It was by accident that I witnessed a phone conversation between a teacher working in the capital city of Romania and a student's mother: "How could I give him new textbooks, since we had just a few incomplete sets, which we gave, depending on the children's scores? I know what your child got. I know he got a prize, but his textbooks are used ones, dirty ones, with missing pages. I know all these, but how could I give him new textbooks?" Apart from the dirty politics in Romania, apart from all the demagogical statements on people, nation and European destiny, this is actually the real tragedy we are faced with: we are losing generations who get fed-up with the idea of school education. Traian Basescu is right to worry about the demographic unbalance. This is a fact, but it has been uncovered (just like corruption, poverty, groups of interests and magnates) just when there is need for another scandal, another springboard for accusations. All our politicians would die for love of their country and they are very concerned about the poor. At least once in three sentences they speak about the future we have to see to, especially at election times. Thank God politicians come and go. But the decline of Romanian education stays and intensifies. When the school year opened one week ago you could see the way many schools looked like in Romania. They surely looked the same in 1907. Well, this is as much we know and as much we can do. But since things are so, why bother to lie to ourselves and to others about meeting EU standards? Why don't we just say education is no national priority for Romania? Why don't we say there are other priorities just because substantial commissions are cashed by different means and it is also by different means that they can have substantial gains if all groups of interests collaborate? Why don't we say that in 2007, Romania's real problem is the gradual death of schools in the countryside, the old buildings in ruins, some of them poor improvisations which schoolchildren reach after walking kilometers, be it summer or winter, just like one century ago? When seized with concern about the country's future, why has no politician asked about the progress of school building on finance coming from the European Investment Bank? It is about substantial funds on which Romanian building companies were hired. Why don't we get an updated report on the funds cashed (many millions of Euro), the contracts signed, the plans adopted and the deadlines not met? Why don't we say this is the cause of the high number of children who drop school or who don't go to school at all, especially in rural Romania? Why do they always find funds to waste on bad taste propaganda action throughout Europe and the world, propaganda that always brings to the foreground the ministers in charge of the respective credit, but not the textbooks? How come Romanian intellectuals alive are so perverse that they complain about the poor quality of education in Romanian schools, but when they get political positions, they grant finance to anything but books for schoolchildren? I don't know what is more serious: the mock the elected show each and every day or our traditional indifference?

Cristian UNTEANU