Education and Solidarity in the European Union: Europe’s Lost Spirit

This book tells the story of the European Movement’s mission to create—through education—a European spirit in order to secure the success of European integration. This book draws links between the crisis of solidarity experienced by the European Union today and the difficulties faced throughout European integration to develop a fully-fledged EU education policy.
It makes the case that education has not been a stable mechanism for fostering spirit due to its national attachment to identity and nation-building. Without education, it has been difficult to foster the spirit needed to establish a strong citizen-wide sense of European solidarity to overcome the crises the EU faces today. Exploring the connection between education and solidarity through the notion of spirit, the book presents an interdisciplinary study that avoids the compartmentalisation of education studies, philosophy and political science to bring ideas together that shed fresh light on contemporary debates currently under the spotlight.

Sarah K. St. John holds a PhD in Education from the University of Glasgow and works with the Secretary General at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy). Previously, she co-edited the volume Education and Public Policy in the European Union: Crossing Boundaries (with M. Murphy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Her research interests are European Union education policy, European integration history and the construction of Europe, European and international higher education, and higher education administration and governance.