Epilogue

The quantitative and qualitative expansion of Education, also of Higher Education, constitutes a need and ability of our era. A need, because science influences spheres of human activity more and more, while the scope of the subjects of scientific knowledge continually expands. An ability, because the general application of science in production and the spectacular increase in the productivity of labour, creates the means for a Higher educational level than the one held by previous generations and, most important, saves time. Time usually spent in unemployment could be creatively used, with the lengthening of the educational period.

The policy, however, that the government supports, is in the opposite direction. Because the government is using a language different from the people’s when speaking of social needs. It is using the language of the multinational companies that take the word education for skill and behavior good for them, just like the word education means part-time occupational ability to them. Thus, the policy it follows in all the levels of the educational system, obeys one unique goal. To force the vast majority of young people, mostly children of the poor social stratum towards a “skill complying with the needs of the market”. On the first levels through TEE, IEK, KEK, and the “schools of the second chance” that replace even compulsory education. On the Higher stage it takes place, on a secondary level, through the decrease in duration, and undermining of undergraduate studies. The goal of such practices is the formation of the “employed” force, which will be wandering through unemployment and will be working with neither demands nor rights and, most significant, with zero doubts as concerns the socio-economic system. It is not difficult then for someone to trace certain shared basic features between the “reformation” of school that we have experienced and the “reformation” of University Education that is now in the process.

• The violent clash of the social demand for improvement of the educational level; a demand expressed by the mass character of high school and university during the last decade.
• The even greater debasement of any educational function left in education. In school, this happened with its transformation into extra tuition which simply “packs” and makes knowledge typical; knowledge whose utility aims at the demands of the final examinations. In University it occurs with the transformation of undergraduate studies into the first cycle of an ephemeral skill the value of which lasts for a few years only.
• The function of public education at the mercy of private, economic and “competitive” criteria. The “best”, according to the market, schools and Universities, which will collect the “best” students, the “best” teaching staff, will “gain the biggest financing”. The rest will gradually fade and some will close down, if the parties involved cannot pay to preserve them. The majority, that is, of educational institutions will be driven at a tragic debasement and our youth in a highly paid for ignorance.

In short the laws of the educational “reformation” include in their goals the basic rule of monopoly competition, “the first man takes it all”. The general, universal education not at all concerns the government and the grand benefits it represents. They only provide for an elite. The few, which will survive the multiple class filters, can suffice to be in control of the manipulation and suppression of the many.

Thus the poor must gradually drift away from the educational system, in order not to prevent the “capable” of becoming even more “capable”. Educational institutions must be evaluated and classified so that the “mediocrity” does not blend with “perfection”, and the latter’s progress is not obstructed. The many must “learn to learn” and continually learn, changing positions in unemployment, with the pretext of the always insufficient “skill”. This is the meaning of all that “society of knowledge” preaching; it could better be described as a “society of desperation”. And all that happens for the profit of the rich to rise, and for the people’s material and spiritual exploitation to increase. The Japanese model of the blind devotion to the company on behalf of the labour has already been introduced to the E.U. Besides, “European” multinational capital has, since 1995, through the report of the Round Table of European Industrialists said its cynical last words: Life-long training… “from the cradle to the grave”! For this reason, even since “whole day” kinder garden and “whole day” school, they seek to plunge youth into toil as soon as possible. Monopoly giants demand that the necessary time for play and social interaction be excluded from youngsters’ life. Premature transmission of skill concerning instruments should come in its stead (using the computer, communicating through foreign languages), so that they will soon have at their disposal a skillful, and most important, vulnerable and subordinated labour force.

Without wishing to undermine individual attempts made by educators and academics to save anything that can be saved, the answer to the problem of what kind of education the young people of our age need, is not a matter of certain improvements -here and there- concerning the educational system, or some textbooks or of the curriculum. Only through a general program aiming at creating the conditions for the final solution to their problem, we can expect that resistance to reactionary measures and personal attempts will not be cancelled, that each gain will not be taken away. On the contrary, they will be multiplied under the pressure of a powerful popular educational movement that its focus will be at the goals of education, what kind of persons and society it creates.

And of course the goal of education would never be the majority’s withdrawal from school, because of costly and seemingly abundant education in a society suffering from unemployment and uncertainty. Its goal cannot be the discrimination “of the children who will constitute the succession to the ruling class, from those who will be the great army of –not fully paid- work”, as in his time D. Glinos, our great pedagogue, was alert to note.

The goal of education is to develop the abilities of all people at a maximum level, in a society that needs to put into use the powers of all of its members, in order to proceed.

