E. Unified Twelve-year Basic School and the prospects of its graduates
“And after Senior High School what?” This question has been argued lately on the advertising leaflets of the Ministry of Education also. The goal of the ministry’s misleading advertisement here is to raise doubts about the value and the purpose of studying in Senior High School. Senior High School then ends with a big question. All that have been gained by the student during his school years are as if they never existed. The people of the Public Relations Department in the Ministry of Education have as a main goal to bewilder the eighteen-year-olds through their campaign. We, however, unlike them, know that every ending signifies a new beginning. The graduation from Senior High School and the end of basic education should mean the beginning of the independent and creative social activity for the individual. What does the System offer him/her? The list is long; unemployment, insecurity for the present and future, loss of self-confidence, wavered faith in his logic and abilities, a sense of inefficiency and finally, manipulation.
The misleading advertisement goes on to address Junior High School graduates; and it goes as follows: “I’m providing you with the solution: since it is difficult to fulfil your dreams through Senior High School it would be better for you to lower your goals. There are other options as well. With little and short effort, with not much toil and expenses you can acquire an instruction, enter production and get paid, have your own income. Become independent”. This is however only half the truth. Where the young person is sent, he is bound to receive cheap (cheap for whom?) instruction in order to be willing to share his wages, social security and all those rights he deserves in full. All of the above will be possible since young people will be considered only as spare parts of the system in the stock of the unemployed. This is where Vocational Technical Senior High Schools lead. Let’s not forget the post-Senior High School Centers of Vocational Instruction, the Institutes of Vocational Instruction along with the various private faculties that also go down the same path. As far as Senior High School is concerned, it will be finally transformed into only a waiting room for University and at the same time -an official now- institutional mechanism of social selection.
Today’s education problems along with the problems of the particular socio-economic system in general are depicted in the deadlock that the vast majority of modern school graduates are facing. This particular socio-economic system does not comply with the right to work and with social planning in professions and education. Therefore those propagandizing a change in examination system as the solution to the modern dead end of unemployment and University access, only create illusions in our people that, without any struggle, without the least harming the system, they can hope for something better. However for the school to be rid of rivalry and the anxiety of viewing academic education as obligatory, and also for Higher Education to be actually broadened, radical changes are needed on an economic level, changes which will aim at the elimination of unemployment and poverty and not at sharing and concealing them.
The last problem examined here is: Is the Unified Twelve-YearSchool of polytechnic education capable of preparing the young for both the vocational prospects and further studies? Can it become free of antagonism and the consideration of University as a one-way track? We believe it can, exactly because it integrates the work of General Education, thus contributing to a multilateral education and the harmonious development of everyone’s abilities along with the formation of their social character. Then follows the procedure of reproducing the skilled labour and scientific workforce, this procedure must be completed in special state vocational schools and in universities.
E1. Preparing young people for Vocational Activity
The Unified Twelve-year Basic School is the minimum, socially necessary, limit for the creative integration of a person in productive procedures.
A person’s vocational activity, from its beginning until its ending differs quantitatively and qualitatively, so we should judge it in its proper breadth and its great prospect. It varies from time to time, from country to country, from age to age, since the disposition and capabilities of a person also change. In a few words the objective and subjective circumstances can change. Vocational orientation, highly connected with vocational activity, is a procedure depending on the level of production and the social relations of production. If we wish to find out why the student focuses on one or the other direction, we should examine how and under what circumstances this takes place.
