Abolish the amendment on distance education

[Wayne Hall]

Teachers' Association: Abolish the amendment on distance education

Teachers' Association of the Argo-Saronic Islands
Aegina, 11/5/2020

Subject: Abolish now the amendment on distance education and the recording of lessons in school classes

In the midst of a pandemic, with schools closed, in the wake of the anti-environmental omnibus bill the Greek government has now introduced an anti-educational omnibus bill, one more reactionary directive, which now institutes with legal sanctioning the provision of distance education in the event of "total or partial suspension or prohibition of educational structures or for any other reason corresponding to extraordinary or unpredicted circumstances" and permits the entry of cameras into school classes and tertiary education for the purpose of projecting lessons live into the homes of students who cannot be present at school. The government is aware of the opposition of the teachers' movement to such a practice and accordingly submitted the amendment at the last minute, in a bill of the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum, unrelated to education. As in the case of the omnibus bill on education it is operating in the most anti-democratic way, taking advantage of the pandemic to impose the most authoritarian, indeed totalitarian, measures for control of the educational process.

The amendment is totally threatening in content because:

1. In Article 1 it asserts that "notwithstanding any other provision, employing technological means, it is possible for modern distance teaching to be made available to primary and secondary-level pupils who who are unable to participate directly in the educational process whether through total or partial suspension or prohibition of educational structures or for any other reason corresponding to extraordinary or unpredicted circumstances".

This provision makes it absolutely clear that the amendment does not have to do only with "cameras in school classes". The amendment "baptises"/legimates distance education as normal education after many years of acknowledging that face-to-face live teaching cannot be replaced by any other procedure. This opens the door wide for full substitution by distance teaching in the educational process in the event of whatever the Ministry decides to be "extraordinary or unpredicted circumstances".

2. The amendment introduces surveillance cameras into classrooms and into teaching! This measure entails countless dangers for the teaching process. The entry of cameras into a school class and videoing of the lesson is, for a start, anti-educational and anti-pedagogical. The living process or learning and education is terminated. Limits are placed on trust, immediacy and communication when the activities of the teacher and the students are observed by an outside party. Indeed live face-to-face teaching becomes something secondary, with its place taken by distance teaching which, as we have emphasized, from the perspective of material-technical infrastructures is neither public nor universal and from a pedagogical viewpoint cannot be seen as an autonomous educational method but as an ancillary activity, a technical tool.

Following a lesson by means of a camera contravenes every right of a teacher and a student to privacy and makes it impossible for personal data to be safeguarded. At any moment a remark or a movement could be published, reaching thousands of extraneous eyes and ears and becoming a subject for disparagement and defamation.

A class in school cannot equated with a classroom. It is the venue of a learning and teaching process, of socialization, it hosts all the assertive elements of the childhood and adolescent years, determining who one will become in the future, how one will deal with what comes up in one's life. By contrast, a camera in the class organizes its life around the options of the supervisor.

3. In an article in paragraph 2 of the amendment there is a specific indication that "any content that may be produced in the abovementioned context is retained for an appropriate period. Processing of the material in question is permitted only for research or statistical purposes. "The Education Ministry is responsible for processing of data in the public sector and school heads in the private sector. This paragraph makes it clear why it is that distance education has come to stay, as the Education Ministry has indeed declared, and is not simply a transient episode in the pandemic. The objective is comprehensive control and thorough supervision all participants in the teaching/learning process. It is a a cynical admission of the actual purposes. The power-wielding eye of Big Brother , whether this means the Institute of Educational Policy, the school administration or the private school headmaster or headmistress, has been brought into the everyday routine of the school and is demanding full submission to its dictates. Here every notion of educational freedom, of teacher autonomy in specific school environments, has gone out the window.

Educators are not going to consent to exposure of our pupils, or of us ourselves, to these dangers

Anyone who thinks that these provisions have been legislated for the benefit of pupils or in defence of their rights passed is deeply deceived. The Ministry has not been in the slightest interested in those pupils who throughout the great quarantine have not been connected to the internet or have not had the necessary equipment to be connected. It has attempted to offload the cost of equipment allocation onto the school committees. i.e. the municipalities, and the schools themselves, avoiding public funding in every possible way. The great digital divide, in reality a class divide, which was created, was covered over with public relations declarations about the "marvels" of distance learning and slanderous attacks on teachers by the mainstream media, because the Prime Minister himself was the first to speak of heroic efforts. The glorious electronic platforms of modern and not-so-modern technology were planned for the few, for environments privileged both educationally and economically. For everyone else there was the solution of the mobile phone, at first with the charge of a local call and then free of charge, according to the statement of Mrs. Kerameus (Education Minister). It is characteristic that World Bank analyses on distance education encourage the education ministries of nation states to regard educators and their trade unions as an impediment to these developments and to use technology for thorough and far-reaching control of their work.

The Ministry of Education's objectives appear quite clear: through an amendment of this kind it opens the way for full control of the educational process, of inspection and of assessment. In addition to teacher shortages, even the workplaces of substitute teachers can be replaced by cameras and distance education, which does not require personnel, and makes it possible for there to be total control, including of sponsors and investors.

We reply that the educational process is not either for livestreaming or for monitoring from the computer screen by whoever has access. A safe and protected environment for our pupils is the school's first obligation. Educators will protect the personal life of pupils and teachers , the vital and creative live educational process, the rights of pupils to free public education, the working rights of teachers.

The amendment must be abolished now. Cameras out from the schools!

A strike and a boycott against every kind of contemporary distance education. We call upon the associations (the Labour Inspectorate, Greek Federation of Secondary Education State School Teachers, Greek Primary Teachers' Federation, ) to declare a strike and a boycott against contemporary distance education.

Information provision and joint action by our association and parents' and guardians' associations. Discussion in an open venue/school courtyard on the subject: "We are responding to the harmful consequences of the omnibus bill and reception of lessons on-line". Support for the demand for provision of permanent contracts for school cleaner and the requirement of hygienic conditions in our schools.

Participation in the 13th May mobilization against the omnibus bill on education. We urge colleagues whose are present in Attica and other areas to participate in the associations' mobilizations.

For the Steering Committee

Christos Reppas
President

Evangelia Lykouri
General Secretary



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