The European Cultural Convention of 1954 and the transformation of languages and cultures teaching and learning of intoa priority field of European cooperation

The paper is devoted to the evolution of language education in the postwar Europe from passing over a large volume of passive knowledge of foreign languages to a limited number of school students towards a universal language and culture teaching and learning, promoting the strengthening of economic, political and cultural ties, the growth of international exchanges and support, maintenance and sustained development of the common European linguistic and cultural heritage. The European Cultural Convention of 1954 called for coordination of European countries' activities in the sphere of culture and education with the aim of preservation and further development of the common European cultural heritage. Special attention in the convention was accorded to the study of European languages, history and civilization of Europe's countries. The adoption by the Council of Europe of the European Cultural Convention turned the study of modern languages and cultures into a priority field of European cooperation and led to a number of initiatives, which in the course of their realization in the form of language projects, transferred the ideas about the role of languages in society and their place in educational programs at all stages of teaching and learning. The paper shows, on the basis of an analysis of the Council of Europe's language projects and the European Union's activities in the field of language policies, that close cooperation of the national education systems in enhancing the effectiveness of language and cultural education prepared the ground for constructing in Europe of a multilingual and multicultural society. In the course of the realization of the Main Project in modern languages in the period from 1964 to 1974, the cooperation of the European national systems of education entered a new stage of harmonization of 238educational systems on the basis of coordination of curricula and teaching methods. Also, the efforts continued in overcoming the rift between the theory and practice that led to limiting the linguistic research in universities to literature and philology, while the integration of Europe put forward new demands to improve the quality of language teaching and to the introduction of objective ways and means of assessing the results of teaching and learning. The awareness of the need for a transfer from a formal learning of language structures to a language policy in the field of education directed at the preservation and maintenance of the rich and diverse linguistic and cultural heritage in Europe came as a result of a successful completion of a number of language projects and important political and economic changes during the 1980s and 1990s in the course of the information revolution. With the establishment of the European Union in 1992 and coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the conceptual shift of European education to multilingualism on the basis of purposeful language and cultural policy received a legislative support

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