Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-14-Speech-1-075"
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"en.20010514.7.1-075"2
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"Mr President, teaching and learning for a knowledge-based society, a citizens’ society, European added value and other similarly pompous expressions of dubious import are sprinkled liberally through the reports under discussion in a bid to conceal the real substance of the reactionary, anti-educational reforms of the education systems advocated in the White Paper.
Luckily, a wave of protest has risen up against this policy in numerous countries of the European Union. In Greece, huge demonstrations by students, pupils and teachers against this reactionary policy to dumb down education have given rise to an explosive situation, rectors have resigned and universities have been occupied or even closed.
The trend towards mass education in the 60s, 70s and 80s has now been replaced by a new model in keeping with the latest demands of big business, which wants a constant supply of cheap, semi-skilled labour and a small, highly-qualified elite. What is being advocated is a new type of vocational training dictated by the immediate demands of the capitalist market, while scientific knowledge and specialisms are being shifted into expensive post-graduate study which few can afford.
Knowledge is giving way to skills, i.e. reading, writing, arithmetic and elementary use of computers, together with skills which will allow young people to adapt easily to capitalist restructuring, while teaching them to be well-behaved workers and citizens.
Educational establishments are called on to become more responsive to fast changes on the job market. Abandoning wider subjects and, in general terms, a wider education in favour of skills which will make them employable deprives children – especially children from working class homes – of the rudimentary knowledge they need in order to function as active, thinking citizens and, as factors of social progress. Big business is trying to penetrate education, mainly in the aim of creating new profitable business activities, witness the reference to the famous link between schools and companies.
The reports under discussion, especially the Perry report, not only fail to oppose the guidelines in the White Paper, their sole criticism is of the delay in implementing them.
Mr President, the people of the European Union must fight and overturn this anti-educational policy, they must secure their basic right to a free, high-quality, universal state education which is sensitive both to the productive requirements of each country and to individual vocations and talents. We, as members of the Communist Party of Greece, shall do whatever we can to foster this."@en1
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