Georgian education reversed

The president of Georgia admitted that the former course of introducing the western standards in the Georgian education is not quite correct. One of these days, Mikhail Saakashvili promised to bring back the former system of textbooks provision and the structure of the education program, as well as to introduce final examinations and the credit card-based meals system. Besides, the president thinks it necessary to resume the military-patriotic upbringing, obviously using new notions of the country's friends and enemies.

The Georgian authorities have realized at last that not all the things coming from the West are good for the country. After more than five years of reforms carried out in the educational system and the attempts to shift the system to the European standards the president of Georgia admitted that many innovations were wrong.

Yesterday, during his meeting with the teachers from Batumi schools, Mikhail Saakashvili expressed concern about the falling prestige of the school certificates.

A person who introduced seasonal education at schools (it is when this semester a schoolchild studies only physics and the next semester he studies only chemistry) was called an ignorant person by the president; he also criticized the decision to cancel the final examinations, the constant change of the training aids, the abolishment of special schools and rotation of the educational institution headmasters.

It was Minister of Education and Science Alexander Lomaya who started the reorganization of the educational system after the Rose Revolution. At the end of 2008, he was replaced by Nikoloz Gvaramia who retained the unquiet post for only a year. Last December Saakashvili replaced the minister again.

Quite unexpectedly, the Georgian education was headed by Dmitriy Shashkin. Besides the fact that he is the only representative of a non-titular nation in the Georgian government, he had occupied a rather curious post before, serving as minister of probation, sentence enforcement and legal assistance, simultaneously being head of the Democratic Reforms Commission of the country.

Either the new minister wised Saakashvili up to stop the blind imitation of the west, or the authorities are afraid of the protest actions that are to be held in February by the Free Trade Union of Teachers and Scientists; anyway, the president's yesterday speech marked a gradual reverse. However, the head of the state also underlined that the changes will not mean getting back to the past but improving of what is already available.

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