Vocational Orientation, the way it is practiced in Greece today, at least in the context of education, is not a complete task, since its character is occasional and varies from case to case (although planned by present curriculum). It only functions informatively. Viewed from this aspect, vocational orientation tends to become yet another cognitive subject, with fairly narrow vocational-centered content. It does not cover the problem of the prerequisites, vocational tools, the qualifications and abilities needed in order to exercise a profession and finally the problem of the very choice of profession. Social needs and social utility do not meet the students’ pondering in no way with the exception of one: the stereotypes of the present state of affairs. ‘Which professions are more prestigious and more profitable than the family trade? ’The things that are of primary importance in a capitalist society are profit along of course with the money and power that comes out of it and let’s not forget social prestige also, which guarantees some social function. Social utility is not considered valuable- since education is individually centered- the individual solution is dominant and is what the system cultivates. No child coming from a middle-class family has chosen to become a coal miner, a professional fisherman, a gardener or farm worker, due to having received vocational orientation. No one really paid attention to the person’s qualifications for the uptake of a profession. In reality no vocational orientation takes place. ’Orientation’ is just the name of the course.
We, however, without excluding of course the possibility of an early choice for some people, do not pursue a premature selection of profession at all. We believe so because until the age of 18 young persons cannot be sure of their choice’s success and even then they cannot be expected to bind their whole life to a profession choice, since both production and individual needs evolve. School therefore shouldn’t theoretically present information of all vocational fields and scientific domains from which the student will choose only those which will match an uncertain future career. On the contrary, we believe that the basic elements of Vocational Orientation must and will be obtained in school, not through the creation of yet another cognitive section, but by providing the kind of theoretical and practical knowledge which will set the basis of any future specialization in either university or production domain. A person can self-orientate and plan his life when he is cognizant of everyday communicative language principles and mathematical language, when his is aware of the Natural Sciences’ and social sciences’ principles and finally when all of the above are seen through the understanding of the entire socio-economic environment.
When we say, therefore, that the bases of later vocational education should be included in school, we do not mean that school must be transformed into a Vocational Instruction Institute, as the governmental legislator -secretly- planned. Basic school is not intended to provide specialized knowledge for exercising a particular profession (e.g. car mechanic or cheese-maker) but the necessary bases for the formation of a creative personality, efficient in any productive activity domain of the society he chooses in the future. And this is the main issue and the most important goal because people are not born to exercise a particular profession and be occupied in only one domain of the social and productive activity. The same person can prove competent in several domains of activity. Consequently the teaching of abilities and knowledge that promote the multilateral fulfilment of personality is necessary. An example of this kind of teaching is the Unified Twelve – Year Basic School of Polytechnic Education that sheds light to all those factors leading students towards the productive activity.
Those factors that support education are:
The first factor is the instillation of love and recognition for labour in the child’s conscience.
The second factor is the early connection of the child to the productive activity, which means that the child must internalize the essential knowledge of productive activity and recognize that it composes the basis of the society’s existence and development. The child must internalize the fact that he/she must acquire his/her own place, a place in this social procedure always in accordance to his/her abilities and yet to be obtained qualifications. Therefore a person’s education is not an end in itself. On the one hand we develop our personality within our social environment, while on the other, education is also a means that provides us with the ability to intervene, interact and function within the social development of our era and country.
The third factor is the need for student’s familiarization with the use of machines and the common tools, things that should be included in the school curriculum, not just as assimilation of knowledge but also as a channel of youth’s activity and form of socialization.
Of course for a series of productive activities, considering the development level nowadays, specialization – not analogous to the level of Higher Education – is needed. This vocational specialization can be acquired through apprenticeship, or directly through production, also another way is through short specialization in public Vocational Faculties. This procedure must be organized by the state school system, with completely free educational programs that will be the basis of an agreement with a factory or a union starting with state companies and municipalities. Attendance in these schools, which can be characterized as vocational specialization, will last – depending on the field of specialization- from 1 to 2 semesters (provided that the Unified Twelve – Year Basic School is in use). Public Vocational Faculties should presently function with completely free tuition programs of substantial specialization, in the place of Vocational Instruction Institutes (that should cease to exist, since they do not belong to the school system, they depend on tuition, their programs are defined by the occasional needs of the market and in their vast majority they belong to the private sector).
E.2. Educational prospects of school graduates
We believe that the Unified Twelve-Year Basic School can create people with independent personalities capable of serving the specialized fields of science, which demand special schooling and education. Of course this is the task of a Unified Higher Education, a stage that nowadays is intentionally differentiated and placed within the broader term Higher or “post-secondary” education so as to attribute to a large part of it functions of vocational “instruction”.
Before discussing the transition of graduates to next educational stage we would like to clarify that the responsibility of transmitting scientific knowledge to future scientists and the production of new knowledge should be part of Higher Education. However we also demand the expansion of Higher Education meaning that we pursue the unlimited growth of science’s social role, the transmission of scientific knowledge to people and its good use in everyday life. Thus we view the expansion of Higher Education neither through false studies (e.g. Choice Educational Programs and Open University) nor through programs-obstacles that obstruct the course of conventional studies. On the contrary Higher Education should be planned in those fields demanded by the modern social and popular needs. Besides we should not hide the fact that access to Higher Education is obstructed by social inequalities and we go further to state that selection is imposed by means of social coercion relevant to the productive forces’ level of development. Consequently, access to Higher Education should take place on the basis of social planning, without overlooking of course the individual factor.
Social needs that take in consideration the planned economic development should be the first criteria of selection always in the interest of the working people. ‘Who determines today ‘the demand’ for more advertisers and fewer teachers?’ Not our people’s needs, that is certain. Moreover the issue is to allow access to Higher Education for more children that come from working class families and lower social strata. This means a general confrontation of class inequalities and also the enforcement of measures that will guarantee equal opportunities for university access. Furthermore special motivation and all of the prerequisites are needed for the benefit of those children. The first prerequisite is that every student undergoes the same general education in the Unified Twelve-Year School. Night school students, working people that wish to be educated, minorities, children with special needs along with other similar social groups need more compensatory measures (such an example, not the only one, is access through special percentages). And of course everybody should be able to participate in the selection procedure, as many times as they want, without any limitation whatsoever. On the one hand we are watching today’s policy- that aims at a selection based on social class- promotes the privileged treatment of the oligarchy (one example is the enactment -even today-of the privilege that allows certain private schools to be excluded from the Pan-Hellenic Examinations.) However on the other hand the policy that aims at the elimination of class inequalities strikes back, it does not remain with folded hands but instead it offers help to the majority and the suppressed social strata that need to be elevated. This means favourable treatment for those people in this field also.
Concerning the individual factor we note the following. Conscious inclination towards a profession and a minimum of skills should be taken into consideration. We refer to the skills a person must have in order to study a science and to serve the social function of a scientist. An independent from school access system –since its purpose is not to verify the quantity and quality of general education- can become subject to acute processing with the contribution of the scientists of course. It is an issue for further study that is not excluded however from the educational and social problems (there are many thoughts, one of which proposes examination in 3-4 domains typical of the future scientific occupation). In any case the context and criteria of selection must be studied and valuated both socially and scientifically within the framework of science’s social role.
The examination system itself (through its connection with today’s secondary education) is a characteristic domain where measures of the bourgeois governments’ have proved unable to resolve any severe issue whatsoever. A few of those issues that supposedly concern every minister of education are firstly the unprejudiced access in universities and Technological Vocational Institutions, the elimination of the so-called ‘parrot learning’ and finally the limitation of Para-education. As for the graduates of today’s Senior High school unemployment and its results (financial problems, insecurity) await. They cannot do anything else but strive to enter a faculty and obtain a degree with which they hope to find a job position even if that does not happen in the near future. School is therefore degraded into an institution, which offers almost every time ill and inadequate preparation for the access examinations (access to Higher Education). All measures to fight ‘parrot learning’ will prove inadequate since Para-education is in position to hand out immediately ‘ready made’ answers to the most incredible questions of ‘critical judgment’ and to the most inventive tests. Therefore we most clearly state to those directly interested (students and parents) that without political change it is impossible even for the measures of little importance to work effectively.
The problem returns to its very essence which is the aim of school and what kind of people our society is forming. Moreover, there are planned measures that come along with the Senior High School degree which aim at making the connection between Senior High School and access examinations even stiffer. If those plans do not meet with reaction, they will lead the majority of the students to quit school and furthermore will eliminate every trace of spiritual and general culture for the young.
The economic drainage of the popular social strata along with the development of Para-education of all kinds reinforces the class structure of education. Finally, we believe that disentanglement of Senior High School from the access to Higher Education and the careful re-orientation of school towards offering a complete Basic-General Education should be the primary issues for the university studies too.
The misleading advertisement goes on to address Junior High School graduates; and it goes as follows: “I’m providing you with the solution: since it is difficult to fulfil your dreams through Senior High School it would be better for you to lower your goals. There are other options as well. With little and short effort, with not much toil and expenses you can acquire an instruction, enter production and get paid, have your own income. Become independent”. This is however only half the truth. Where the young person is sent, he is bound to receive cheap (cheap for whom?) instruction in order to be willing to share his wages, social security and all those rights he deserves in full. All of the above will be possible since young people will be considered only as spare parts of the system in the stock of the unemployed. This is where Vocational Technical Senior High Schools lead. Let’s not forget the post-Senior High School Centers of Vocational Instruction, the Institutes of Vocational Instruction along with the various private faculties that also go down the same path. As far as Senior High School is concerned, it will be finally transformed into only a waiting room for University and at the same time -an official now- institutional mechanism of social selection.
Today’s education problems along with the problems of the particular socio-economic system in general are depicted in the deadlock that the vast majority of modern school graduates are facing. This particular socio-economic system does not comply with the right to work and with social planning in professions and education. Therefore those propagandizing a change in examination system as the solution to the modern dead end of unemployment and University access, only create illusions in our people that, without any struggle, without the least harming the system, they can hope for something better. However for the school to be rid of rivalry and the anxiety of viewing academic education as obligatory, and also for Higher Education to be actually broadened, radical changes are needed on an economic level, changes which will aim at the elimination of unemployment and poverty and not at sharing and concealing them.
The last problem examined here is: Is the Unified Twelve-YearSchool of polytechnic education capable of preparing the young for both the vocational prospects and further studies? Can it become free of antagonism and the consideration of University as a one-way track? We believe it can, exactly because it integrates the work of General Education, thus contributing to a multilateral education and the harmonious development of everyone’s abilities along with the formation of their social character. Then follows the procedure of reproducing the skilled labour and scientific workforce, this procedure must be completed in special state vocational schools and in universities.
E1. Preparing young people for Vocational Activity
The Unified Twelve-year Basic School is the minimum, socially necessary, limit for the creative integration of a person in productive procedures.
A person’s vocational activity, from its beginning until its ending differs quantitatively and qualitatively, so we should judge it in its proper breadth and its great prospect. It varies from time to time, from country to country, from age to age, since the disposition and capabilities of a person also change. In a few words the objective and subjective circumstances can change. Vocational orientation, highly connected with vocational activity, is a procedure depending on the level of production and the social relations of production. If we wish to find out why the student focuses on one or the other direction, we should examine how and under what circumstances this takes place.
Vocational Orientation, the way it is practiced in Greece today, at least in the context of education, is not a complete task, since its character is occasional and varies from case to case (although planned by present curriculum). It only functions informatively. Viewed from this aspect, vocational orientation tends to become yet another cognitive subject, with fairly narrow vocational-centered content. It does not cover the problem of the prerequisites, vocational tools, the qualifications and abilities needed in order to exercise a profession and finally the problem of the very choice of profession. Social needs and social utility do not meet the students’ pondering in no way with the exception of one: the stereotypes of the present state of affairs. ‘Which professions are more prestigious and more profitable than the family trade? ’The things that are of primary importance in a capitalist society are profit along of course with the money and power that comes out of it and let’s not forget social prestige also, which guarantees some social function. Social utility is not considered valuable- since education is individually centered- the individual solution is dominant and is what the system cultivates. No child coming from a middle-class family has chosen to become a coal miner, a professional fisherman, a gardener or farm worker, due to having received vocational orientation. No one really paid attention to the person’s qualifications for the uptake of a profession. In reality no vocational orientation takes place. ’Orientation’ is just the name of the course.
We, however, without excluding of course the possibility of an early choice for some people, do not pursue a premature selection of profession at all. We believe so because until the age of 18 young persons cannot be sure of their choice’s success and even then they cannot be expected to bind their whole life to a profession choice, since both production and individual needs evolve. School therefore shouldn’t theoretically present information of all vocational fields and scientific domains from which the student will choose only those which will match an uncertain future career. On the contrary, we believe that the basic elements of Vocational Orientation must and will be obtained in school, not through the creation of yet another cognitive section, but by providing the kind of theoretical and practical knowledge which will set the basis of any future specialization in either university or production domain. A person can self-orientate and plan his life when he is cognizant of everyday communicative language principles and mathematical language, when his is aware of the Natural Sciences’ and social sciences’ principles and finally when all of the above are seen through the understanding of the entire socio-economic environment.
When we say, therefore, that the bases of later vocational education should be included in school, we do not mean that school must be transformed into a Vocational Instruction Institute, as the governmental legislator -secretly- planned. Basic school is not intended to provide specialized knowledge for exercising a particular profession (e.g. car mechanic or cheese-maker) but the necessary bases for the formation of a creative personality, efficient in any productive activity domain of the society he chooses in the future. And this is the main issue and the most important goal because people are not born to exercise a particular profession and be occupied in only one domain of the social and productive activity. The same person can prove competent in several domains of activity. Consequently the teaching of abilities and knowledge that promote the multilateral fulfilment of personality is necessary. An example of this kind of teaching is the Unified Twelve – Year Basic School of Polytechnic Education that sheds light to all those factors leading students towards the productive activity.
Those factors that support education are:
The first factor is the instillation of love and recognition for labour in the child’s conscience.
The second factor is the early connection of the child to the productive activity, which means that the child must internalize the essential knowledge of productive activity and recognize that it composes the basis of the society’s existence and development. The child must internalize the fact that he/she must acquire his/her own place, a place in this social procedure always in accordance to his/her abilities and yet to be obtained qualifications. Therefore a person’s education is not an end in itself. On the one hand we develop our personality within our social environment, while on the other, education is also a means that provides us with the ability to intervene, interact and function within the social development of our era and country.
The third factor is the need for student’s familiarization with the use of machines and the common tools, things that should be included in the school curriculum, not just as assimilation of knowledge but also as a channel of youth’s activity and form of socialization.
Of course for a series of productive activities, considering the development level nowadays, specialization – not analogous to the level of Higher Education – is needed. This vocational specialization can be acquired through apprenticeship, or directly through production, also another way is through short specialization in public Vocational Faculties. This procedure must be organized by the state school system, with completely free educational programs that will be the basis of an agreement with a factory or a union starting with state companies and municipalities. Attendance in these schools, which can be characterized as vocational specialization, will last – depending on the field of specialization- from 1 to 2 semesters (provided that the Unified Twelve – Year Basic School is in use). Public Vocational Faculties should presently function with completely free tuition programs of substantial specialization, in the place of Vocational Instruction Institutes (that should cease to exist, since they do not belong to the school system, they depend on tuition, their programs are defined by the occasional needs of the market and in their vast majority they belong to the private sector).
E.2. Educational prospects of school graduates
We believe that the Unified Twelve-Year Basic School can create people with independent personalities capable of serving the specialized fields of science, which demand special schooling and education. Of course this is the task of a Unified Higher Education, a stage that nowadays is intentionally differentiated and placed within the broader term Higher or “post-secondary” education so as to attribute to a large part of it functions of vocational “instruction”.
Before discussing the transition of graduates to next educational stage we would like to clarify that the responsibility of transmitting scientific knowledge to future scientists and the production of new knowledge should be part of Higher Education. However we also demand the expansion of Higher Education meaning that we pursue the unlimited growth of science’s social role, the transmission of scientific knowledge to people and its good use in everyday life. Thus we view the expansion of Higher Education neither through false studies (e.g. Choice Educational Programs and Open University) nor through programs-obstacles that obstruct the course of conventional studies. On the contrary Higher Education should be planned in those fields demanded by the modern social and popular needs. Besides we should not hide the fact that access to Higher Education is obstructed by social inequalities and we go further to state that selection is imposed by means of social coercion relevant to the productive forces’ level of development. Consequently, access to Higher Education should take place on the basis of social planning, without overlooking of course the individual factor.
Social needs that take in consideration the planned economic development should be the first criteria of selection always in the interest of the working people. ‘Who determines today ‘the demand’ for more advertisers and fewer teachers?’ Not our people’s needs, that is certain. Moreover the issue is to allow access to Higher Education for more children that come from working class families and lower social strata. This means a general confrontation of class inequalities and also the enforcement of measures that will guarantee equal opportunities for university access. Furthermore special motivation and all of the prerequisites are needed for the benefit of those children. The first prerequisite is that every student undergoes the same general education in the Unified Twelve-Year School. Night school students, working people that wish to be educated, minorities, children with special needs along with other similar social groups need more compensatory measures (such an example, not the only one, is access through special percentages). And of course everybody should be able to participate in the selection procedure, as many times as they want, without any limitation whatsoever. On the one hand we are watching today’s policy- that aims at a selection based on social class- promotes the privileged treatment of the oligarchy (one example is the enactment -even today-of the privilege that allows certain private schools to be excluded from the Pan-Hellenic Examinations.) However on the other hand the policy that aims at the elimination of class inequalities strikes back, it does not remain with folded hands but instead it offers help to the majority and the suppressed social strata that need to be elevated. This means favourable treatment for those people in this field also.
Concerning the individual factor we note the following. Conscious inclination towards a profession and a minimum of skills should be taken into consideration. We refer to the skills a person must have in order to study a science and to serve the social function of a scientist. An independent from school access system –since its purpose is not to verify the quantity and quality of general education- can become subject to acute processing with the contribution of the scientists of course. It is an issue for further study that is not excluded however from the educational and social problems (there are many thoughts, one of which proposes examination in 3-4 domains typical of the future scientific occupation). In any case the context and criteria of selection must be studied and valuated both socially and scientifically within the framework of science’s social role.
The examination system itself (through its connection with today’s secondary education) is a characteristic domain where measures of the bourgeois governments’ have proved unable to resolve any severe issue whatsoever. A few of those issues that supposedly concern every minister of education are firstly the unprejudiced access in universities and Technological Vocational Institutions, the elimination of the so-called ‘parrot learning’ and finally the limitation of Para-education. As for the graduates of today’s Senior High school unemployment and its results (financial problems, insecurity) await. They cannot do anything else but strive to enter a faculty and obtain a degree with which they hope to find a job position even if that does not happen in the near future. School is therefore degraded into an institution, which offers almost every time ill and inadequate preparation for the access examinations (access to Higher Education). All measures to fight ‘parrot learning’ will prove inadequate since Para-education is in position to hand out immediately ‘ready made’ answers to the most incredible questions of ‘critical judgment’ and to the most inventive tests. Therefore we most clearly state to those directly interested (students and parents) that without political change it is impossible even for the measures of little importance to work effectively.
The problem returns to its very essence which is the aim of school and what kind of people our society is forming. Moreover, there are planned measures that come along with the Senior High School degree which aim at making the connection between Senior High School and access examinations even stiffer. If those plans do not meet with reaction, they will lead the majority of the students to quit school and furthermore will eliminate every trace of spiritual and general culture for the young.
The economic drainage of the popular social strata along with the development of Para-education of all kinds reinforces the class structure of education. Finally, we believe that disentanglement of Senior High School from the access to Higher Education and the careful re-orientation of school towards offering a complete Basic-General Education should be the primary issues for the university studies too.
Department of Education
Central Committee of KKE
September 1999
Central Committee of KKE
September 1999
e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr