European appeal for a public Education for free, for all!
Bellow please find an appeal by European communist and workers’ parties on questions regarding the education in Europe, issued on the occasion of the “World Teachers’ Day”
The appeal is open for further support by parties, teacher associations, student movements, trade unions and other interested movements. The text will be also circulated and addressed to intellectuals, teachers, professors, researchers, students and technical staff involved in education.
Any new endorsements may be communicated to info@solidnet.org in order to regular up date the list available at
http://www.solidnet.org.
With our thanks for your support, receive please our fraternal greetings
The international section of KKE
European appeal for a public Education for free, for all!
We, the endorsers of this appeal, express our rejection and deep concern regarding the capitalist restructuring of education promoted across all Europe.
We express our solidarity with the growing protest movement in many countries and call on the progressive intellectuals, scientists, teachers and pedagogues as well as the administrative staff to raise their voices and take active part.
The measures that are massively rejected are targeting the entire spectrum of education.
These reactionary reforms intent to implement the previsions of the "EU- White Paper on Education and Training" and the related decisions taken by the education ministers of the EU and by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, (OECD).
In particular, after the EU Summit Meeting in Lisbon, after the beginning of the “Bologna process” and within the context of regulations under the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) , within the framework of World Trade Organisation, the process of adjusting education to the laws of the capitalist market is being accelerated. Fully neglecting the horrific consequences, this process is imposed by the attempt on the part of big capital to find a way out of the economic and social crisis and to discover new fields of profit-making activity as demanded by the intense competition between the main imperialist centers.
Despite the differences, regarding the rates and methods used to promote this capitalist restructuring of education, each country has some common characteristics, which are as follows:
- Increased privatisation of education, which often involves a reduction in direct public funding, the increase of private "for profit" financing, and the transfer of educational costs directly to students and their families.
At the same time private business is encouraged to play an increasing role in the fundamental functions of education at all levels, starting from higher education. This privatisation and marketisation makes it necessary for state schools to operate by "competitive" private criteria and to search for means of "self-funding" through competing for funds from the private sector - a "profiteering invasion" of businessmen and "financiers".
- Development through the Bologna process of a market open to competition in the sphere of European higher education. The development of such a European competition in higher education in the name of reinforcing the "mobility" and upgrading the "quality" of studies will in fact lead to the emergence of a small number of high level universities which will concentrate the best infrastructures for research, the lion shares of the funding, and will attract the economically stronger and more "competitive" students, while on the other hand, the vast majority of higher education institutions will be of an inferior quality, and will consist the losers of the restructuring. The result will be “mobility” and “higher quality” for the rich and immobility and poor quality for the poor.
- Reinforcement of class barriers with the aim of selecting a social elite, through the separation and classification of pupils and students into class-differentiated types, categories and forms of educational-training, while the vast majority will be relegated to makeshift and insubstantial training instead of systematic education.
- Reduction of general education and more generally the blatant degradation of education by replacing mass education with individual forms of "lifelong learning", market orientated utilitarian skills and submission to the "labour market" in preparation for a lifelong career bouncing between training and unemployment.
- Discrimination against migrants, encouragement of nationalism and chauvinism, attempts to slander other peoples and cultures by promoting in the same time " EU - nationalism " and hostility towards other peoples and the international working class .
- Abolition of the social mission of learning through the imposition of stifling control over its orientation, directions and even results on the part of the monopolies and imperialist organisations (NATO, EU), which interfere openly and determine the academic activity of universities and research foundations.
- Measures to promote imperialist European Union, free market ideology, entrepreneurial spirit, irrationalism, anti-materialistic approach to history, obscurantism, anti-dialectical view of social evolution, distortion and slandering of national liberation, social, anti-fascist and class struggles and efforts to penalise all resistance, along with any progressive, communist ideology.
We also call upon all the concerned not to succumb to the attempts using authoritarian threats or "baits" and not to be seduced by the various benefits promised "under the table" serving the new anti-education measures.
Let's unite our efforts with the student and labour movements demanding:
A Unified Education for the People through a free of charge, public educational system, providing sufficient grants for students of secondary and higher education and financed by increasing public expenditure from the central state budget. Our goal is an education system in total opposition to any privatization and differentiation in class terms that increase social inequities at even younger ages.
A direction for the scientific research meeting the contemporary needs of people and not at the service of the profits and choises of monopolies. The research projects must stop being an instrument for super-profits and over - exploitation of the working people.
They have to be powerful tools for relieving humankind from material deprivations and intellectual bonds.
A quantitative and qualitative widening of general-basic education through a unified school, in order to provide a contemporary overall education under the same conditions for all students without class barriers and differentiations.
Professional training exclusively through schools, which are part of the public education system and only after the completion of the compulsory basic-general education, which is socially necessary in our times. Connection and interaction of professional training and scientific studies.
