When I found out we had to project images on stage, the first thing I thought of was this picture of us saving what we could with a few friends. But I've since withdrawn from the activity and am busy bombing on the sidelines.
Good evening, my name is George Gîlea, I am a journalist and I live in our beautiful capital city. Before that, I was born in Galati and grew up in the area of junction 22, in the direction of Two Old Maids. The area is so named because Two Old Maids were murdered there in a heinous crime in the 80s. And we, more than 30 years later, still tell the driver in the maxi-taxi: Stop at Two Old Maids, please! Towards the end of 4th grade, I moved to Comuna Greci, Tulcea County.
This is a representative picture, although it is outside the village. It is a very beautiful region in the north of Dobruja, with landscapes that you won't find anywhere else in the country. I lived in Greci until the end of my school years. That was a kind of golden age when I did everything. We farmed, we harvested, we mowed, we collected lime blossoms in the forest, but we also had great friends with whom I roamed the countryside.
When I was in 5th grade, the Ministry of Education came up with an experiment and divided us into classes A to E depending on our school results.
I was placed in Grade 5 A because I had won second prize in Grade 4, even though I had never been a pupil. But here I am with the good children. The bad ones were in 5th grade E, everyone knew that.
This is the Oak School in Greci. I didn't go to school here, but I always thought it was
very nice. As far as I know, it has since been renovated, I haven't been there for a long time. at home... But there was a time when we often met in the Oak School yard. A phase ended in the 8th grade. Some went to grammar school in Tulcea or Constanta, others went to vocational school. The nearest grammar school in Greci was in the town of Măcin, about 15 km away, so we went there depending on capacity. My main problem during my four years of high school was not what I learned at school or my relationships with teachers or classmates, but the fact that I didn't have enough money to go to school, to get to Măcin and especially with what to go home. Apart from short periods when I commuted with my classmates, I couldn't afford a bus ticket for most of those four years. Although it didn't cost very much. As far as I remember, 150 lei a month at most.
But as Ilie Moromete used to say: Where am I going to get the money if I don't have it?
So the only option was to hitchhike every day, in the morning at 7.00 am and in the afternoon at 2.00 pm. Getting there was a bit easier because I was known and there was always someone there to pick me up. But coming back was more complicated because it was harder to find someone I knew. I always went with people who wanted to go to Tulcea or Constanta and dropped me off at a crossroads about 4 km from the municipality. I could make it from there. Besides, in winter or in the rainy season, it was annoying to stand in the fields on the outskirts of the city for an hour or two. I was asked what I was thinking during that time? What questions I asked myself in view of the situation I found myself in. I can honestly tell you that they weren't big questions. I was thinking about getting home and eating something, or meeting friends around dinner time. Short-term things like that. I wasn't thinking that the Ministry of Education should know that a child in a community in Tulcea is sitting on the edge of the abyss and has no way of going to school. I don't think that was an eye-opening or formative experience for me, in any way. It was an infuriating experience in a hurry. Just as honestly, I don't know why I continued to go to school given the lack of prospects. For the first few years of high school, I couldn't imagine going to college. That meant a place in a dorm or, if I didn't get it, rent. It also meant I had to get a job. At some point I did the math and it turned out that I had changed 10 tenancies and 10 jobs in the 3 years I spent at university in Galati.
We installed TV antennas on people's houses, we were bartenders, I read heat meters, I sold telephone subscriptions, I worked in a casino in Braila. All this time I was studying and doing all kinds of projects as part of a non-governmental organization that I had founded with our group of friends. I don't know when we had the time to do so many things.
The fact that I no longer rely on the state to help me get around, but help it by paying taxes and being a good citizen who supports the citizens' initiative, is mainly thanks to my friends. I have always been lucky enough to have friends I could learn from. People who sang or acted, people who read a lot and were enthusiastic about history or philosophy. That's how I ended up studying philosophy. In the photo behind me, in the top left corner, is our modern philosophy teacher, Ion Cordoneanu. I think it was his birthday, as you can see from the shirt he's wearing. We had sewn him a shirt and depicted him on it, in Photoshop, in Raphael's famous painting - The School of Athens. Together with these friends and others not pictured here, we organized theater festivals, art exhibitions, serious debates on democracy involving all the city's high schools and students.
I wanted to tell you about this from my own experience, because one in four children in rural areas drop out of school after secondary school. There are many reasons why a quarter of rural children drop out of 9th grade. One of them is that they don't have enough money to go to school. Apart from the personal stories and supporting the vulnerable, it is also about a healthy society. And that is difficult to achieve when so many children are left behind. For anyone who has lived in Romania after 1990, the expression "generation of victims" - from an educational point of view - is a familiar and well-known thing. Because almost every member of every family belongs to a generation of victims, and that makes us all a victimized society.
When every minister tries something new in education - and we had a different minister every 1 year and 4 months on average - the experiments become experiments, and the expression generation of victims no longer has anything noble about it, but becomes harmful. The World Vision Romania Foundation recently published a report showing that the national Healthy Meal programme, piloted in 450 schools across the country, has worked for only 36% of these schools. And of those, 60% understood giving children a sandwich as a healthy meal. Because for too many of these children, school lunch is the main meal of the day.Moreover, for some children it is the main reason why they go to school every morning. It makes no sense to go on and on for years about the benefits of transportation and one hot meal a day for students. These are the most important measures to reduce school dropout. And we are still implementing (inadequate) programs that we have been talking about for years.
Education has always been a priority, avowedly. But not really in reality.
Romania has the highest school dropout rate in the European Union - 16%. One in five young people between the ages of 15 and 29 does not participate in any educational or employment program. 42% of our pupils are functionally illiterate. Perhaps it would be useful to review all the experiments on generations of pupils that have got us into this situation. But I prefer to look to the future.
Finally, I would like to encourage the younger ones: Stay in school, ask yourself questions, surround yourself with inspiring friends, do something!
And for the older ones: Let's take care of transportation and food so we can move on to more complicated topics. The most important thing is that the students are in the classroom when we talk to them.
Otherwise, the national exam and the Abitur are just around the corner. I wish all the children who have reached this point every success from now on! I only hope that when their children are students, they will no longer be referred to as the victim generation.
Thank you!
