B. General principles and characteristics of a new school
B.1. Education is a field of class struggle
The work of education depends on the society, it is its reflection and it is similar to it. The process of transmitting gathered experience and social habits to younger generations, their initiation to work conditions and social life in general, this is the social function of education, which concerns the edification and contributes to education, mental cultivation and civilization of society. Education changes, because every time it serves the reproduction of the specific social relations and the socio-economic system. From the time society was divided into classes, education itself was divided into two: into elite and massive education. Therefore, it evolved into a governmental organization, in order to serve the interests of the ruling class.
Through this particular educational system the minority that possesses the means of production, controls ideologically and restricts the education of majority. At the same time it is interested in its own reproduction, by providing privileged knowledge to its own children and by corrupting the elite of science that is gradually filtered through schooling. Isn’t it obvious today, which forces outside education, dictate this educational policy in order to forward class differentiations and control of education? The capitalists more and more obviously define education in accordance with their measures, by serving the economy of capitalistic market, with instructions and directions of global capital, with statutes and decrees, and with the direct intervention of business men.
In Greek education and in other capitalistic countries, recently a series of reconstruction that aim to competitiveness are launched. Competitiveness was the basic target of “educational reconstruction” in Greece too, as the introduction to law 2525/97 refers. So, education is requested to adjust itself to Greece’s way to the Economical Monetary Union. But what is the meaning of “competitive” education? What is asked by education to do is, to promote a kind of part time occupational ability – a form of which is the “life-long training”, which is already making European people’s life difficult. Workers are asked to consent to being life-long a hostage, to alternative unemployment and to live under enduring poverty and constant insecurity. They are asked to agree that intensive exploitation and workers’ right abolition are for their own sake. Capitalism considers as a productive education, that one, which contributes to the reproduction of cheap and “flexible” workers and adjustable consciousness. An education, which cultivates the “business spirit”, and propounds as idol for life, that those who get rich because of other people’s struggle are smarter and more productive. An education that in its whole not only in private sector, but in state as well, lies under the indirect and direct control of markets, banks and industries.
Nowadays, the policy of privatizations, is the basic lever for class differentiations and education control by capitalists who define the terms and content of education. Public investments are reduced and education is more preferable as long as it costs less. The majority has to need a little; therefore school has to give less, just elementary knowledge (writing, reading, simple mathematics, use of computers and a foreign language). Let the rest be searched into initial and lasting Vocational Training provided outside schooling and workers pay it to those who take advantage of them. Therefore, this burden charges to proletariat families, no matter how they can afford it. Later on, they premise that “education should stop being a schooling monopoly” Many employers will take up to “educate” their workers, either inside production or in private institutes of training. So the meaning of education is substituted by that one of “training”. The universities as well have to be adjusted to the “market needs”, as short lasting studies are more preferable. Fake scientific programs and fake schools increase. Proletarians are going to graduate of TEE (Technological Vocational School), IEK (Institutes of Vocational Instruction), ΠΣΕ (Programs of Educational Choice) and the great number of ΤΕΙ (Technological Educational Institutes) and Universities. Intervention of great capital into public education, does not aim to improve massive education. So they care about the elite, those who will pass through the successive class restrictions and in the future they are going to govern the “Europe of Citizens”.
The plans of the imperialist centers have nothing in common with the educational needs of people and youth. Modern proletarians will soon or later raise other flags. Struggle for knowledge and education is an integral part of class struggle. Life can change to better, when knowledge, which is a vehicle to alter our life, becomes possession of all the people, instead of being a monopoly by a restricted group of the strong and so called specialists. Of course, they know that knowledge is turned to power in the hands of human society and it turns down the worlds based on lies. That’s why they reduce and control it from the base to the top, it is censored and controlled according to the system’s aims. Unawareness of truth and reality makes people powerless, restricts the horizons of thinking and as a result it restricts action too. It inactivates human being, whereas approaching truth can be revolutionary. That’s why demand for knowledge should be unlimited. We always have to educate ourselves, not just to know simple things, but also to learn to be ready to use this knowledge, in order to make our lives better. This is a constant struggle, based on the confidence that human mental power is able to create a better world, in contrast to what is endeavored today, under the hypocritical appeal to “learn how to learn”. (By the way, who defines “what and how we’ll learn and what is the reason for this”?) That’s why proletariat, youth, unprivileged classes need UNIFIED STATE FREE EDUCATION, mental cultivation and spherical education for all people’ children, having as a presupposition their personal progress and as a criterion their financial and social development. For a world, that everybody will have the right to work and be educated, to enjoy common wealth, cultural attainments and the right to control their future.
Collision with the established policy is inevitable, but needs consciousness of common profits, which is build up inside a common struggle, in the united fields of struggle for education, work, civilization, peace, environment, democratic rights. It is necessary to be widely known that only the power of anti-imperialistic popular massive movement of struggle and the will of power, which will not kneel in front of the native and foreign capital, can lead education to the route of popular needs. A lot of people frequently claim that education should stay away of political fights, political parties should stay outside school and pedagogical movement away from political parties. They are either deceived or they consciously deceive. When parts of educational claims trip on general political choices, when all the forces of state machines come up against the controversy of educational regulations, when ministers of the government “have their coffee” at schools and Police forces and solicitors take up the educational role…independence from parties and denial from political struggle by proletariats means only one thing: the conversion of their vision into an utopia, their right to a “Midsummer’s Night Dream”, their will for struggle to remise, resignation, fatal agreement and complicity. Teacher’s struggles and recently students’ as well, reveal more and more how education constitutes a movement of general socio-political struggle. School’s problems are not going to be solved inside school’s microcosm. Educational cosmogonies, confrontations and reversals can not happen “irrespective” of juxtaposition of social classes and those who express their policies.
Populace-creator is asked today to decide whether they will take education on their hands or they will leave it to be a victim of private business. Whether they compromise with the class policy of reactive reformation of education or they fight against it. Whether they open the way towards the necessary reconstruction of education, which is integrated to the necessity of a new organization of the whole society, that of the socialistic one. So that all of the social goods (both material and mental, that nowadays are trade, privilege and monopoly of ruling class) will pass to social control by their creators and to be possession of the whole society.
B.2. Education is a social right and obligation
An enormous propaganda for the need of a “flexible” system of “educational” services inside “market” supports the reactive reconstruction of Greek education and in the E.U., in contrast to a “solid” public system of massive education. The popular demand for free education, for equal possibilities to knowledge, which had as a result some attainments, is presented as socially unfair, because it “restricts” individual’s will. Personal access to knowledge, possibility to construct “one’s own” knowledge, comes to excuse privatization, class restrictions and substitution of education from scattered short lasting studies.
However, knowledge is not only a matter of personal “chances” but a matter of capabilities. And each one’s education is a subjective attempt, which is absolutely dependent on the individual’s social status inside a particular social system and at a particular point of historical evolution. School cannot ignore the social inequality between the students and of course cannot move on with those who have the capability thanks to their social milieu. Basic principle should be the equality in participation on basic material and mental goods. This means that the state is obliged to provide free education to everybody, through similar conditions in state schools and to counterbalance so as to stop any inequalities which are results of different conditions in their life (family’s financial status, parent’s educational level, geographical and social inequalities etc).Only in this way can one develop their personal skills, to create their tendencies and show their talents. One way or another, human being gets knowledge and mature inside society and schooling is the social place where concentrated experience is provided systematically. And the educational problem becomes even more difficult, as human knowledge grows and as the most inappropriate and unequal means are used. Nowadays, it is impossible for someone to create choice criteria and a thinking system without having an integrate Basic Education, because of the enormous size of knowledge and information speed. So a self-built education would be a straw hut, even more an education that is not only informative but also edifies social personality.
Learning is not a shelf target. We do not learn just to learn, but to improve our lives, to work into society and to create a better world. In accordance with this aspect, we cannot accept the disconnection of school and job and of course we cannot accept abolition of working rights. (From recognition of the right to work we led to certification of qualifications.) On the contrary, a principle should be so as all capabilities that all members of society have, be socially reclaimed. Society and education do not have to choose whether they will move on with the “good” or the “moderate”. There’s no one odd out. Social progress needs the support of everyone, according to their capabilities, and education has to work on how to develop those capabilities exceedingly. Competitiveness, ”redundant” people, unemployment, are due to this particular kind of society, capitalism, that in this manner expresses its contradictions and crises, its need to sacrifice the first productive power the human being on the temple of the profits.
