ABSTRACT
Reports of the Commission of the European Community and Jacques Delors’ recent White Paper all concur that the reduction of unemployment and the guarantee of acceptable levels of competitiveness for the European regions depend upon higher levels of education and training both within and outside the workplace. Has this always been the case? If today the political and cultural positions prevailing in the United States and Europe enjoy an almost universal consensus, certain aspects were the subject of profound disagreement only fifteen or twenty years ago. This disagreement did not simply derive from governments and different political parties, trade unions and business associations but also from militant sociologists and economists belonging to left-wing coalitions set up after the student and worker unrest of 1968.
