiatric disease, called complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder.

I'd classify it as an aspiration.

Some of the overt symptoms of this new disease include increased drinking (check) and tobacco consumption (check, I'm smoking cigars again). It's also linked to increased cancer risk, which seems more than odd. But mostly it's about not letting go.

There is physical evidence for the condition:

Then, in 2008, NeuroImage published a study of the brain activity of people with complicated grief. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Mary-Frances O’Connor, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, showed that when patients with complicated grief looked at pictures of their loved ones, the nucleus accumbens — the part of the brain associated with rewards or longing — lighted up. It showed significantly less activity in people who experienced more normal patterns of grieving.

Should you click over to the article, be sure to read the comments. Very interesting testimony.

2005.04.07 with Adamkus

Brussels, EU speech 2 (1999)

Here is Vaiva's more substantive review for the European Union of the status of Lithuanian education and international outreach. Note her reference to a.p.p.l.e. near the end; Vaiva modestly overlooks her own role in the founding and leadership of the organization. Note also the emotional close of the speech, her trademark, which always left a great impression on her audiences.

Our current body of law creates no legal impediment to implementing the Agreements between The European Community and Canada of 1995 and between the European Community and the United States of America, also of 1995, establishing co-operation programmes in higher education and vocational education and training. Lithuania is ready to accept all European Union obligations undertaken through these agreements from the day that Lithuania becomes a member of the Union. We hope the agreements will be extended. We look forward to taking part and are confident of our competence in project selection. In the interim various agencies and institutions in the United States and Canada have concluded certain agreements with Lithuania and we are already engaged in joint educational projects, although there are no bilateral governmental treaties.

I must say that our sit - before you as a sort of living: Lithuania and the United States are quite capable and quite willing to share intellectual as well as human resources. I have brought with me from my home in the United States to my job at the Ministry of Education and Science, and that is the personal experience of an education in a developed, democratic, open, information-based society. But I am hardly alone as a former US resident in Lithuania. Lithuania has a thriving colony of Canada and US Lithuanians - while perhaps a million Americans and Canadians claim Lithuanian descent. The fact is - there is a historically well-established infrastructure of support for joint projects between Lithuania and the US and Canada. The fascination with and commitment to Lithuania that was once linked with one’s personal national heritage in North America has since 1990 grown to include many policy makers, educators and citizens with no such prior ties. As a result we have developed a powerful Lithuanian momentum in our common educational initiatives with the US and Canada, even though our school and university systems are very different. I would like to demonstrate this experience and our institutional capacity through a brief sketch of these activities as administered through the Ministry, even though they are not EU based as yet.

On July 6 in 1994, in Riga, Latvia, the Governments of US and Lithuania signed a joint treaty on “Co-operation in the area of science and technology”. A five-year co-operation program was delineated with the possibility of renewal for another five-year period. Its purpose is to strengthen the development of science and technologies in both countries, to broaden the scope of and empower specific projects of common interest, to support scientific and technical co-operation in research for peace, to create an infrastructure for the exchange of information, skills and technical equipment. According to this agreement, both Parties assist State agencies and laboratories, universities and other institutions of higher learning to form bilateral partnerships. A very important facet of this agreement is the protection of intellectual property rights.

Also in the area of higher education I should mention an agreement between the American Council for Collaboration in Education and Language Study and then the Ministry of Culture and Education of Lithuania. This agreement establishes a program between the US and Lithuania to aid in the advancement of co-operation in the areas of education, scientific research and language study. This program is automatically renewed yearly and provides for the administration of the TOEFL and GRE examinations in Lithuania as a gateway to international study for Lithuanian students.

Although we have signed no agreements with US or Canada mandating student exchange, many young people do travel to study every year, and under individually negotiated admissions agreements some are supported through Lithuanian stipends. these are modest - 1 to 2.500 Litai monthly, but are essential for students receiving them.

