ABSTRACT
The debate in Europe does not focus as much on whether to cater to the individual student versus bringing the entire student population up to a specified level of learning as it does in the United States. Emphasis in Europe does not reside in the individual realm. Rather, the debate there focuses more so on how the education system should be shaped and where the emphasis for teachers should lie. Until recently, every European nation had its own model, pieced together through the centuries, mired in bureaucracy and outdated regulations, individualized, and difficult to challenge. Then, in 1996, in an attempt to draw these different models together and make sense of them in terms of the European education system as a whole, the Council of Europe, formed by the European Union (EU), an economic and political union of 27 European states, proposed a list of common values for all involved nations to subscribe to. The list included human dignity, fundamental freedoms, equitable growth, the rejection of violence, dialogue, and respect for others.
