The advert is known and much discussed. The children in elementary school learn about Europe and ask their teacher why Greece is no longer in the Eurozone. The bewildered and stunned teacher looks at them and can’t answer them, he can’t even say a word, since the children’s question traps him and he himself cannot give one reasonable explanation or excuse. Then the end titles appear quickly and the following immense message comes forward “We don’t gamble with our children’s future”, which obviously suggests that now – when we are in the Eurozone – the present or future of our children is not at stake and that New Democracy will certainly not allow for something like this to happen in the future.
Although this advert video has been characterised as extreme, it shouldn’t surprise us in a time when the political slogans and statements are risky and often quickly denied by the same politicians who introduced them (see Velopoulos’s statements in the party’s television network just before he resigned from Popular Orthodox Rally, the “politics without politicians” by Gimeros, the television video “We stay in Greece” by Panhellenic Socialist Movement etc.).
However, it is a fact that although this school seems to lack computers and any other kind of electronic system, the classroom has a huge shiny blackboard, which is used as traditional means of teaching, with the contribution of a student standing in front of it and showing to the other students with a nice, long piece of wood the names of the countries and other information. The classroom is freshly painted, the desks are nice and clean, the chairs are plastic, anatomical and far better than the ones we had back in the 80’s, i.e. when the generation of today’s 30-year-olds went to elementary school and their memories are limited in the few ruler strokes on the palm and the delicious peach and appricot juice they generously offered us in the morning and in the afternoon in tin cylindrical boxes just before the Koskota’s scandal.
Furthermore, silence prevails in the classroom, everyone listens carefully to the teacher, who teaches calmly and politely as if he’s teaching a lecture to mature senior university students. Finally, the children are beautiful, they have bright faces and clean clothes and don’t look hungry at all. So, yes, after this advert I thought that if we were to go back to drachma and the pubblic school was to be like this, then I would be fine with that.
Wouldn’t you?
