07-11-16 Nikos Filis’ address in handing ministry over to Costas Gavroglou

Nothing has ended. On the contrary, everything begins now.

From the first day that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras selected me for the post of education minister, I pondered this day – the day of farewell, the day of offering an accounting. Woe to the politician who deceives himself regarding the longevity of a post. Woe to the politician who has not drafted from the very first day in office their letter of resignation, in case issues of principle or inadequacy arise during the exercising of his duties.

This day, for which my collaborators and I laboured for 13 months, has arrived. And we stand before the officials and the entire personnel of the ministry, who everyday try to do their best, before the educators whom we honour and thank for their service, before valued associates, comrades and friends, to whom I offer my heartfelt thanks for their assistance and their presence here today, so that we may hand over the reins of the ministry with great joy, esteem and trust to comrade Gavroglou, as is mandated by the democratic order, the ethics of the Left, and our comradely and human ties over many years. I welcome also the new deputy ministers and dear friends Dimitris Baxevanakis and Kostas Zouraris.

We stand before you, however, to say plainly what we attempted to do, what we achieved, what we leave as a legacy to the new ministry leadership and to the country’s political life.

In my first statement on the day I assumed the post of education minister, I set as my first choice the reversal of priorities. I said that we shall start to build the field of education from the bottom up, and not the other way around. Instead of the classic failed prescription of the minister setting university education as the priority, we focused our efforts on kindergartens, primary schools, junior high schools, technical education, second chance schools, and on the forgotten and abandoned field of special education. We turned our attention to the place where the heart of education beats, for whomever understands what serious educational reform is, and does not come here simply to have a carefree and uneventful term.

Within a few months, the left-wing government, despite the harsh austerity of [bailout] memorandums, proceeded with the first major interventions and reforms in these sectors, with the guiding principle that we set – creating schools of equality and quality. We thus confirm, step by step, the commitment of this government that the exit from this crisis will involve all citizens without exception, and that at the epicentre of the new Greece will be an upgraded and democratic educational system.

The fact is that this year we have operating for the first time:

-       The new all-day kindergarten

-       The new type of all day primary school, which has been extended to all primary schools nationwide areas of instruction that were available to only one-third of all schools

-       The new organisational and operational model of high schools with the drastic limiting of examinations, the extension of the length of the school year, and the modernisation of curriculums.

-       The new Vocational High School with general education, the focus on subject areas and specialisation in the first three years, and another major innovation, internships at businesses in the fourth year of studies, with pay and social insurance, and not illegal labour and exploitation.

-       The new structure of Special Education with the creation of both new schools and hundreds of induction classes. For the first time this year priority was given to the appointment of teachers at special education schools

-       The return of oversight of private education to the Education Ministry and the protection of private school teachers from arbitrary and abusive lay-offs, following a major battle with all sorts of neo-liberals and political forces such as the New Democracy of Mr. Mitsotakis, who posit a marketplace conception of education , and who above all else  “love to hate” public schools

-       On the issues of highs schools, whose educative role is threatened with collapse, due to their one-dimensional attachment to the chariot of university admissions exams, we organised a fruitful dialogue in the framework of the National and Social Dialogue on Education (for which I offer warm thanks to the committee head and valuable friend and collaborator Antonis Liakos). We have asked that the reports from these dialogues and other approaches be sent to the Parliamentary Committee on Education, where with consensus we can achieve a new type of organisation of high schools and of university admissions. At long last, after decades, the political system must assume its responsibilities and stop nationwide Panellinies exams from devouring and grinding up the adolescence of our children and creating huge economic burdens for their families.

Dear Ministers and Friends,

On September 12 for the first time in years the school bell rang in all schools nationwide, with all books and necessary personnel in place. This is the greatest collective and personal satisfaction of our tenure at the ministry, which from now on will be a steadfast and permanent effort of all ministers. This is not an exception or a one-year success.

For our government, this was a great moment, which put an end to the aim of our opponents to depict the Left as a party of grand rhetoric and small works, as the party of ideological insularity and managerial incompetence. No! The Left has a vision for education, a plan for education and a penchant for education. We have a desire for countless hours of work, day and night, the reward for which is not the ‘excellent’ grade from the prime minister (whom I also thank for his support and respect for our work), but the kudos for this accomplishment from the special education school at Haironeia in Boeotia, where parents were accustomed to schools opening in November. The same occurred in Ereikousa and Thymaina, in Gavdos, Vovoudes, Metaxades, and in every remote and hard-to-reach corner of Greece.

Along with this important achievement, we have added another project which is beginning and has attracted international interest. That is the education of refugee children, which began successfully and week by week is bolstered, as with the progress in vaccinations, new reception centres are being added to the programme.

I shall ask the dear incoming minister Costas (Gavroglou) to embrace with especial interest this programme, for which Ministry Secretary General Yannis Pantis, whom I thank for his service, is responsible, so that they may stand up to all voices of bigotry and racism. Because I feel guilty that I was unable as minister to visit some of these schools, I hope comrade Gavroglou that you will permit me to accompany you as an MP in one of your first visits to one of these schools.

I could mention dozens of other things as a rich accounting in a relatively short timeframe. The impeccable conduct of nationwide university entrance exams, the hard work on tertiary education by Sia Anagnostopoulou, the graduate programmes, the scholarships, care for university student issues, textbooks, the new law on research and ELIDEK inspired by Costas Fotakis, the reform of Greek-language learning abroad by Theodosis Pelegrinis, the new lifelong learning framework, Institutes of Vocational Training (IEK), the youth initiatives by Mr. Papageorgiou, the fine work in the General Secretariat of Religion by Mr. Kalantzis, the utilisation of EU ESPA funding and new financing tools, our plans for digital schools, the state language aptitude certificate, environmental education, sex education, combating addictions, school meals, electronic processing of a series of ministerial administrative functions, the SAEP foreign university degree recognition bureau, training teachers, the reform and rationalisation of analytic curriculums by the Institute of Education Policy, under the guidance of Professor Gerasimos Kouzelis. 

I would like here to thank especially a person without whom we would not have this rich list of accomplishments – Takis Katsaros, the director of my office, a brother and comrade for over 40 years, who with his untiring contribution, decisiveness and administrative ability, was the pillar of this effort. I thank you all once again.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish to comment on all that is being said and written about my removal from the Education Ministry. I remind you that we are all in these positions due to the mandate of the Greek people and the decision of the PM, who is responsible for forming a government, and for subsequent corrective measures in areas where incompetence or delays are noted in the government’s work.

Such problems were not brought to my attention in our meetings with the PM concerning the education ministry. The opposite is true, judging from the very positive references by the PM on the ministry’s work to date in his remarks in the first cabinet meeting.

Despite that, the excellent grade of 20 [by Tsipras] was transformed within a month and a half to a failing grade. Since this is the education ministry and such matters concern us, usually in such rare instances we carefully review who erred, the “generous teacher” who with no explanation annuls such a high grade, or the until yesterday excellent student who suddenly faces a dramatic reversal of his performance. As long as all that is not convincingly explained, the proposal to “change educational environment” cannot be accepted. Even if the new school proposed is a major ministry.

You see some of us – and here I refer also to Takis Katsaros – hammered out our stance toward politics and the Left in the unsubordinated student days of the later junta period and the beginning of the early post-junta era, when we were opening our own stride in the world, when we fought the ubiquitous autarchy, when we tread upon patriarchal family restrictions, when we stuck our tongues out at conservative supposedly moral principles, when they expelled us from school, when they characterised us as contaminated and bums. These are the threads that link our generation to today¨s crisis generation, and that restless, creative reversal element that we sought to imbue in the education ministry, the par excellence ministry of youth.  

All that, along with our unifying struggles with the youth and university student movement of that period, and Rigas Feraios in particular, for rights, liberties, and the education of the younger generation, is the metal from which our generation was built, which followed the generation of anti-junta resistance, the generation of the Lambrakides youth and of 114, and the dragon generation of the national resistance. These are our most valuable degrees, along with the recognition and love of the people of the left. This is what the politicians of TV soap operas will never obtain, the absentees, the indifferent, those externally imposed, the cynics, those empty of life, regardless of how many degrees they managed to acquire with their fathers¨wallets.

That metal, which is invaluable and priceless cannot be bought or exchanged, even if the price is a ministerial or any other post. That is my reply, in the name of the left, which I have said is a party of the ΅lining and dead΅, to the question why Filis did not accept any of the ministries¨ offered him. I smile even with the bewilderment of these people. They do not know me. They do not know us. They have no idea of what can be created when individual dignity meets with and represents a collective dignity.

Let us be more specific. The question about my removal continues to hover over the public sphere, and I see that it preoccupies not only leftists, who following the prime minister¨s urging and honoured me with an extraordinary grade at the recent SYRIZA convention, but also every democratic citizen. It seems that my person - who began his ministerial tenure amidst intense disputes, spurred by the opposition over often non-existent issues, and in a climate of vulgar attacks that bordered on character assassination - acquired not only many friends and supporters from every part of the political spectrum, but also sworn enemies due to the changes, ongoing for many years and discussed with the Church of Greece, in the teaching curriculum of the religion course. Every well informed citizen knows the milestones in this change of the church leadership, which is not limited to the religion course, but also extends to other issues that constitute an agenda for returning to the past, and the quest for a central political role by the church hierarchy.        

In the past week, and despite the recently confirmed ΅resolution of misunderstandings΅΅ which the archbishop himself affirmed after a meeting with the PM, a political death contract was organised and executed at my expense by Skai TV, with the well known interview of Archbishop Ieronymos with journalist Alexis Papahelas

There, the country¨s PM ahead of a cabinet reshuffle was asked to sack the ΅problematic΅education minister. Later, referring to elements of the discussion in the PM¨s office, there was launched an in every way problematic threat of willing political actors to overthrow the elected government if the church demanded that.

That was coupled with equally chilling things for the democratic and constitutional order. I remind you of the belated opposition of Ieronymos to the erection of a mosque, despite the approval of his predecessor Christodoulos, of the adoption of far right rhetoric that refugees threaten to de-Hellenise and Islamify the country, the perversion of Christian charity  by accepting the un-Christian dogma that the church offers bread only to Greeks, and full support for ultra-right clerics.

All that and much more, even if they are political moves, unreconcilable however with the ecumenical message of Christianity, constitute a direct challenge to the political system, a disputing of democratic values, and dangerous rhetoric which if it prevails will lead to the division of society and marginalisation of the country. It will sink our country deeper in crisis.

This issue transcends me as education minister, the current PM, or the left as a party. It involves the entire political system, and all political forces are obliged to stand up and act as a shield of protection against the impudent demand that the church leadership can even consider and finally achieve, with the open support of the bankrupt media establishment, the removal of ministers of the elected government of this country.

This is the very definition of para-institutional behavior, to which all democratic citizens and especially the progressive bloc will stand in opposition decisively, despite any temporary political cost.

My removal from the Ministry of Education Research and Religious Affairs - one wonders how long this anachronism of mixing education and research with religion in the same ministry can last – I am certain will be registered in the clearest manner as a central aim for all democratic forces in the upcoming constitutional revision, to propose the redefinition of church-state relations, in the direction of a separation of roles and competencies.

This is now an issue of fundamental self knowledge and duty for the entire political world, which must respond to the new social reality. The vast majority of our people and most citizens who believe in Orthodoxy agree with this aim, as confirmed steadily in surveys over the last years.

For a country approaching its 200 years since the 1821 revolution will finally complete its institutional-democratic modernization, with a church liberated from the state embrace, a dark ages mentality, and mediaeval anachronism, capable of answering, free from ideological obsessions such as nationalism and zealotry, the great concerns and needs of modern humanity.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I shall devote a large measure of my activity as an MP in the coming period to this aim. I will do this cognizant of the fact that the country¨s exit from the deep moral-political and economic crisis cannot occur by returning to establishment interests, bankrupt dogmas and anachronistic stereotypes. With the recognition that in this crisis no one is sinless, neither the old party system, nor the gluttonous economic elites, nor the interests of multi-pronged corrupt vested interests, nor powers naturally.

This is why the discussion of church-state relations is part of the entire effort for national rebirth, in a new Europe of democracy and solidarity. The essential re-incorporation of the country in Europe cannot be achieved with neoliberal policies of harsh austerity, nor at the same time by venerating domestic dark age powers. If for the former there are justifications, what shall we assume about the latter?

It is a pity for unresolved issues in relations to be handled with aphorisms and anathemas, or even worse with accounting calculations of the church coffers, land parcels, hectares and imperial Byzantine gold seal concessions. These are conceptions and self-interest that before the crisis led to the Vatopedi Monsatery scandal. It is logical then to be chilled when we hear such stands by Ieronymos, at a time when our people are suffering in hard times. These are power-motivated conceptions –I am forced to say it openly – that transform the ΅House of the Father into a house of commerce΅. This in no way takes away the value of the social offering of many people of the popular clergy, which often feels the arbitrariness of the regime of bishops¨rule in our country.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends,

With this political position of democratic principles, proud of our work at the education ministry, with the conviction that nothing finished, but rather everything is starting now, I hand over to my worthy comrade and friend Costas Gavroglou the leadership of the education ministry. We shall all stand beside the new leadership to continue the work we started with the commitment that education constitutes a high priority for democracy, for social cohesion and the Left. We insist that the future of the younger generation is a horizon of freedom and liberation, with creative work for all with democratic rights to life and love, which no power, which no authority, especially one not democratically legitimised, can deny them. That was the meaning of our effort in all ministerial initiatives.