A Requiem for the End of Great Narratives in the Era of the 'Crisis': Greece under the Microscope

This article, placed in the general framework of a global attempt to reform education by making it comply with neoconservative and neoliberal directions, discusses the particular case of Greece, and investigates the possibility of an international educational paradigm-seeking to impose a market reasoning on school culture and create a disciplined privatised educational sector in pursuit of profit (Siani-Davies, 2017). It contests the disaster approaches preaching the 'end of labour', examines the role of teachers in the new, exceptionally adverse circumstances and reflects on the role that 'revolutionary' intellectuals are called to play in inciting resistance and change. Approaching the issue of the Greek financial crisis as a 'Trojan Horse' for a technocratic turn in education, the Critical Pedagogy Approach is applied and thus, Marxist analytical tools are used (Rotenstreich, 1965; Mepham and Ruben (eds.), 1979a; 1979b; Matthews, 1980; Harris, 1982; Krapivin, 1985; Allman, 2001; Molyneux, 2012; Agostinone-Wilson, 2013; Malott and Ford, 2015; Grollios and Gounari, 2016), placing therefore the whole thinking within the philosophical framework of dialectical materialism. The application of the aforementioned approach is an attempt to fully understand and interpret the causes and nature of the crisis, along with its impact, while the endeavour to reform the educational process in Greece is perceived as one with global dimensions, correlated with the need to manage the capitalist reform and to shape a new type of worker in accordance with the requirements of the capital for human resources. For this reason, a holistic perspective is attempted, based on both empirical evidence and a coherent theoretical and philosophical framework, that examines schools and education in an economic, social, political and ideological context.