Nikos Paizis / The great teacher and researcher has died

“It’s one of the few times that the term ‘irreplaceable’ for those who leave has any real meaning“, she points out HELLO where with pain he says goodbye the great teacher, researcher and educational visionary, Nikos Paizi.

Nikos Paizis, died at the age of 63 giving a long, brave and dignified battlenotes OIELE, underlining the gap he leaves in the Federation and, above all, in the Educational Policy Development Center of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (KANEP-GSEE), of which he was head of research and scientific advisor, is huge.

“But greater is the void of those who knew him and loved him for his big heart, for his humanity, kindness, warmth and pure enthusiasm for education and for the youth of our country. They loved the teacher, the visionary, the genuine democrat, the companion, the friend. The giant with the soul of a small child whom we find difficult to believe will no longer be by our side”, points out OIELE.

Nikos Paizis, notes OIELE, will undoubtedly go down in the history of Greek Education. “Passionate and tireless mathematician at the Petraki-Valsamidis Schools in Piraeus, he was loved by all, students, parents and colleagues. It belonged to leading trade unionists of the last decades in the field of private education and served OIELE from the position of Vice President and Head of Educational Affairs. He was also an adviser to the Minister of Education Dimitris Faturou, contributing to the effort to modernize the education system”.

But even more important was his research contribution in the field of education. He started his research career at the University of Patras next to Professor-Teacher Alexandros Kosmopoulos. It was founder of the “Melina” Program which brought for the first time and on an equal basis the cooperation of the Ministries of Culture and Education and contributed to the acquaintance of the students not only with our cultural heritage but also with all kinds of modern culture. An innovative and pioneering program that did not appear to the students as a school lesson but was presented with experimental teachings and with the collaboration of museum educators and artists as a fairy tale.

During the years that he worked as a Research Officer and Scientific Advisor of KANEP-GSEE, he prepared the gigantic task of mapping the education system in all its aspects from pre-school education to Lifelong Learning.

The great anxiety of Nikos Paizis was the educational and social inequalities. He believed that through Education, through a modern education system, these inequalities could be smoothed out, notes OIELE and points out that “for Nikos, the numbers were not cold, but revealed the tragic reality of a country torn apart by the poor quality of education, especially for the children of the underprivileged. He was deeply saddened by the high school dropout rates and the low performance of children in poor and rural areas, and was outraged by the growing phenomenon of NEETs, young people out of education, training and employment.
He was perhaps the only one who in a few lines had the amazing ability to describe the failure of our education system:

“Our education system has its own logic, which one will not find reflected in laws, decisions or circulars. Basically, it is anti-pedagogical and sometimes illogical. It aims for students to receive the maximum amount of information possible, at the youngest possible age, and worst of all, it is aimed primarily at whoever ends up making it. That is why it feeds para-education and is fed by it. (…).