Editorial: Sayings

Almost immediately after assuming his portfolio, Education Minister Kostas Gavroglu announced a change in the university admissions system.

He was not the first to do so and based on the result one would hope that he will not be the last. However he is the first who during his term has experimented on the job with changes at the expense of students.

The wide range of proposals that the minister presented on television seems to feature everything and its opposite.

First he abolished exams then created a national high school diploma. He delinked the high school diploma grade point average from university admissions and then repeatedly changed the number of subjects in which candidates will be examined.

He abolished exams in some courses which he considered superfluous and then established exams in courses for which the curriculum has not yet been drafted.

The education system requires a national policy, but that presupposes dialogue, open horizons, and a synthesis of ideas.

That national policy requires exactly what is not being done by a minister whose wont it is to arbitrarily impose his views on a series of issues pertaining to all levels of the education system.

Regarding the university admissions system, the minister appears to be adhering in the lonely dialogue that he is conducting with himself to the saying of Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well I have others.”