The aims of the Society for Education
[The two opposing views that were expressed in the General Meeting of the Society for Education and finally led to its split]
Suggestions of Mr Alexandros Delmouzos
1) The Society for Education in relation to Religious and National education will follow the course it has been following so far.
2) The Society is an educational and not a political society, not interested in nor working for a specific party or specific social class, but catering for the education of all. N[ote]. Its policy will be the educational enlightenment of the whole of society and it will endeavour to influence all parties as concerns its demands.
Suggestions of Mr Dimitris Glinos.
1) The objective of the Society for Education remains the same, that is 'to help in the reform of Greek education'.
2) The Society for Education is not a political society, that is it is not harnessed to any political party. It is a society for the study of educational problems and social enlightenment concerning them. Therefore it determines and exercises a certain education policy, to achieve the implementation of its objective.
3) Every significant social reform, and consequently the educational one, occurs by means of the struggle of social classes. The Greek bourgeoisie, as the experience of the Society for Education has demonstrated so far, either fights directly or does not sincerely seek substantial popular educational reform. For this reason the Society realizes that popular educational reform cannot have a different social vehicle and advocate other than those social classes that, as the underprivileged, clearly realize the social problems and fight for the implementation of social reforms, thus forcing the ruling class to improve its institutions. For this reason the Society for Education, as a society of the educational avant-garde, is obliged to work in order to express educational demands and shape the educational conscience of popular classes whether labour, rural, or petit bourgeois.
4) The obvious and basic labourer of educational reform is the teacher. Therefore the Society for Education believes that the teacher, without breaking the laws and the curricula of the State during the execution of his work within the school, has not only the right of free thought, but the right as an individual and as a group to enlighten society and contribute to the reform of education. The Society for Education consider it our moral obligation to protect these rights of the teacher.
5) All the time we have been seeking educational reform the Society for Education has never until now brought up the issue of teaching Religion because we come up against the constant chargesof atheism, anti-religiousness, scheming against religion etc. We think that it isour duty to proclaim that the religious issue is considered principally as a matter of freedom of conscience, and therefore does not consider the teaching of Religion at schools as inseparable from the concept of public education .
As concerns the problem of national education and the charges of unpatriotism that the Society faced, we consider it our duty to declare that we recognize as the content of 'national education' that education should be based on those living elements of culture that form the characteristic traits of our people, as these develop over time. Therefore the concept of patriotism and national education must not be taken advantage of by cultivating chauvinism, nor by identifying the concept of nation with the interests of the ruling class.
(Alexis Dimaras, I metarrythmisi pou den egine, Athens, Nea Elliniki Vivliothiki, 1974, pp. 151-153)
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