Discussions about eastern Europe – especially those countries that are due to join, or have just the joined, the EU – tend to fall into two categories.  First, there are the negative stories that express worries about immigrants from the new member countries coming to the UK in droves, distorting the lower end of the labour market, or placing even greater strain on overstretched public services.  Second, there are more positive descriptions of the role that eastern Europeans might play, which sees them as instrumental to the UK, working harder in jobs for wages that would be unacceptably low for their UK equivalents. 

There is very little suggestion that these countries might have lessons to teach western Europe, as well as things to learn.  But in the three days that I have spent in Bulgaria so far, I’ve seen plenty examples where this is the case.

Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I spent playing in a school playground with my friends’ daughters.  Rather than locking families out of schoolyards when schools aren’t open, they are left open for everyone to use.  Although there are some places in the UK where this happens, it isn’t commonplace.  Equally, the Bulgarian education system makes a much clearer priority of language teaching, with secondary age children going to specialist “English” or “German” high schools, where they will immersed in the language from age 14.

The Bulgarian commitment to learning languages gave me the opportunity to spend an hour talking to Bulgarian teenagers over the weekend.  All these students, aged between 14 and 18, were learning another language outside school, in their own time.  We ended up talking mostly about politics and the media, within and beyond Bulgaria.  All of the students were confident discussing their approaching presidential elections, the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the domestic media here.  Although they shared many young British people’s mistrust of politicians, they had not dissociated themselves from formal politics entirely: they understood it well enough to talk fluently about it in what was – for many of them – a third language.

I don’t sign up to the view that British teenagers are irreparably apathetic in relation to politics.  The success of campaigns around development issues and climate change, for instance, suggest a younger generation more than willing to get behind issues they support, but reluctant to do so through the wrap-around offer made by political parties.  But to achieve the goals they aspire to, they will need an understanding of how Westminster and town halls work, if only to re-shape them in the way that they choose.  To find out how to equip young people with that understanding, without demanding that they give up their own reservations about the way that formal politics works, we could do a lot worse than learn the lessons from Bulgaria.

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