In the past few days the students of Austria have developed significant actions in the struggle against the Bologna Process and its impacts of privatization in the Austrian educational system.

These actions, massively participated by the Austrian students, are crucial for defeating the European Union, World Bank and World Trade Organization’s imperialist strategy to prevent the children of the working class to ever access the highest levels of education, knowledge and culture.

The same imperialism that destroys and invades countries and makes millions of people starve to death in a world where the food production is actually higher than the needs of the world population, wants the future generations to be an army of silent and non-critical workers, whose only goal of life is to contribute to the concentration of wealth and increase of profits of the major economic groups.

WFDY believes that the so called “Bologna Process” is a tool of imperialism in a way to build an educational system according to the aims of the imperialists and in full contradiction with the rights, wishes and needs of mankind.

All through Europe, the consequences of the implementation of the Bologna Process are an evidence of the wish of imperialism to privatize and narrow to maximum levels the access to Education, particularly to wide knowledge and to the ability of creative development of futher knowledge.

Therefore, WFDY salutes the struggle of the Austrian students and calls upon them and their representative structures to continue the struggle until all its goals are achieved. Furthermore, WFDY calls upon all its member and friend organizations to spread the news and solidarity towards the Austrian students, making a contribution to the reinforcement of the struggle in their own country for a Public, Free and Quality Education!

On March 13, in the framework of WFDY member SDAJ Germany (March 14 and 15), a seminar of WFDY regional commission of Europe and North America, will take place to discuss the concrete developments of Secondary, Professional and High Education in the region and struggle for a full public, free and quality education for all (idea that is clear by the slogan of WFDY campaign “We struggle for a Public, Free and Quality Education for all!”, which is also the slogan for this event).

The imperialist forces manipulate education in order to make it one of their most powerful instruments for domination and exploitation. Imperialism bans the access of millions of people to education, because it knows that uneducated people are easier targets of exploitation. This is why there are so many analphabet people in the world, even though four days of money spent on weapons would be almost enough to pay all these people studies.

Moreover, in many parts of the world, imperialism imposes processes of partial or full privatization of education, transforming what is a universal right of each human being into a millionaire business that keep enriching a few imperialist groups throughout the world.

However, this is not a linear process. Many times imperialism’s goal is not only to exclude, and behind statistics of high percentages of young people attending school, the fact is that many of those people are not getting wide and emancipator knowledge. In fact, many schools and universities are more and more, factories of non-scientific formation, which goal is only to assure that people have enough formation to keep producing at a high level and where historical truth and human values are despised or subverted in order to create a selfish, reactionary and unable to resist world population (as the Bologna process is clearly showing).

The positive experiences in socialist and other countries show that through democratic and universal access to public, free and quality education people live much better: they know their rights and they are much more able to defend the workers and youth’s conquests.

For all this, WFDY fully supports the struggle of the all the students against all economical and social obstacles to an Education for All!