The latest general strike has demonstrated that the Greek working class does not intend to take the government's kicks in the teeth lying down. Explosion in t schools tional.
December 1986 was clearly a hot month for European education. The mobilizations of the French, Belgian and Spanish high school and university students surpassed the most optimistic predictions. The opposition was provoked by the tightening up of entrance requirements, cut backs in admissions and the strongly class character of this process of selection, which is based on economic criteria. The Greek schools also added their voice to swell the chorus of this European agitation.
The movement in Greece started after [education minister] Tritses' statements in the first week of December. The passing of Consolidation Law 15566/85 gave greater powers to a super-centralized ministry and increased teacher unemployment. It represented another attempt by anaemic Greek capitalism to intensify the educational process by the sole means of imposing more and more exhausting teaching schedules.
While working people are being savagely taxed, the appropriations for education are pittances by comparison with the sums spent on the
GREECE The demonstrators called notably for a readjustment of wages to the real and not estimated rate of inflation and the re-establishing of collective bargaining.
Since October 1985, buying power has dropped by an average of 10 per cent, and the situation can only get worse when the price freeze, instituted in November, is lifted on February 2,
The demonstration of strength on January 15 was the sharpest warning that PASOK has had. Papandreou knows that he can lo longer count on his charisma alone to get the workers and the people to swallow his government's medicine. he high "bargain of the century." [This refers to a massive arms deal made by the government.] This increases the strain in making the reforms needed to enable the educational system to incorporate advances in science and technology and new production techniques.
The demands for reproducing a specialized and differentiated workforce are conflicting more and more sharply with the elasticity of the selection process and the liberal elements in the educational system.
The first step towards narrower specialization was the separation of the technical entrance to the TEI [Instititues of Higher Technical Education]. Thus, instead of "wasting time" as candidates for the TEI, the children of the economically disadvantaged classes will enter more rapidly into productive activity. That is directly in line with the interests of capital.
The picture is filled out by changes in the curriculum to the detriment of "outdated subjects" (such as Euclidian geometry), which in prin-
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International Viewpoint 9 February 1987
IN THE UPSURGE of student struggles that marked the end of the year in Western Europe, one of the more powerful was the fight waged by Greek high school students. The following article on this movement is translated from the January issue of Ergatike Pale/
'partacos, the paper of the Greek section of the Fourth Interna-
IN THE UPSURGE of student struggles that marked the end of the year in Western Europe, one of the more powerful was the fight waged by Greek high school students. The following article on this movement is translated from the January issue of Ergatike Pale/
'partacos, the paper of the Greek section of the Fourth Interna-
The January general strike was the biggest movement so far against Papandreou's austerity (DR)
ciple are aimed at developing the critical thinking and culture of the students, and to the benefit of computer and economic subjects that are defined in a narrowly technocratic way.
Nonetheless, the levels of training and study are still too far from the social blueprints. Apparently, the social programs for reorganizing education have become a nightmare for many governments. The French, Spanish, Italian, and still more so the Greek ministers, are scurrying to try to hide how much their educational systems are lagging behind West Germany. Teaching materials have to be increased, a lot of books have to be rewritten, selection has to become stricter.
Tritses made it clear early on that it was an organic need of modern capitalism to drive teachers and students at exhausting workrates. Teachers and students have to surrender their humanity and concentrate on turning themselves quickly into fully programmed accessories of electronic calculators in the service of capitalist production.
The growing unemployment of graduates is a strong argument for selection and specialization in education. Drastically reducing admissions to the AEI [Institutions of Higher Learning] is becoming a primary goal of the Greek state. (The next step is probably abolishing the equality of diplomas). [This is in order to 12 restrict access to further education and create a hierarchy of schools.]
Thus, the dream of entering higher education will become still more unrealizable for those who cannot afford the costs of preparatory schools. Suplementary education (especially the preparatory schools) will grow, while competition among candidates will sharpen. Closing off access to education
The experience of the explosion of unemployed graduates in Italy at the end of the 1970s weighs very heavily. The occupations and clashes in Bologna, the jeering and beating up of the Italian CP bureaucrats is not easily forgotten. The European states are learning from each other's experiences. High school students are clearly easier victims [than university students].
So, the model of the Italian university is being decisively ruled out as a social danger. When the state cannot guarantee the future employment of today's university students, it is better to close off access to thirdlevel education. This is the clear choice of Greek capitalism.
Resistance by students and teachers to all these attacks and restrictions on access to education is determined by many factors. It has not developed in a linear or a deliberate way. This conflict is very complex and intricate. There is no class homogeneity, no unified consciousness, no organizational structures for coordinating the struggles in all the high schools.
The teachers have given priority to job-related questions. They staged a 24-hour strike on November 12, 1986, to press demands for higher levels of education funding, higher wages and democratization of the civil servants' code (i.e., political rights). Along with these demands, they have condemned the inhuman, exhausting work schedules that the ministry is trying to impose, while at the same time refusing to hire unemployed young teachers.
