Monday 12
August 2013
To:
Marc
Durando
Executive
Director
European
Schoolnet
Brussels
Cc:
Ministry
of Education and Religious Affairs; Ministry of Administrative Reform &
e-Governance; Ministry of Finance; Ministry of Development &
Competitiveness; Ministry of Interior; Ministry of Labour, Social Security and
Welfare; Ministry of Public Order & Citizen Protection; Presidency of the
Hellenic Republic; members of the Greek Parliament
Greek
members of the European Parliament
EU
agencies involved in education & digital initiatives (Scientix; DG DIGIT; European
Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism & Youth; Eurydice;
European Institute of Innovation and Technology; European Training Foundation; Education
Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency; Committee of the Regions: EDUC; Digital
Agenda for Europe: Pillar VI: Enhancing
digital literacy, skills and inclusion & Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs)
Subject: ICT classes to be eliminated from upper
secondary education in Greece
Dear
Mr. Durando,
My
name is Mina Theofilatou and I am writing in the capacity of teacher of
Informatics in Greek secondary education. Perhaps my name rings a distant bell:
I had the honour of receiving from you the first prize in the poster
competition at the 1st Scientix Conference in Brussels in May 2011[1].
Needless
to say, the prize was a great honour, and unexpected too, as the theme of the
conference was closely linked to the STEM European Schoolnet projects running
all over Europe, whereas my poster was about my students’ contributions to
Wikipedia since 2007: I had no idea Wikipedia was on European Schoolnet’s
“agenda”. It was however a priority for the
Greek Ministry of Education: 2011 was dubbed by the Ministry as the “Year of
the Digital Encyclopaedia[2]” and editing
workshops were held all over the country to promote Greek Wikipedia as a
learning tool, especially to upper secondary – higher education audiences[3]. Moreover,
throughout the past two years the Ministry has been trumpeting Digital School
initiatives[4]
for incorporating ICT and “blended learning” in secondary education. It should come
as a surprise then that 2 years, 3 title changes[5] and
numerous “digital school” initiatives later, the Ministry is planning on eliminating ICT classes from general upper
secondary curriculum in Greek schools.
The
much discussed law bill for the “New Lyceum” (upper secondary) saw the light of
publicity late Friday night: ICT teachers were shocked to learn that two of the
classes they taught, namely “Communications Technology” in 2nd Grade
of Lyceum and “Application Development in a Programming Environment” in 3rd
Grade would no longer be available to students who had chosen to pursue a
career in Engineering & Technology sciences. These classes were taught for
the past 14 years to pupils who had selected “Technology orientation” in the
last two grades of secondary school, while ADPE was one of the lessons examined
at a national level in the context of Greek Tertiary Education Entry Exams. So
what became of all these revolutionary digital initiatives so ardently promoted
by the Ministry? Could going back to the University Entry System practiced some
20 to 30 years ago[6]
be credulously integrated into a law bill for the NEW Lyceum?
In
the member-states of the European Union keeping pace with the Information Society
and the Digital Age of the 21st Century[7], such
a time warp to the past would sound unimaginable. In Greece under crisis
however, one can easily draw conclusions by plain watching the news on TV or
the Internet. For the past 3 years we have been bombarded by disaster scenarios
related to our country being in a bankruptcy situation and in desperate need of
external financial aid and reforms to balance the fiscal deficit. Ruling
politicians have done little to go through with the reforms that have been
identified as necessary in the “Memoranda of Understanding” that have been
signed between the “Troika” and the Greek government, for fear of “political
cost”; this means that each time the state “runs out of money”, new measures
need to be taken in return for the next loan instalment. Teachers were one of
the easiest targets: first our salaries were slashed by approx. 40%[8]. Then
they increased our working week by 2 hours, and threatened to relocate us to
any place in Greece if we were identified as “surplus” in our own region[9].
Finally, when we started discussing a strike in reaction to all these unfair
measures, they proceeded to issue a mobilisation order against us, served to
each and every one of us by a policeman at our school or worse yet, our
doorstep.[10]
In other words, the act of THINKING has pretty much been penalized (with help
from mainstream media, who have thrown “tons of mud” our way).
Now
our rulers have drawn the last straw: the government has started firing
teachers “cold-turkey”. The government is in a constant chase to dismiss a
total of 15,000 civil servants by the end of the year; this has been imposed as
a requirement for the disbursement of upcoming loan instalments. As no
reformative measures (combatting bureaucracy, fighting tax evasion, rational
allocation of personnel on the basis of transparent evaluation results etc.)
have ever been successfully deployed for fear of political cost as mentioned
earlier, the only “legal”[11]
solution they can resort to is eliminating job positions. Less than a month ago,
2122 technical secondary school teachers[12] were
dismissed, with absolutely no cause or warning. How did they pull it off? By
eliminating 46 different courses in technical secondary education literally
overnight: not a single study had been carried out in the direction of indicating
that these courses were unpopular (quite the contrary!) or unviable. Naturally,
the job positions of the teachers working in schools offering these courses
were eliminated as well.
But
it’s a long way still to the 15,000 limit, and teachers are easy targets: we
are often described in the media as lazy, arrogant and incompetent[13], so
the government expects little reaction from the general public. Which brings us
back to the New Lyceum: in order to get rid of hundreds more teachers, they
blatantly intend to send upper secondary students back to the “Dark Ages”.
