"We need a system where students and young people receive appropriate knowledge and understand values. This is the main task. I don't know the scale it will take, but there will be resistance here similar to what we have seen regarding transparency because that is the ugliness called pseudo-liberalism in our country," said the Prime Minister of Georgia, announcing a "fundamental reform" of education with a special focus on Tbilisi State University. As Irakli Kobakhidze noted, a large part of TSU professors are selected entirely on political grounds.
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In an interview with the public broadcaster, Kobakhidze spoke at length about the period when the United National Movement was in power. According to him, the education system was being deliberately destroyed by external orders, which is "the line of pseudo-liberal ideology."
"Unfortunately, the results of their activities are directly reflected in the statistics. It is cynicism that today one of the non-governmental organizations, IDFI, publishes the results of the education system, stating that 63% of our school students, probably the last grade, failed even the basic skills test. At the same time, this non-governmental organization claims to be proud of the fact that specific representatives, including young people, are protesting the unread law. This is a sad and very hard reality. Another result is that we ranked 63rd in reading comprehension out of 81 countries according to the Pisa test. Of course, this is also a result of the 1990s when the education system was dismantled for the first time, but the representatives of the previous government added additional problems to these issues, following the line of pseudo-liberal ideology. The main thing is that you don't have to give them proper knowledge... History was no longer taught to children," said Kobakhidze.
The Prime Minister "admitted" that the 12 years of Georgian Dream being in power "could not be properly used" in the direction of education, although this had its own objective reasons.
"Ultimately, a solid system was established that could not be easily rearranged. They created even more serious problems in the higher education system.
For example, if we take the leading Tbilisi State University, where I also teach as a university professor, the general picture is the worst. One factor is that a large number of professors are selected on purely political grounds. This means that they have a political bias, it is clear whose side they are on, and they do not have enough qualifications.
Any professor may have a political bias, but when you don't even have qualifications, you are politically biased, here you can see how the professorship at Tbilisi State University was actually formed. This applies to a very large part of the profession. Therefore, it is a closed circle, due to which the entire system is disrupted. Because of this, textbooks are not being developed at Tbilisi State University, nor science, nor anything," said Irakli Kobakhidze.
As Kobakhidze said, one of the main reforms that will be offered to the public during the election will be the fundamental reform of education.
The Prime Minister agreed with the opinion of the journalist that "what was selected on political grounds, it is impossible not to change it on political grounds" and continued:
"Ultimately, we will propose a reform to the society, based on which we will get a different political picture; after four years, we will have a qualitatively different infrastructure, where students will have a ten times better opportunity to realize their interests. We will have a qualitatively rearranged system, where instead of a higher educational institution serving someone's political interests, any state university will be focused from beginning to end on providing high-quality education. The resources for this are in the country; the main thing is to establish the system correctly," said Irakli Kobakhidze.
The administration of Tbilisi State University did not respond to the Prime Minister's statement.
