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?

Comments

[Gregg Sinner]

Does this post foreshadow elements of our future in the US? I have been working in secondary school reform since 1971 and I stand with Jon Kozol. Rhetoric for school improvement abounds. There are islands of excellence here and there -- visit one Brockton HS in Brockton, MA -- but for the masses of kids in most large, urban high schools the experience as been pretty much the same or worse for four decades. Radical change is needed, and the best writing on radical, systemic change in schools that I have seen is Stephanie Pace Marshall's, "The Power To Transform: Leadership That Brings Learning and Schooling to Life. (Jossey-Bass, 2006)

[edcresources.com]

Gregg,
Thanks for the tip about Stephanie Marshall's book. I sit in Florida watching the education system here fail so many students that it turns my stomach. My background is in education and my passion for school reform is extremely frustrated here. The school grading system and test requirements are a tremendous burden to our overworked and underpaid teachers. I can certainly see what happened in Greece occurring in the US. With students dropping out of high school at alarming rates--1 every 26 seconds!!--what do we expect from these disenfranchised teens.

My own son, a senior, at a school with 4200 students said to me yesterday, "School is a waste of time." This broke my heart, but I have to agree that the majority of high-school students in Florida are bored to tears and often disrespected by their teachers.

Recently, I taught a Junior Achievement course as a community volunteer at my son's high school. Before starting my sessions, I wanted to observe teachers at the school to see their classroom management styles and the overall behavior of the students. The principal recommended two of his "best" teachers and two first-year teachers for me to observe. His "best" teachers had good rapport with their students, but the class time seemed mostly unproductive. One issue that bothered me the most was the lack of professional dress by the teachers.

Students have mastered playing the "school" game. They know how to get by with each teacher doing the least amount of work possible. The classes I observed had students dragging teachers off topic and interrupting with trivial concerns. This left very little instructional time, of course.

While teaching the Junior Achievement course, Success Skills, I started the two ninth-grade classes by discussing proper classroom behavior. The effectiveness of spending some time on simple things like how to pay attention (active listening), how to sit, how to raise their hands, etc. was a revelation to me. This was not part of the JA cousework, but the time spent allowed me to engage students at a much higher level during the remaining class periods. I have to say that the time did fly by and it was a challenge to cover the content as presented in the JA materials. Nonetheless, the students had a strong impact on me and I hope I left a professional image in their minds of what it takes to be successful in the real world.

I fear that the decade of 2000-2010 and beyond will continue to pump out poorly prepared students who will eventually add to the crazy economic conditions in this country.