A Case Study of Community Attitudes Towards the Primary School System in Athens, Greece

Educational reality in Greece took its final form after the end of the political frustration. Although the most fundamental changes in the system were introduced after the establishment of democracy in 1974, the ‘seeds’ for these changes had existed in the mid-sixties, when the liberal party of George Papandreou was in office. Among the changes brought by this government -- which attempted in an unfavorable social climate to attack the ‘classicism’, ‘conservatism’ and ‘intellectualism’ of the preceding right-wing governments -- the most important were the following:• Free education at all levels of public education• Nine-year compulsory attendance instead of the six-year system existed• Restructuring of secondary schools into three-year gymnasium (lower) and three-year lyceum (upper); the latter would include general and technical-vocational types• ‘demotiki’, the vernacular, would be the language of instruction in primary schools and taught along with ‘katharevousa’ (a simplified form of ancient Greek) in secondary schools.• At the end of secondary education the pupils would sit special examinations to get the ‘academic certificate’ that would allow entry to the universities.It was not the first time that a nation-wide educational reform was being attempted. Actually this was the third attempt, in the same century (the previous ones had been made in 1913 and 1929, both under center-wing, liberal governments) to insert a new way of thinking into the ‘conservative’ and the ‘classicist’ Greek educational structure (Gouvias, 1998: 13). The 1967 ‘junta’ brought to a halt every reform attempt, and reinforced the conservatism of the ‘traditionalists’. Among the counter reform measures of the period 1967-74 were the reduction of compulsory education from 9 to 6 years, the abolition of translated ancient Greek literature texts, and the replacement of social sciences in the new curriculum. The teaching of ‘demotiki’ was restricted to the first 3 grades of the primary school. Secondary education remained ‘integrated’ in the form of the six-year gymnasium. In general, in those years Greek education was more classics-oriented, bookish and old-fashioned than in the previous decade. The most important changes were to be observed in the ‘hidden curriculum’ (Young, 1971) of the schools and the disciplinary environment in which the teaching was taking place. The regime attempted to turn the attention of the pupils towards the values of the past, especially through the emphasis on ancient Greek and its simplified form of school instruction, the katharevousa (i.e. the pure language). To argue that big improvements have been brought about however would be naïve. Half of the population of the country is concentrated in the Greater Athens area, and as a result increased enrollments as a proportion of the respective area-population represented a very small improvement in real figures (Gouvias, 1998: 15)