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I belonged to the penultimate year that entered the Anavryta School with exams. Two years later, the PASOK government of 1981 abolished the standards and students were admitted by lot. The school declined. Officially, it remained a standard, as the teachers were selected. Over time, this too was weakened, and the selection of teachers was also determined by other criteria, such as party affiliation.
The abolition of standards as poles of excellence in public schools left private schools dominant. A few years ago, the PASOK government, with the support of ND, reinstated the standards and did very well. The SYRIZA-ANEL government was to come to abolish them again. The first time was a mistake, in 1982, is inexperience. The second is precocity. To compensate for the haircut of excellence in public schools, the government imposes a bunch of leveling restrictions that degrade private schools. Two mistakes don't make a right.
I don't remember many rich classmates at Anavryta. Most belonged to the middle and lower income classes. The school's ethos did not favor display and consumerism.
In class, you stood out if you were "problematic," if you had read the "coolest" books.
Societies without elites (or if you prefer: leadership groups) do not exist. The issue is by what processes they emerge, how they are democratically controlled, within what framework of rules they operate. What belts of opportunities and upward mobility allow those who start from the bottom to reach (with value, work, skills) higher. Will the elites be mainly hereditary, pareocratic, partisan? Or will they be meritocratic?
A society without adequate mechanisms for the promotion of meritocratic elites will pay dearly in the future. Some students will always stand out. The issue is the critical mass: the sufficient number of people who can pull society forward. If the worthy and capable are a lonely minority, then they will seek their fortune far from the country. The existence of this critical mass will facilitate synergies between poles of quality in education, research, the economy, and public life, and will allow institutions with duration and continuity to be built. It will determine whether the entrepreneurship model will be technological innovation and smart start-ups, or cafeterias and delivery. And this will determine the future level of prosperity of the country, whether salaries will be 500 euros or 1.500 euros. The Minister of Education presented a remarkable proposal for International Baccalaureate (IB) studies in high school, converting it into a two-year program and converting high school into a four-year program. Excellent. But every upgrade requires an evaluation. The Ministry of Education dismantled the personnel evaluation procedures and handed over power to the unions. Then it did the same to private schools. The ministry wants to direct more students to technical-vocational education, and rightly so. Greece has one of the highest rates of admission to universities. Massification leads to the inflationary degradation of everyone. The percentage directed to technical-vocational education has never exceeded 30%, when countries like Germany and Britain have 65%. However, Mr. Filis' policy achieves the opposite: by abolishing exams in secondary education, it also abolishes the intermediate filters that direct the lowest-performing students towards technical and vocational education. The last national exams ensured universities for everyone. Future students will be taught by education graduates who have been admitted with an 8 (out of 20). This is a mockery of the taxpayer and the families who think their children will obtain university qualifications.
We should educate students from abroad instead of exporting scientific graduates who studied with public money, as Apostolis Dimitropoulos writes. When the Diamantopoulos reform (architected by the late Vasilis Papazoglou and in the footsteps of the Veremis committee) tried to strengthen the internationalization of universities, this was the goal: to take universities out of the introversion and misery of factions, to force them to irrigate experience, to be measured by the standards of an internationalized community such as the academic one. This was the purpose of the Foundation Councils, which attracted personalities from Harvard, Princeton, Oxford to contribute their experience. And whom the government, after humiliating, led to mass resignations. And now even the most basic things are being canceled, such as that the status of a student cannot be eternal, in order for the parties to draw their thirty-something student fathers. Mr. Filis takes us back again, to the pathogenicity of endless study. Therefore, the Minister of Education is right to proclaim as a goal the best education for the many, not just for the few. However, he conceals that without competition and poles of excellence, without evaluation, differentiation, diversity, extroversion, internationalization, the privileged few will continue (one way or another) to advance. However, they will be much fewer and they will carry even fewer with them. The absence of a critical mass of worthy people will drive them away, and those who are left behind will sink into the quicksand of mediocrity, flattening and paralyzing degradation.
* Mr. George Pagoulatos is Professor of European Politics and Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business and a visiting professor at the College of Europe.

Republished from Kathimerini.