This
why I – we! – are appealing to you. In a country where tax evasion is still
riding high[14],
where the infamous “Lagarde list”[15] has
been ridiculously presented by one involved politician after another as “lost”
or “misplaced”, where politicians and their protégées continue to live an
opulent life, the scapegoat to their incompetence will be EDUCATION. Pupils
will be deprived of the option to follow a technology-oriented curriculum at
school with lessons such as programming and communications (which will most
certainly affect their choice of career) and ICT teachers will see the years
they have spent promoting knowledge, technology and innovation in their classrooms
go to waste, and their own decent living a memory of the past. If not for any
of the above, by helping us you will justify the objectives of the European
Commission “ICT in schools survey[16]” and
the “Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs[17]”: digital jobs cannot be created where
digital education is at risk.
The
law bill is currently under public consultation and it is expected that the
final bill will be submitted to Parliament at the end of August. We kindly
request of you, in your capacity as Executive Director of European SchoolNet,
to take regard of the points put forward in this letter and support our case with
the Greek Ministry of Education. As we have received no valid answers from the
people planning these supposedly innovative changes, we are counting on
European education institutions to press for such answers. In particular, we
would really appreciate an explanation for the following:
What is the
rationale behind eliminating constructive ICT classes such as “Application Development
in a Programming Environment” from upper secondary school curricula, especially
when the changes are supposedly being introduced as “innovations” in the name
of the NEW Lyceum?[18]
This
letter shall be communicated to mass media in Europe; in addition, it shall be
translated into Greek and communicated to all involved parties as well as mass
media in Greece. Education and digital
literacy cannot be the scapegoat to a system incapable of timely and justly
coping with crisis.
In
closing, I believe you will find the following video of interest: it is a
national television interview on a mainstream news show. Pavlos Charamis,
Chairman of the Research and Documentation Centre of the Greek Secondary
Education Teachers’ Federation, explains the reasons computer programming was
eliminated from secondary school curricula. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1xl0kMIU7E (with English transcription).
Thank
you very much for your time. I am naturally at your disposal for any other
information/input you may need.
Kind
regards,
Mina Theofilatou
Electrical
& Computer Engineer
Teacher
of Informatics in Secondary Education
Evening
Secondary School of Argostoli
Argostoli,
Kefalonia
Greece
Many thanks to my colleagues at “P.E.KA.P” (Hellenic
Association of Computer Science Teaches) for providing ideas and input for this
memo (see “PEKAP” Facebook group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/210307492345/)
[3] The Wikipedia editing guide I had written for my pupils was made
freely available and was adopted for the purposes of the “My Wikipedia”
campaign: http://mycontent.ellak.gr/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/mywikipedia-tetradio.pdf
[5] In the past 4 years, the Ministry of Education has changed name
three times: from “Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs”
(1974-2009) it was renamed “Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religious
Affairs” (2009-2012, “coincidentally” within the core period of LLP 2007-2013
funding), then “Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs, Culture and Sport”
(2012-2013) and then to its current “Ministry of Education and Religious
Affairs”. It has been estimated that each change is equivalent to a cost of
€500,000 (new signs, stamps, letterheads etc. for 15,000 schools) http://www.protothema.gr/greece/article/206443/poso-tha-kostisei-h-metonomasia-toy-yp-paideias/
, meaning a total of €1,500,000 over a period of four years, three of which officially
under national financial crisis.
[6] Throughout the eighties and nineties the entry system was based on
4 orientations, with 4 special lessons each and no ICT classes, as they were
practically non-existent then: the new system shall be quite the same. http://www.tovima.gr/society/article/?aid=507072
[7] See “Informatics education: Europe cannot afford to miss the boat”,
Informatics Europe & ACM Europe Working Group, April 2013.
[8] As an example, my monthly salary was 1260E (5-year engineering
graduate, 2 children, C2 foreign language and 7 years of experience in 2011)
plus benefits (approx. 2000E/year), now it’s 890/month and no benefits.
[9] If the draft presidential decree is approved, many teachers –
myself included – will be forced to resign, as they cannot afford to be
distanced from their families!
[11] According to the Greek Constitution, a legally appointed civil
servant with a clean administrative record can be dismissed only if the agency he
is employed with is abolished.
[12] Tables with names of the dismissed teachers: http://www.koutipandoras.gr/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Diathesimotita.pdf
. Some 250 of them possess postgraduate degrees. Article about a teacher with
20 years of experience and who had received an excellence award three years ago
from the then Minister of Education Anna Diamantopoulou: fired as well. http://panosz.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/success-story-10/
[13] There was uproar against Greek teachers when they reacted against
the extra two hours per week. On first thought, it does sound reasonable; on
closer investigation and considering a previous average of 20 hours teaching per week (plus office
work which is mandatory but not counted), the augmented schedule will mean
that 1 out of 10 us will now be considered redundant by the government, which
was their intention in the first place. Plus the “compulsary relocation” clause
was carefully concealed from the public.
[14] Interesting article on mind-mapping tax evasion in Greece, and how
it led nowhere (English) http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/05/144747663/how-a-computer-scientist-tried-to-save-greece
[18] An
explanation they may produce is that two hours/week of ICT have been introduced
into 1st Grade. They may however choose to conceal the fact that
this class will be a selective one involving the teaching of ICT skills (not Informatics), and that this selective was already in place for
almost a decade in 1st and 2nd general until it was eliminated 2 years ago, only to be
“halved” and reintroduced – most likely with the same outdated textbook – in
the New Lyceum. This can hardly be called a victory for innovation.
αν απευθυνεται και σε μας εκτος απο την ΕΕ
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