Every academic year, management, leadership and supervisory staff in Romanian schools ask themselves, in writing or orally, a SWOT analysis problem, a work technique that comes from the long process of Western acculturation with which we, as a modern nation, are so familiar. , all in view of the PDI (plan, strategy, scheme of institutional development). It is extremely difficult to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and development goals of the Romanian education system as a whole. Each institution enjoys its own SWOT analysis, overt or hidden, but putting everything together in a dynamic and contradictory whole, as it happens, we are faced with what we would call, with minimal technical value, the Romanian social dialectic, an ocean of tendencies and counter-tendencies, which we will boldly try to describe below in its basic data. Of course, without referring to specific studies, the problems are not typically Romanian, but, in fact, they are part of a broad demonstration common to many other developing countries, some even mired in underdevelopment. Before we are surprised that there are no grades in Norway, or that the planned discipline is not barracks like in Romania (the local master adores outward displays of obedience), or we will always be surprised to note the superior material capacity of the Scandinavians. education, let’s ask ourselves, let’s ask ourselves honestly, who we are and what we Romanians are doing in the equation of modern public education, public, free and to which, in principle, we all have access. The main controversial aspects we have considered are as follows.

1. Intrusive and necessary policy. On the one hand, the secretaries of state, an emanation of the ruling parties, determine the general work schedules in the system. On the other hand, political boundaries usually end at the level of the middle and lower administration of the state. They impose state policy anywhere in the world. One is to move in the direction of inclusive and egalitarian education in the treatment of most existing social categories, the other is to especially support excellence and results of unusual, elite, voluntary, expression of competence and personal merit. The difference between left-wing and right-wing governments determines the emphasis on one or the other side of social needs, despite the fact that they are (pre)defined. Probably, in any developed society there is a middle way. In Romania, public policies agreed upon through public debates and group projects are rare, if not completely absent. Functions political – this is exactly what their name says: positions, ranks, statuses are counted as annuities for fixed periods, beyond any measurable responsibility, enjoying impunity. As soon as this political core is created in the Ministry, the public culture seeps into the schools, the inspectors get on the road, right in the middle, in this political game without leadership and impersonal practices. Even the positions of specialized inspectors, where the rate of application of a certain state policy is minimal, the existing procedures and methodologies that already codify the target state policy, are simple political interference, trivial bureaucratic positions, haunted by the unproductive and ineffective behavior of some rent seekers autochthonous In this regard, we can draw an unhappy conclusion: apart from loud words like “budgetary autonomy”, “decentralization”, “digitization”, we do not come across anything noticeable in practice, because some people with functions they are above the laws, rules and social practices recognized as such. If teachers take exams, more or less final, to become better or to be teachers in the first place, inspectors and those above they are appointed on a fiduciary basis and personal political supportwhich is based on the qualification imposed on the completion of some of the documents in the file, many of which were obtained under conditions that are not subject to any rigorous verification (or, finally, of the type presented by Valeriu Nicolae).
2. Digitization with papers. In any Romanian school you go to today, you will be amazed by the “double registration” of all documents, from flat certificates to bulky plans for drawing up rules. First on paper, then in digital form or vice versa, the road is circular and redundant. Tables filled out in Google Sheets and printed in triplicate with the seal of the department and the signature of the director are required. Fear of digitalization That’s all to hide educated skepticism, related to any written, printed or online documents of people obsessed with primary orality. We make so many copies of existing documents “according to the original” because we do not trust the application of existing laws, and interested parties require additional evidence if an error occurs, for example, some informants are misspelled, lost or falsified. The signature and seal on almost any document are intended to demarcate responsibilities that can hardly be assumed without it. formal restriction by signature Hence the difficulty in obtaining signatures and approvals in Romanian public institutions: why rush to sign when we can delay or ask for additional documents? “But come again next week, please.”
3. Extracurricular and extracurricular work as a school in the class. A means of diversifying educational offers, broadening the horizon of learning and non-traditional learning of all kinds of life skills has become the defining method of the Romanian school in the last decade fine. There are gymnasiums where the ceilings fall on students, and others where, unfortunately, there are not enough teachers to cover all school subjects. We are talking about other high schools where Erasmus+ programs and rigorous trips abroad cover whole weeks of the academic year as we go out into the world with the same teachers and leading students. We count European schools among others that remained in 1950 in terms of the level of modernization and quality of education, unqualified teachers swarming in the countryside. We celebrate with splendor in one place day of europe while in others we still struggle in unsanitary toilets. Excesses and extremes define a primarily inconsistent system riddled with major internal imbalances, starting with elite educational institutions where undergraduates experience emotions in relation to standing an updated international list of universities where they will graduate, in others where semi-illiteracy rises to rationally unforeseeable heights and the bachelor’s rate on earth. Activities in Another school and Green week they are a financial and logistical chore in most counties in Romania, but a pleasure, an educational extravagance in the big urban centers where students, supported by well-off parents, feel great or on vacation, a question that can be changed by a Romanian student. We provide high quality educational services, pretentious, false Eastern European mandarins to some and beyond criticism to most, left behind by appalling ignorance and flagrant administrative malfeasance. Instead of evaluating the didactic efforts of the teacher in the classroom, we reward extra activities, fun aids and leisure culturally replacing average but decent requirements in schools that are not really being met satisfactorily by today’s standards, that is, if there is anyone who seriously considers the quality of education beyond grids, marks, progress reports and learning improvement and other coded expressions, but which do not convince with clarity, thoroughness, stability, or real book science.
4. Improvement and continuous learning against the background of declining public recognition of the teaching profession. Although the didactic sophistication and correctness of the way of work leaves much to be desired in every sense, the few positive percentages are offset by many negative percentages, unconvincingly hidden, although Romanian students leave schools with less and less intellectual and civic formation. , there has never been so much emphasis on the accumulation of diplomas from courses, webinars, national and international conferences, etc. We have difficulties with the multiplication table, which has become questionable in terms of efficiency (7×8? – google it!), we express ourselves clumsily and anapodically in writing, because we read books that do not belong to the “classical repertoire” (here I can add to the long list of those who do not read, except for entertainment, both Mircea Carterescu and Stefan Agopyan) or or nothing is read, we don’t promote a way of speaking and a set of average knowledge, but instead we offer dozens of courses for students with CES, as if the school is largely designed for differentiated work , for free a number of standard expectations, as well as solving some problems that, although real, can be integrated into a mass pedagogy common to all. We casually focus on some big problems, but minor in intention, without taking into account that they have spread to the table of students in Romania. The current teacher is officially good, starting from the last courses he passed and graduated with a certificate, in digitalization, in individual work with students in situations of social isolation, in the most innovative pedagogical methods, but he experiences difficulties in teaching subjects in a day school, to test the accumulation of knowledge (yes, the school also deals with this, although it sounds paradoxical today) and for the formation of skills that arise from the first, for establishing a number of clear rules of behavior and civilized behavior. We dream of visiting Mars with Elon Musk in a spaceship and promote postmodern forms sanitationbut we still find it difficult to wash our hands after going to the toilet or to greet each other politely in our daily interactions.
5. School competitions and Olympiads are a school only for winners. We banned crowns and old-fashioned ribbon awards in school divisions at a time when the regime of the “victorious proletariat” introduced hierarchies based on more or less real school merit, with almost no one complaining about the fundamental injustice of such an approach. On the contrary, there are many Eastern Europeans of mature generations who nostalgically recall those pretentious ceremonies as rhetoric and emotional engagement, beyond the red paint of official ideology. Now we no longer practice such “discriminatory” and “offensive” vacations, because the child of a laborer could, without the hindrance of society, take the first place before the child of the mayor, the grocer, or the storekeeper, left by the hearth. village or commune. We also avoid “show of force” today. – Continue reading the article and leave comments on Contributors.ro