It was back in 2009 when George Papandreou was telling us from the stage of the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair to make us «Denmark of the South». Three memoranda and a Greece 2.0 under a blue government later, it is the turn of the Ministry of Education to give us vision, perspective and hippest wellness in primary education.
After the EUR 2 million vegetable gardens, announced in glory a few months ago and expected in primary schools and nurseries, last week a new programme for weaving, embroidery, knitting and ceramics was announced, again for primary schools, for EUR 4 million. Mani mani EUR 6 million for activities that enable children to get away from screens and use their hands. Two million for metal flower beds, soil, small metal greenhouses, spades, seeds, watering cans. Four million for threads, needles, stamped embroidery, looms (?) and pottery wheels (?). Not bad.
And indeed, it would be very nice and creative for a country with the level of infrastructure and personnel of a southern Denmark. Unfortunately, however, we are still Greece. So, in Greece of 2025, the last thing children need are vegetable gardens and folk arts, because still, in many corners of the country, they lack decent classrooms, teachers and parallel support.
Lesson in a container
In Igoumenitsa, a few days ago, plasters were detached and fell into a primary school classroom, just minutes before students were due to enter the classroom.
In Kypseli on Tuesday, parents and teachers protested against serious problems that plague the school unit, ranging from teacher shortages and building problems to the addition of an entrance hall and a proper toilet for disabled people.
In Samos, five years after the earthquake, children in several schools are still learning in containers. And in Kefalonia, parents complain that for ten years in certain schools container classes have remained in place. The situation in Arkalochori is similar, four years after the earthquake.
In Menidi, generations of students have been learning in containers for the last 26 years - since the earthquake of 1999. According to the Teachers« Association of Eastern Attica, »a total of 35 out of 73 school units in the Municipality of Acharnon have empty classrooms".
And if these seem like «isolated incidents» that get in the way of the ministry's vision of vegetable gardens and folk art, the Greek Teachers' Federation records more than 500 kindergarten classrooms operating in containers while noting that hundreds of requests for relocation and unsuitable rented buildings used as classrooms.
As for the gaps in teachers, indicative is the picture in the prefecture of Heraklion where the gaps are more than 400 according to the teachers but in the third phase of recruitment only 35 kindergarten teachers and 45 special education teachers were hired. The institution of parallel support is underused for children who are certified as needing it, resulting in one teacher for two or even three children.
A luxury... the psychologist in schools
Similarly, in Greece, where the news reports daily contain cases of serious teenage delinquency and where, according to the latest figures of the PODEN, about 2000 children a year end up in the country's hospitals injured in fights, psychologists and social workers are a luxury, with the ratio being one specialist for five schools.
Result? There is neither the time nor the space to know, recognize problems and anticipate situations. And if psychologists are a luxury item, nurses are an endangered species, with the result that single-parent families with children with serious health problems are either asked to either not go to work to accompany the child or the child does not go to school.
It is typical of what was described to me by a single parent of a fifth grade child with type 1 diabetes from Corfu: «As a mother of a diabetic child, I cannot leave the child unattended at school because his life is in danger at any time. Either from hypoglycaemia and fainting episode, or from hyperglycaemia.»
For the essence of the programmes, when there is no compulsory sex education or management of emotions and behaviours such as bullying, instead, they are put under the umbrella of «skills workshop» as «subjects» without checking if and how they were taught, vegetable gardens and embroidery are rather... luxury.
What kind of school we want in 2025 should not be «written» as «innovative» or as a «link to tradition» in a press release. Because on paper, we've been «Denmark of the South» many times over.
Anastasia Yamalis
Unfortunately, he has kept that promise.
The world's George Jeffrey Papandreou wants to say one thing and comes up with another
Meaning “Southern Loans” and NOT «Southern Denmark»
It's still out there and it's still going on