Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine

After the revelations about the government’s plans to privatise higher education there was a storm of debate on the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza – no, not about education, about something called the Hausner plan. Unless I miss my guess this is the second plan to be named after this Hausner person.  This one concerns public funding of the arts, or to be more precise, cutting public funding of the arts. Surprisingly enough, the government wants to hand over arts funding to the private sector. Corporations are to be allowed write off 1% of blah blah blah. GW has had articles on it every day and every day they printed a summary of the plan’s main points, as if you couldn’t guess to within 99.9% accuracy what a plan dreamed up under the auspices of a right wing neoliberal government consisted of.

Now I think puppet theatres and poetry and what-have-you are important but I am amazed at the complete lack of interest in Kazimierz Stępień’s expressed desire to remove the constitutional guarantee of free study. Propose getting rid of the requirement to do a post-doctoral degree and there is an uproar. Propose cutting poor people out of third level education and nothing.

The other thing that has been occupying the mainstream media of late is who gets to be called boss of the European Parliament – Jerzy Buzek or some Italian guy. We’re all supposed to be glued to our seats with our fingers crossed for Buzek even though we’re constantly told that the EU is about partnership and putting the interests of the community above the interests of individual nations. That’s all very well, it seems, but wouldn’t it be nice if Our Lads got some nice (”prestigious”) jobs out of it? At the risk of being drawn into the pointlessness of it all, here is some background information on Jerzy Buzek: he was not a very good prime minister of Poland for a few years, during which time one Marian Krzaklewski, trade union leader, was the power behind the throne. Krzaklewski also ran for the European Parliament but didn’t get in. Well it looks like he may soon get his old back seat back.

Yesterday Gazeta Wyborcza announced plans by the government to stop paying for students to do two degrees – one’s your limit. Today’s paper lets the cat well and truly out of the bag. There’s an interview with professor Kazimierz Stępień, chairman of the Rada Nauki (Education Council, more or less) at the Ministry for Privatising Education. He says quite openly (that is to say: he doesn’t hide behind childish arguments like “free education is a myth,” a headline in last week’s newspaper) that the constitutional guarantee of free studies should be abolished (“konstytucyjny zapis o bezpłatnych studiach powinien być zniesiony”). But wait – what’s this – oh he does go for the childish argument: “Studiów bezpłatnych nie ma, ponieważ płaci za nie całe społeczeństwo” (There is no such thing as free education because society as a whole pays for it). It’s depressing that such a weak argument can be made (and made repeatedly) in serious newspapers. Aside from the government’s desire to exclude poor people from university education, there is the question of when Gazeta Wyborcza is going to wise up to all this. It’s quite alright to have ago at the poor, the sick, the old and the working classes but university educated people…? They’re the ones who buy the newspaper. If you alienate them, who’s going to buy your product?

June 4^th rolls around again…. Twenty years gone by. What a wild ride it’s been! It’s worth looking back on what life was like before the historical change. Mostly I remember the boredom and the greyness. There was dirt everywhere and alcoholism was rampant as people sought refuge from the dull, mind-crushing realities of every day life. There was no sense of hope in the air; no belief that things might ever change as the queues just got longer and longer. The lucky few who escaped rarely came back. Work was a joke – just one grey meaningless day after another with no change on the horizon. I remember too the enforced gaiety of the parades: standing with my parents in my Sunday best waving a flag as the soldiers marched by. Life was dominated by collectivism – schools were institutions devoted to crushing individuality within their grey walls. Creativity was stifled by the authorities. Everyday life was a struggle. But some time in the nineties Ireland changed from all that into a real dump.