Georgian Dream’s Conservative Drift Now Targets Schools

As the news of the dismal showing in international student assessment (PISA) has inundated the Georgian media, the government responded by playing the patriotism card.

Schools have become a new axis of the Georgian ruling party’s increasingly conservative ideological pivot, and officials say more focus will be put on teaching children the “traditional values.” How this could improve reading comprehension and agility in maths – two areas where the surveyed Georgian high school students have fared particularly poorly – is not clear. But it is almost an election year, and everything is about solidifying the supporter base.

Government officials pledged to revisit the goals of the current education strategy to emphasize issues like “national identity” and “family values.” In doing so, the government says it distances itself from the legacy of the United National Movement (UNM) rule, whom Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili accused yesterday of “conducting experiments” on Georgian youth. 

UNM, the former ruling party, tried “to breed some sort of a new Georgian, new human,” PM Garibashvili told a large audience filled with MPs, Ambassadors, and Georgian Orthodox Church clergy on December 12. “It was an attempt to change our national identity, our DNA, Georgianness,” he thundered.

Garibashvili, the pole bearer of the ruling party’s rightward swing, backed up his protege, Education Minister Giorgi Amilakhvari, as he presented his vision for school reform. On the top of the reform agenda was revising the “National Goals of General Education,” a framework document approved in 2004, shortly after UNM came to power through the Rose Revolution, which has been in force to this day.  

The new goals will be “strengthening of national identity, promoting the development of healthy values and raising the awareness of students in patriotism, Georgian traditions, culture, and family values,” Amilakhvari said. 

The reform talk follows mounting concerns about educational flaws. The PISA report pointed to worsening performance in various fields over the past five years. The latest NDI/CRRC poll, released almost simultaneously, shows 35 percent of Georgians saying the situation around education has improved in the past decade. 25 percent say things have worsened, and 30 percent believe the situation has remained the same. In the same poll, respondents identified low education quality, low qualification of teaching personnel, and high cost of university education as top challenges facing the Georgian education system. Garibashvili acknowledged the challenges but blamed them on the post-Soviet crises and what he says were failed “pseudo reforms” under UNM.

“We don’t want to create a new citizen; we want a person to be Georgian, rooted in Georgian identity, to grow up on patriotic sources, national foundations, learn to value and be aware of his/her history, culture <…> to grow up on family values”, Minister Amilakhvari said in sync with Garibashvili’s remarks.

The officials did not elaborate on what part of the current strategy they sought to eliminate or how exactly it was molding the “new Georgian.” Ideologically, the 2004 document is fairly tame. It lays out eight key goals, focusing on the development of certain values and practical skills among students. The values include promoting students’ awareness of “one’s responsibility towards the country’s interests, traditions, and values,” their ability to “independently create values and not just live at the expense of the existing ones,” and shaping a “law-abiding, tolerant citizen.” The language about citizenship, personal responsibility, tolerance, and independence seems so far to be abandoned in the new version.

Elections, elections, elections

PM Garibashvili is drawing on the usual grievances of UNM’s conservative critics who saw the former government’s policies, especially in education, as too liberalizing and westernizing. The conservative voters increasingly grew to become GD’s political base, especially during the tenure of Garibashvili.

Talk about “Georgian DNA” is a dog whistle for this category of voters that the ruling party has increasingly cultivated by positioning itself as a protector of children and by continuously attacking what it sees as youth-corrupting “LGBT propaganda.” The argument about protecting the “genetic pool” and saving Georgian demographics often surfaces in this context in the ruling party’s media mouthpieces.

But their other proposed measures are quite apart from pandering to the radically “patriotic” voter. These include increasing teachers’ salaries, promoting their professional growth, building new schools, and renovating the existing ones.  Another reform is supposed to grant schools more autonomy.

The truth of the matter is that schools as institutions and teachers as administrators are of particular electoral importance for the Georgian Dream. The authorities have faced repeated protests over allegations of political meddling, by appointing loyal, rather than competent, directors who then are allegedly tasked with keeping the supporter lists and mobilizing teachers to canvas the vote for the ruling party.  Better salaries and the rhetorical valorization of teachers are intended for the ears of this, particularly important audience.

Same but different?

The reforms under UNM rule since 2004 have dramatically transformed the Georgian education system. Introducing a unified university entrance exam that dismantled the previous, corruption-infested schemes is considered a key accomplishment. Those were popular enough, and during its eleven years of rule, the Georgian Dream made hardly any serious attempt to fundamentally alter the course.

Garibashvili “basically admitted that for the past eleven years, the Georgian Dream government has been using a document designed to degenerate the Georgian nation,” education expert Simon Janashia wrote with irony.

Neither was patriotic education in schools something alien to UNM. In fact, many liberal opponents opposed the previous administration for what they saw as an overly ideological approach. President Mikheil Saakashvili was particularly derided for endorsing a daily flag-rising ceremony for decreeing so-called “patriotic youth camps.” Yet Garibashvili and his team have tried to draw a clear line between two polarizing versions of patriotism. 

If the UNM’s sense of patriotism was militantly focused on civic allegiance and external security threats like Russia, the Georgian Dream has defined itself in opposition to internal threats to ethnically colored “Georgianness” and its values, aligned with the ultraconservative agenda of the Orthodox Christian Church. This version pits “patriotic” Georgians against the West and Westernizing elites, in the imagery closely reminiscent of the one peddled by the Russian Orthodox Church and officially endorsed by the Kremlin.

Studies have shown that patriotic sentiments, especially in teaching history, have long penetrated the classrooms, awkwardly sharing the space with newer approaches that encourage critical thinking.

But when it comes to the school curricula, whether the ruling party has the stamina to match its words with lasting deeds remains to be seen. It is not the first time GD pre-election promises have come to naught.

Also read: Nationalism and ideology in present-day Georgia: Interview with Prof. Stephen Jones