In a dystopian masterpiece I, the Most High, the South American writer Augusto Roa Bastos narrates in an ominous scene the fate of the oppressed peoples, both outside and inside, in the troubled history of South America: the synecdoche concerns the kitten that the barbarian dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, a real politician, a monster of selfish mind and cunning zoophilia, keeps him hidden from other life and the holy light of the sun from birth until the age of three, when he, a poor animal with numbed instincts, is thrown away to the confirmation of his master, who believes in controlling the nature of his people through arbitrariness and social engineering, in the midst of a rat race burrows The result is not difficult for anyone to guess. Many times we can say that the current Romanian people, left in trouble and beaten by their own ignorance and laziness, confirmed after 1989, are like the kitten in the Paraguayan parable of Roa Bastos. Nations are, of course, more numerous than a single member of a species, and therefore suffering and loss are amortized relatively painlessly, even if they cannot recover culturally, economically and politically for decades or even centuries, the minority that makes up the country of identity, in an absurd “spiked”, as in the Corinthian novel by the Russian Andrii Platonov, in which the workers are digging for a gloomy future in which they no longer believe very much, and an idea that they had completely forgotten about at the time.

Today’s Romania is internally a society without a compass, which even we, the victims, the tormentors and the guilty, recognize in the bittersweet cans that we shamelessly flaunt in public space. From the outside – a parade of Europeanism and cultural and economic integration in the European Union. Good foreigners appreciate the locals’ intentions to follow them, but the arrogant and cowardly monkey cannot avoid them. However, our dubious, extremely vulnerable role as the last barricade of Central Europe against the onslaught from the east still animates our state institutions, inert, superficial, lost in inconsistency and insignificance, stuck on yellowed autopilot for 20-25 years. Socio-economic integration is almost complete, but positive results are observed only in a few cities, where a large part of society lives day-to-day, abandoned by global capitalism, where they do not know what to do, except repetitive and poorly paid work, from which only a little extra value can be squeezed . Enough emigrated, and even in the West at the moment, not everything is the best in terms of economic growth. The attempt to find a long-term improvement solution will consist of a visionary investment in education. Substantial social subsidies, the infusion of public capital into poor areas of Romania to improve infrastructure and school staff, population policies coordinated from the center, attractive salaries for the best university graduates, integrated into education, all in the hope that a high level of education could now , indefinite in time, of course, lead to the material development of society and, implicitly, the Romanian nation. Whether we become a European Union country as envisaged or remain relatively sovereign, a society in which intelligence and character are seriously nurtured in schools can look forward to prosperity, peace and moderate prosperity. But in our country, the slow pace and shameful from many points of view simulacrum, which we have been subjected to since the second half of the 90s of the last century, continues unhindered, without penalizing anyone except the easily visible Romanian poverty. . We rage at what we see as the eccentricities of the Western world and are horrified by their real problems, which have worsened in recent decades, from emigration without effective integration to the breakdown of the traditional family, amid general aging and macroeconomic stagnation, but we don’t want to notice that the West still has a thriving middle class, a relatively functional public sphere, some industry, and an interesting local culture in places, while we are mostly entrenched in the chaotic wasteland of 1990s Third World peripheral capitalism, which we have only partially unraveled (or others have for us) in Bucharest (and the pseudo-district of Ilfov, actually a large residential area of ​​the capital), Cluj, Iasi, Craiova, Timisoara, Constanta, Sibiu, Brasov and the list will probably end soon. More ordinary than neighborhood boutiques or small merchants in the village, more miserable than small farmers and animal rights activists, worse than the owners of regional transport companies who still pay their employees illegally, of course, the statesmen, who were ironically nicknamed public servants. , in the absence of another clear identity, participate under the stick of hypocritical, corrupt and weak politicians, enslaved by their position to the West, which they do not understand and to which they cannot at all oppose another European vision, but the Romanian one, to the collective backwardness of Romania. “Agents of reaction”, as they said before, but this time the past they reach for is different, inherited from the collapse of the 80s and the anarchy of the 90s, the officials or workers of the Romanian state do not really love their country and do not treat their peers professionally .

We have a fresh new law on pre-university education and another on university education from July 2023. It is assumed that they were worked on for years as part of the program Educated Romania, which only through this law acquires concreteness, visibility and credibility. The flesh of the law seems to rest on the titanium skeleton of the project Educated Romania. We are already late with the development of procedures and rules that should complement the laws of the Romanian education system. And yet the ink did not dry well on the text of these two laws Law No. 296 of October 26, 2023 on some fiscal and budgetary measures to ensure the long-term financial stability of Romania cancel at least part of the implementation schedule Law on pre-university education No. 198 from July 2023. Among other things, the disappearance or radical reform of the county, sector and municipal inspectorates of Bucharest is postponed after January 1, 2025, when the mandatory application Law on pre-university education No. 198 it comes down to a different government, unborn, and different political parties than the ones we have now (or maybe the same ones, the polls say, but with different stakes than now). Of course, another president will lead Romania’s political life from the shadows occupied by his used props. Most likely, government and ministerial decisions will introduce so many changes and additions to the law that its original form, about which little is known in modern educational institutions, will be completely changed or it will have to be reproduced in its original form.

Why did the school inspectors receive leniency from the current government? It can be answered in several ways, but the most painful is the main reason: simply an impartial, effective and fair examination by a school inspectorate cannot be carried out in an organized and predictable manner in Romania. This long-confirmed structural impotence shared by ARACIP, which should largely cover the work tasks of the former inspectorates from November 1, 2023, determined the extension for a year and a few months, perhaps even more, of the (on) paper reform of education. Then there are internal reasons, less relevant but important for the Romanian education system: the fear of losing bureaucratic control over schools decentralized only from the point of view of discourse, the lack of certain levers to occupy political positions, significantly paid compared to others. to load, the most loyal teachers and principals in the system, rewarding diligent party members for personal and dedicated service to an interest group, or at least to those with some influence in the corridors of any party in power. These would be the reasons for this retreat of a direct political nature. Otherwise, inspections did not function normally for decades, getting lost on the long road to Europeanization from reports and from fat budgets for trips abroad with didactic and pedagogical purposes at the official level: most specialized inspections are carried out by the “reserve army” of Methodists, some of whom are better trained and more honest, than acting inspectors (glory to meritocracy!), and most schools suffer through their management the occasional verbal abuse from education management or staff inspectors who insist on saying things they cannot be told to do in writing because the law is different or subtly bypassed if the principals are ex-inspectors, or, of course, march undercover, in political armour, and the interim schools are imposed by a handful of inspectors who have not passed the examination for taking up the position (as if his organization could not be co-ordinated in in turn in favor of “our people”) and which change among themselves from one government to another at the speed with which governments fall and are created, that is, two or three years at most. Practically and reducing everything to the essence, the inspectorates do not work even at 10% of their theoretical capabilities, prescribed in the law and provided for by the regulations and methodologies of the Ministry of Education. It is absurd to assume this Law on pre-university education No. 198 starting from 2023, the Romanian state would function in a somewhat less miserable, defeated and retired state than it is now, the reform of the inspections by opening some county or municipal directorates with the support of the large ARACIP and increasing the powers faced an impregnable stone wall: where to find staff, qualified and recognized enough to verbally carry out the much-desired reform? _

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