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The crisis of the educational system

Nikos Chatzarakis

Dear readers,

As the new issue reaches your hands, the time has come to evaluate our work. Dozens of articles found, for another time, their way to the hands of the editorial board with their authors waiting anxiously for publishing, the reward for their work. A work for which all (students and teachers) should be congratulated.

Here I must say, as a young member of the journal’s “company”, that I am always glad to learn that young people, especially students, are working so hard and with such devotion on fields that school is usually “turning us against”. By their articles, so many children show us how interesting, even lovable, sciences can be.

And so we come to the major matter of our days: the educational system. I have started to fear that the distance between students and school is getting longer and longer. More and more frequently, we see students and teachers as well, turning away from the fundamental idea of education. I think we can now speak openly for an “educational crisis”.

A basic indication of this crisis is the fear or hate that appears in many students for the subjects of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Children, of course, were always stiffing their upper lip when coming to these lessons. However, I believe this reservedness of theirs was springing from their ignorance of the real nature of these lessons or from their indifference for these specific sciences; both opinions are absolutely accepted. Despite all these, the last years I have been sensing a particular hatred between students and lessons, a hatred leading to another bigger one,

between humans and sciences.

Another characteristic sign is the relation between students and their projects. In S. Korea, for example, the opinion that everything is buyable (that has been nourished quite well) and the children’s ignorance of their lessons leads many of them to turn Internet upside down as searching for a ready project to buy. In Greece, where for the first time the lesson “Research Project” was added on the school programs, I sensed for the first time such a strong need of “fleeing” among the students. I haven’t seen that great disdain for team work. And still, we all can tell collaboration is the basis for scientific progress.

In my opinion things are simple: education has been put of her own scent! Schools are facing students used to the glamour and the laxness the life in modern society (and specifically, the media) is offering them. The professors are coming face to face with children that understand better than them the new scientific achievements (like computers or videogames) without caring about the science that created them. On the same time, the educative policy is not taking any care to modernize the “hated” subjects, a thing very simple if

new technology and laboratories make a dynamic enter in the school program. And of course, (something we have all said repeatedly) no encouragement is given to the students to work, which is perfectly suitable with our era. I hope (and wish) that more and more students and teachers will get the scent of this journal (or any other similar project) and will start to work with love with all these “awful things”. The time that only a few can discover their own way to enjoy science (or anything else) at school must come to an end. And with this hope, I am waiting until the next issue!