The Greek left

i ran into one of the kids' high school teachers today

i asked her when the school term would be starting this year - there was a bit of a 'mix-up' (let's call it that, euphemistically): it normally starts on September 11 (which basically means that the kids have had between 2.5 to 3 months summer holidays), but in May the government announced that it would start a week earlier (September 5 or 6) due to the current reforms, only to rescind this by announcing that the state wasn't organised enough (what does that mean?!) to do this, and would stick to September 11 (presumably until it gets organised enough)

she told me that i should never listen to what the state says and i should just stick to my own plans (which sounded a little too anarchic for my liking - do we just do what we like in this world?) - i asked her for a straight-er answer: surely if schools start on the 11th, i as a parent should have my kids ready to start school on the 11th? she said that the state has completely destroyed the education and health systems (really, i thought, as i remembered my own dealings with the greek public health system in the past month - see here and here and here), and we shouldnt ever trust the state to get anything right, not even the first day of term

to understand why she said this, you need to understand her background: she is the daughter of a couple who were both teachers like herself, in other words, she has been raised in a family of δημόσιοι υπάλληλοι (public servants), and they passed on to their daughter similar expectations of the state's role for δημόσιοι υπάλληλοι, something which has been discussed ad nauseum on both greek and foreign media int he last 4-5 years since the greek crisis broke out

i think i know why she's angry: she had the carpet moved from under her feet, and she's lost her bearings; that's why it's difficult for me to take this woman seriously - i know why she can't trust the state: it's because it treated her very well in the past, at a time when the state did not even recognise my own existence because i was not a public servant - that was what the greek class system was based on, in fact: you were either a public servant, or a non-public servant, and if you werent 'serving' anyone, you were most likely running a business or private practice

the state now says that whether we are state or non-state employees, our employment/pension/health/social security schemes are equal - in order for that to happen, it basically meant that some people had to move down a few steps - it didnt happen the other way round (ie those of us who used to be in the lower orders of society didnt climb up to a higher echelon)

in other words, we are equal to some degree - but my kids' high school teacher cannot see that - she insists that so many struggles were fought to get to where greek public servants were before the crisis and now everything is lost

i pity her because she is not living in the real world, she is only remembering the idealised greek world, the one created for the δημόσιο υπάλληλο - she thinks her politics are leftist, but she is not living with real leftist political empathies - if she were, she would realise that all employees are equal, and those so-called struggles were really only all about protecting one class of greek society, which was the δημόσιο υπάλληλο, not the employee in general

(and what has this discussion got to do with the photo? the posters, particularly the one on the left, carry messages that are typical of the 'greek left')