Achilles Heel
Most of the media attention these days is focused on Illinois Governor Blagojevich and his David Mamet-esque recordings about "selling" President-elect Obama's Senate seat. The narrow focus on this story has pushed another important world event to the back burner.
Since the police shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos earlier this month, Greece has been tormented by rioting and protests that have threatened the government and the stability of the nation. Riot police have clashed with protesters armed with Molotov cocktails, thousands of striking workers have marched in anger over economic policies, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage has been done to property in a matter of days. Many have blamed a poor economy, where 1/5 of the population lives below the poverty line, and the less-than-stellar education system for the turmoil.
"You have paid for what people like me, who belong to the generation of 50-year-olds, know to be true," wrote one father in a note, according to The Guardian. "That we are shaking with worry over the future of our children."
"A lot of teenagers identify with Grigoropoulos," said Christos Mazanitis, an Athenian journalist. "There's a whole generation out there who see their parents in debt and feel they have nothing to look forward to in the future. Fear and despair are what these riots are about."
It has been said that education is the key to a country's economic stability, and the amount of funding for education in Greece, while increasing, is still lower than many industrialized nations. Greek students ranked below average in math and reading in the 2006 PISA assessments, and Greece is one of the only countries participating in PISA that spent less than 5 percent of its GDP on education.
Could fully funding the education system in Greece prevent a situation like this from happening in the future? Would a better education system in the first place have led to a better economic situation, thus avoiding the unrest Greece is currently experiencing?
