What he said about subject bank and education
Giorgos Babiniotis proposed the “end of the Panhellenic examinations” as a way of admission to the University and its replacement with the “Academic Baccalaureate” during his interview on the ERT radio show. The Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and former Rector of the University of Athens, appeared on the First Program of Hellenic Radio 91.6 and 105.8 and on the show “The GPS of Current Affairs” where he spoke about issues such as the academic baccalaureate, the subject bank and education.
“End of Pan-Hellenic – Admission to Universities with an academic diploma”
As Mr. Babiniotis characteristically stated at the beginning of his conversation with the journalist, “since 2009 when we held the national dialogue on Education, I have been saying that this system with Panhellenic women is no longer valid. It’s unfair, it’s inhumane, it’s cruel, it’s unreliable. You can’t judge a child in a 3 hour exam that something might happen. However, we should look at the potential that a child has in his three years of performance and his high school performance. This is how all of Europe works. This is how large universities operate abroad. In other words, they ask you for your high school diploma and your grades in the last classes of the Lyceum, in the three classes of the Lyceum.
So there they have an image of you and the schools which have a very limited number and cannot open it and do an additional examination in some subjects, if necessary. In most schools you don’t need this and the way you get into the university is your identity, as shown by the academic, let’s say, high school diploma. So what I propose is to have an admission system that will be based on the high school diploma, which will be based on the overall performance of the student in the three years of high school.”
“With the upgrade of the Subject Bank will come the resurrection of the Lyceum and its strengthening”
“It is a fact that a high school has become useless, that all the courses, you know, of the high school, don’t count anymore, that is, no one counts them, they look at when they will be absent, how they will read something more to take exams. So those of us who have an understanding of what is happening in education, we are living this thing and it is the worst thing that has happened to us.
Now someone will say yes, but there will be pressure on the professors to give grades, etc. There is the safety valve called the subject bank. So there, from time to time in the school they are given the same with correction by the teachers, subjects from the subject bank for which objectively you now have a grading. That is, if the professor has put 19 and in the exam with the subjects from the subject bank, he goes to 14 from there and then there will be an intermediate grade and then again. So, we are talking about a parallel upgrade of the theme bank, which must be something substantial for justice to exist. And I think that the Lyceum will be set up again educationally in this way.
Therefore, in order for there to be a resurrection of the Lyceum, decisions must be made which may have a reaction from some people who are profiting from the current system, but the government, the Ministry of Education must dare this solution, which will be for the good of of the students themselves and will lead little by little to the abolition of the entrance exams” Mr. Babiniotis then noted about the Subject Bank, commenting at the same time on the situation prevailing in the High Schools.
“Actually, education today stops at High School – School is not only information and knowledge but also education”
Finally, when asked if he sees immediate changes being made in the education system and in the way students are evaluated, Mr. Babiniotis answers the following: “anchorages and distortions that have created some interests, some people who have become comfortable in this way or earn money must be overcome . These, if you have the courage to overcome them, you can provide solutions. Otherwise you stay in the establishment and go through what you go through, that is, you have three years lost from education.
And we are all constantly told that it is a question of education or a question of education that. Which education? An education that actually stops at high school? An education that has now ceased to have character and training? Because, when you talk about forms of behavior, about values, about rules, about principles, you are considered right-wing, conservative, Juntic and I don’t know what else. In other words, when will the teacher be freed to do both his education and his lesson and have a comfort and a respect from the people but also a good salary? That is, to be able to stand in society without having to have two or three jobs? (…). School is not just information and knowledge. School is also education. It is a way of life, behavior, education, character. And that second piece is lost.”