By: Branko Koderman
Slovenian education is a political project – today very successful and effective for certain interests. So successful, in fact, that in the last composition of the Slovenian parliament the unpatriotic side achieved nearly a two‑thirds majority. This happened even as, in the face of Janković’s C0 project, an unhealthy and irrational sewer folly, the majority of Ljubljana’s citizens remained deaf and mute.
Am I exaggerating? I do not think so! I was taught, and later spent my life teaching others, that nothing can arise from nothing, nor can it be the product of mere chance. What I mentioned above comes about because people, voters, choose leaders and political representatives who sooner or later bring them misfortune and despair. Do these voters not know how to think? And if not, how and where did they learn not to think?
“Gaber’s school” began to be built soon after independence. The project was the work of the ‘left’ and its allies, in truth, all anti‑patriotic social and political forces, after the historic achievement of the Slovenian nation had been internationally and constitutionally recognised. In the new state of the Slovenian nation, they faced the threat of disappearing into the dustbin of history. How to survive and perhaps eventually regain full power? In my view, their strategic decision was entirely rational: to create voters who would easily fall for their deceitful promises. It was essential to ban the Church from entering the school system. Why? Because a Christian value‑based view of humanity and reality would have stifled their project at birth. Then came the construction of a total panopticon – an organisational system that is meticulously organised, carefully planned, centrally bureaucratised, and strictly controlled. Such a system subjugates people. Complete organisation cannot and must not be a community of people bound by shared goals and ideals, with internal relations governed by commonly accepted principles, virtues, and values.
Scoring connects the entire system, everyone and everything. Points are collected by principals and teachers, for advancement. Parents collect points together with their children. for admission to a good secondary school or university, or simply to avoid failing a subject. Children and adolescents collect points in abundance, at every test, school assignment, final exam. For better success? Success in what? Success in knowledge, they say. But what is knowledge? Is it what is written in textbooks and spoken by teachers? Is that all? In the social sciences, history, languages, and Slovene (I exclude mathematics and most natural sciences from this critique), children and youth study, reread, and cram. They learn ‘by heart,’ sometimes even in a ‘copy‑paste’ fashion. As if each of them did not already carry in their pocket, on their mobile phone, the knowledge and information of nearly all humanity. Do we need such a vast and expensive school system for that?
Assessment (scoring) must be numerical, so that a candidate’s success or failure can be mathematically processed. And objective. Objectivity can always be checked. For the principal, the number of classroom observations; for the teacher, the number of seminar attendances; for the student, the number of assessments and points on tests or exams. Everyone can and must objectify their performance with written certificates, products. Points accumulate for everyone, and through some Marxist‑dialectical delusion that quantity turns into quality, we supposedly get what – a successful person or an outstanding achiever.
Cognitive and developmental psychology understands such instrumental conditioning as reinforcing narcissistic traits in the personality structure of the individual, which applies fully to children and adolescents. How, then, should an adult citizen, after such long‑term “training,” think healthily, rationally, and wisely about the promises of their leaders and representatives?
(Contribution of the movement “Skupnost Kosezov / Kosez Community”; Branko Koderman: “New School 1”)
