“The national priority”… drifting

Six weeks after the start of this school year, pupils of the elementary school (from the first to the fourth grade) seem to have officially entered a short vacation. I say “seem” because the concrete reality of each locality is not known precisely. And it is not known exactly at a Ministerial level either, for the “simple” fact that the current school year has a very contradictory configuration, which simply disfigures it. Many buildings which were useful to the process of studying were given back as private goods and therefore turned into pubs or night bars. But, even in some buildings that still serve the studying, the buildings’ rehabilitation and hygienic works continue at the time being, as well. This is why some of the classes are improvised somewhere, or they are not taking place at all.But, even in those schools where classes are taking place according to a rigorous timetable, several of them are undermined by an environment that is against study. There are no labs with modern equipment, libraries or consulting rooms. The heat stations of several schools, even in the great cities of the country, are on the edge of bankruptcy. During cold days, children are staying in classrooms wearing the clothes they wear outdoors as well, for fear they might catch a cold. In every quarter of an hour, teachers demand them to do some physical exercising, in order to get warmer. Afterwards, the lesson thus disturbed continues with questionable results. The pupils from elementary classes, who are, by definition, the “disobedient” ones, are frequently catching cold and, therefore, parents will not let them come to school. Therefore, entire classes of pupils enter a fortuitous vacation.This vacation often lengthens endlessly for the tens of thousands of children who have nobody to take care of them, due to the emigration of their parents, to work abroad. Abandoning school, which is constantly increasing in Romania, feeds its percentage especially from this category, named “the home alone” category. Which is the most mysterious, the most unpredictable and the most threatening Romanian reality of today. A possible succession of generations which are thus confused by the separation from their parents and, subsequently, by dumping school, which would bring much more damage to the country than a negative demographic index. Because, in case of the second version, the remedy would still be possible, it disappears in case of the generations struck by the feeling of alienation from the beloved ones, and from themselves as well.Schools from the countryside are confronted with even harsher conditions. Half of them do not have, for years, any health approval which would be necessary for their functioning. Because they lack a sewerage system, water supplying and, sometimes, electric power as well. How could the computers, which are indispensable to modern education, function? Due to these causes, but also to the lack of the official number of students which is necessary for the existence of every class, some countryside schools were closed and the few pupils of those rural localities are forced to cover a distance of 7 to 10 kilometers daily, by foot, to get to a school from a locality nearby, where they were distributed to study. The autumn and winter days, with storms, with rains followed by floods or impenetrable snowfalls turn into unexpected days of vacation.As a result, the Government has adopted an initiative which is correct, in its essence, the initiative that all these rural localities receive microbuses for the pupils’ transport to the schools from the villages nearby. But these initiatives, just like several others, are often embezzled by the local authorities, which are inflexible to school necessities. A research performed by the Institute of Educational Sciences shows that the majority of the school board members have a huge distrust to Local Councils and Mayoralties. Why? Precisely due to the fact that these are not representing public interests when distributing and administrating resources, but subordinate everything to electoral propaganda. Performing an analysis of the manner of preparing the current school year leads to frequent cases of Mayors who have accessed important financial sums for modernizing schools, but those financial sums were embezzled one way or another.But not those Mayors are the ones to blame, as they are quite illiterate themselves, but the Romanian Government that has turned the principle of administrative decentralization into a chaotic reality. Nowhere can the principle of administrative decentralization be turned into a slavish imitation, as “universally good” formula. It requires an organic adoption, perfect adequacy to the field it is applied to. Unlike other domains, the education, health and the army require, each of them, a unitary structure at a national level, that would not create any artificial differences from one region to another, from one locality to another. This is due to the simple but essential reason that the education, the health and the defence are strictly indispensable values that must be equally accessible to the entire nation.For the year 2008, it is stipulated that the education receive 6 per cent of the GDP, the highest budgetary percentage of the latest 18 years. But would the actual chaotic decentralization of the education allow this budgetary surplus to be dedicated to educational projects of an ample perspective, and not to the “traditional” interests of any political group? Whenever they are confronted with this depressing alternative, the members of the Government evade into stereotype declarations, just like: “the education is a national priority”. Indeed, the Romanian education, its recovery constitutes a priority. Unfortunately, it is a drifting priority. The actual priority is the emergency of proclaiming the solidarity of values including the elimination of all centrifugal forces. Of all those forces that are alienating the concept of education itself by a damaging politicizing.This is why the first step for the acknowledgement of the education as a national priority is the institution of an apolitical school system.
by Mihai Iordanescu
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2007-11-07