/ world today news/ A round table “Education as a factor for national security” was held in the capital these days. Apart from the fact that there is no news, the wording of the topic is probably puzzling.
However, a more in-depth analysis will undoubtedly reveal the connection, since both spheres are in the portfolio of Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva. Most likely, these were originally two separate round tables, the unification of which was necessary in order to save money, given the heavy expenses that the national teachers’ meeting caused.
The event would have passed without causing much public interest if, in her speech at the forum, the Minister of Education had not pointed out the main culprit for the state of our education system and national security, passionately asking the question: “Where are the parents?”.
Since Mrs. Kuneva clearly does not know where they are, we will have to explain.
We can begin by recalling the findings of the only large-scale study to date of the effects on children left behind by parents who work and live abroad. It was presented back in 2014 by UNICEF Bulgaria. According to him, 23.1% (or over 270,000 students) from fifth to eleventh grade have at least one parent abroad. The main receiving countries of labor emigration are Spain – over 170,000 workers, Greece about 120,000 (of which 70,000 are settlers), Great Britain – about 70,000, Germany – 60,000, etc. Here are the specific data on the whereabouts of some of the parents.
Why are they there?
According to Eurostat data, almost two-thirds of remittances to Bulgaria – an average of 60-70 million euros per month – come from EU countries, and the emigrants’ families spend the “help” from outside on food, bills, medical care and education.
In the meantime, the “sky parents” phenomenon was born, which is the result of the real economic circumstances in the country, and not the desire of parents to be as far away from their children as possible. And in this statistic, we rank third in Europe after Poland and Romania .
What else does the study show?
74.1 percent of the studied students live in Bulgaria with both their parents, 5.3% of the children only the mother is abroad, 15.1% only the father, and 2.7% both parents; 2.8% have a foreign parent who is also abroad.
What do the parents who are still here do with their children?
It is clear from Minister Kuneva’s statement that they are not doing what is necessary to support the reform processes in the education system. And this is a “multi-layered” problem that requires our joint efforts, because after the family, the education system is the most important factor in the formation of national values.
Thus, the parent, who is called upon to provide financially for the child’s standard of living and the logistics of his education, also has the responsible task of laying the foundations of these values. Because when it comes to values, things also depend on literacy, the parents, who the minister does not know where they are, will have to motivate their children to learn from the earliest childhood. One can start with reading fairy tales with understanding, because it was found that Bulgarian girls do not understand the content of the texts in the textbooks. The issue of textbook content is also “multi-layered” as it is constantly debated with zero success, but parents must be sympathetic to the processes and compensate by investing in private lessons to fill the loopholes in the system.
The provision of compendiums, aids and other educational materials to numerous publishers specified by the ministry should not be overlooked. All of this goes hand in hand with creating the attitude that education is the path to progress, ignoring the fact that in our country you can be a municipal councilor even with a 2.63 in the matriculation exam in Bulgarian.
Then the same parents will have to further develop the “innovative” idea of professional and dual education, convincing their child that being a worker is, if not prestigious, then a national responsibility. They will not be alone in their efforts, because, according to Kuneva, this it should happen under “shared leadership between the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy and the Ministry of Education and Science in institutional terms. City by city, village by village, school by school, child by child, we should see what the possibilities are”.
While the ministerial apostles go around on palanquins, parents, of course, must also be involved in the processes of control over the educational process by participating in the numerous public and other councils and boards. Thus, they will be able to effectively influence the management of kindergartens and schools. It can be seen that the expectations are high, and so are the delegated powers and duties. But they will manage because, as it turns out, this is also a matter of national security.
And if not, God forbid, they still have some free time, nothing prevents them from being alone with their child and solving a few tasks with complex interest on a deposit, explaining that the state does not guarantee investments in shares in case of their depreciation or , that the BNB announces exchange rates and the price of gold. There is no one to do this for them if they don’t want to screw up the next survey because of their children’s poor financial literacy.
All this should somewhat answer the question: “Where are the parents?”, which, unlike the other – “Where is Kuneva?”, is not rhetorical.
#parents #merrygoround #Kuneva