Unified higher education, which through its basic courses will provide full scientific competence and along with it the right for all graduates to practise their profession. With teachers and researchers exclusively employed in higher education, so that they do not act as servants of two masters.
Economic and scientific improvement of educators at every level, so that they acquire their true educational and social role.
We consider that positive steps and real success can be achieved in coordination with the labour and popular movement in a common struggle against capitalist restructurings in education, at workplaces and in social life, against the monopolies and the imperialist institutions that impose this profoundly class-based policy.
The demand for a resolute reorganisation of education in a progressive direction goes hand in hand with the need for the reorganisation of the society as a whole.
The great mobilisations at schools and universities during 2005 and 2006 in many European countries revealed important potential and the possibility to delay and in some cases even block the implementation of the reactionary reforms and policies of the EU and its "free market " in education and economy.
This battle of ideas, as well as the political and social struggle, must be developed further and intensified promoting the necessity of an other education corresponding to the needs of the popular strata and of a new, different social system, free of multinationals and exploitation.
Public Education For Free, For All !
5 October 2006
COMMUNIST AND WORKERS' PARTIES
- Communist Party of Albania
- Communist Party of Armenia
- Workers’ Party of Belgium
- Workers’ Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Communist Party of Britain
- Communist Party of Bulgaria
- Party of the Bulgarian Communists
- Socialist Workers’ Party of Croatia
- Communist Party in Denmark
- Communist Party of Finland
- Unified Communist Party of Georgia
- Communist Party of Greece
- Socialist Party of Latvia
- Communist Party of Macedonia
- Communist Party of Malta
- New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN)
- Communist Party of Poland
- Portuguese Communist Party
- Communist Party of Romania
- Socialsit Alliance Party, Romania
- Communist Party of the Russian Federation
- Communist Workers’ Party of Russia [RKRP] -
Party of the Communists of Russia [RPC] - New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
- Communist Party of Turkey
- The Party of Labour [EMEP], Turkey
OTHER ENDORSEMENTS
- AUSTRIA
Kommunistische Initiative (KI)
- BELGIUM
Dirk Pauwels, Kinesitherapeut- Manueel therapeut- Ergonoom
- DENMARK
Communist Unity
Communist Party of Denmark ML
- FRANCE
Annie Lacroix-Riz, Professor for the contemporary history at the University of Paris VII
Aurélien DJAMENT, ancien élève de l'ENS, agrégé de mathématiques, syndicaliste CGT de l'enseignement supérieur (université Paris 13), militant du Pôle de Renaissance Communiste en France
Emmanuel CHUBILLEAU (PCF),
Emmanuelle Chapon, Militante dans un syndicat français de l’enseignement secondaire (SNES-FSU)
Sylvie GUDUK -Institutrice - PRCF
Paul MONMAUR
Antoine MANESSIS enseignant PRCF
Dimitri MANESSIS lycéen JRCF
Nicolas SPATHIS, Maître de Conférences Université Paris 6
- GREECE
Kostas Alyssandrakis, University Professor
Vana Tziatzi, Chairwoman of the National Confederation of Parents
Tamara Kazantzidou, Biologist
Dimos Mpartzokas, University Professor, member of the direction of the Pan-Hellenic Federation of Universities Teaching and Research Staff Associations (POSDEP)
Vasiliki Vadalouka, Lecturer
Giorgos Mpourkas, Lecturer
Evagelos Gazis,University Professor
Dimitris Panagiotounakos, University Professor
Giorgos Sarigiannis, University Professor
Anna Sarigianni- Papastamatiou, Lecturer
Kostas Siettos, Assistant Professor
Giorgos Mpafas, University Professor
Emilios Sideridis, Lecturer
Kiriakos Chitzanidis, University Professor
Kostas Papadopoulos, Associate professor
Dido Giova, University Professor
Veta Telioni, Lecturer
Alexis Papaioannou, Assistant professor
Efthimios Liarokapis, University Professor
Dimitris Kiekos, University Professor
Ioannis Palivos, Associate Professor
Victor Kitopoulos, Assistant Professor
Dimitris Manolakos, University Professor
Giorgos Trimperis, Associate Professor, member of the executive secretary of the POSDEP
Manolis Dris, University Professor
Michalis Kokkoris, Assistant Professor
Panagiotis Georgiadis, Scientific Assistant, member of the executive secretary of the POSDEP
Ladogiani G., University Professor
Noutsos D., University Professor
Pantis G, Univeristy Professor
Panti B., University Professor
Tsikaris V., University Professor
Mavrothalassiti IlektraUndergraduate Student in Biology
- ITALY
Andrea Catone, Professor and Director of the Center of studies on Socialist Transition
- SPAIN
Angeles Maestro Organisation: Corriente Roja
- ROMANIA
Prof Dr Silviu Somicu,Craiova, Romania
Teacher Viorica Vasile,Craiova, Romania
- SLOVENIA
Slovenian communist commitee
e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr