By Philologist, Zina Lyssandrou Panagidis:
Everyone has left for the subject that entered the Pancyprian exams. For me the issue is simple. It is a free subject and in essence asked students to understand a text, and based on it to express their views. So, they had to think, to judge, to project their own thoughts.
Fine print. When most, especially large tutoring, give ready-made reports, and students learn about the parrot, their spirit is castrated, and they can not act on their own. No critical thinking. This is not the first time we have had reactions, because someone dared to touch on the wrong texts. Finally, it is time for not all to write the same prologues and epilogues, to put the same examples, the same connectors, the same and unchanging paragraphs. I have stopped reading the same reports for so many years. It is time to teach our children to read texts and understand their essence. To teach the report. To teach our children how to develop any subject based on their global knowledge, and not to learn some subjects from outside, and to think that they have acquired the ability to write and produce speech. So it is the fault of all those who teach the language, and they only give ready-made blueprints, excerpts from essays and ready-made reports, instead of letting them read essays, and beyond, as ideologues we are most human beings, students combine their own views with the ideas they got from Here, too, the crucial question arises: can all people produce a high level of communicative speech? What about children who do not have these skills or have not cultivated them, since all they have been taught is to parrot? For these children who have other talents and abilities, but have difficulty in lessons, the state and teachers need to bend with love, tolerance and grace, to help them all find their way. But neither do the so-called " excellent ”students today, in the inflation of excellence, do not have such abilities, since no one in this island of the saints, except for some bright exceptions, deals with the Greek language, not to mention the devaluation that exists from xenomania, our neo-enrichment and nobility. We need as a society and as education to "throw back the stern". No more illusions. We are all to blame. Teachers, parents, carers, and most recently children. Do we want to develop critical thinking, combinatorial thinking, the ability to argue thoroughly, such as what we say as goals of our education? No more parrots. To introduce issues that are not possible to predict, to show the true value of each, and not his ability to sterile memorization. That, you will tell me, sounds like a revolution.
Selectively, it is urgent to implement Mr. Kadis' suggestion for the separation of the Pancyprians from the Entrance Exams so that most students do not fall victim. In Pancyprian the subjects should be passable to meet the needs and abilities of all children, while in Pre-Introductory ones subjects of a higher level should be included, so that those who want to go to difficult schools can prove their true value and their own abilities.