B.3. Expansion of basic compulsory education is a modern social need
Once upon a time education for somebody was to know writing, reading and counting, knowledge ordered by the needs of market. Modern giant-merchants add to those basic skills, the skill of counting and communicating through computers and foreign languages and thus we have the modern basic education. Such an education is for sure going to lead to an early and expired vocational specialization, an easy excuse for firing and unemployment. This happens due to specific social data. Basic knowledge is reproduced more quickly and easier, thanks to science progress and popular education, while specialization of a worker costs less when it is achieved through apprenticeship inside production. (The more is specialization unilateral, the more quickly it takes place). If what’s requested is the minimum knowledge acquired therefore compulsory education should be limited. The capitalist, who asks for increase for exploitation of workers power, for cheap and directly productive workers, will be satisfied. But Basic education has overcome the meaning of simple elementary education since long time ago. Today we need Basic-General education, upon which the young man will construct their further evolution, both vocational and scientific. An education which ensures the feeling of self-confidence and, as it depends on it, the feeling of assurance about tomorrow. Basic Education must be considered the twelve-year compulsory education.
Scientific evolution, the great amount of means and knowledge make the expansion of Basic Education absolutely necessary. Bourgeois theorists claim that with the help of new technologies and informative computer science we have passed from knowledge to more than that, in other words, that there is no General Education because nowadays knowledge is something specialized. They deny the united philosophical consideration of the world and its material cohesion and they adopt the suggestion of new-positivist about the use of knowledge as simple tools inside a tool case. So we reach the claim of White Bible, that the division between education and training is not transparent. The bourgeoisie consider education the information skills and the helping to them behavior. The distance between them and modern social needs is longer than ever. The truth is that schooling today has more meaningful demands and education has a more important and obvious role. Expanding knowledge field is connected to new capabilities for human’s general knowledge and can get rid of encyclopedic concentration of knowledge; this is something that could be taken up by a computer’s memory – it can be concentrated to more general correlations in their appliance in life and society, in comprehension of general rules of science and social evolution in its dialectically united consideration of knowledge itself. General consideration of the world not only is possible but also necessary for everybody and for their specific university studies. The applied science on production and technology like the general applied science to society after Industrial Revolution, poses the question not only to the social but also to the mathematic science too: what target and which social advantage do they serve? The scientists need awareness of their position inside the world and scientific approach needs general scientific methodology apart from special methods, as the specialization gets deeper, so greater is the involvement of different sciences and greater the need of cooperation and social control. This concerns university and research process and much more Basic School. School must not sink the students into the ocean of new and unimportant for Basic education knowledge. And even if it stops being storage of knowledge and information, now that the level of scientific knowledge is high and it is impossible for a student to learn all these, it still has the major role to help people construct criteria so as to choose through the brain storm of information, the treasure of true knowledge instead of trash and at the same time to organize their personality to a harmonic wholeness with emotional and mental balance. Thus, educational process cannot be restricted to teaching skills and habits. There is a civilization materialistic and spiritual and human’s personality is both a product and producer of that civilization. Therefore, by posing people into narrow training, which is presented as the big deal of our times they steal from them all their wealth, their social status and pose on them an expiry day. They make individual an inferior automatic machine programmed to do a specific number of actions.
As it concerns the compulsory character of Basic Education, we do not only ask statute law. We are aware of the fact that one out of five youngsters has abandoned the 9-year-lasting compulsory education. We mean the state’s obligation to provide free education through state schools and to ensure it with parallel laws, which have to do with forbidding children’s work, teenagers work and financial help to poor families. Empowerment and reconstruction of night shift schools is necessary as long as the problem of ignorance of Greek population exists because it comes to face illiteracy through real and qualified schools and not through fake institutions like those called “second chance schools”.
Finally, we would like to define the issue of twelve years length of studies of basic education. Before arriving to basic education the child must have completed its pre-school program, which should be 2-years compulsory and be ensured through a public system of kindergartens. Later on, we do not suggest lengthen Compulsory Education. If we asked only this, meaning to add a 6-year primary, and a 3-year Gymnasium and a Lyceum, it would mean that either we do not receive the problem’s meaning (or we pretend not receiving it). The demand of our days about expanding education is not only quantitative but qualitative as well. General compulsory education means the obligation of state to ensure all the means for the people’s children to receive through the same conditions actual and spherical knowledge. The point is that we cannot talk about Demotic or Primary education and Secondary. The meaning of demotic education was applied as class segregation, meaning the limited education of unprivileged poor people. Gymnasium and later High school had other aims. If Basic Education has an aim, which in order this aim to be served it becomes 12-years long it can only be provided through a UNIFIED SCHOOL.
B.4. The unity of school for the total upgrading of people’s education
Total general education is the first step to raise cultural popular level. The Unified School serves the popular education, a demand for social quality and justice, which bourgeoisie and especially social democratic parties have tried to exploit and falsify. A lot of people talk about unified school; however, it means other things to the working movement and socialistic pedagogic and other things for various aspects of bourgeoisie policy. Unified education, as expressed through the historical motto of the government of free Greece during occupation and resistance “one people - one education”, meant the catholic right to knowledge according to general social needs and not according to class financial status, place of residence, religious beliefs or race characteristics. So that anyone can tend to the perfect development of personality and the social mass be raised so as to contribute to the creation of a constantly improving civilization. This general principle, that connects spherical education of individual’s personality together with improvement of popular education and civilization, it is also expressed by the popular movements’ demand for a unified basic school. Unified Basic School, means equal provision of same education to everybody under similar conditions, without barriers and discriminations and it is in contrast to the class character of school and to all its aspects; downgrading of mass Basic Schooling, gradual students’ restriction from class to class and from grade to grade, differentiation of educational types and of course privatization, private and preparatory out-schooling education. If Basic Education needs to be twelve-year long, then a specific type of school must ensure it. Practically, this means unified construction, unified program, unified administration and function, unified level of stuff facilities as well as teaching staff.
Bourgeoisie and middle-class theories clearly doubt that the unified school can meet the personal needs and interests and they suggest the differentiation of schools or even different sections inside the school itself. Some of them come to the point to suggest “free students program”, that will be chosen by the students themselves. Class segregations and their reproduction are covered up and accepted by these theories. What finally impends everyone’s free will are social inequalities and forces. It is scientifically proved that there are no children who cannot receive school subjects, but in contrast, from the very first moment of education, learning difficulties reflect class barriers. We shouldn’t forget that we refer to ages, whereby one has not an independent position inside society since children have not completed their personality. If schedule was adjusted by students, then their education would reflect even more obviously, signs of class origin. In reality, educational quality can only be ensured through a suitable basic school function which is not impersonal and flattening – everyone contributes according to his/her characteristics and enriches his/her interests. There are no human skills given and fixed - even the gifts and talents show and develop when there are suitable conditions. Unified schedule in Basic School constitutes a security regulation for harmonic development of skills. So, talents can stand up to, because one does not have just one skill and what we call “talent” is actually a combination of skills. And that’s the reason why only inside Unified School the student is given the opportunity to develop specific interests and talents, through teaching schedules and free time as well. And the choice subjects no matter if the student gets marks on these, they should not be away from General Educational goal of Basic Education which is personality construction and above all to enforce student’s interest for school.
Some necessary clarifications:
Unified school is public and free. Let’s finally abolish the privilege of private education and preparatory schools outside official schooling since it is a definite factor of inequality. To ensure all the conditions for an equal system of public schools, because educational level of people should rise at all areas and for all social categories. To create conditions for equal education of minorities and immigrants (separation of religion and education, right to be taught the mother tongue, control of financial problems, like food, home clothing etc). Especially today, we must pose barriers to their plans for decentralization of schools, chosen financing and altering of books and schedules. Not to let them go on with privatization of public schools through lack of financing, with relegation of expenses on school councils having as a result searching of sponsors and municipality taxes. Free education, is an irreplaceable right; students and school cannot comfort with charities and scholarships for “good” students. Our issue is not whether a worker’s child could stand up inside class, but if condition of working class inside society becomes better. The system of Unified State Free Education consists a condition, so that everybody progresses inside fair-play condition having in mind the total rise of Greek people.