A study program of great interest to Lithuania encompasses co-operative links between Canadian and Lithuanian colleagues. The association of Canadian colleagues has forged an alliance with the Ministry of Education and Science of Lithuania, the Lithuanian College Director’s Association and specific Lithuanian colleges and is providing technical support and curricular consultations. Lithuania is thus better able to reform its college infrastructures and administrative systems and to develop curriculum in two needed areas: tourism development and business administration.

Although the European Union Agreements with the US and Canada refer to higher education and training only. I would like to ask for your indulgence - I would like to briefly mention a few joint programs which are aimed at general education student populations, but which of course are also available to vocational school students.

In 1997 the US Information Agency of the US State Department signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education and Science specifically supporting the development, publishing and distribution of English as a foreign language textbooks. In general the USIA has been an active partner in curriculum development and teacher training, particularly in the area of civic education based on principles of participatory democracy, minority rights and the teaching of tolerance.

We are pleased with the momentum of our Junior Achievement project. Junior Achievement (JA) is a US based non-profit organisation with the purpose of developing economic education programs for young people. Junior Achievement of Lithuania was founded in 1993. Initial funding was through a grant from The Open Society Fund. The programs: Currently the backbone of Junior Achievement is the Applied Economics (AE) course, which is approved by the Ministry of Education and Science. APPLIED ECONOMICS is taught primarily in high schools and secondary vocational schools and colleges all over Lithuania. The course includes a textbook, workbook, Automatic Test Generator (ATG) computer software system and a teacher’s guide, all of which cover principles of market economics at length and is adapted from US materials and methodologies. PILOT PROGRAMS will be started for business and economic education of students of lower grades. Additionally, an adult education program geared towards employees of newly privatised companies is being explored. Several other programs available to vocational and general schools might be viewed as enrichment programs.

In 1998, Lithuania implemented a program of Strategic Environmental education. At the end of the year, the International GLOBE program issued an invitation to Lithuania to participate through school pilot projects. 38 schools volunteered to conduct ecological research activities. An agreement has been drawn up between the Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Science, the Lithuanian Ministry of Environment and the US Water and Atmospheric Safety Board, which will facilitate participation by schools and provide training for educators.

In the same vein, the International project “Nature’s tale” has drawn in numerous partners: the Lithuanian Ministries of Education and Science and the Environment, the Creative Societies Centre of London, the British and American Arts Association and the European Council program “Culture, creativity and youth”. The European Council has labelled this partnership a model for Europe. In 1999, 9.500 young people participated in this arts for ecology program with US involvement.

Finally, a word about educator in-service initiatives. We have limited contacts with Canada in this area. One spotlighted program is “In-service for teachers of English”. Begun in 1994, the program brings 5-6 instructors to Lithuania yearly. About 100 teachers and 30 school directors hone their English language skills.

A far broader project is the American Professional Partnership for Lithuanian Education. Initiated in 1990 as Lithuania regained her independence, this program has provided in-service to over 10.000 or somewhere over 20% of Lithuania’s general and vocational education teachers over a broad range of subjects including civic and environmental, agricultural education methodologies and administration. This program melds the talents of accomplished US volunteers and acts as a catalyst for grass-roots-initiated change eventually reaching systemic levels. It is telling that the Ministry has stood solidly behind this bilateral voluntary professional program for nine years, although our government has changed political hands in a number of popular elections.

Of course this means that some long-term commitments overarch short-term political change. This is good news for our commitments towards and with the European Union.

There is a very famous by Thomas Wolfe I believe novel called “You can’t go home again”. Although I am not nearly fifty years old, sometimes I have the emotional sense, the false memory, that my country was taken from me for 50 years. I am deeply grateful that this time has ended, that Lithuania is free, and that I have been able to come home. Similarly, I think that Lithuania is ready to come home to take its place at the table, to bring to the European table its cultural riches and its people’s courage. I believe that our educational system will pave the road home and that the journey will be swift. Thank you.

Brussels EU speech 1 (1999)

Vaiva was Vice Minister of Education when she gave this address to the European Union.

1999 balandþio 15-16, Brussels, ES

Esteemed members of the European Commission delegation, or perhaps I should say esteemed colleagues. I am in a sense the “odd man out” at this meeting, for I think it likely that I am the only person present who was born and raised outside of Europe. Although I am a Lithuanian, I have only recent come to understand that I am also a European. This realisation has been a revelation to me, since the European dimension of education, of culture, of history has come late to me and therefore come as a gift which is renewed every day as I discover Europe in my work, in my friends and in my country. My colleagues in the Lithuanian delegation are in a different position entirely. They have been both Lithuanians and Europeans every day of their lives. They have always known that Lithuania has been a piece of the European puzzle throughout this millennium and is integral to Europe now. As I have come to live in Lithuania, to work at the Ministry of Education and Science and to engage with its processes of democratic growth and educational reform I have learned how deep-seated these processes are in my country, how intertwined with the evolution of European structure and European thought.

Just as every ancient culture does, we have much to be proud of as well as some things to regret. We regret our absence from the daily life and natural development of the European network of national connections for fifty years. But we are proud that we are actively in the vanguard of creating a European tradition in our educational system now; a European tradition which is purely our own, which has its roots in the Lithuania of Medaeval Europe, which continued to blossom in pre-war independent Lithuania and which we claim now as the basis for building a modern system for teaching and learning in a free and democratic society of the twenty-first century.

Our population rightfully demands an educational system that gives us a level playing field with all of Europe. We need to achieve and maintain European standards of quality and of accessibility to education for our own sake. We need to open doors and create an open house of education for our European neighbours for our own sake. We have known this for a long time. In 1773 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania established one of the first Ministries of Education in all of Europe. This Ministry (Edukacinë Komisija) put into motion reforms on a state level and sweeping scale. This Ministry declared that “Education is our tool for building a modern nation”. And our Ministry understood that a modern nation cannot be closed in on itself. Without a dialogue of ideas with its neighbours it withers.

Lithuania has a tradition of paying attention to European thought in educational matters. In particular, French reformers found willing, critically thinking ears in Lithuania. The works of Jean - Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot found their way into our educational philosophy. Rousseau was invited to come and live in Lithuania, in a sylvan setting, and to write for Lithuanian schools.

That was a long time ago. But Lithuania is today still in the front ranks of nations in systemic educational reform. Our results are good and our goals are set high. One of these goals is to fully enter a common European educational space. After all, the journey to Europe is a return to our birthright and long-standing heritage. The end result will broaden the common cultural territory of Western and Central Europe, will deepen the foundations of true European Stability and spur human development, which knows no borders.

Whenever Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s intellectual descendants are ready, they are welcome to come and live in Lithuania, to write, to help us build our school system, to provoke our ways of thinking.

Meanwhile, we hope that you will help us through the process we engage in today. This meeting is the second round of deliberations, during which we expect to explain what Lithuania has decided to do and has done during the year since the first multilateral negotiating session. We will explain what still needs to be accomplished in order for Lithuania to become a full-fledged member of the European Union.

We have presented a completed Screening A-List, which should confirm that Lithuania is resolved and ready to undertake all of its European Union obligations from the date of admission.

Agenda 2000, the Opinion of the European Commission made plain the relative ease of transition for Lithuania in the field of education upon entry to the Union. We are gratified by this conclusion, but we also bear a great responsibility for the efficient management of the adoption of European Union Acquis Communitaire. We need to ensure that this process will be as smooth and rapid as possible. We have at our disposal, and at your disposal, half a day’s time, during which we will try to make clear our position and our situation, basing our presentation upon the experience gained at last year’s meeting.

I would like to present the policy - makers and experts that comprise our delegation...

I myself am Vaiva Vëbraitë, vice-minister of Education and Science, and must admit that I am in Brussels for the first time and expect to learn a great deal from my colleagues and from you.

Without further ado, I would like to give the floor to Mister Arûnas Plikðnys, who will address the question of migrant workers. Of course, we also have brought to the meeting some documents to leave with you in the expectation that they will help create a broader context, a more complete view of the changes that Lithuanian education is undergoing.

Ten months

My beloved Vaiva died ten months ago today.

One year ago today we were in the midst of a fruitless course of chemo, which only served to delay the mastectomy and probably hastened her death.

2004.02.16 mano nuotrauka

Seems to have been an Independence day speech in 2004.

2003 Carol, Lincoln, Syracuse

Liepa collected these photos from Vaiva's hard drive, I don't recognize anyone.

Condolences from Dick Myrick

Jim,

I was so, so saddened to read in the Epsilon Theta Alumni Newsletter that Vaiva had passed away. It is hard to believe that such a vivacious, committed, and charming woman would not still be with us and with you. I still remember well the role that you both had during the time just after Epsilon Theta had become coed, when so much had to be worked out. Vaiva could always be relied on for practical advice, good humor, and wonderful Lithuanian food. I could tell then that she was a person who would make a difference, and the entries in the blog make that so clear what an impact she had. You should indeed be so proud, even in this most terrible time. Are you in the Boston area? Please let me know as I hope we can get together.

Dick Myrick

PC ‘67

DMyrick@alum.mit.edu

2006 Grand Canyon

In 2006 Vaiva had a big meeting of the Lithuanian American Community to conduct in Phoenix. She had always wanted to visit the Grand Canyon, and I was interested also, if not as ambitious as she was about it. So I flew out to Phoenix as her meetings ended, rented a car, and we drove up to the Canyon. This photo is from that trip.

Letter to Nordic countries, 1999

Vaiva Vėbraitė
Vice-minister of Education and Science
Republic of Lithuania

March 16, 1999

Trends and issues in non-formal education, the culture of the school

A very famous American once said "Ask not what your country can do for you. Rather, ask what you can do for your country.” In Lithuania’s development as a reborn Baltic democracy I have observed a swinging pendulum - first a commitment to build and serve an independent state as free people, then a disillusionment at the lack of targeted infrastructures and centralised support for citizen actions. I would myself like to know - where should the balance lie and where does it fall in reality in various countries? Where do our responsibilities as citizens lie, what must we do for our country? And what should our country do for us, what guarantees should it offer our children?

When I am asked to speak of policies regarding children’s upbringing outside of the formal learning environment, there are various stock answers upon which I might rely. It’s always easiest to speak of those children who seek out an enriched environment on their own, who find a suitable niche in their societal surroundings. These children are quick to respond to opportunity, are naturally curious. Teachers are delighted with such pupils and easily find common ground with them, both in school and through supplemental activities.

Accelerating changes in our society impact to a huge extent upon young people and this should be reflected in the educational activities provided them. A major problem today is that formal, academic education continues to be seen as the only essential part of education. Thus non-formal education, which is often best equipped to prepare young people to cope with social changes, is underestimated and opportunities to benefit are not fully realised.

On the one hand, Lithuania has a relatively large number of schools and special youth centres offering solely extracurricular programs for children according to their special interests or talents. They might take part in sports, dance, art or music activities, take an interest in electronics or ecology. We might view all this activity with some pride, but it has its dark side as well.

As a rule, such centres are established only in major cities. What is the rural child to do? Besides, such groups generally require a fee for participation, a fee that is beyond the reach of many families. I recently read a World Bank report on poverty in Lithuania that identified as a fallacy the frequently voiced belief that pensioners are the most impoverished social group in our society. In reality, they’re not - young families with several children are worse off.

Leaving aside issues of location and fees, many of these centres and schools open their doors to certain children only - those who have early on developed a clearly perceived talent in one area or another. But we need to consider the needs of all of our children, not solely the brightest among them. The question then arises - how do we provide all children at least some level of opportunity to develop special skills, explore new interests and arrive at a discovery of self?

One approach would be to transfer - in part - the delivery system of supervised extracurricular activities to an institution close to every child, to the neighbourhood school. At this time there are remnants of a broadly organised system that has undergone genteel decay during the years of independence. There were two dramatic enough reasons why: one, that school clubs were once associated in people’s minds with the dreadfully deformed system of political indoctrination engineered via the young Pioneers. The second reason that school clubs are threatened with extinction is equally simple and currently more devastating. We can’t afford them, or rather our fiscal policies don’t encourage them effectively.

At this time, there are some schools that offer extended day sessions where children can prepare homework, play and spend time at activities suited to them. Most such groups are oriented toward the needs of elementary school students. But there are plenty of organisational problems. First of all, that of teacher salaries, for our teachers are paid not as professionals with full-time jobs and monthly wages, but per number of hours taught weekly. For this reason, municipalities already spending 50-60% of their budgets on the maintenance of the basic educational process and the upkeep of extremely poorly insulated school buildings can’t afford the additional services of after-hours teachers. Another problem is the overcrowding of schools. Many schools work in two and sometimes three shifts. In these cases there really can’t be much discussion of extended day groups or other after-school activities, at least within the school facilities.

There are special non-school centres called day centres that are supported by a few municipalities and one charitable foundation that I know of. Still, this approach, oriented towards the needs of children with social problems or children from dysfunctional families runs into other difficulties. The maintenance of separate establishments is particularly expensive. This is a problem endemic to many countries, I imagine - different people and a number of institutions try to solve a particular problem, but rather than co-operating towards the same end, they end up competing with each other for scarce resources.

I think that the simple solution would be for the best, and we have put forth this simple solution, which is not so simple to implement, in a proposal to our government that we also seek outside support for. The proposal focuses on the new idea of open schools - schools that create a safe and creative haven for children with varied needs and allow the varied needs of children to be met under one roof. In a society as fragmented as ours, this is a radical idea, for it will require the concerted efforts of several ministries to accomplish. The idea is focused on educational, medical, social and cultural needs. We would like the school to become a cultural lodestone for its community. In fact, we often declare that it is already, but this is almost always declarative, rather than actual, reality. Lithuania needs its schools to be carriers of local, national and multicultural values, we need our schools to become forums for cultural developments and debate. This requires more than enthusiasm, We need expertise and we need the funding, at least at a minimal level, to seed innovative projects.

A current focus of our attention (unfortunately, a focus that is to some degree engendered by threatened status) - are school libraries. In a few schools, libraries are actively evolving towards a new functionality - information centres, pedagogic partners for pupils and teachers, centres for cultural programs as well. Just as often, poorly equipped, poorly maintained and barely functioning school libraries are being shut down entirely, merged with municipal village libraries and functioning at best as stockrooms of old textbooks. Our school libraries desperately need teaching equipment, literature, reading rooms - usually there are none - where children would be welcomed to do lessons or explore books. The ministry has a program of library modernisation, which is to be submitted for funding.

This program is an integral part of three major programs that we hope will be funded beginning in the year 2000. Each of the three bears upon the topic we are discussing today. I would like to at least name them. These are : “The modernisation of the educational process”, “The assurance of required social and pedagogic conditions for learning”, and “Support for talented and gifted children”. These three programs taken together, if implemented, will create a solid foundation for education in the next century.

Meanwhile, the projects supported in the past several years by the Council of Ministers of Nordic Countries have been an incredible catalyst for change in our schools. I have closely followed the project called “School leadership in a democratic society”. The participants of one particularly successful ongoing series of seminars were the directors of all of the municipal school departments throughout the country. If we wish to effect change in the school culture, in the way pupils and their teachers interact, we need to have a foundation for change in organisational structure, something solid under our feet, so we don’t end up walking on the clouds, a dangerous activity. One outcome of the seminars was an alliance forged between directors, another the new partnership grounded in a climate of trust between the directors and the Ministry itself.

A separate project of a somewhat different nature was focused on curriculum change. This project allowed for greater participation of grass root activists. Throughout this three year curriculum development project we watched the thirty participating schools grow as educators of their pupils, but also as a network of innovators of institutional change, testifying to a particular inner culture, as bastions of conscious citizenship at the local level.

Lithuanian schools now have a new internal structure: school councils. Some schools pay lip service to a paper council, others have bought into the concept of a democratic model of limited self-governance. Here young children play at games requiring democratic models of choice, later more serious forms of political organisation become accessible to students, parents and teachers.

The most difficult topic to touch on today is the situation of those children who are lost to us. Either they have never crossed the threshold of a school, or they have dropped out. Frankly, we don’t know how many there are. According to one estimation, it would take about $500,000, and such funding is not available. We have a glitch in the system, a seven-year gap during which children didn’t receive identity codes at birth, and now it is simply impossible to trace where they are.

Adolescent crime is on the rise. Many of the children caught up - and all of them are victims - are lost to the school system, while the remainder may not be lost to the system, but they’re lost in it. It’s not enough to weep over the children in the streets, we need to take a hard look at the children in the schools, since the worthy activity of returning children to the classroom is a matter of undoing damage that were better not done in the first place. This means re-evaluating our curriculum with a realistic view of children’s capabilities and it means providing a physically and emotionally safe environment. Incidentally, the institution of a job position called social educator is anticipated in many schools, but funding has not become available as yet. We hope to spur disbursement of the needed money to allow initial placement in some schools as of Sept. 1st.

While we consider the Gordian knot of challenges facing us, we can identify their source easily enough - the whirlwind of social change that surrounds us and demands our response. Not so long ago, societies believed that children were simply smaller, weaker, inexperienced adults. Our perception of children and childhood has changed on a very deep level. Children are essentially different. Different rules of ethical conduct apply, rules demanding particular nurturing.

Children cannot be held accountable for decisions that are inappropriate for the estate of childhood - all the more, we bear the responsibility for preparing children well able to choose for themselves in those areas of life where individual choice is a part of growth onto adulthood. So our schools must ask: How do we help children develop decision-making skills?

I think that life in Lithuania, a country in transition to a full-fledged Western democracy, grants us a unique perspective. For many long years Lithuania experienced an extremely regimented social structure. Even for adults - a sense of individual responsibility, of adequacy in critical decision-making, of selfhood, was suppressed. All the more so for children.

Lithuania has undergone a joyful political and social revolution.

What next? We rejected for all time Soviet structures upon our individual and common culture, but we need to rediscover our own authentic rules of common behaviour. Simply put, culture. We need to rediscover those boundaries of traditional behaviour that protect our neighbours and our selves, that protect our children and yet allows us to reward and rejoice in self-expression. During 50 years of occupation, many of us have lost touch with our own authentic values. Our children can’t simply choose to follow in their parent’s footsteps. Those choices are gone in Lithuania. Our children are compelled to build a new society.

And they must do so as individuals in a world where they experience a kaleidoscope of impulses through the mass-media. They are compelled to discover and orient their own moral compasses, for we have no century of democracy and humanism as a general backdrop.

This is where education comes in. We can and do institute the infrastructures of a civic society based upon Western experience, but we must depend upon our schools to breathe life, to breathe content into formal models of decision-making.

Here I run into a dilemma. Our school programs are newly constructed and speak to building idealism, civic-mindedness and tolerance. But children leave their school building for the streets where frequently, regrettably, cynicism, violence and abuse lie in wait. There is a gap between what we speak of in school and what is street reality. Children faced with this gap understandably turn bitter, scornful. Or despairing. Youth suicide is sharply on the rise.

I think it unfair to create ivory towers in classrooms, to teach “civic society as a subject” that asserts the rights and influence of each citizen and then send children into a dangerous world where they have few rights and virtually no influence. So - we need to connect the worlds we live in, to bridge the gap, so that our schools are not self-serving, are not academic ivory towers, but prepare our children for hard choices, for hard work, give them the skills to change what is false, what is wrong. Not all of our schools see this as a primary task, or even as a task at all.

I would like to ask my colleagues in the Nordic countries whether you have solved this problem. And how?