The rather low-key reaction of the teachers to Tritses' educational policy took on a new force because of the unforeseen entry of the highschool students into the fray. The movement started in the polytechnic schools, whose students demanded abolition of the discriminatory measures against them and an equal chance with graduates of the other high schools to gain entrance into the TEI.
The main demands were for a chance to get into the TEI and the creation of a fourth year for specialization. The occupations of the polytechnic schools were followed by occupations of some general and technical high schools in Athens. On December 16, 1986, some 115 high schools held the biggest high school student rally and march since International Viewpoint 9 February 1987
the fall of the dictatorship [in 1974].
Of course, the teachers' trade-union establishment shut its eyes and ears. The existing organizations, OLME and ELME did nothing, not even issuing a simple declaration of solidarity with the student occupations. There were many reasons for this.
The first is that the occupations of the polytechnic schools did not have the support of any official party. The decision to occupy these schools in Athens was taken on December 9. Some 400 students voted for, 222 students voted against and 120 cast blank ballots. The "no" votes came from the KNE [the youth group of the Communist Party-Exterior] and the abstentions from MAKI [the student organization of the right-wing bourgeois party, the New Democracy].
This was a genuinely spontaneous choice by the overwhelming majority of the students that took everyone by surprise. The teachers remained silent, confused and passive. There were, however, weightier and graver causes for this attitude.
It is no accident that to this day there has never been any action by teachers for liberalization of the schools and in defence of students against oppression, jail-like regimentation and the destruction of their personalities. Circulars and orders such as G2/2652, requiring all teachers to send a letter to the parents when students exceed 30 absences, have not run into any opposition from the OLME.
The teachers are unable to comprehend the whole set of physical and social conditions that determine the psychology and the reactions of the students. This is not the result of any unwillingness on their part. Rather it is a result of the fact that their centralized hierarchy forces them to impose discipline by every avail. able means and to try to force the students to study things that are students to study things that are divorced from, and in conflict with, their experience and wants.
The teachers probably try with good intentions to make learning attractive to the young. But these efforts run aground very quickly on the lamentable reality of the jaillike schools. More and more, the teachers acquire the attitudes of pitiful jailers, just trying to survive, and no longer looking at what they do not want to see.
On the other hand, at least those students involved in the occupations of general high schools (southern Smyrna-Kallithea) adopted the just demands of the OLME for higher funding and the appointment of new teachers.
Tritses' statements convinced no. one. The wretched condition of the school buildings and crying shortages of teaching personnel, at the very time when thousands of unemployed graduates are piling up on the streets, is a merciless reality that the students experience every day and are very well aware of.
Moreover, no one better than the students understands the mental and psychological pressures on the teachers and the exhausting nature of their work. The students' refusal to accept the imposed order and to absorb learning whose usefulness they cannot see is a genuine expression of human freedom. But it is a painful trial for those sitting in teachers' chairs. Student occupations transform schools
The occupations transformed the schools from an area of reproduction of bourgeois ideology and oppression of the students' personalities into an area of free expression and questioning of the educational system and of all the government circulars and orders from above. The schools suddenly became a center of attraction for the students. The students voluntarily stayed there every night.
December's mobilizations were only a prologue. The teachers' wage demands are not going to find any speedy satisfaction. In the meantime, the continually rising prices and the fading of cost-of-living allowances will create a constantly more explosive situation.
For the first time, the teachers' section of PASK [the trade-union organization of the ruling PASOK party], which has a plurality in the leadership of the OLME, took a clear stand to the left of its ministry. The statement of the PASK in Peiraius on October 12, 1986, is especially notable. It not only openly supported the national strike
Bosses want students to become "fully- INV programmed accessories of electronic calculators in the service of capitalism"
by the OLME, but condemned Tritses.
The student mobilizations caught a lot of bureaucrats by surprise. The student youth has a very complex psychology and behaviour. Much less of it is organized in the KNE, Regas Feraios [the student organization of the CP-Interior] and the far-left groups than in the previous decade. Moreover, the MAKI has experienced a significant rise. The reasons for this alteration of the political picture are first of all social and not simply owing to the decay of PASOK and the weak-kneed policy of the reformist parties.
The expression of the students' antagonism to society is taking on a more spasmodic, chance and often violent character. First of all the constantly worsening unemployment all around them feeds their anxiety about their futures. In the student world every day there is less and less comradeship. The constant unbearable bombardment of videos, a plethora of different makes of motorcycles, comics, modern clothes and the sounds of electronic music press down on them.
Neither the KNE nor the PAMP [the PASOK high school organization] nor the MAKI will be able to understand the sudden explosions of the high school student youth. No parli amentary party is going to increase its influence here. The road ahead leads downward for all of them. However, there is going to be a marked rising trend of student occupations and actions. The results will certainly be determined by the degree to which it is possible to achieve coordination of the mobilizations and to link up with the teachers' demands.
The vision that must guide and encourage the fight for radical changes in education is one of a many-sided humanistic education in the service of human needs, and not a technocratic education in the service of capitalist profit.
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International Viewpoint 9 February 1987
CHINA