Likewise, the goal of Higher Education is not to discriminate between the modern spiritual work and the ones that will use their knowledge to dominate us. The goal of Higher Education is to prepare a scientific labor force capable of developing the productive and spiritual potential of our country to the highest degree, to guarantee the progress and well-being of all the people.

It is obvious, however, that the necessary rearrangement of our Higher Education cannot come without conflict with E.U. mechanisms, OECD and the other imperialist centres that lead and impose educational policies, working policies and, on the whole, the conditions of the social life.

The rearrangements of Education cannot take place outside the re-orientation of the political and social life, in order to really serve the interests and needs of the vast majority of our people and not of a small minority of the “competitors” of our life.

Thus, juxtaposition against today’s politics in its totality is needed and not just concerning separate matters because that, at best, will lead to partial and therefore precarious accomplishments. Nowhere and never, could especially today – a period of the greatest capitalist aggression - struggle provide on its own the solution, save in the case it is formed by a powerful socio-political alliance, with a political play for radical change as concerns power.

Here also the propositions for Higher Education meet the overall suggestion of the Greek Communist Party for the development of Popular front, which will unite separate movements of Education, Health, Peace, Culture and, most of all, their basis, the worker’s movement. A broad social and political front, which will not only resist monopoly planning, but will also fight back, claiming what is best for the people, all that which the people own.

The suggestion of the Educational Section for Higher Education is included in this general frame. A suggestion, which is not about the future, but a mature need of our time. It is the answer to the modern capabilities and needs of our people, that today’s material conditions, product of the people’s hard work, create.

For that reason, from today, students, teachers, scientists, parents, the people in general, every person conscious of his/her position and power within society can influence its course; they should all unite and pursue the basic following goals of an educational policy which we believe meets their demands.


The basic axes of a popular educational policy

• Establishment of Unified, 12-year Basic Compulsory School, the necessary presupposition not only for academic studies, but for any kind of vocational education. A school common for everyone, without class, racial, geographical or other kind of discrimination. Without the outdated division in primary school-junior high school-senior high school, this will have one goal: the complete formation of the social personality of young people, with judgement, feeling, ethics and volition, so that they comprehend the world in its unity and become able to change it. A school of general education whose curriculum will embody technical elements, not for professional specialization, but as general preparation for life and work. A school which will unite theory and action, which will unite basic scientific principles with their practical application in production and the social life.
• 12-year school follows a two-year compulsory pre-school instruction through a public system of childhood centres having the necessary pedagogic means and staff that will show respect for the children’s psychic realm, free from the precocious “school entrance” attempted today.
• Radical reformation of technical/professional education, so that, in post-high school level it is built upon the steady basis of twelve-year basic education, in Public Professional Schools which will provide high quality professional education and essential qualifications for practicing the profession (for those professions that do not demand academic education), or specialization that can directly be acquired through production. Essential professional education cannot be provided, in fees, with the wretched skill presuppositions of IEK and KEK which must cease to exist, and it cannot be prematurely provided, before the young persons have the ability to harmoniously develop the basis of their personality.
• Constitution of Public and Free Unified Higher Education, serving modern popular needs and the developments of science, which will guarantee high quality scientific specialization for all students, without discriminations. Without the outdated divisions in academic and technical/non-academic education that reproduce the mutual cover-ups and inequities of Universities-T.E.I. Without categorizations among the Institutions, the faculties and their graduates. Without the anti-scientific, class separation of undergraduate studies from scientific specialization and their breaking up in cycles, for unified undergraduate studies and one-cycle postgraduate studies which will exclusively lead to a doctorate diploma. Higher Education which will have one goal: to develop deeply cultivated scientists, who will scientifically think and act, at all levels, and not restrict their thinking to their field of expertise only. Capable of creatively confronting the future needs of production and society, this essentially contributing, with their special and general knowledge, and their personality, to the conscious rearrangement of natural and social reality for the sake of “all” and not for one class only.
• Reformation of the study schedules and re-examination of their subjects so that, together with the necessary differentiations among them, they meet the demands of scientific and social progress. Schedules which will combine a high quality professional specialization and capability. Which will gradually introduce students to the methods of scientific labour and research, and will develop the ability for creative thought and action, instead of a simple transmission of methods on how to manipulate knowledge and use it as a simple tool. Which will unite theoretical knowledge with its application from the first up to the last year of study, combine teaching with real-life practical social activity, within and without University and promote the unique dialectical view of knowledge and reality, so that the future scientist is not only part of the productive activity but the essential agent of its planning and orientation. The greater, in comparison with past times, velocity of knowledge accumulation demands a extension of the study period, depending on the specialty.
• Re-orientation of University research so that it elevates the social, economic, and spiritual level of the people, instead of reinforcing the economic and political power of a minority. Research policies of Universities cannot be determined by the people financing them: by the companies’ interests or by the ideological, political and even military interests of imperialist centres and their mechanisms (E.U. and NATO programs). The production of new knowledge is a social product and as such it belongs to everyone. Its sufficient financing by the state budget is necessary so that all aspects are sufficiently covered and all of our Higher Institutions participate in it. The formation of “clarity” conditions and social control of the research’s orientation is also necessary, as well as its connection to academic education and the broad transmission of the results. In such a frame, the burden of its realization, the burden of its taking place should be carried out by the University faculties –which ought to be properly organized, so that they can perform full scale research on various fields- and not in the inaccessible ΕΠΙ and the other strict structures the government promotes.
• Guarantee of Public and Free Higher Education, as the basic presupposition of its unified character. Abandonment of all types of private “universities” and any privatization of public ones. Release of Universities from monopoly control, creation of the presuppositions for the democratic social control of their activities, by the academic community and the people, so that they fulfil their true public/social role. Guarantee of all the material conditions and necessary financing for the covering and expansion of university activities. Guarantee of the necessary –for the progress of science- conditions of freedom of thought and scientific creation.

