NAR: The struggle for the defence of the public character of education only be combined with the struggle against capitalism

NAR: The struggle for the defence of the public character of education only be combined with the struggle against capitalism

The New Democracy government is promoting a wider educational plan to restructure education in a reactionary and unpopular direction. In this respect, it undermines the educational and social rights of the youth and the large social majority in the name of economic competitiveness and profitability of capital. It is a comprehensive educational programme which extends to every level of education. What we have, therefore, is not individual "reform" interventions, but a comprehensive attempt to transform in reactionary terms the educational DNA of the public school and university. From this point of view, the response of all those fighting for the public character of education and the emancipatory content of education, in the direction of socialist construction and the communist perspective, must be unified. Experience shows that no issue can be addressed unless it is linked to objectives that threaten the main pillars of bourgeois domination

The last point has a great value, as it is politically necessary to see the resistances that are developing through the prism of the broader anti-capitalist struggle of the working class. It is about the assumption that the debate on school and university is by definition political. The struggle for the defence of the public character of education and for an education that serves the social and collective needs of the majority can only be combined with the struggle for emancipated and non-exploitative work.

Anti-capitalist programme

The struggle in education is an aspect, albeit crucial, of the broader anti-capitalist struggle. The logic of reducing education struggles to individual resistances on the basis of defensive trade union demands fails to consider the big picture, namely the contribution of the capitalist school/university and scientific research to the formation of a diversified flexible workforce responsive to contemporary capitalist despotism and the transformation of educational institutions and scientific knowledge itself into fields of profitability for capital.

The debate on education in the current intensifying educational confrontation, especially with the mass student mobilisations, can only be illuminated by the assertion of the unprecedented liberating possibilities for society generated by work and science, in opposition to their appropriation, destruction and suppression by contemporary capitalism. The educational programme of the New Democracy is an effort to politically inscribe the proposals and directives of the OECD and EU reports in Greek education. It is a programme of neoliberal-neoconservative political restructuring and consists of four critical dimensions.

First, the imposition of the principles of public management on the way educational institutions operate. Targeting, on the basis of predetermined market criteria, quantitative evaluation of results and competition as a basic principle of school and university operation. A central concept in this field is the evaluation of everything as a means of reorienting educational priorities and disciplining educational subjects.

Second, the privatisation/entrepreneurialisation of education, which presupposes, at a first level, the underfunding and devaluation of public schools and universities, a practice that concerns, in general, every structure of the welfare state (e.g. health). Underfunding is a prerequisite for the direct involvement of the business sector in public education (colleges, private universities, tuition-based postgraduate programmes) and its transformation into a profit-making field for capital. Entrepreneurialisation is also transforming the public educational institutions themselves, which become public in name, but in practice operate as public enterprises seeking to maximise their “profits”, just like businesses in the private sector.

Third, this educational project leads to the intensification of class educational inequalities in order to ensure the smooth reproduction of the capitalist division of labour. The shift to degraded forms of technical education and the private universities clearly indicate the class nature of this educational policy, which works against the children of the working class.

Fourth, this particular educational policy is sealed by authoritarianism, either in the form of administrative authoritarianism (court decisions to declare teachers' struggles illegal, brutal state interference in the functioning of teachers' unions, dismissals of workers who resist), but also police violence, with the presence of police inside university campus. The attempt to commercialise/privatise education presupposes violence and authoritarianism as its necessary political complements.

In this dystopian educational landscape, but at the same time in an era of unprecedented emancipatory possibilities for humanity, the projection of an anti-hegemonic anti-capitalist educational programme is a political and educational necessity for youth and workers. The need for an integrated education against the logic of detached "skills" is urgently emerging.

This can only be achieved through the single and unified 12-year public school, which reverses the existence of all vertical and horizontal divisions in education, tries to combine knowledge with its scientific and practical applications, and therefore has a multidisciplinary character, seeking the integrated educational cultivation of all children. A school and university that by definition oppose any form and version of private education and entrepreneurialism and are accompanied by all the necessary economic and social measures to support the children of the working class. In other words, the aim of the single school will be for all children to learn, rather than to certify through various examination practices those who cafrom succeed in order to exclude them.

The unified structure therefore serves a different educational philosophy based on the collective democratic programming of pedagogical practice, understanding education as a collective, democratic and creative process rather than a competitive examination arena with winners and losers. In this way, it promotes a different overall conception of society, where the hierarchical classification of people within the capitalist division of labour is not important. It rather promotes solidarity and collectivity, where the value of each individual person emerges through collective coexistence and reciprocity.

A school that not only accommodates all children, but also takes all the necessary social, economic and pedagogical measures to keep all children within its structure. It is therefore the central educational goal of the struggle of the working class for a totally different organisation of social relations in the direction of the emancipation of the dominant social strata. It critically illuminates the present from the perspective of the future.

Similarly, a modern anti-capitalist educational programme fights for the absence of examination barriers to attendance at the public university for the children of the working class and struggles for the existence of uniform scientific subjects with guaranteed professional rights for its graduates. It insists on the genuinely public character of the university against privatisation, whether direct (existence of private universities) or indirect (commercialisation, as well as business operation and practice). Similarly, it approaches scientific research from the point of view of collective social needs and not from the point of view of serving business and military interests.

In conclusion, the magnitude of the reactionary attack of capital requires a corresponding opponent. This cannot be constituted unless it challenges the core of the aspirations of capitalist restructuring, from the point of view of a different vision and perspective for the school, university and society.

On the basis of the above logic, the struggle of the student movement and the labour-peoples’ movement more broadly against the establishment of private universities can only be comprehebsive and counter-attack. If the government and the system go on the offensive wanting to impose that the market system, the domination of the private and the logic of profit, is inevitable and supposedly modern (while it is deeply conservative and reactionary), the fighting forces of the movement and the anti-capitalist Left must fight back and make it clear that the exclusively public and non-commercialised character of education is a need for the workers and the youth. Therefore, not only do we say "no" to the private universities, but we demand that all existing private education institutions be closed down.

The movement should also demand a doubling of state funding for public schools, the abolition of all tuition fees at the public university (almost all postgraduate degrees are currently running with tuition fees) and an end to schools relying on the EU and business projects. The student movement is fighting to abolish the University Police and student disciplinary boards. It is also necessary to immediately abolish the Minimum Admission Basis, based on the grade of the final school degree, to universities, which technically entails an army of failures, with these students then ending up to private schools and private universities.

Solid knowledge of the world and critical thinking should be prioritised as opposed to the market logic of skills, functional illiteracy, irrationality, religiosity and obscurantism. This is emphasized in the NAR and ANTARSYA Theses on Education. We fight for unified education: two-year pre-school education, a unified 12-year school, a unified university education and a network of vocational schools.

We demand education that unites theory and practice. Single degrees, with comprehensive subjects in higher education. We demand education for all, without class barriers or other discrimination, throughout life, with free access at every level. We demand that measures be secured to strengthen those with the weakest class-based, learning context. The aim of inclusive education is to 'make all children learn', not to certify those who cannot so as to exclude them. Examinations are not pedagogical incentives for the acquisition of knowledge. Rather, they internalize "failure". We demand the abolition of all testing grids that drive children out of public school.

Free access to higher education. Support for young people in their university or vocational studies. Strengthening exclusively public and free student care. Building new dormitory halls and using them without charge, rent or fees.

NAR for the Communist Liberation

2024