The oracles of Delphi

Greek education has been moribund for quite some time now -and everybody knows and acknowledges it. For the umpteenth time in the past generation the present government claims to be embarking on a "radical reform" of higher education in order to make it competitive on the international level. The project, if this is what it is, was announced during a rather pompous gathering in Delphi last weekend, in the presence of various foreign personalities that are to function as advisors for the intended overhaul. These are all distinguished individuals no doubt, and their hiring replicates a favorite tactic of the current ruling team especially with regard to the economy where a variety of experts has been engaged to contribute their lights about what is to be done -as if what needs to be done were not clearer than sunlight in the first place. At least they will not collect fees for their services.

I do not mean to doubt the good intentions of anyone, but I am afraid that the whole show is just another exercise in futility. The "radical" proposals aired in the Delphi meeting basically came down to a change in the structure of university administration, which is the least significant aspect of higher education malaise. If the government or anyone else were serious about introducing meaningful reforms, all they need to do is to peruse the organizational and educational policy handbook of any internationally recognized school of higher learning from anywhere in the civilized world. It would take them at most a couple of hours to note the basic guidelines and another day to draft a legislative decree for their application here. But this they are not going to do, for what passes for a university here is completely at odds with universally accepted principles and criteria of what learning means at this level.

Instead of going from the bottom up (as is the usual method in this totalitarian-minded society), they should have started at the bottom, namely with goes on -or rather with what does not go on- in the classrooms. They should have instituted the obligation of the students to be present in the classroom and follow the lectures, their obligation to pass a given course at the end of the semester or else repeat it or take another one in order to complete the credits required for a degree, their obligation to fulfill the evaluation requirements demanded by the teachers (i.e. research papers, midterm and final exams etc.) and finally their obligation to successfully complete a lower level course before proceeding to the higher level one. It is quite astonishing and indeed incomprehensible to any person (expert or not) coming from a genuine educational environment to realize that none of the above criteria and procedures are in place here. The students are not required to attend classes and in fact most of them do not, they never write a single paper in their four-year career, they appear only at the end of the semester in order to write an exam in which cheating is rampant and is in fact considered a student "right" (!), and they do not give a damn if they fail for they can go on taking this wretched "exam" again and again for ever until the teacher becomes tired and/or disgusted and gives them a passing grade just to rid himself of their presence. Failure successfully to complete a lower level course does not prevent them going on to take a higher level one, where the aforementioned conditions also apply. If one as much as mentions the mot maudit "requirements" s/he will immediately face the ridicule, hostility -and more- of the student "unions", whose most recent demand is that teachers should not assign research papers in their courses because this constitutes class discrimination against working students.

The said "unions" are the branches of the various political parties, those represented in parliament as well as those of the extremist left, all of them united under two basic demands, firstly that degrees should be given to all with practically no learning effort involved, and secondly that all those with such worthless degrees should upon graduation be given jobs by the state. Most recently in some schools and departments, as I hear and I find easy to believe, these "unions" have put forward the demand that they have a say in writing up the questions to be put in exams. As for cheating, as I have already mentioned, it is not only established and widespread practice, but also declared a "right" under the protection of these champions of the working class. In all universities the rectors are elected as a result of deals with these groupings, given the fact that students participate in the election of the administration under a formula of weighted votes according to which even if one student votes as opposed to hundreds of others this one vote still counts for 40 percent of the total. This is the local idea of democracy in education, the like of which one would have to go to the other side of the universe to discover. It is no wonder that the so-called universities are basically factories for the mass production of illiterates, who also believe that it is their inalienable right to be supported for life by the society at large without them contributing anything to it. Needless to say, these despicable practices and attitudes are presented under the guise of communism, socialism, anarchism and what have you. This is not to say that in the universities one does not find brilliant, conscientious and committed individuals, both teachers and students. But these do not in any way set the tone or determine the direction of these rotten structures. I could add other graphic details about the way worthless individuals climb to the top without any academic credentials or by means of political connections, outright plagiarism, blackmail etc. etc., details that would make anyone coming from a proper university abroad cringe. These things are even beginning to be written in the press as of late.

Hence, what is to be done if there is to be education at all in this place is quite plain. You don't need armies of well-meaning experts from abroad coming here to prescribe solutions. The solutions are obvious and simple, and they are never going to be implemented. For one thing the very same political men and women shedding tears nowadays about the state of our schools and promising to be their saviors are the very ones who brought them to this horrific state of decomposition -one just cannot forget that the present prime minister was himself a minister of education for a number of years. Besides, the young people that under the direction of this corrupt and ignorant political class grew to believe that the world owes them and that they owe nothing to the world are not going to allow even the slightest movement in the direction of true Paideia. They would be ready and willing to shut down and even burn down (it's happened many times before) their schools, rather than see any real change.

The oracles of Delphi have always been deceptive.