Standort: fm4.ORF.at / Meldung: ""Fainting during class""

Johanna Jaufer

Revival of the fittest... aber das war noch nicht alles.

8. 6. 2015 - 09:00

"Fainting during class"

Geschlossene Schulen, veruntreute Förderungen und der allgegenwärtige Geldmangel: Griechenlands Bildungsminister Aristides Baltas im Interview.

Aristides Baltas hat Elektroingenieurswesen und Physik in Paris und Athen studiert und später als Professor für Philosophie und Methodenlehre der Physik unterrichtet. Princeton, Istanbul und die London School of Economics waren weitere Stationen seiner akademischen Laufbahn. Seit Ende Jänner gehört er der griechischen Regierung von Alexis Tsipras und dessen Linksbündnis SYRIZA an, die derzeit in hitzigen Verhandlungen mit ihren EU-Gläubigern steht.

Im Gebäude des Bildungsministeriums am Athener Stadtrand wird Griechenlands Finanznot buchstäblich begreifbar: Im Lift sind manche Tasten abgeschlagen und dem Sekretariat längst die Visitkarten ausgegangen. Sein geräumiges Büro nutzt Aristides Baltas nur zu einem kleinen Teil: Er hat sich mit einem Stapel Akten ans Ende einer langen Tafel gesetzt. Ständig gehen MitarbeiterInnen ein und aus – drängende Fragen sind an der Tagesordnung, wenn nicht ohnehin gerade wieder das Telefon läutet. "Do you mind if I smoke?", eröffnet der 72jährige Minister für Erziehung, Kultur und Religion das Gespräch.

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Aristides Baltas

What were the biggest challenges when taking over the ministry?

At least three kinds of problems. Problem one: Austerity. Which meant that in schools there were even students who could not eat. There were cases of fainting during class. Problems at that level – in some areas of Greece, not everywhere – which were enormous. At the same time, because of the impossibility to hire new teachers and replace those who left, a lack of teachers throughout the school system. And in addition to that, a law which said that teachers should leave school for various reasons if they did not fit some standards almost at random. At the beginning of the "memorandum era" there was a clause saying that we do not touch education, which was not respected. And this in all levels of education: Grammar school, secondary school, university teaching. Before in government, we tried to face the problems through solidarity networks working in different places, and secondly, since being government, to have a kind of card for people below the levels of extreme poverty to be able to purchase things or pay the electricity bill – through a law that was the first law we passed. This touches schools also. We are now in conversation with the ministry responsible for that, to share all these kinds of standards with tertiar education, helping some students to leave from their families/the place where their family lives and give them some money to pay their rent, things like that. This was the first thing we tried to do. The second challenge was corruption. If you enter a ministry like that, you discover that previously, laws and structures were established in such a way that – even (with/through) European money from these "programs" helping in many ways or supposed to be helping the country – all kinds of things were squandered. People were getting money out of doing nothing, in a way, and programs with no real objective but the kind of objective that looked like what Europe said the objective should be – and then money disappearing through different holes. The third challenge was the relation of the ministry to the educational system as a whole: previously the ministry was closed so to speak – all kinds of security around it, it was difficult to even approach the ministry: to reach this office you needed to pass I don't know how many guards, cameras and all that. What we are trying to do now is to open up even the building to schools, teachers and also the ministry to get out and talk with teachers and students, without cameras and big fuss about that. But in a way to understand from below the real problems that the real schools are facing. These will be, say, the three challenges we try to meet.

Can you give me a bit of an insight into the demographic effects – for example the emigration of young people – that the crisis already had?

There are two kinds of emigration going on now: the (young) ones who are leaving because they can't find a living here, and secondly, a brain-drain, in the sense that the unemployment rate of the younger people is enormous: about 50 percent. They really cannot find a job here, even if they have high degrees, so they have to leave the country. There are about 150.000 people right now getting out of Greece with these kinds of qualifications. Responding to that problem, we first have to finish with the negotiations, because everything now is constrained, there is no money in the literal sense of doing anything practically except paying wages and pensions, and you cannot work as a government with just that.

How have university departments been dealing with the situation?

I'll give you an example: At (the time of) the first memorandum, if anybody left for his pension, then he could be replaced 1:1, then it was 1:5, then it was 1:10, but practically it was 1:0 – in the sense that of about 3500 university teachers who retired, none were replaced. So you have departments with just one person, and many departments keep working because those who retired return to teach gratis. There is a solidarity movement, if you like it, on this level as well. So, the system remains somehow in function because all kinds of voluntary work at the level of university professors as well as at all levels of society. Because from this point of view, Greece is a kind of society with close in the sense of family, in the sense of coming from the same place, but also in the sense of helping each other in the case of need like this one. Quite a few of my colleagues continue teaching on that basis.

What about the relation between public and private education on primary and secondary school levels?

This is a big issue, because we have private schools like every other country, but the big problem is not them. The problem with the education system as a whole is that it is an education system directed almost exclusively to entrance examinations for the university system. You have a kind of parallel network of "preparatory schools", that just help students prepare for the entrance examinations, running parallel to the school system. In the last years of secondary education, most students go to these schools, "in addition", officially, to going to public school, but almost abandoning efforts to finish – in a good way – the public system, because they want to prepare themselves for the entrance examination. This is a very big isssue and has always been like that. So in addition to all financial problems, families find themselves obliged to pay for these preparatory schools. That is a kind of wound that is very difficult to close. What we are trying to do is relieving the tension of continuous examination within the public system so as to lessen the pressure for students to go to these preparatory schools. But this does not solve the problem which is still there, which means that those who prepare well for the entrance examinations again become the people who can afford these preparatory schools. Before the crisis, this was more or less accepted because the income level was such that even the poorer families could afford some preparatory classes.

Before entering politics, you had been living as a university teacher yourself for a long time – how did entering politics feel?

I think there are two ways of doing politics. One is becoming a professional politician in the standard sense, the other is to participate in issues you run into in your everyday life whatever profession you might have otherwise. The people of this government have done the second kind of politics for many years. We don't consider ourselves as "professional politicians". We have experience in doing politics for years – the job of course is new, becoming a minister and all that – but this kind of experience in a way helps to understand the issues. Also, the fact that we are not "professional politicians" is a kind of relief because we don't have to obey by rules of professional politics regarding voters and all that. From this point of view it is new. It is in a sense renovating. The number of university professors in this government is enormous (laughs) in all standards – it is 14 or 16, something like that. Crazy. But it is the specificity of the situation.

What were the most unexpected issues you have been facing?

I like coming here – in a sense it is like going to school again, because I learn new things every half hour: new problems, issues, things I would never have imagined before. The tension is that "political time" is very short: you have to make decisions on issues you do not understand very well. You have to learn by mistakes and "correcting" issues – this is the real pressure. But on the other hand, it is learning new things and understanding society from this perspective is quite different and opens up vistas you could not imagine that were there before. So, there are things you are expecting more or less, standardly, but most of them were impossible to expect, because the view is very different if you look at things from below from a party level or from a social movement level. There are things you cannot see and perceive from there, it is impossible.

In most Austrian secondary schools, you learn about politics within the classes that also teach you about history for example. For years, people across the political divide have been asking for the introduction of political education as an independent subject (siehe Kasten rechts). How about that in Greece?

For many reasons, Greece has always been a very politicized country. You learn about politics outside of class, most of the time. Even at the level of let's say 12 year olds, the kind of discussions in class and the kind of organizations students have, give them a kind of feeling of how politics work. So, I do not think that there is a real need for "educating" in that sense, in the sense of "classes" – through that, of course, you can impart knowledge in a theoretical way – but the feel of politics you have all around you here.

A thinker important for many people involved in the movements that formed SYRIZA in the first place is Nicos Poulantzas who said that in times of (economic) crisis, the social consensus for technocracy would crack –as it would not be possible anymore to convey the idea that cuts in the social system are to the benefit of all people...

I think in a sense this is a general rule: you can find it in every situation – but every situation is unique. Poulantzas I think would not have thought that there would be any more broader movement in the sense of who is giving that kind of support to a government which everybody considers as minority, radical or I don't know what. Despite all that, in the respective of political opinion before the crisis, this kind of support was imaginable. But it is, again, – to come to Poulantzas – a kind of breaking point. Over the last two years, throughout the previous elections, people started to understand that this is the only way out and were supporting it. And if we do our job correctly, we can keep this support because we are not "professional politicians".

In your opinion, what does and what should "competitiveness" mean?

There is a kind of "new speak" if you follow Orwell's "1984", with words like "excellence", "transformation", "reforms", and also "competitiveness". In a sense this is a kind of vocabulary imposed since Thatcher and Reagan under neo-liberalism. I do not really understand the word; in the sense that we consider our students as from what I know very "competitive" in a good sense – they could go to any university in the world and be as good as any other students and vice versa. But this system of bank structure, finance capital etc. obliges you to think competitiveness in very monetary terms, without taking into account that these monetary terms can't apply in this case to Greece.

What would getting rid of austerity in Greece mean to young people in similar situations who live in other countries, Germany, Austria, Finland etc.?

I think that for the main opponents, – political opponents – it's not that money is the issue. It's the government as an example. Why they are pressuring us so much is not because we don't "follow the rules" or don't like this or that. What they care about is that this government falls. Because if it succeeds, then an example of a small country against austerity (would be set, that) could be an example that would create, let's say, a domino effect in Europe and the world. This, I think, is the main issue.

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