On the basis of these general principles for the urgent problems of Higher Education, made harder by governmental policy, the popular movement should directly pursue:

• The avoidance of gradually fulfilling Bologna decisions for shortening and degrading undergraduate studies with

a) The abolishment of law 2327/95 for the National Council for Education (ΕΣΥΠ) and all the anti-educational/anti-scientific legislation that comes with it, and also of laws 2525/97 and 2640/98 that realized the reactionary demands in previous levels, thus creating the foundations for present day Higher Education changes
b) The abolishment of postgraduate programs of specialization and the entrance of specialization in the undergraduate cycle of studies, the expansion of postgraduate studies so that they exclusively lead to a doctorate diploma.
c) The inclusion of T.E.I. in Higher Education on the basis of clarified scientific subjects and consequent rearrangement of study schedules; improvement of their structure, and their teaching staff so that they stand up to their high quality character
d) The abolishment of the credit point system which leads to the disruption of the normal structure of studies, The comparison between studies and their titles can take place in the casual manner.
e) The abolishment and non-creation of new faculties of seminar-like character (that do not, in any case, belong to Higher Education); non-acceptance of long life education Institutes that will replace Programs of Educational Choice (ΠΣΕ) and proclaim segmented skill Higher Education.
f) The connection of studies and degrees with the profession; expansion of essential professional and working rights for the graduates

• The guarantee of financial sufficiency for the Universities for all the aspects of their teaching and research activities, with state financing as the condition for the avoidance of their suffocating subordination to monopoly interests, the stoppage of the course of their transformation into profit-bearing companies. The re-orientation of OPEIVT money towards the real needs of the Universities, with its inclusion in and distribution by the state budget, the embodiment of special research accounts in modern public accounting methods. The abolishment of the branches of foreign Universities in our country, the avoidance of the creation of private Universities (of either Municipalities, or the Church, or of private agents) which impose pressure for the privatization of public universities as well.
• Guarantee of free and public Higher Education for everyone. The cease of all kinds of tuition fees, the guarantee of free books, food and shelter for all students, scholarships for all postgraduate students. Improvement of building and laboratory equipment of the Universities, guarantee for modern libraries. The employment of the necessary scientific, administrative and technical staff, the cease of “flexible” working relations, the guarantee of full and exclusive employment of the teaching staff, the scientific and financial support of University staff, the cease of the allowance-like character of academic teachers’ salary and the cease of inequities it creates.
• The avoidance of imposing an evaluation system for institutions and their teaching staff based on companies’ criteria (having nothing to do with universities). Financing should cease to the relevant to the “market’s demands”. Such evaluation results in imposing a reactionary control of Universities by the state, imperialist organizations and the capital, and the transmission of state responsibility for Higher Education financing to the Institutes themselves (and the students).
• The defence of the democratic function of the Universities. The essential role of University collective instruments in its control and administration. The guarantee of rights; equality for everyone studying and working at them, with their broad participation in decision-making procedures; change of power correlations in favour of the powers fighting for the release of Universities from monopoly imprisonment. The support of the academic asylum from the calculated opposition against it, the real free transmission of ideas and scientific views. The formation of clarity conditions and control of scientific research goals, in contrast to the attempts of extending stereotypical structures of research (like the ΕΠΙ) that lead the members of the Teaching Staff to exclusion from the research activity (those members that do not have proper “connections”) and cut education off from it.