Education and social reproduction in post-war Greece
2015 | Dec
The Greek history of education is full of characteristics often described as disconcerting, and interpreted through a reference to the particularities of the Greek society. Among such particularities is the much lower class selection in education, detected in the 1970s within the Greek educational system (Τσουκαλάς 1977 et Tsoukalas 1981), in comparison to almost all other European countries.
In fact, as studies in the sociology of education have documented during the 1950s and 1960s, the educational system reproduces social inequality, while school achievement is determined by social origin (Bourdieu and Passeron 1964, Coleman 1966). According to national statistics, from the period after World War 2 until the end of the 1970’s, this was not the case in Greece, where in higher education, students from the working classes were more than 40 per cent of the total student population (among which 25 per cent of peasant origin). This high percentage, together with the traditionally high and continuously growing demand for higher education, was interpreted as a particular ‘tendency towards education’ of Greek lower social strata and particularly the agricultural population.
The above phenomenon is primarily related to the history of Greek education, in which the main trait appears to be a very long and difficult road toward a democratic society, and the corresponding educational system.
The democratic principle of the right of all citizens to education appears very early in the history of the Greek state, albeit excluding for almost a century from this right of ‘all’, the lower social strata and the women (as was the case in other European countries). The political project aiming to create an educational system, enrolling in compulsory school the entire corresponding age population, being adapted to the needs of economic development and forming responsible citizens, also appeared very early. Nevertheless, as a result of economic difficulties, social unrest, and the wars (from 1912 to 1922, and from 1940 to 1949), access to education was quite slow.
As a result of the above, Greece of the 1950s is a widely uneducated society. According to the 1961 Census, among the close to 7 million citizens over 10 years of age, only 1.9 per cent had a higher education degree, and 7.5 per cent a 6 year high school degree. That is, less than 10 per cent of all citizens were educated (3.8 of women). For the rest, 43.4 had accomplished the 6 year primary school, while almost half of the total population, that is 47 per cent, are registered as having had “some years of schooling” in primary education, while it is specified that “among them” 37.5 is “illiterate”.
Source: 1961 Census, National Statitics Association, vol. II: Education
As far as the content of education is concerned, Greek schools in the 1950s could be described as transmitting grammatical knowledge on dead languages, and blunt political propaganda. These were the times of the ‘Great Fear’ of the civil war. Lacking legitimacy, in the Weberian sense, the authorities assigned to the educational institutions the sole function of ensuring the political and ideological control of the young generations. They felt insecure to the point of treating democratic values and freedom of the press as socially dangerous, while the use of Demotic Greek in schools was seen as subversive (Δημαράς 1974).
The situation will remain very negative, again for political reasons. Economic development in the 1960s, the successive integration of Greece’s economy in the world market, and the opening of society to new ideas, led once more the educational system to the centre of public debate. The educational reform voted in 1964, albeit against a violent opposition from traditionalist elements, was indicative of the beginning of a new era. The spoken language was established as the language of education, compulsory school was extended to 9 years, and new knowledge was introduced in schools. Nevertheless, the abrogation of this 1964 reform was the first act concerning education of the military dictatorship in August 1967.
Thus, the restoration of parliamentary government, in the mid 1970s, found the educational system in a situation, often described as involving a delay of almost a century. According to the 1981 Census, analphabetism (for over 14 years of age) was 22.2 per cent (14.6 for men and 29.1 for women). The drop out rate from secondary education was high, resulting in around 60% of the total population getting into the labour market with only a six year primary school education. Technical and vocational education was almost non-existent, and university education was still highly unequal as far as gender enrollement was concerned (women in higher education represented 25.4 per cent in 1961, 30.4 in 1971, 40.0 in 1981).
It is only since the 1980s that Greece becomes an educated society, through impressively rapid and radical changes. In only one decade, in the beginning of the 1990s, among these changes was the generalization of 9 year compulsory education, the doubling of secondary level student population, the quadrupling of the student population enrolled in tertiary education, while gender inequality as to school attendance in all levels had disappeared.
At the same period, the high percentage of students from the working classes in tertiary and university education has evolved accordingly. At the end of the 1980s, no ‘particularity’ was visible any more in the national statistics. School achievement appears directly proportional to social origin, as in the rest of other European countries.
In other words, the quite lower class selection in education during the 1950s and until the end of the 1970s is relevant to the country’s delay to adapt the educational system to the needs of the society. Educational reforms, designed to organize a modern educational system, have been deadlocked, while a modern and functional school was pending for several decades.
The very slow access to education for the vast majority of Greeks was the main reason of the presence in higher education of students from working classes origin. The very small overall numbers of citizens succeeding in completing the six year high school permitted, through overselection, access to higher education for sons of families belonging to the two lower social strata. This access was also due to gender inequality. As a general rule, when gender inequality is high as to school access, the absence in university education of women from the upper and middle social classes permits the presence of men from lower social origin. And in the 1950s, as mentioned earlier, women in university education represented only 25 per cent of the total student population (while their percentage was still 40 vs 60 per cent for men in 1980).
Moreover, class selection in education had always been present, but it had been functioning through the assignment of students to various kinds of disciplines. In fact, schools distributing diplomas with a high economic and symbolic value, such as the Athens School of Medicine or the Technical University of Athens, had a much lower percentage of students from working classes than the national average. In the 1950s for example, when the mean for students from peasant origin in higher education was 25 per cent, they were only six per cent in the Technical University of Athens, while at the other end of higher diploma’s hierarchy, they were close to 40 per cent in the Panteion school.
There is a last parameter for this phenomenon, related to the inefficiency of the Greek education system to fulfil its role until the 1980s. According to an OECD study, published in 1966, the holders of a higher education degree were in Greece 40 per cent of the total state employees at all levels (Madison et al. 1966, 86), while in other countries, as for example in France, only 5 per cent. This difference reveals that higher education diplomas functioned in Greece as markers of the educational level attested in other countries by secondary or technical and vocational educational degrees, absent among Greek citizens.
Entry citation
Frangoudaki, A. (2015) Education and social reproduction in post-war Greece, in Maloutas T., Spyrellis S. (eds) Athens Social Atlas. Digital compendium of texts and visual material. URL: https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/article/postwar-education/ , DOI: 10.17902/20971.25
Atlas citation
Maloutas T., Spyrellis S. (eds) (2015) Athens Social Atlas. Digital compendium of texts and visual material. URL: https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/ , DOI: 10.17902/20971.9
References
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- Bourdieu P and Passeron J-C (1964) Les héritiers: les étudiants et la culture. Paris: Les éditions de Minuit.
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