We cannot consider as unified, a school of separate grades (primary –secondary) or successive levels (elementary, junior high school or gymnasium, senior high school or lyceum). This is a remnant of the policies that considered just the lower grades of education only available for populace. Those who invented “High-School diploma” seem to follow the same tactic. Main target of Unified School is every young person to complete the 12 year long studies, in order to construct and develop their personality, because it does not just add more knowledge but also quality, by observing children and teenagers growing. So, the last grades of school are the continue of previous education and they are characterized not by their administrative autonomy, but by the quality in the process of knowledge, by the greater students’ responsibility, and activity on social life, issues that are related to the educational demands of adolescence. From such a change, we will have a different qualitative school. Not just because it will have more students, but because the force of the students will change too, as the psyche of students will de differentiated. This brings new demands for teaching staff, who must be graduates of pedagogical university faculties. The main point is their education through pedagogic faculties, which will ensure pedagogic sufficiency and teaching object at the same time. At those pedagogical schools, programs of frequent in-service training for teachers can also function. Talking about this issue, it brings up other problems such as buildings. There is a serious problem when children 6-7 years old and 18-19 years old are placed on the same building. At big cities we cannot easily have playgrounds courts according to the School Building Organization. At this point there must be an actual policy of facing the problem. The real need is to organize school units based on human measures and needs of every age. In general, the leading regulation should be that none of the 12 year unified schools must have over 450 students (two classes per grade). Buildings should have cells per 4 or 6 classes (1-15 students per class for the first four grades and 1-20 students per class for the rest grades). Each cell will include not only classrooms but patio as well. Those cells will have secure separated school function and common administration. At school facilities we include aesthetics, physical education and free time.
Unified school is not differentiated in accordance with the vocational perspective of the student. There must not be any vocational choice during edification of young person before until the age of 18. There should be an end to early differentiations and class reproduction in allocation of work through the different kinds of schooling (General and Vocational) or different sections inside Lyceum (classical, science, technological). When unified school has completed its edification work, then capabilities and inclinations will have been shown and the young person can make an account of them. As a result, unified school, whatsoever depends upon it, can create the same conditions towards highest education and productive activity. This attitude towards social segregations demands, as it concerns school, apart from expansion, a new quality of general education, that Marxist pedagogic has established under the definition polytechnical education and edification.
B.5. Polytechnical character of general school supports spherical development of young people
If Unified Twelve-year long Basic School aims to the education of all the people, without class barriers and segregations and it is not differentiated to serve class choice, then it is radical dissimilar to the traditional general school and to techno-vocational, that reproduce class allocation of work and antithesis between mental and handwork. We reject fragmentary knowledge and early specialization. We reject separation of theory and practice, science and its application on life. Nowadays, the great need of basic education is a school of polytechnical horizon, which will not develop unilateral young people’ skill for occupation, but all their abilities, it will develop multilateral personality, and it will edify people capable to face their job and their life in a productive way, no matter what is their future occupation. The need for polytechnical character of Basic – General Education was born but cannot cover it, by the growth of capitalism. The start of great industry, as proved by technology, is the conscious application of science at social production. But, the capitalists, who want to keep control of production and science, the more they apply science for their own sake, the more they isolate the workers from their mental power and they convert them to simple parts of a machine. Thus, not only reproduction is cheaper but the worker’s dependence from capitalistic power becomes greater. So a school that aims to edify a man responsible over his fate who will be able to take part to the control of science and production, is a school that fights against unilateral education and isolation from work. In fact, it is opposed to benefits, choices, and power of monopolies. It is closely related to the process of abolishing class antitheses. Polytechnical general school is a term of socialistic pedagogic, used by intellectuals of Marxism-Leninism to describe the education which is suitable nowadays, in the age of substitution of capitalism by socialistic society. In the struggle for spherical human education there might be some attainments, however, this need cannot be covered by the socio-economic system. Polytechnical education, gives to science its real meaning, in other words, science is not a mental game but the decisional domination of human over natural and social environment. That’s why polytechnical education does not require everything be studied, but it requires studying the principles of modern production in general. So it is directly opposed to “multi-occupation”, which is presented as rejection of unilateralism and of narrow specialization and allocation of work, while at the same time it produces people who even when they are not unemployed and change jobs not only they do not have control of their work but are controlled by it, and they are oppressed for all their life. Polytechnical characteristic covers the meaning of General Education and constitutes the distinctive difference of our thesis from different perspectives, to bourgeoisie class school and it indicates the timeliness and necessity of socialism.
Some necessary clarifications:
Multilateral education cannot be ensured by the traditional school of general education. This is a theoretical school, of fragmentary knowledge and passive learning by heart. It is a school of class barriers and preparation of “special” scientists for reproduction of social and financial construction of that system. Encyclopedic knowledge which was the basic content of bourgeoisie General Education when the educational level of people was still low, nowadays it is not enough to cover our needs and it has already reached to a dead-end. Modern school cannot aim at the acquisition of new knowledge with the revolutionary development of sciences. General Education must not address to minority but it must meet Basic Education’s needs. The functional illiterate graduates of bourgeoisie schools (who do not know how to use their knowledge), are not a result of personal attempt of children and teachers. (That’s why school assessment and evaluation no matter how rough they are, cannot solve the problem. Instead they could mislead). Traditional General School and especially Lyceum pay the consequences of its social character as a mechanism of social choice and guidance. Their educational aims are the accumulation of knowledge and, the quantity of work required for competitive reasons. Lyceum’s schedule is a review of specific University programs, in order to prepare candidates for medical, law and economic departments. Continuous accumulation of theoretical and fragmentary knowledge has lead available school time and learning skills to a critical point. Fragmentary learning is dominating. At the same time, fragmentary offered knowledge serves an attempt of ideological guidance, substitution of the scientific philosophical consideration of world by fake scientific and religious approaches that help the dominating policy be accepted. In addition to the above, the way acquisition of knowledge takes place according to these data is passive - learning by heart. Schools function is restricted to lectures inside class (i.e. ready knowledge) and to books (i.e. indirect knowledge). However, a productive personality is formed by the knowledge, which is gained by the active and productive participation of the child. In order for students to become subject of learning process and to understand new knowledge, they need to pass from classroom to scientific laboratory and to life. School has to choose those elements, which the new person might encounter and criticize on action, in order to form a scientific view of the world, a critical and productive attitude to life. Schedule has to help through each subject the general consideration of phenomena and to show coherence of knowledge. The request of Unified Twelve-year Basic School is for the students to de aware of the laws of natural and social evolution and humans role inside it, by observing nature and be in contact with human civilization’s achievements, through scientific experiments and contact with social life. The point is not school’s timetable to include all the scientific fields, of the next level of education so as to inform the unsuspicious students. Basic Education’s main point, for example, is not the child be taught “drama” – the dramatic presentation of literary texts, the contact with the theatre itself inside or outside school, this is aesthetic edification of children that would be important, that could function in an additive way to the edification and independence of school.
The Polytechnic school is not a part of Vocational Training, which means that it does not aim at creating special professionals, but it is a school of general education. Multilateral education cannot be provided by the technical-vocational school, the practical school of contemporary proletarians. It cannot be provided by the School of fragmentary experiences and passive introduction in the production. The technical-vocational school uses all those elements of technique which are needed for the vocation and it is especially oriented towards special vocational skills that someone can acquire directly in the production. Such a unilateral education does not meet the needs of the contemporary level of economy and science which constantly reverses the technical base of industry and demands mobility of workers and professions. However, capitalism is not capable of ensuring absolute availability of the worker for the constantly alternating needs of labor, his multiple skills that will allow him to change his profession without losing his job (which would mean that the worker himself would take part in the ownership of the production and the direction of the work, which is the core of social life). Such training is costly and useless to the capitalist who has at his disposal superfluous workforce and it is in his interests to alternate it in the production through alternating partial training. Marx revealed that as long as there is individual ownership of the means of production, no vocational training can ensure tranquility, stability and certainty of the worker’s life, as he will face the constant threat of being deprived of his tool and means of maintenance and, by rendering his partial operation unnecessary, rendering him, himself, unnecessary too.
We, being not obliged to see things from the capital’s point of view, want the conditions to be created in order for technology to be used for the worker’s interest. Moreover, the knowledge of technology cannot commence by vocational specialization. We want the Unified Twelve-Year Basic School to incorporate the basic elements of technique not as skills but as a general preparation for life. We want the young people to learn the basis of economics. The main point is not a mixture of incoherent practical courses, e.g. exclusively the use of personal computers in order to create modern typewriters and accountants. The main point is that the school, with support from science, gradually teaches young people about social life, whose core is work. Also, to teach students the scientific principles of the mechanized economy, the common tools which are used not only in one domain but generally in all the domains of production, to unveil the mystery covering the production process. For the students to discover through the knowledge of Mechanics, not the manual work, but the application of science, not the mere use of a machine, but the fact that in all machines there is the repetition of the same forces. But, also, to comprehend that science is applied on a social level, knowing for example, in the Physics course, the technical principles of electricity, not only when asked to solve something on the blackboard or in the school laboratory but in their application in life, e.g. in the transportation of travelers or merchandise. To combine knowledge that is being taught, e.g. teaching of raw material in the subject of geography with the principles of the mechanic processing of the subject of physics and chemistry, for truth to be established in their conscience, that sciences neither constitute an end in themselves nor autonomous, but cooperate for a social purpose. In general, the problem is not for certain courses to be added for the teaching of economy and technology, but the recognition of the role of work and production as the starting point for science and human culture, as the basis of social life, to penetrate the whole of the school curriculum as a central axis. And we are far from intending the slavish adjustment to the social system, and as is attempted today through various forms of “apprenticeship”, to let students get used to their manipulation from an early age. On the contrary, we want the young people to understand that unemployment is not a result of their own inefficiency or lack of flexibility; all the same, the unrestrained competitive development, that destroys the productive forces, both nature and human nature, are not the results of technology and science but that of their inappropriate use. In the future, they will get to know a society in which the social ownership of the means of production and its social direction will release work from its bonds and will allow its use even in the educational process, not as a “chore” and exploitation but as a method for the multilateral development of human beings. We preserve for the future the experience, in this domain, of socialist countries where the experimental application of science and the social edification, used to begin with team work in the laboratory and in the schoolyard, and reached the planned practice in the factory, the agricultural or professional corporation. In any case, the edification of the young person is not over at school; additionally, the content of the social edification at school is not autonomously determined; it is rather defined by the forces that dominate society.
B.6. Independence of school intends to social edification of stable and creative personality
Unified Twelve-year Basic School ensures its autonomy by submitting all its functions towards an aim: to tribute to the balanced development of a stable personality and to the social edification of a young conscious and creative person who will not face life with misery. Nowadays, school’s independence does not exist. Technical Vocational Schools (TEE) are not even schools. “Unified Lyceum” is divided to Basic Education and preparation for the Universities. In general, stress for covering syllabus, without any capability of choice and scale, results to a quick reading or to the statement “up to here, that is what we could do” which means that school does not complete anything and that the real content of life stays out of its aims. The way school provides edification to the social system, is the shatter of young people personality, on the Symplygade Rocks of class choices and ideological guidance. It is an individualistic school of a hard struggle for a small life, which makes young people old and exhausts them. It is the school of indifference for the life itself, of insecurity and passiveness, of meaningless moral tatters and preachers that aim to the slavery adjustment to the system. A young person needs a different attitude towards life and its problems. Of course, moral education in the new school is not a different subject. Right and complete development of personality is fulfilled through life at school in connection to social milieu. That’s why, school must teach truth for life, a truth that will be proved on every day life. It is not only school that should ensure connection of life and social action, but the social milieu as well, should become human, so that people get used to experience themselves as human beings.
At first, school should make it easier for children and teenagers to live and enjoy their best years. Doubtless there is necessity for young people’s preparation and accouterments, so that they successfully face their future life, but it should not exclude the above mentioned. Knowledge provision, aesthetics and physical education and in general school’s content and function should make more pleasant and interesting the childhood and adolescence. To ensure children’s play, to help teenagers in organizing their free time, to enrich youth’s actions during the timetable and after that, by reclaiming school place and by the contribution of school community in the socio-political life. If we want children and teenagers to love schools, school must be attractive. Attractive school has nothing to do with the “bourgeoisie jungle”. Anyone who closely attends aspects of student’s life understands why “we are having lessons” is a threat, instead of being thankful for “not having school”. In modern school, adults’ stress for insecure future has invaded school and has gradually become students’ stress. Not only free time has been vanished, but also school recreation as well, as for example, excursions have lost their educational content and consist an out-burst of concentrated tension and a break from meaningless and tiring school work.
School must also aim to harmonic development of person and generally to contribute, so that human personality should find its balance. The characteristics of that balance are, on the one hand, the interior harmonic development of human psyche and on the other hand, the harmonic relationship with the environment. So, school must practice as much as possible, both physical and mental functions of humans. In order to awake the spirit, we have to use our senses and to have a strong body. Later on, human psyche must develop harmonically, at its three dimensions: cognitive – consciousness and volition. Modern school focuses on transmittal knowledge which is not complete and thus develops in an awry way consciousness and volitional dimensions of human beings. Cognition, consciousness and volition are expressed inseparably in human behavior. Finally, volition is the passage from consciousness and thought to action. The problem is not only that persons without volition are incapable of influencing their environment. Harmonic development itself is not gained exclusively through knowledge offer, since cognition starts from the contact with the things and it must be verified. Young people must recall theoretical knowledge through practice and vice versa through theory they should define action. That’s why Unified 12-year Basic School should be the school of social practice and student’s action. And these become creative through the joint organization of school life in its contact with society. Some occasional visits, offer separated and meaningless profits, comparing with the wealth of ideas and relations of the surrounding reality. And we do not want school’s connection with society to have the form of passive adjustment, as modern school aims at. In that category belongs the “a-political”, the “away from politics” school, which constitutes the “stalking horse” for making young people stay away from fertilizing ideas and values of workers movement. We, against the system of today, will keep on fighting, so that life will enter to school and bring its progressive messages. School’s participation at worker’s May Day celebration, moving together with those who fight for peace, discussion for woman’s rights into class with representatives of women movement, student’s council for educational policies are educative priorities and suggestions of high importance for edification of youth. School’s connection with the forces of social progress, joint action of all the carriers of education so as to make young people conscious of social duties, the edifying role of proletarians party are even more critical issues for socialism, for the society that is developed only by the conscious action of populace.
If what is requested from school is the right position of young people towards life and its problems, then school has to create the criteria for right and wrong and these are the criteria for the truth of life.
Of course, this belongs to the main ideological problems of education. It is connected to the big question “why am I studying?”. No rational person could seriously support that s/he studies to know a lot, or that s/he studies just to study. Nevertheless, when we attempt to look into a problem, through sciences, we make a cognitive action, (we refer to school action) but above all we make an action of evaluation. For example, this happens in literature, when we observe the personality of a hero, so we are critical towards a social event or we analyze a part of literature and finally the intentions of the author. The same thing happens when we study a great scientist and we focus on his/her work and the use of his/her inventions, we make a moral and finally a social approach. Against all those who deny it, this happens in all aspects of cognition because knowledge implies a social approach to the way of truth, which is a social approach to reality (whether the scientist understands it or pretends s/he does not understand it). This is revealed, when we face science on its wholeness, as a reflection of reality, in other words on its philosophical dimension.
But, to return to Unified 12-year Basic School, this owes to offer the basic scientific knowledge, which is necessary for students to form a scientific cosmotheory and theory of life. At school, students must organize their thought, to learn to face the natural and social phenomena in their evolution, to face the world at its wholeness. When students find out through repetition and mixing of phenomena the existence of general rules, they have consciousness of physical rules and social evolution, they learn to control their life and be aware their social duties. The person, who assimilates the knowledge of reality, has abilities and qualities, which make him/her responsible and conscious user of the problems and status quo of his/her age. Education is not only a matter of knowledge, but it is a matter of life.
The work of education depends on the society, it is its reflection and it is similar to it. The process of transmitting gathered experience and social habits to younger generations, their initiation to work conditions and social life in general, this is the social function of education, which concerns the edification and contributes to education, mental cultivation and civilization of society. Education changes, because every time it serves the reproduction of the specific social relations and the socio-economic system. From the time society was divided into classes, education itself was divided into two: into elite and massive education. Therefore, it evolved into a governmental organization, in order to serve the interests of the ruling class.
Through this particular educational system the minority that possesses the means of production, controls ideologically and restricts the education of majority. At the same time it is interested in its own reproduction, by providing privileged knowledge to its own children and by corrupting the elite of science that is gradually filtered through schooling. Isn’t it obvious today, which forces outside education, dictate this educational policy in order to forward class differentiations and control of education? The capitalists more and more obviously define education in accordance with their measures, by serving the economy of capitalistic market, with instructions and directions of global capital, with statutes and decrees, and with the direct intervention of business men.
In Greek education and in other capitalistic countries, recently a series of reconstruction that aim to competitiveness are launched. Competitiveness was the basic target of “educational reconstruction” in Greece too, as the introduction to law 2525/97 refers. So, education is requested to adjust itself to Greece’s way to the Economical Monetary Union. But what is the meaning of “competitive” education? What is asked by education to do is, to promote a kind of part time occupational ability – a form of which is the “life-long training”, which is already making European people’s life difficult. Workers are asked to consent to being life-long a hostage, to alternative unemployment and to live under enduring poverty and constant insecurity. They are asked to agree that intensive exploitation and workers’ right abolition are for their own sake. Capitalism considers as a productive education, that one, which contributes to the reproduction of cheap and “flexible” workers and adjustable consciousness. An education, which cultivates the “business spirit”, and propounds as idol for life, that those who get rich because of other people’s struggle are smarter and more productive. An education that in its whole not only in private sector, but in state as well, lies under the indirect and direct control of markets, banks and industries.
Nowadays, the policy of privatizations, is the basic lever for class differentiations and education control by capitalists who define the terms and content of education. Public investments are reduced and education is more preferable as long as it costs less. The majority has to need a little; therefore school has to give less, just elementary knowledge (writing, reading, simple mathematics, use of computers and a foreign language). Let the rest be searched into initial and lasting Vocational Training provided outside schooling and workers pay it to those who take advantage of them. Therefore, this burden charges to proletariat families, no matter how they can afford it. Later on, they premise that “education should stop being a schooling monopoly” Many employers will take up to “educate” their workers, either inside production or in private institutes of training. So the meaning of education is substituted by that one of “training”. The universities as well have to be adjusted to the “market needs”, as short lasting studies are more preferable. Fake scientific programs and fake schools increase. Proletarians are going to graduate of TEE (Technological Vocational School), IEK (Institutes of Vocational Instruction), ΠΣΕ (Programs of Educational Choice) and the great number of ΤΕΙ (Technological Educational Institutes) and Universities. Intervention of great capital into public education, does not aim to improve massive education. So they care about the elite, those who will pass through the successive class restrictions and in the future they are going to govern the “Europe of Citizens”.
The plans of the imperialist centers have nothing in common with the educational needs of people and youth. Modern proletarians will soon or later raise other flags. Struggle for knowledge and education is an integral part of class struggle. Life can change to better, when knowledge, which is a vehicle to alter our life, becomes possession of all the people, instead of being a monopoly by a restricted group of the strong and so called specialists. Of course, they know that knowledge is turned to power in the hands of human society and it turns down the worlds based on lies. That’s why they reduce and control it from the base to the top, it is censored and controlled according to the system’s aims. Unawareness of truth and reality makes people powerless, restricts the horizons of thinking and as a result it restricts action too. It inactivates human being, whereas approaching truth can be revolutionary. That’s why demand for knowledge should be unlimited. We always have to educate ourselves, not just to know simple things, but also to learn to be ready to use this knowledge, in order to make our lives better. This is a constant struggle, based on the confidence that human mental power is able to create a better world, in contrast to what is endeavored today, under the hypocritical appeal to “learn how to learn”. (By the way, who defines “what and how we’ll learn and what is the reason for this”?) That’s why proletariat, youth, unprivileged classes need UNIFIED STATE FREE EDUCATION, mental cultivation and spherical education for all people’ children, having as a presupposition their personal progress and as a criterion their financial and social development. For a world, that everybody will have the right to work and be educated, to enjoy common wealth, cultural attainments and the right to control their future.
Collision with the established policy is inevitable, but needs consciousness of common profits, which is build up inside a common struggle, in the united fields of struggle for education, work, civilization, peace, environment, democratic rights. It is necessary to be widely known that only the power of anti-imperialistic popular massive movement of struggle and the will of power, which will not kneel in front of the native and foreign capital, can lead education to the route of popular needs. A lot of people frequently claim that education should stay away of political fights, political parties should stay outside school and pedagogical movement away from political parties. They are either deceived or they consciously deceive. When parts of educational claims trip on general political choices, when all the forces of state machines come up against the controversy of educational regulations, when ministers of the government “have their coffee” at schools and Police forces and solicitors take up the educational role…independence from parties and denial from political struggle by proletariats means only one thing: the conversion of their vision into an utopia, their right to a “Midsummer’s Night Dream”, their will for struggle to remise, resignation, fatal agreement and complicity. Teacher’s struggles and recently students’ as well, reveal more and more how education constitutes a movement of general socio-political struggle. School’s problems are not going to be solved inside school’s microcosm. Educational cosmogonies, confrontations and reversals can not happen “irrespective” of juxtaposition of social classes and those who express their policies.
Populace-creator is asked today to decide whether they will take education on their hands or they will leave it to be a victim of private business. Whether they compromise with the class policy of reactive reformation of education or they fight against it. Whether they open the way towards the necessary reconstruction of education, which is integrated to the necessity of a new organization of the whole society, that of the socialistic one. So that all of the social goods (both material and mental, that nowadays are trade, privilege and monopoly of ruling class) will pass to social control by their creators and to be possession of the whole society.
B.2. Education is a social right and obligation
An enormous propaganda for the need of a “flexible” system of “educational” services inside “market” supports the reactive reconstruction of Greek education and in the E.U., in contrast to a “solid” public system of massive education. The popular demand for free education, for equal possibilities to knowledge, which had as a result some attainments, is presented as socially unfair, because it “restricts” individual’s will. Personal access to knowledge, possibility to construct “one’s own” knowledge, comes to excuse privatization, class restrictions and substitution of education from scattered short lasting studies.
However, knowledge is not only a matter of personal “chances” but a matter of capabilities. And each one’s education is a subjective attempt, which is absolutely dependent on the individual’s social status inside a particular social system and at a particular point of historical evolution. School cannot ignore the social inequality between the students and of course cannot move on with those who have the capability thanks to their social milieu. Basic principle should be the equality in participation on basic material and mental goods. This means that the state is obliged to provide free education to everybody, through similar conditions in state schools and to counterbalance so as to stop any inequalities which are results of different conditions in their life (family’s financial status, parent’s educational level, geographical and social inequalities etc).Only in this way can one develop their personal skills, to create their tendencies and show their talents. One way or another, human being gets knowledge and mature inside society and schooling is the social place where concentrated experience is provided systematically. And the educational problem becomes even more difficult, as human knowledge grows and as the most inappropriate and unequal means are used. Nowadays, it is impossible for someone to create choice criteria and a thinking system without having an integrate Basic Education, because of the enormous size of knowledge and information speed. So a self-built education would be a straw hut, even more an education that is not only informative but also edifies social personality.
Learning is not a shelf target. We do not learn just to learn, but to improve our lives, to work into society and to create a better world. In accordance with this aspect, we cannot accept the disconnection of school and job and of course we cannot accept abolition of working rights. (From recognition of the right to work we led to certification of qualifications.) On the contrary, a principle should be so as all capabilities that all members of society have, be socially reclaimed. Society and education do not have to choose whether they will move on with the “good” or the “moderate”. There’s no one odd out. Social progress needs the support of everyone, according to their capabilities, and education has to work on how to develop those capabilities exceedingly. Competitiveness, ”redundant” people, unemployment, are due to this particular kind of society, capitalism, that in this manner expresses its contradictions and crises, its need to sacrifice the first productive power the human being on the temple of the profits.
B.3. Expansion of basic compulsory education is a modern social need
Once upon a time education for somebody was to know writing, reading and counting, knowledge ordered by the needs of market. Modern giant-merchants add to those basic skills, the skill of counting and communicating through computers and foreign languages and thus we have the modern basic education. Such an education is for sure going to lead to an early and expired vocational specialization, an easy excuse for firing and unemployment. This happens due to specific social data. Basic knowledge is reproduced more quickly and easier, thanks to science progress and popular education, while specialization of a worker costs less when it is achieved through apprenticeship inside production. (The more is specialization unilateral, the more quickly it takes place). If what’s requested is the minimum knowledge acquired therefore compulsory education should be limited. The capitalist, who asks for increase for exploitation of workers power, for cheap and directly productive workers, will be satisfied. But Basic education has overcome the meaning of simple elementary education since long time ago. Today we need Basic-General education, upon which the young man will construct their further evolution, both vocational and scientific. An education which ensures the feeling of self-confidence and, as it depends on it, the feeling of assurance about tomorrow. Basic Education must be considered the twelve-year compulsory education.
Scientific evolution, the great amount of means and knowledge make the expansion of Basic Education absolutely necessary. Bourgeois theorists claim that with the help of new technologies and informative computer science we have passed from knowledge to more than that, in other words, that there is no General Education because nowadays knowledge is something specialized. They deny the united philosophical consideration of the world and its material cohesion and they adopt the suggestion of new-positivist about the use of knowledge as simple tools inside a tool case. So we reach the claim of White Bible, that the division between education and training is not transparent. The bourgeoisie consider education the information skills and the helping to them behavior. The distance between them and modern social needs is longer than ever. The truth is that schooling today has more meaningful demands and education has a more important and obvious role. Expanding knowledge field is connected to new capabilities for human’s general knowledge and can get rid of encyclopedic concentration of knowledge; this is something that could be taken up by a computer’s memory – it can be concentrated to more general correlations in their appliance in life and society, in comprehension of general rules of science and social evolution in its dialectically united consideration of knowledge itself. General consideration of the world not only is possible but also necessary for everybody and for their specific university studies. The applied science on production and technology like the general applied science to society after Industrial Revolution, poses the question not only to the social but also to the mathematic science too: what target and which social advantage do they serve? The scientists need awareness of their position inside the world and scientific approach needs general scientific methodology apart from special methods, as the specialization gets deeper, so greater is the involvement of different sciences and greater the need of cooperation and social control. This concerns university and research process and much more Basic School. School must not sink the students into the ocean of new and unimportant for Basic education knowledge. And even if it stops being storage of knowledge and information, now that the level of scientific knowledge is high and it is impossible for a student to learn all these, it still has the major role to help people construct criteria so as to choose through the brain storm of information, the treasure of true knowledge instead of trash and at the same time to organize their personality to a harmonic wholeness with emotional and mental balance. Thus, educational process cannot be restricted to teaching skills and habits. There is a civilization materialistic and spiritual and human’s personality is both a product and producer of that civilization. Therefore, by posing people into narrow training, which is presented as the big deal of our times they steal from them all their wealth, their social status and pose on them an expiry day. They make individual an inferior automatic machine programmed to do a specific number of actions.
As it concerns the compulsory character of Basic Education, we do not only ask statute law. We are aware of the fact that one out of five youngsters has abandoned the 9-year-lasting compulsory education. We mean the state’s obligation to provide free education through state schools and to ensure it with parallel laws, which have to do with forbidding children’s work, teenagers work and financial help to poor families. Empowerment and reconstruction of night shift schools is necessary as long as the problem of ignorance of Greek population exists because it comes to face illiteracy through real and qualified schools and not through fake institutions like those called “second chance schools”.
Finally, we would like to define the issue of twelve years length of studies of basic education. Before arriving to basic education the child must have completed its pre-school program, which should be 2-years compulsory and be ensured through a public system of kindergartens. Later on, we do not suggest lengthen Compulsory Education. If we asked only this, meaning to add a 6-year primary, and a 3-year Gymnasium and a Lyceum, it would mean that either we do not receive the problem’s meaning (or we pretend not receiving it). The demand of our days about expanding education is not only quantitative but qualitative as well. General compulsory education means the obligation of state to ensure all the means for the people’s children to receive through the same conditions actual and spherical knowledge. The point is that we cannot talk about Demotic or Primary education and Secondary. The meaning of demotic education was applied as class segregation, meaning the limited education of unprivileged poor people. Gymnasium and later High school had other aims. If Basic Education has an aim, which in order this aim to be served it becomes 12-years long it can only be provided through a UNIFIED SCHOOL.
B.4. The unity of school for the total upgrading of people’s education
Total general education is the first step to raise cultural popular level. The Unified School serves the popular education, a demand for social quality and justice, which bourgeoisie and especially social democratic parties have tried to exploit and falsify. A lot of people talk about unified school; however, it means other things to the working movement and socialistic pedagogic and other things for various aspects of bourgeoisie policy. Unified education, as expressed through the historical motto of the government of free Greece during occupation and resistance “one people - one education”, meant the catholic right to knowledge according to general social needs and not according to class financial status, place of residence, religious beliefs or race characteristics. So that anyone can tend to the perfect development of personality and the social mass be raised so as to contribute to the creation of a constantly improving civilization. This general principle, that connects spherical education of individual’s personality together with improvement of popular education and civilization, it is also expressed by the popular movements’ demand for a unified basic school. Unified Basic School, means equal provision of same education to everybody under similar conditions, without barriers and discriminations and it is in contrast to the class character of school and to all its aspects; downgrading of mass Basic Schooling, gradual students’ restriction from class to class and from grade to grade, differentiation of educational types and of course privatization, private and preparatory out-schooling education. If Basic Education needs to be twelve-year long, then a specific type of school must ensure it. Practically, this means unified construction, unified program, unified administration and function, unified level of stuff facilities as well as teaching staff.
Bourgeoisie and middle-class theories clearly doubt that the unified school can meet the personal needs and interests and they suggest the differentiation of schools or even different sections inside the school itself. Some of them come to the point to suggest “free students program”, that will be chosen by the students themselves. Class segregations and their reproduction are covered up and accepted by these theories. What finally impends everyone’s free will are social inequalities and forces. It is scientifically proved that there are no children who cannot receive school subjects, but in contrast, from the very first moment of education, learning difficulties reflect class barriers. We shouldn’t forget that we refer to ages, whereby one has not an independent position inside society since children have not completed their personality. If schedule was adjusted by students, then their education would reflect even more obviously, signs of class origin. In reality, educational quality can only be ensured through a suitable basic school function which is not impersonal and flattening – everyone contributes according to his/her characteristics and enriches his/her interests. There are no human skills given and fixed - even the gifts and talents show and develop when there are suitable conditions. Unified schedule in Basic School constitutes a security regulation for harmonic development of skills. So, talents can stand up to, because one does not have just one skill and what we call “talent” is actually a combination of skills. And that’s the reason why only inside Unified School the student is given the opportunity to develop specific interests and talents, through teaching schedules and free time as well. And the choice subjects no matter if the student gets marks on these, they should not be away from General Educational goal of Basic Education which is personality construction and above all to enforce student’s interest for school.
Some necessary clarifications:
Unified school is public and free. Let’s finally abolish the privilege of private education and preparatory schools outside official schooling since it is a definite factor of inequality. To ensure all the conditions for an equal system of public schools, because educational level of people should rise at all areas and for all social categories. To create conditions for equal education of minorities and immigrants (separation of religion and education, right to be taught the mother tongue, control of financial problems, like food, home clothing etc). Especially today, we must pose barriers to their plans for decentralization of schools, chosen financing and altering of books and schedules. Not to let them go on with privatization of public schools through lack of financing, with relegation of expenses on school councils having as a result searching of sponsors and municipality taxes. Free education, is an irreplaceable right; students and school cannot comfort with charities and scholarships for “good” students. Our issue is not whether a worker’s child could stand up inside class, but if condition of working class inside society becomes better. The system of Unified State Free Education consists a condition, so that everybody progresses inside fair-play condition having in mind the total rise of Greek people.
We cannot consider as unified, a school of separate grades (primary –secondary) or successive levels (elementary, junior high school or gymnasium, senior high school or lyceum). This is a remnant of the policies that considered just the lower grades of education only available for populace. Those who invented “High-School diploma” seem to follow the same tactic. Main target of Unified School is every young person to complete the 12 year long studies, in order to construct and develop their personality, because it does not just add more knowledge but also quality, by observing children and teenagers growing. So, the last grades of school are the continue of previous education and they are characterized not by their administrative autonomy, but by the quality in the process of knowledge, by the greater students’ responsibility, and activity on social life, issues that are related to the educational demands of adolescence. From such a change, we will have a different qualitative school. Not just because it will have more students, but because the force of the students will change too, as the psyche of students will de differentiated. This brings new demands for teaching staff, who must be graduates of pedagogical university faculties. The main point is their education through pedagogic faculties, which will ensure pedagogic sufficiency and teaching object at the same time. At those pedagogical schools, programs of frequent in-service training for teachers can also function. Talking about this issue, it brings up other problems such as buildings. There is a serious problem when children 6-7 years old and 18-19 years old are placed on the same building. At big cities we cannot easily have playgrounds courts according to the School Building Organization. At this point there must be an actual policy of facing the problem. The real need is to organize school units based on human measures and needs of every age. In general, the leading regulation should be that none of the 12 year unified schools must have over 450 students (two classes per grade). Buildings should have cells per 4 or 6 classes (1-15 students per class for the first four grades and 1-20 students per class for the rest grades). Each cell will include not only classrooms but patio as well. Those cells will have secure separated school function and common administration. At school facilities we include aesthetics, physical education and free time.
Unified school is not differentiated in accordance with the vocational perspective of the student. There must not be any vocational choice during edification of young person before until the age of 18. There should be an end to early differentiations and class reproduction in allocation of work through the different kinds of schooling (General and Vocational) or different sections inside Lyceum (classical, science, technological). When unified school has completed its edification work, then capabilities and inclinations will have been shown and the young person can make an account of them. As a result, unified school, whatsoever depends upon it, can create the same conditions towards highest education and productive activity. This attitude towards social segregations demands, as it concerns school, apart from expansion, a new quality of general education, that Marxist pedagogic has established under the definition polytechnical education and edification.
B.5. Polytechnical character of general school supports spherical development of young people
If Unified Twelve-year long Basic School aims to the education of all the people, without class barriers and segregations and it is not differentiated to serve class choice, then it is radical dissimilar to the traditional general school and to techno-vocational, that reproduce class allocation of work and antithesis between mental and handwork. We reject fragmentary knowledge and early specialization. We reject separation of theory and practice, science and its application on life. Nowadays, the great need of basic education is a school of polytechnical horizon, which will not develop unilateral young people’ skill for occupation, but all their abilities, it will develop multilateral personality, and it will edify people capable to face their job and their life in a productive way, no matter what is their future occupation. The need for polytechnical character of Basic – General Education was born but cannot cover it, by the growth of capitalism. The start of great industry, as proved by technology, is the conscious application of science at social production. But, the capitalists, who want to keep control of production and science, the more they apply science for their own sake, the more they isolate the workers from their mental power and they convert them to simple parts of a machine. Thus, not only reproduction is cheaper but the worker’s dependence from capitalistic power becomes greater. So a school that aims to edify a man responsible over his fate who will be able to take part to the control of science and production, is a school that fights against unilateral education and isolation from work. In fact, it is opposed to benefits, choices, and power of monopolies. It is closely related to the process of abolishing class antitheses. Polytechnical general school is a term of socialistic pedagogic, used by intellectuals of Marxism-Leninism to describe the education which is suitable nowadays, in the age of substitution of capitalism by socialistic society. In the struggle for spherical human education there might be some attainments, however, this need cannot be covered by the socio-economic system. Polytechnical education, gives to science its real meaning, in other words, science is not a mental game but the decisional domination of human over natural and social environment. That’s why polytechnical education does not require everything be studied, but it requires studying the principles of modern production in general. So it is directly opposed to “multi-occupation”, which is presented as rejection of unilateralism and of narrow specialization and allocation of work, while at the same time it produces people who even when they are not unemployed and change jobs not only they do not have control of their work but are controlled by it, and they are oppressed for all their life. Polytechnical characteristic covers the meaning of General Education and constitutes the distinctive difference of our thesis from different perspectives, to bourgeoisie class school and it indicates the timeliness and necessity of socialism.
Some necessary clarifications:
Multilateral education cannot be ensured by the traditional school of general education. This is a theoretical school, of fragmentary knowledge and passive learning by heart. It is a school of class barriers and preparation of “special” scientists for reproduction of social and financial construction of that system. Encyclopedic knowledge which was the basic content of bourgeoisie General Education when the educational level of people was still low, nowadays it is not enough to cover our needs and it has already reached to a dead-end. Modern school cannot aim at the acquisition of new knowledge with the revolutionary development of sciences. General Education must not address to minority but it must meet Basic Education’s needs. The functional illiterate graduates of bourgeoisie schools (who do not know how to use their knowledge), are not a result of personal attempt of children and teachers. (That’s why school assessment and evaluation no matter how rough they are, cannot solve the problem. Instead they could mislead). Traditional General School and especially Lyceum pay the consequences of its social character as a mechanism of social choice and guidance. Their educational aims are the accumulation of knowledge and, the quantity of work required for competitive reasons. Lyceum’s schedule is a review of specific University programs, in order to prepare candidates for medical, law and economic departments. Continuous accumulation of theoretical and fragmentary knowledge has lead available school time and learning skills to a critical point. Fragmentary learning is dominating. At the same time, fragmentary offered knowledge serves an attempt of ideological guidance, substitution of the scientific philosophical consideration of world by fake scientific and religious approaches that help the dominating policy be accepted. In addition to the above, the way acquisition of knowledge takes place according to these data is passive - learning by heart. Schools function is restricted to lectures inside class (i.e. ready knowledge) and to books (i.e. indirect knowledge). However, a productive personality is formed by the knowledge, which is gained by the active and productive participation of the child. In order for students to become subject of learning process and to understand new knowledge, they need to pass from classroom to scientific laboratory and to life. School has to choose those elements, which the new person might encounter and criticize on action, in order to form a scientific view of the world, a critical and productive attitude to life. Schedule has to help through each subject the general consideration of phenomena and to show coherence of knowledge. The request of Unified Twelve-year Basic School is for the students to de aware of the laws of natural and social evolution and humans role inside it, by observing nature and be in contact with human civilization’s achievements, through scientific experiments and contact with social life. The point is not school’s timetable to include all the scientific fields, of the next level of education so as to inform the unsuspicious students. Basic Education’s main point, for example, is not the child be taught “drama” – the dramatic presentation of literary texts, the contact with the theatre itself inside or outside school, this is aesthetic edification of children that would be important, that could function in an additive way to the edification and independence of school.
The Polytechnic school is not a part of Vocational Training, which means that it does not aim at creating special professionals, but it is a school of general education. Multilateral education cannot be provided by the technical-vocational school, the practical school of contemporary proletarians. It cannot be provided by the School of fragmentary experiences and passive introduction in the production. The technical-vocational school uses all those elements of technique which are needed for the vocation and it is especially oriented towards special vocational skills that someone can acquire directly in the production. Such a unilateral education does not meet the needs of the contemporary level of economy and science which constantly reverses the technical base of industry and demands mobility of workers and professions. However, capitalism is not capable of ensuring absolute availability of the worker for the constantly alternating needs of labor, his multiple skills that will allow him to change his profession without losing his job (which would mean that the worker himself would take part in the ownership of the production and the direction of the work, which is the core of social life). Such training is costly and useless to the capitalist who has at his disposal superfluous workforce and it is in his interests to alternate it in the production through alternating partial training. Marx revealed that as long as there is individual ownership of the means of production, no vocational training can ensure tranquility, stability and certainty of the worker’s life, as he will face the constant threat of being deprived of his tool and means of maintenance and, by rendering his partial operation unnecessary, rendering him, himself, unnecessary too.
We, being not obliged to see things from the capital’s point of view, want the conditions to be created in order for technology to be used for the worker’s interest. Moreover, the knowledge of technology cannot commence by vocational specialization. We want the Unified Twelve-Year Basic School to incorporate the basic elements of technique not as skills but as a general preparation for life. We want the young people to learn the basis of economics. The main point is not a mixture of incoherent practical courses, e.g. exclusively the use of personal computers in order to create modern typewriters and accountants. The main point is that the school, with support from science, gradually teaches young people about social life, whose core is work. Also, to teach students the scientific principles of the mechanized economy, the common tools which are used not only in one domain but generally in all the domains of production, to unveil the mystery covering the production process. For the students to discover through the knowledge of Mechanics, not the manual work, but the application of science, not the mere use of a machine, but the fact that in all machines there is the repetition of the same forces. But, also, to comprehend that science is applied on a social level, knowing for example, in the Physics course, the technical principles of electricity, not only when asked to solve something on the blackboard or in the school laboratory but in their application in life, e.g. in the transportation of travelers or merchandise. To combine knowledge that is being taught, e.g. teaching of raw material in the subject of geography with the principles of the mechanic processing of the subject of physics and chemistry, for truth to be established in their conscience, that sciences neither constitute an end in themselves nor autonomous, but cooperate for a social purpose. In general, the problem is not for certain courses to be added for the teaching of economy and technology, but the recognition of the role of work and production as the starting point for science and human culture, as the basis of social life, to penetrate the whole of the school curriculum as a central axis. And we are far from intending the slavish adjustment to the social system, and as is attempted today through various forms of “apprenticeship”, to let students get used to their manipulation from an early age. On the contrary, we want the young people to understand that unemployment is not a result of their own inefficiency or lack of flexibility; all the same, the unrestrained competitive development, that destroys the productive forces, both nature and human nature, are not the results of technology and science but that of their inappropriate use. In the future, they will get to know a society in which the social ownership of the means of production and its social direction will release work from its bonds and will allow its use even in the educational process, not as a “chore” and exploitation but as a method for the multilateral development of human beings. We preserve for the future the experience, in this domain, of socialist countries where the experimental application of science and the social edification, used to begin with team work in the laboratory and in the schoolyard, and reached the planned practice in the factory, the agricultural or professional corporation. In any case, the edification of the young person is not over at school; additionally, the content of the social edification at school is not autonomously determined; it is rather defined by the forces that dominate society.
B.6. Independence of school intends to social edification of stable and creative personality
Unified Twelve-year Basic School ensures its autonomy by submitting all its functions towards an aim: to tribute to the balanced development of a stable personality and to the social edification of a young conscious and creative person who will not face life with misery. Nowadays, school’s independence does not exist. Technical Vocational Schools (TEE) are not even schools. “Unified Lyceum” is divided to Basic Education and preparation for the Universities. In general, stress for covering syllabus, without any capability of choice and scale, results to a quick reading or to the statement “up to here, that is what we could do” which means that school does not complete anything and that the real content of life stays out of its aims. The way school provides edification to the social system, is the shatter of young people personality, on the Symplygade Rocks of class choices and ideological guidance. It is an individualistic school of a hard struggle for a small life, which makes young people old and exhausts them. It is the school of indifference for the life itself, of insecurity and passiveness, of meaningless moral tatters and preachers that aim to the slavery adjustment to the system. A young person needs a different attitude towards life and its problems. Of course, moral education in the new school is not a different subject. Right and complete development of personality is fulfilled through life at school in connection to social milieu. That’s why, school must teach truth for life, a truth that will be proved on every day life. It is not only school that should ensure connection of life and social action, but the social milieu as well, should become human, so that people get used to experience themselves as human beings.
At first, school should make it easier for children and teenagers to live and enjoy their best years. Doubtless there is necessity for young people’s preparation and accouterments, so that they successfully face their future life, but it should not exclude the above mentioned. Knowledge provision, aesthetics and physical education and in general school’s content and function should make more pleasant and interesting the childhood and adolescence. To ensure children’s play, to help teenagers in organizing their free time, to enrich youth’s actions during the timetable and after that, by reclaiming school place and by the contribution of school community in the socio-political life. If we want children and teenagers to love schools, school must be attractive. Attractive school has nothing to do with the “bourgeoisie jungle”. Anyone who closely attends aspects of student’s life understands why “we are having lessons” is a threat, instead of being thankful for “not having school”. In modern school, adults’ stress for insecure future has invaded school and has gradually become students’ stress. Not only free time has been vanished, but also school recreation as well, as for example, excursions have lost their educational content and consist an out-burst of concentrated tension and a break from meaningless and tiring school work.
School must also aim to harmonic development of person and generally to contribute, so that human personality should find its balance. The characteristics of that balance are, on the one hand, the interior harmonic development of human psyche and on the other hand, the harmonic relationship with the environment. So, school must practice as much as possible, both physical and mental functions of humans. In order to awake the spirit, we have to use our senses and to have a strong body. Later on, human psyche must develop harmonically, at its three dimensions: cognitive – consciousness and volition. Modern school focuses on transmittal knowledge which is not complete and thus develops in an awry way consciousness and volitional dimensions of human beings. Cognition, consciousness and volition are expressed inseparably in human behavior. Finally, volition is the passage from consciousness and thought to action. The problem is not only that persons without volition are incapable of influencing their environment. Harmonic development itself is not gained exclusively through knowledge offer, since cognition starts from the contact with the things and it must be verified. Young people must recall theoretical knowledge through practice and vice versa through theory they should define action. That’s why Unified 12-year Basic School should be the school of social practice and student’s action. And these become creative through the joint organization of school life in its contact with society. Some occasional visits, offer separated and meaningless profits, comparing with the wealth of ideas and relations of the surrounding reality. And we do not want school’s connection with society to have the form of passive adjustment, as modern school aims at. In that category belongs the “a-political”, the “away from politics” school, which constitutes the “stalking horse” for making young people stay away from fertilizing ideas and values of workers movement. We, against the system of today, will keep on fighting, so that life will enter to school and bring its progressive messages. School’s participation at worker’s May Day celebration, moving together with those who fight for peace, discussion for woman’s rights into class with representatives of women movement, student’s council for educational policies are educative priorities and suggestions of high importance for edification of youth. School’s connection with the forces of social progress, joint action of all the carriers of education so as to make young people conscious of social duties, the edifying role of proletarians party are even more critical issues for socialism, for the society that is developed only by the conscious action of populace.
If what is requested from school is the right position of young people towards life and its problems, then school has to create the criteria for right and wrong and these are the criteria for the truth of life.
Of course, this belongs to the main ideological problems of education. It is connected to the big question “why am I studying?”. No rational person could seriously support that s/he studies to know a lot, or that s/he studies just to study. Nevertheless, when we attempt to look into a problem, through sciences, we make a cognitive action, (we refer to school action) but above all we make an action of evaluation. For example, this happens in literature, when we observe the personality of a hero, so we are critical towards a social event or we analyze a part of literature and finally the intentions of the author. The same thing happens when we study a great scientist and we focus on his/her work and the use of his/her inventions, we make a moral and finally a social approach. Against all those who deny it, this happens in all aspects of cognition because knowledge implies a social approach to the way of truth, which is a social approach to reality (whether the scientist understands it or pretends s/he does not understand it). This is revealed, when we face science on its wholeness, as a reflection of reality, in other words on its philosophical dimension.
But, to return to Unified 12-year Basic School, this owes to offer the basic scientific knowledge, which is necessary for students to form a scientific cosmotheory and theory of life. At school, students must organize their thought, to learn to face the natural and social phenomena in their evolution, to face the world at its wholeness. When students find out through repetition and mixing of phenomena the existence of general rules, they have consciousness of physical rules and social evolution, they learn to control their life and be aware their social duties. The person, who assimilates the knowledge of reality, has abilities and qualities, which make him/her responsible and conscious user of the problems and status quo of his/her age. Education is not only a matter of knowledge, but it is a matter of life.
e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr