Education :: Everybody's Right?

There is a crisis in the educational system of Greece... again.

The politicians have been trying for many years to create a just and effective educational system. They have changed the system several times and the students have protested several times. Also the teachers have gone on strike and protested against what they thought was an irrational way of judging the knowledge of a person.

So what have we achieved so far? I remember that we (the students of 1997) closed up our high school by force for 3 months and stayed in there, as a way of protest. We forbade the entrance of teachers as a drastical and desperate way to be heard.

"The System Sucks. Do something Now!"

Ten years have passed since then, the system changed and changed and changed. Governments came to power and left. Ministers of education appeared and dissapeared.. And the students of 2006, after 3 months of teachers going on strike, are closing the schools again.

"You achieved only a hole in the water, dear Politicians. You simply ALL FAILED."

Our problem, ten years ago, was the unfair way of entering the university. It did not matter how good one was at school, as long as one could pass the examinations on a set of four subjects. The problem was that one could finish high school with an A grade but this grade did not correspond to the real knowledge. Students of A failed in the university examinations because

1. The had not really learned (by heart) the material
2. The teachers did not really teach the material and allowed students to advance to the last class of school by giving high grades

So I have certificate of graduating highschool with an A+ grade. BUT I cannot be accepted to university. How does this make sense? An A student, who has passed successfully all subjects at school with an A is not suitable for entering the university? How is that sane? How is that logical?

Another fault of the educational system at that time was that as long as you did not take the exams immediately upon graduating for high school, you could never again apply for a university. Never again. Unless you wanted to go through the last class of high school again... A fault which probably still exists in a slightly different way though.

A year after I graduated from high school they changed the system. Into something that finally proved to turn the already unflexible system into something very very hard. The four subjects now became ten, only they were reflected in the grades of the last two classes as well. That was a desperate effort to plant the university exams and associate them with real school. A greek student would go to school in the morning and spent his whole afternoon taking extra classes in maths, physics, ancient greek etc to be able to really learn and pass the examinations for the university. Not only do you have to sacrifice all your youth in learning, but you also have to have a pair of rich parents to pay for extra lessons in english, german, physics, chemistry, maths, ancient greek, piano, music, dance etc etc etc ..... And that is what we call "Free Education for All".

I wonder how all these intelligent politicians have not yet grasped the core of the problem (or have they?). The problem is the procedure of entering a univerisity. The reason to this problem is a chain of events that takes off in primary school. A student is permited to advance from class 1 to class 2 with the base grade from primary school all the way to high school. This system takes for granted the fact that one is able to follow classes and learn the material of a next class by having achieved the base grade of the previous one. Shouldnt that mean that a student with the base grade in the last high school class should have the right to continue his studies in university? Then why do you block A students from the universities???? Instead of this, the system demands A+ grades in seperate exams and deprives the right for higher education to a very great percentage of students, that is 45% of those who apply.

It is funny, because a Greek high school graduate, could study in any university of Europe he wanted, whenever he wanted, with only the highschool certificate. And yet in Greece he just cant. That is the reason that leads a great percentage of high school graduates to universities in the UK, Germany and Italy.

So, change the system from primary school! Make it effective, make it real! Graduating from highschool is now a mere ritual with no meaning. Everybody graduates. Very few go to a university. We need teachers that know how to teach. A flexible and modern system of teaching, flexible and modern ways of examining knowledge. We need a system that promotes free thinking, creativity, the ability of COMBINING INFORMATION and NOT the ability of STORING INFORMATION. The educational system nowadays trains students into parrots, while it should train them into independent, mature and thinking humans.

The solution is simple. But the solution is worthless without an honest will to solve the problems, as well.

My Life is a Password...

I often wake up in the morning, switch my super-pc on and wonder and gaze at its chaotic contents. Sometimes I am filled with awe about the system-monster I created and at other times I doubt how contructive this "creativity" is.

The Desktop is filled with folders and subfolders, with files and images, documents and program shortcuts. The C partition must have around 1 GB left and there I really must add space to it. Half of my files are lying within a silver box that hides an external HD and half of them are in the second partition. And the silver box is lying somewhere between the "zone of the black cables" and the "lost books" of viruswitch's room.

But nothing so far is alarming enough, the real danger lies within the hidden RAM and the workings of my mysterious CPU. The BIOS is like a sleeping monster in a dormant state yet ready to rise and produce sound waves through the atmosphere. BEEP! BEEP! Black screen... A TFT that changes its wavelength? Or could it be the grafic card that was never meant to have its drivers? A weird fate for ATI. Will it ever end up there where it really belongs?

Speed was the pride of this pc that opened and closed windows in a microsecond. Now I have to wait 5 seconds for the desktop menu to open. The 5 seconds are the dreaded messenger of FORMAT C which I would do right now if only my life was not a password. If I wouldnt have to back up my emails from C, if I hadnt stored 20 email accounts in there, if the magic wand of opera would not store more than 50 user name and passwords for very important sites (which passwords I forgot), then I would format C now. If I could store all these 100 accounts in my brain (email, sites, university, messengers, voIP etc) I would surely format right now. But the temptation is too great, the internet speed makes up for the system speed and the case is postponed "until further notice" . Lets just find out for how long it takes for windows to die on its own...

How to Create an Extremely Bad Website

To create an extremely bad website is a difficult task. It might seem easy at first sight, but it is not at all. And one has to try very hard to achieve this noble goal.

One of the most difficult parts to ruin, when designing a website, is the NAVIGATION.

The difficulty of a chaotic navigation lies in the ability of the webdesigner to go against that which we call "Common Sense". So one has to employ all ones strength and intelligence to become... dumb! Logic has got to be abandoned and complete surealism has to take over...

The famous webdesign rules
1) KISS (Keep it simple stupid)
2) The 2 clicks rule (the user must be able to access all pages from the main navigation in 2 clicks)
have got to be reverted and avoided.

If you want to completely confuse and agitate your visitors they must not find what they are looking for at no cost! Your success is proved when they wonder countless hours clicking through the hundreds of useless links you provide to many pages that promise the same information!

Another very important thing is that your contact information is not valid. By no means place a valid telephone number or email and use different pages with different contact info! Let the user have a little adventure! Allow the visitor to go through a life-quest, allow him to develope his psychic abilities to guess your contact info!

Still, you will not have created an extremely bad website if you keep your content up to date. Thats something that has to be avoided. Keep your content preferably one year old or even more. Nobody will be interested in last years meeting, when they are looking for the time and place of this years meeting.


Be extra careful when publishing essential information. You do not want the visitor to access it directly and quickly! You want to torture your visitor and you want this torture to be slow and painful... Use at least 10 links that will lead to a page with the desired information. Then don't be silly and spoil it! Attach a word document with the information and let the user download it. Let them wait, search for a place to download the precious .doc , let them scan it with the antivirus and finally allow Word to open. A triumph! You want your visitors to do something, dont just feed them with the information quickly and easily!

Even better! Publish different documents for the same subject and update only one of them! Let the visitor download all of them, compare them, study them and arrive at a logical conclusion.

The visitor might as well open the window and scream due to frustration. And when the visitor is heard miles away or seen pulling out his hair then you know you have succeded your goal.

Promise the information, create a labyrinth, keep it as complex and complicated as possible, never update your content unless you have material more than one year old and lead your visitors to insanity.

Well done, you have created an extremely bad website.

Post dedicated to the website of my university.