Challenge Europe
- for youth development
E learning didn't exist when I was young. I would have profited from it, I know. Challenge Europe is a registered charity that embraces the new flexibility and richness in modern education.
Luckily I went to an exceptionally good school, and I can also claim that it was a golden age of teaching. In my day we respected, and enjoyed the company of, our teachers. Our school programmes were classic, that is to say, we learned classic information, in a classic way. Education was not yet designed to amuse, it was designed to give a pupil a broad base, from which all other learning would be easy. It worked.
Also, at school although my friends were important, I was not there because of my friends. I was there to learn my lessons, develop my own personal skills, and benefit from an unbelievably rich palette of hobbies and subjects in addition to the classic subjects.
Every day was full of sports, amusement, periods of intensity and relaxation. Great onus was put on our individual ability to take this structure and profit from it.
The best days
There was a saying that said, "Schooldays are the best days of your life," that I don't hear much these days, and I know why. It simply isn't true any more. Schools have become overreglemented, over analysed, over babied, over modified. So how can we reproduce those golden days : -
. variety
. external discipline and rigour
. internal discipline and rigour
. a rich palette
. personal development
. human contact
. creativity and imagery
. sense of progress and achievement, individually and as a group
. flexibility
Where to learn to challenge
First of all, we have long ago lost our respect for schools. My children got through a traditional state school system, and I don't know how they did it. Schools today are so poor in almost every area. They have just become a meeting place for children, an opportunity for them to amuse themselves in teacher-baiting, and system manipulation. If we want a generation that has this as a prime objective, in life, then we should continue to support this. I don't.
E-learning is out there. It requires a renewed input from parents, which I, as a parent, would welcome, but I know that many parents, for a mix of social reasons, have now abandoned responsibility for educating their children. With e-learning the child must be supervised, and the tutor will do most of the rest. It works.
At the same time the parent can live with the child, experience everything that he is doing. E-learning has the potential for restructuring our lives after a period of great change caused mostly by the computer. Now we can embrace the power of computers and get back our family and social values. We can get back close to somewhere where we were.
It will take time, but the revolution is already in place. The reason why it will take time to explode, is because we have come to trust schools, and universities. We refuse to believe that their methods, their people, their programmes serve very little academic purpose. They serve very debatable social purposes, if you include being exposed to racketeering, drug-taking, consumerism, the fashionability of being dumb, or not competing, of being obsessed by your neighbour's clothing, rather than with your own performance.
The benefit of experience
In 1999, I met, amongst some other influential people at that time, two people who were older than me - a traditional retired research professor, and an active businessman who had a strong belief in investing in youth. By 2002, through working on a few projects together, we had created a non-profit making organisation, Challenge Europe, that would officially try and recreate these golden days. It is still going strong today, fifteen years later.
As a celebration of our tenth anniversary, we launched a website that drives the tennis tournaments side of the association. Through the website we give details of our principal activites : -
. Private tutoring
. School lessons
. Language courses
. Holiday courses, with accommodation
. Weekend courses , with accommodation
. Sports training
. Sports compétitions
. Work experience , through our sponsors
On the website we offer information, and encouragement, for all sorts of young people. They are mostly still in the education system. We want them to adapt their education, to turn it into something useful and enriching.
The tools are all out there, arguably richer than ever before.
On this website you'll find information about these possibilities, and information about our own programmes. We hope you change your thinking through all of this, and take advantage!
