We are in a period of deep capitalist crisis, where many rights
acquired through tough struggle in the past years are under threat in
all areas of society. One of them is the free, state-run school. The new
“reforms” being introduced in Greece are putting the rights of teachers
and students in the firing line too.
We are in a period of deep capitalist crisis, where many rights
acquired through tough struggle in the past years are under threat in
all areas of society. One of them is the free, state-run school. The new
“reforms” being introduced in Greece are putting the rights of teachers
and students in the firing line too.
Specifically, the Additional Teaching Support (ATS) which was
addressed to students of all grades of secondary education has been now
dropped. This project was set up with the aim of helping struggling
students so that they would not have to repeat the year or leave school
early. Most importantly it helped increase a students chance of
accessing higher education. It mainly involved students from working
class and poor families who couldn’t afford to pay for private
tutorials. As always, however, during a capitalist crisis, the poorest
get hit first with cuts. Thus, the ATS was the first in line to be cut.
Its abolition means the dismissal of the teachers who worked under it,
while also forcing thousands of students from working class families to
live without additional teaching. In times of crisis it is impossible
for ordinary working class students to afford to go to a private
tutorial, and as a consequence more and more Greek students are being
deprived of a higher education.
A second point of the government’s proposals has to do with the "New
Secondary School" program which will include 3 mandatory lessons; Greek
Language and Literature, English and physical education and 6 elective
from; mathematics, experimental sciences, antiquity, social sciences,
foreign languages and culture. This idea for the “new school” is rife
with contradictions. Firstly, it is not possible to implement this
program because there are no qualified teachers for the new courses and
the ministry does not intend to hire new ones, since it is trying to
reduce costs as part of the Greek governments’ austerity programme.
Secondly, students are not being adequately prepared for higher
education, which will lead to difficulties in the future.
At the same time, another proposal brought by the minister is the
licensing of foreign companies to provide tutorial help to students. It
is not difficult to understand that this trick opens another window for
the privatization of education and turns the learning process into a
business for profit.
One final but extremely important point is that under the current
proposals, school textbooks are to be abolished! Students and teachers,
who have so far been granted free books, will be forced to buy them or
find them through the Internet. Even the OEDB (Textbook Publishing
Organization) is to be repealed and replaced by a new “semi-private”
entity. The abolition of the OEDB and the transfer of its powers to
private entities means that the production of the textbook, from which
most students study, will be given to private enterprise, where again
the bottom line is private profit not the needs of ordinary Greek
students.
It is obvious that in order to get out of the economic crisis, the
Greek capitalist class, like the ruling class internationally, are
determined to eliminate the reforms gained by the working class in
previous years, such as public education, and will therefore once again
make class background a hard and fast determining factor in how students
access education. It is necessary to fight and defend our rights from
such attacks from the government and the capitalists, through the
formation of a common front of students and workers.
This article first published in the paper of the Greek Marxists, Marxisti Foni. Translated by George Diakageorgiou.
