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ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 (2015) 392 – 395

Global Conference on Contemporary Issues in Education, GLOBE-EDU 2014, 12-14 July 2014, Las Vegas, USA

Legal Principles and Values in Romanian Academic Life Brindusa Gorea a* a

”Dimitrie Cantemir” Universty of Targu-Mures, Bodoni Sandor 3-5, 540056 Mures County, Romania

Abstract Not only the higher education, but the entire education system in Romania is supposed to promote values, creativity, cognitive, volitional capacity and capacity for action, fundamental knowledge and knowledge, competences and skills that are truly necessary to a profession and in society. This study aims to identify the legal values on which academic life should rely, in order to promote the principle of equity, transparency, public liability, to respect the rights and liberties of students and of the academic staff and to avoid any form of discrimination. © 2015 2014The TheAuthors. Authors.Published Published Elsevier © byby Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of GLOBE-EDU 2014. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of GLOBE-EDU 2014. Keywords: Educational values, Legal principles, Academic life;

1. Problem Statement At a declarative level at least, in Romania, education is considered to be a national priority. According to the National Education Law, no. 1 of 2011, the mission of the higher education institution is to generate and to transfer knowledge to society, by means of initial and further training at academic level and scientific research, development, innovation and technological transfer. The university autonomy gives the right to academic community to set its own mission, institutional strategy, structure, activities, its own organization and operation, management of the material and human resources. Nevertheless, the legislation in force must be rigorously observed. The Romanian legislation strongly affirms the need to form, by means of education, the mental infrastructure of the Romanian society, in order to consist with the new requirements related to the Romania’s status as a Member State of the European Union and to its role in the context of globalization, and to generate in a sustainable manner a highly-competitive national human resource, capable to operate efficiently in the present and

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Brindusa Gorea. Tel.: +040-744-357-878 E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of GLOBE-EDU 2014. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.02.374

Brindusa Gorea / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 177 (2015) 392 – 395

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future society. The higher education system and the entire education system in Romania should promote values, creativity, cognitive, volitional capacity and capacity for action, fundamental knowledge and knowledge, competences and skills that are truly necessary to a profession and in society. The education and professional training of children, youth and adults have as their main goal to shape the competences, taken as a multifunctional and transmittable group of knowledge, skills and aptitudes necessary for real life.

2. Purpose and methods of study The purpose of this study is to identify the legal principles and values on which academic life should rely. In our opinion, to observe the principle of equity, transparency, public liability, to respect the rights and liberties of students and of the academic staff and to avoid any form of discriminations related to age, ethnical group, sex, social origin, political or religious orientation, sexual orientation or other types of discrimination, is to promote a healthy, performing academic life. The Romanian legislation contains numerous references to worldwide recognized principles and values. To achieve our goal in this paper, we will review some important provisions, most of them included in the Romanian Constitution and the Romanian National Education Law.

3. Findings and Results 3.1. Values or principles? Philosophically speaking, it`s hard to draw a line of demarcation between principles (assumed as guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct) and values (generally accepted as important and lasting beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable). Values have major influence on a person's behavior and attitude and serve as broad guidelines in all situations, therefore values are basically principles. 3.2. Constitutional provisions regarding education The Constitution of Romania (its fundamental and capital legislative document) contains an article (no. 32) entitled “Right to education”. This right is provided – according to the above cited Constitution - by the compulsory general education, by education in high schools and vocational schools, by higher education, as well as other forms of instruction and postgraduate improvement. Concerning the object of our study, this unique article on education doesn’t clearly affirm a set of values to be followed, but a number of such values can be however inferred. For example, the ethnical traditions of a group are implicitly expressed as a promoted value, as long as persons belonging to national minorities are allowed “to learn their mother tongue and their right to be educated in this language are guaranteed” (paragraph 3). Another example could be the freedom of believes, as “the State shall ensure the freedom of religious education, in accordance with the specific requirements of each religious cult” (paragraph 7). 3.3. Other legal provisions regarding educational values According to the Romanian National Education Law, no. 1 / 2011 (published in Official Gazette no. 18 of the 10th of January 2011), the educational ideal of the Romanian school, from pre-university to higher education, consists in a free, complete and harmonious development of the human individuality, in the action of shaping autonomous personality and in the ability to assume a system of values that are truly necessary for the personal fulfilment and development, for the development of the entrepreneurial spirit, for an active civil participation in society, for social inclusion and for employment in the labour market.

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The Romanian National Education Law only speaks about values in general terms and doesn’t itemize them directly. Nevertheless, art. no. 3 of this legal document provides us with a list of nothing less than 21 principles that should govern the entire Romanian education system, including the academic one: (1) The principle of equity – based on which the access to learning implies no form of discrimination; (2) The principle of quality – based on which the educational activities are related to references standards and to national and international good practice; (3) The principle of relevance – based on which the education comes to meet the needs of personal and socialeconomic development; (4) The principle of effectiveness – based on which it is aimed to obtain maximum educational results by managing the existent resources; (5) The principle of decentralization – based on which the main decisions are taken by the actors that are directly involved in the process; (6) The principle of public liability – based on which the educational establishments and institutions are publicly responsible for their performance; (7) The principle of providing a cultural identity to all Romanian citizens and an intercultural dialog; (8) The principle of assuming, promoting and preserving the national identity and cultural values of the Romanian people; (9) The principle that aims to recognize and guarantee the rights of individuals belonging to national minorities, right to preserve, to develop and to express their ethnical, cultural, linguistic and religious identity; (10) The principle that aims to guarantee equality of chances; (11) The principle of university autonomy; (12) The principle of academic freedom; (13) The principle of transparency – materialized by ensuring a total visibility of decision and results, by a periodical and adequate communication concerning them; (14) The principle that supports the freedom of thought and the independence in what concerns ideology, religious and political doctrines; (15) The principle of social inclusion; (16) The principle of focusing the education upon its beneficiaries; (17) The principle of parents’ cooperation and responsibilities; (18) The principle of promoting education for health, including by physical education and by practicing sport activities; (19) The principle of organizing the denominational education according to the specific requirements of each religion acknowledged; (20) The principle of underling the decisions on dialogue and counselling; (21) The principle of observing each pupil’s/student’s right to an opinion, as a direct beneficiary of the educational system. Some of these principles are concealing true immutable values like equity, respect for human being, equality or freedom. Most of them, however, are the kind of values desired by a certain group at a certain historical moment, hence they couldn’t be regarded as values in a philosophical sense: quality, relevance, effectiveness, decentralization, public liability, cultural and national identity, transparency and so on. More interesting is – in our opinion – the set of values affirmed by another article (no. 4), regarding educational competences. That may be because of the admirable legal definition of “competence”: multifunctional and transmittable group of knowledge, skills and aptitudes. This article links in an inspired manner the educational objectives (obtaining and shaping competences) with the personal and social goals of education. Connecting with immutable values becomes inevitable:


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personal fulfilment and development; achieving one’s goals in life; social integration; building life concepts based on humanist and scientific values; encouraging the intercultural dialog; education in the spirit of dignity and tolerance; observing the fundamental human rights and liberties; the ability of being perceptive to human problems, to moral-civic values and of protecting the nature and social, cultural and natural environment.

4. Conclusions and recommendations Not only the higher education, but the entire education system in Romania is supposed to promote values, creativity, cognitive, volitional capacity and capacity for action, fundamental knowledge and knowledge, competences and skills that are truly necessary to a profession and in society. It is not enough that the Romanian legislation strongly affirms the need to form, by means of education, the mental infrastructure of the Romanian society, in order to consist with the new requirements related to the Romania’s status as a Member State of the European Union and to its role in the context of globalization, and to generate in a sustainable manner a highly-competitive national human resource, capable to operate efficiently in the present and future society. Unfortunately, the above principles and values are not always translated in actual actions, so there is a risk to have more ideals than results in the Romanian academic life. The solution, in our opinion, is not necessary in the legal field. We have fairly good laws, which promote and guarantee desirable personal and social values. A real progress in Romanian academic life, as in all aspects of the Romanian society, is conditioned by individual progress of individual peoples – scholars, professors, students and all non-academic staff. References Bodoaşcă, T., Saharov, N., Drăghici, T.-A. (2011). Judicial Separation by Mutual Agreement, Conference Proceedings 2 of the 17th International Conference The Knowledge-Based Organization, pp. 594, , Sibiu, 2011 November. Sibiu: “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy Publishing House. Djuvara, M. (1995). General Theory of Law. Bucharest: All, 78. Gorea, B. & Puha, E.(2009). Philosophy, Justice and Law. Targu-Mures: Zethus, 1-8, 39-49, 53-60, 83-138. Gorea, B. (2010). The Legal Education, between Pragmatism and Academic Responsibility, in „Research, Education and Development”. ClujNapoca: „Risoprint” Publishing House, pp. 57-64. Gorea, B. (2012). European Dimension of Legal Education. A comparative study of the Romanian Law Curricula and EU Law Syllabus. European Integration – Realities and Perspectives, 146-153 Gorea, B. (2012). Governmental commitment and academic responsibility in Romanian legal education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 3124-3128. Gorea, B., Tomuleţiu, E.-A., Costin, D.-M. & Slev A.-M. (2010). Educating Law Students as good citizens. Is the Romanian legal education system ready to fulfil its social mission? Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2927-2931. Gorea, B., Tomuleţiu, E.-A., Puha, E., Gorea, M. (2010). Romanian Legal education at the Crossroads: Designing Responsible Law Curricula. Proceedings of the 6th International Seminar on the Quality Management in Higher Education, Book I, 431-434. Johnson, N. (2009). Coming Out: Legal Education and the Wider World. European Journal of Legal Education, Volume 5, Number 1, March 2009, 42-46. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life.New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.