KKE launches nationwide campaign for education

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of KKE Aleka Papariga presented in a press conference held on Monday 15 of January the objectives of a national campaign to be organised by the KKE around the crucial issue of Education. The issue has become especially relevant in face of the revision of the article 16 of the Greek constitution and the strong struggles developed in the last year in schools and universities.

The campaign is bound to last 3 months, and it will include actions at all levels from the workplace to central initiatives. According to a communiqué of the CC issued on 14 of January the campaign aims

• To highlight the link of the changes in the field of education with the capitalist restructurings
• To project the problem of education as a major political problem connected to the and the more general aims of the EU and the big capital and the Lisbon Strategy
• To underline the responsibility of the working class and its movement to struggle resolutely and in an organized way for the issues of education
• To put forward the idea that the issue of education objectively constitutes a field for the development of the anti-imperialist alliance of the working class with the other popular strata, that is a condition for radical changes at the levels of economy and of power.

Aleka Papariga speaking to the journalists underlined the position of KKE for a single, exclusively public educational system, exclusively public and free for all and stressed its opposition to the policies promoted by the European Union and Greece's two main parties. KKE proposes that all young people receive a general education up until age 18 with radical changes to the curriculum, the books and the way that schools operate.

The main element of KKE's educational policy is the proposal for the establishment of 12-year compulsory single school education, that should be a precondition for any further studies or vocational training.

Commenting on the new textbooks and programmes in primary and high schools, whose withdrawal KKE demands, Aleka Papariga labelled them as "reactionary, anti-pedagogic and unscientific", and noted that they had been designed by PASOK and put into effect by New Democracy

Speaking of the debate going around the article 16 she noted that the introduction of universities operating along private-sector lines would force the public universities to operate in a similar way and increase the dependence of universities on business and the rules of the market.

She also predicted that universities would operate without moral inhibition, carrying out 'made-to-measure' research that would be used to manipulate public opinion and stressed that her party would strenuously oppose changes to university asylum rules, so that they remained places where more radical ideas could freely circulate.

The General Secretary of KKE called for economic and scientific upgrades for teaching staff and greater democracy in the education system and reiterated the party's complete opposition to the foundation of private universities.

At the same time, new mobilizations have been announced for tomorrow by university and high school students against the revision of article 16.

Info by the International section of KKE