Reading for understanding (Ανάγνωση)

Greeks like to tell you that high school is 'difficult'; isn't high school 'difficult' anywhere in the world, especially when you compare high school to primary school? I don't like to stress myself out about higher education, but recently I noticed that my son looked very stressed out with his homework. I really hate helping my kids with homework, because most of the time, it is akin to actually doing the homework for them. That has serious repercussions in the long run, which are widely discussed in educational sites all over the world. But I don't mind nudging them in the right direction, as long as this means that I am helping them to learn skills that they can transfer to other problem-solving situations.

Two months after terms started (don't forget that we were plagued with strike action), my son seemed to be having problems with his biology homework; he asked me to help him with a crossword (see below) based on biology terms. I have enough problems doing this in English, and I knew I would not be able to help him in Greek. But I also knew that all the answers to the questions are contained in the texts the kids are expected to read, so I told him to look at the texts more carefully before attempting the exercise page.

Click to enlarge

"But I've already read it, and I can't find the answers," he said. I decided this was impossible, but I had to confirm it in some way myself. So I checked the texts, which I found not so difficult to read after all, even for my own level of Greek, and there were lots of graphics to accompany them, which illustrated many of the points in the text. This all made sense to me, and I finally understood my son's problems: he had not understood how to use the text together with the graphics in order to grasp the meaning of the text he was studying. I also realised that he seemed not to have been taught 'how' to read something for understanding. He wasn't underlining words that looked important: instead, he underlined whole paragraphs; he wasn't using arrows to point the graphics to the text where it explains them: he was reading the text separately from the pictures. It's difficult to know whose job it is to teach kids skills about how to be better readers - the biology teacher may see this as the literature teacher's job, while the literature teacher may be teaching skills for reading 'story' texts. Both teachers may actually have said a word or two to the kids already about this - but when you are starting high school, and it all seems new to you, you may not have paid enough attention to what your teacher was saying. Perhaps also... no one has said anything about reading skills... 

Whatever the case, I found I could easily do the exercise just by reading the text quickly and picking up the key words, which were already in the exercise; some were even in bold text. I also used basic crossword skills to eliminate wrong choices, eg the number of letters in a word, and possible adjacent letters in Greek spelling. I admonished my son for his laziness - he could have done all this himself. But if he hasn't been taught to do it in the first place...? I suddenly remembered that at that very moment that I was teaching him to read for information, I had been doing a similar lesson in my English classes with... graduate science students. 

We all have a lot to read these days because we use the internet, which basically means we need to sift through a lot of information. But we don't read everything on a web page, we just look for the information we want/need. We all have different ways to do this. First and most important for me is to look at a web page in the same way that I view a picture, or a photo. Second, I look for the key words on the page. To do this, I run my eyes over the text and ignore everything that looks unimportant. Thirdly, I use all the graphics that are available on the page: this includes capitalised words (which therefore are names) and numbers (which could be quantities or dates). Fourthly, if I'm not sure what's important, I read the first sentence of the first and last paragraph, OR I read 1-2 words on each line, my eyes jumping from one line to the other in the text. There are other ways to do this too, eg the zig-zag method. Whatever way you speed-read is a personal choice - as long as it works for you. And the most important thing is - see First above: a page is a picture. 

The Greek school system is notorious for using the parrot-learning technique. But I can now understand why this happens: kids aren't being taught to read properly (OR, they are not paying attention to teachers when they are being taught to do so). So, they parrot-learn. I found this going on when my son asked me to check his knowledge of ancient civilisations before he would be tested on it. (Gawd, I really hate doing this - but look at how insecure he is feeling, that he actually asks me to do it.) For this lesson, we had fewer graphics and more texts on the page. When I asked him a question based on the texts he was learning, I noticed he was hesitating before answering, because... he was remembering not the information, but the order of the words that he had read. Another thing I noticed was that when he actually answered my question correctly, it would not only be in the exact words he had read in the book... but he kept reciting the entire paragraph, not knowing when to stop providing information, which would have been the answer to a later question! Again, he had not highlighted key words: he had highlighted whole paragraphs, "because the teacher told us this paragraph was important, and the next one wasn't"... Again, he wasn't using a technique to help him remember information - he was just memorising for short-term use, instead of learning for long-term use.

Another point that doesn't seem to be well-used in high school is personal experience. High school focusses on bookish learning so it's very academic. Some children are not academic, but quite a few of those non-academic ones would benefit if they were taught to use their personal experiences in the book-learning methods. Here is an example: So here we are in Crete, and the subject of the test is Minoan civilisation, focussing on the ανάκτορα, the palace, the most famous being in Knossos, 150 kilometres away from our house. Despite having been to Knossos with my kids on a memorable school trip, I still found my son just reading his texts to gain the knowledge he thought he needed. Somewhere along the line, the real life connections to Knossos were lost and proper application was not made of past experiences where new knowledge was acquired.

There are a whole host of problems involved here: the teacher, the child, the parent, television, information overload and junk food are all involved. The biggest issue is probably having an awareness of the problems involved. There was so much less to read when I was my son's age, and fewer resources to tap into. We now need to know what not to read...

All Greek school text books are available online at http://dschool.edu.gr/.

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Insult (Προσβολή)

Yesterday, I blocked somebody from my facebook profile because I believed their comments were insulting. This reminded me of two instances where I felt insulted and abused by students to such an extent that I realised I would have to take 'terminal' action to ensure that such offensive behaviour would stop immediately. In social media, you just 'block' or 'unfriend' someone; but in real life, this kind of behaviour is very hard to control as it involves a matter of opinion, and it is often the case that you are closely connected to the person who may have insulted you in the face. For this reason, we don't really expect this to happen since most of the time, people 'behave' according to common beliefs about what is acceptable and what is not. So we often don't know which mechanisms and protocols to use to stop or prevent this behaviour from occurring. When we do encounter it, we have to decide how to handle it, often treating each case as it comes.

One of my students was regarded by his professors as a brilliant scientist. He had excellent research skills and well developed lab techniques. He was quite religious and kept a low profile, often taking time out on Friday afternoons to go to prayer in the makeshift mosque set up in the town. He was not a bad English student either, but he was not passing the institutionally-set English test. He was a nervous student, always worrying about what would happen if he didn't pass, which doesn't help one's confidence.

If students pass the test with the required score, they can then proceed to another year of studies at the institute. If they don't, they cannot proceed with their studies. It's the rule, and it's applied to everyone; there are no exceptions. At the time, we didn't have online coursework and instant lessons via the internet, like we do now, so the lessons were conducted in the classic style of teaching: lecture theatre, students with books, paper and pens, teacher with marker pen. During the Christmas holidays, when most students left the institute, I would come in for extra lessons with the students who had not passed. I did whatever I could within my powers to help them. I also arranged tutorials outside the regular class hours for students to ask me about anything that they did not understand.

Unfortunately for this particular student, he failed the examination twice which meant that he could not come back the following year to continue his studies (we now give students three chances to pass the test). So he stayed in the country illegally instead of returning home, but he was not allowed to register for courses and he had to manage his own living expenses. "But you know I know English!" he'd plead with me every time I bumped into him at the institute, which is rather small, so I would see him quite often. "Please do something so that I can get a pass mark!" But there was really nothing that I could do for him. Passing the test was up to him, not me. The same exams were set for all students, I did not pass around the questions beforehand, and I could not fake his grade. For a start, faking grades is morally wrong. And if I faked his grades, then who else's should I also fake? But really, why even put this in our heads? It just wasn't in my nature to cheat the system. Unfortunately, this issue did crop up a number of times with a number of students. (This very fact led to the abolition of the examination being managed institutionally - now, students sit a test set and graded by external agents.)

Eventually, he wrote to me via email to ask if I could get the institute to let him into the second year of studies without sitting the English exams. But I don't make the rules, and the rules said he couldn't. He thought I might have some pull in the matter. So he wrote to me again, this time invoking the name of Allah, and telling me that if I am a god-fearing person, I would always be able to find a way to help students. He really had crossed a line here, as I interpreted this statement as a threat. I had to take action swiftly and forcefully, so I forwarded the letter to my boss, who told him in no uncertain terms what the legal implications of sending a person such a letter would entail.

Of course, the student then stopped sending me emails, and if I remember rightly he did apologise (this was a long time ago). He also passed the English test eventually, and we all congratulated him, telling him that he had achieved this through his own personal efforts. There really had been no need for him to resort to his previous tactics, which could all be interpreted as acts of desperation. He finished his studies at the institute successfully, and went on to further studies in a Northern European country. For him, Greece was a stepping stone, which served him well. All's well that ends well.

But sometimes it doesn't end well. My other case of insulting behaviour directed at me by a student involved the case of a woman who had been granted an exemption to study at the institute, despite not having any of the academic requirements to be accepted for studies. She claimed refugee status, which enabled her to be accepted without documentation. On acceptance, though, she was also subject to the same rules as the other students. So she too had to pass an English test in order to be allowed to continue with her studies.

There was a great deal of discussion about her enrolment, because of her unusual status. She also behaved (and dressed) rather idiosyncratically, stopping people in their tracks, even when they were going to the bathroom, to ask about anything that concerned her, namely her grades, which were not very high, nor were they very promising. She'd ask her professors for private after-hours help, she'd complain that the material was too difficult for her to understand, and she wanted to know if this could be taken into account when she sat examinations in the science courses.

For some reason, she would never turn up to my classes, which were optional anyway because the language requirements did not necessarily have to be awarded by the institute itself; they could be earned with a passing grade in other internationally recognised English exams. We simply give students a chance to earn it without paying extra fees. But every now and then, she'd arrive at my office, asking for that extra private help to improve her language skills. I viewed this as a completely unfair way of teaching her, but as long as I didn't have other more urgent work to attend to, I couldn't deny her the extra tuition.

One day, after having written a mock test and not passed it (yet again), she asked me how the final exam would be scored. By this time, we were using tests set and graded by external parties. So I explained the procedure to her: she notes her answers (for multiple-choice questions) on a specially printed card and we send this card to the examiners. After expressing her fear that she may not write legibly, or may confuse the order she noted on the answer sheet, she asked me if we could grade her answers at the institute, instead of sending them to another organisation. The whole discussion reached a tragi-comical climax when she suggested that she would not be treated fairly, due to her writing style. I pointed out that she only had to blacken circles to express her choices, not actually write anything, and that her paper would be machine-read.

At this point, she looked at me in the face very seriously and said: "I don't believe you." I had been secretly hoping that she would execute some act of buffoonery like this one that would get me off the hook and make it look like she had crossed the line of trust, and which had nothing to do with my personal biases. In my exasperated state, I would then be able to get rid of her (and her antics) swiftly and effectively.

"You don't believe me?" I repeated her words. "Then get out of my office right now!" As I said this, I felt so sorry for her because she was from another country and it was plainly obvious that she was unfamiliar with certain levels of civility and commonly accepted academic norms. But I was at a loss, exasperated as I mentioned above, and this woman had taken me out of my clothes (as a popular Greek saying goes). I then wrote an email to my boss about how I can no longer offer extra one-to-one classes for somebody who does not trust me. Naturally, my position was accepted.

I did not see the student again for a while until about a week before the exam date. She came to my office and asked me if I could help her to pass the exam. "Certainly," I told her, and then gave her the times for the scheduled classes I had arranged with the other students in the group. She then asked if I could go over some material with her at that moment, but I told her that I had other 'more important' work to do, but I'll try to answer her questions after the scheduled class. She did not turn up for any of them. Unfortunately for her, she didn't pass the test either, so she wasn't able to continue her studies.

Social media is sometimes more dramatic than real life because we don't always 'know' who we are talking to; real life is too physical to avoid. The rules of trust in real life are generally not written, but they still have to be followed, and they apply to everyone. We start learning them from when we are young. Where to draw the limits just before the breakdown of trust is usually a matter of opinion.

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Union of Crete with Greece (Ένωση Κρήτης με την Ελλάδα)

There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-blue sea,
a beautiful and fertile land, seagirt; in it are many
people, innumerable, and there are ninety cities.
Language with language is mingled together. There are Akhaians,
there are great-hearted Eteocretans, there are Kydones,
and Dorians in their three clans, and noble Pelasgians.
[Homer, Odyssey 19, lines 172 - 177]

We visited the former mosque in the old harbour last night, to see an an exhibition of schoolchildren's drawings depicting their understanding of the Union of Crete with Greece: this was my daughter's contribution.

Since the Myceneans invaded Crete (around 1400BC), the local population became Hellenes, and the Greek language has always been spoken on the island, while people's names have generally been recognisably Greek in nature. But Crete has had a very muddled history of governship - depsite her obvious Greekness, she has been ruled by various cultures:
67BC - the Romans got her
330AD - the Byzantines got her
1204 - the Venetians got her
1669 - the Ottomans got her
1830 - the Egyptians got her
1840 - the Ottomans got her back
1898 - Crete is a self-governing state
1st December, 1913 - Crete is united with Greece

A 1913 picture representing the Union of Crete with Greece. Greece is represented by the blue colour, while Crete is bronze, an aptly chosen colour, given the amount of sunshine our fertile earth receives.

And in 2013, she is still part of Greece, constituing her biggest and southernmost part - the island of Gavdos, south of Hania, is in fact Europe's southernmost point.

After the exhibition, we took our reading material and went to the rooftop cafe 'ΘΕΑ' for a view out to the harbour (you can just make out the lighthouse on the left) where we enjoyed a very large cup of delicious very hot chocolate.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Greeks revolting (Έλληνες επαναστάτες)

I don't normally apologise for anything in my blog, but I'd like to apologise on this occasion for the length of this blog post. It's long because it contains a week's worth of observations during the Greek high school teachers' strike. Hence, I have added sub-headings, to make things easier to read.

Discipline is a strong word. It conveys a controlling sense which has negative overtones in a liberal world (whose tolerance of liberalism led it hyper-tolerance). But discipline usually starts in the home, and it is often acquired by example. Who sets the example is a matter of culture - in the Western world, there is a national sense of what is normally regarded as disciplined action, but in an extremist country such as that which Greece has become, the state has never managed to impose discipline on its people. Nor, by extension, has any state institution. The lack of a standard measure of discipline in Greece is the root reason of most of Greece's problems. The Greek word for discipline is πειθαρχεία. But in Greek, we also have another meaning of discipline that is connected with education: that of παιδεία. These days in Greece, paideia is just as lacking as democracy, both of which were born in Greece. They have both been distorted to a form of brainwashing.

Morning routine
In the summer holidays (which are bloody long in Greeece - between 2 and 3 months, depending on which stage you are at school), I let the kids wake up whenever they want. But during school term, I have a routine, which I dislike breaking:

The breakfast bar - an old filing box, given a new leash of life. A possible winter project: cover it, make it look prettier, and hide its original use.

• 6.53am: while it's still dark, the alarm rings (I have to get up to switch off), I get up and wake the kids
• I start making my coffee
• 7.00am: those still in bed get the sheets rolled off their bodies
• 7.05am: those still in bed get the light switched onto their face
• the kids prepare their own breakfast (helped by my establishing a breakfast bar on the kitchen table): choice of home-made jam or tahini chocolate spread (they always go for my jam!), butter, fresh bread, cereals, milk, cheese, and anything esle in the house that is vaguely healthy and can be considered breakfast food
• the kids prepare their own school meals: anything including a piece of fruit, a home-made muffin, a home-made sandwich, etc - and don't forget your water bottle
• 7.30am: last call for breakfast 
• 7.35am: face, hands, shoes, bag (it had better have been prepared the night before!)
• 7.45am: we're in the car and on the road
• 8:00am: we usually manage to be outside the high school (and I am still early)

If I didn't do all this, then I could never get my kids to school on time with something in their stomachs before they got there. That's one of my jobs - to help my kids learn a routine that works well for them, which they can adapt in later life, according to their changing needs. It's my job to do that as the person raising them. If I didn't present this disciplined approach to our morning routine, what would end up happening is that my kids would get up just a few minutes before they needed to have left home to get to school, they'd eat nothing, they'd complain that that they are hungry, I'd have to fork out money for the school canteen, I'll end up with a constantly emptying purse, and they'd be fat. Or will they? 

Early start, early finish
Schools in Greece start at 8.10am all over the country. It's rather early, but if I were to try to explain this time within the framework of working hours in Greece, then it all seems to fall into place with the public servant mentality: 8:00am is regarded as the start of the working day for most Greek public servants (even in office jobs, many start at 7:00am, but most start at 8:00am - very few start after 8:30am). Needless to say, the earlier you start work, the earlier you are allowed to finish, in line with the communist-style 8-hours-work, 8-hours-sleep and 8-hours-play mentality. Teachers are public servants, hence it could be said that democracy is being served in this way in its full form (as long as you are a public servant, that is).   

To strike, or not to strike
On the first day of the Greek high school teachers' strike (Monday, September 16), I had to take my son to his school, to find out if his teachers had chosen to strike or not (the pseudo-rules of how to announce you are striking in Greece are explained here). I decided to wait outside the school until I found out what was going on, basically to save driving time and petrol money. When we arrived at 8.00am, I noticed how empty the front of the school yard looked, especially the teachers’ parking spaces. (Damn them, I thought; they had decided well before this morning that they would be striking. They were all still in bed while my son and I were at school.) 

Following the sheep
At 8.05am, my son comes out of the school and tells me that he may do 1 or 2 periods only. I asked him how he found that out. he said the other kids in his class told him. “Then you really don’t know what is happening, do you?” Greek schoolkids are like sheep - they follow on from the others who seem to know what they are doing. Kids with older siblings possibly know the routine better. They are kept uninformed by teachers, which is why they resort to this tactic. But very few times do they actually know in full what is happening; they have roughly an idea of what is happening, and that is what causes a lot of confusion. Few of them make an attempt to know exactly what is happening. If only they knew something: if they did demand to know exactly what is happening, they would more likely extract this information on a more consistent basis, and their lives would change completely. 

At 8.10am, the bell rings. The children are all assembled informally in the school yard. I hear the headmaster speaking to them via a megaphone. As he calls out the name of each class group, rounds of cheers are fired by the children. Some children file out of the school just as soon as they had arrived for the day. This meant that either they had no lessons for the day at all (because all their ‘professors’, which is what all high school teachers are called - with the use of the same title at university) - were striking, or they had a free period before their first/only lesson for the day.

I told my son to inform me about the strikes in the way that the headmaster had explained on the first day: by phone – according to the headmaster, they are allowed to use the staff telephone to do this. Only a few parents, mainly the mothers of first-year pupils, were waiting outside the school in their cars, like myself, with the same hope I suppose that they wouldn't have to drive back and forth from home to school and home again. But I saw my son come racing out of the yard at 8:13am to tell me hurriedly through the car window: “One lesson only, we’re having it now, then school's over!” He was excited, happy, almost glad of the outcome.

A sea of faces
Naturally, I waited till he finished - I would still have time to drive him back home and go to work on time myself. For the next 45 minutes, I sat in the car, observing an hour of life passing by outside a small village school. My first observation was rather amusing: I saw a boy I had never seen before, who I thought looked just like his father. We were classmates together at one point in New Zealand and although I hadn't seen his father since his wedding day, the face of the father was unmistakably imprinted on the son’s face. In that sea of Greek boys' faces, I remembered this boy's father as his spitting image. (He does indeed live in the area, something I knew before I came here.)  

Bikies
Children were milling in and out of the school by now, while some were still arriving. A very few were coming on motorbikes (and another tiny minority on bikes). Not a single motorcyclist was wearing a helmet, despite the declaration that we were asked to sign in the junior high school about means of transportation to school: if the children used a motorbike, they had to ensure that the child (who wouldn’t be legally licensed to drive a motorbike anyway at the age of junior high school, unless he is repeating classes and he is in his late teens) would be wearing a helmet. One child walked by wearing shorts, with a thick scab visible, nearly 3 inches wide, from the very top of his left leg to the very bottom, probably acquired during the summer. He didn't look more than 15 years old. No doubt, he would be having sleeping problems. 

For every two years that I have lived in Greece, I can name a dead or seriously injured motorcyclist (always a young person) that I know or whose family I know of. This month, I added another to the list: one of the two motorcyclist deaths that took place on the same day in Hania during our mini-break in Southern Crete. A trainee policeman who would write you a ticket for drinking and driving died in the same way. The woman refuse collector he smashed into has now had her leg amputated. She was an immigrant, living and working in Crete - her life has been shattered by this event.

Junk food
Most kids were carrying a schoolbag. A few were also carrying mobile phones (not allowed according to a teacher I spoke to about this). Most weren't eating anything, but a visible minority were eating packaged food: large chocolate bars, crisps, baked-till-dry salty pastry snacks, ham-and-cheese filled bread rolls (doesn't that cost something like three times to buy it ready than it does to make it at home?) and packets of chocolate biscuits. Drinks ranged from locally produced soda (I was surprised to see this - no one was drinking global labels like Sprite or Coke), juice boxes (we're in the πορτοκαλοχώρια - orange-producing village - here!) and styrofoam coffee (they probably cost 7 times to buy out than to make them at home). One girl even arrived licking an ice-cream rocket cone. No one was munching on fruit or anything that looked barely home-made. (My son had an apple in his bag. I know that one day, he may be embarrased about bringing the apple out of his bag. That's why I insist on a large breakfast every morning. You won't need to eat much until lunch time then.)

Some of the kids eating this food - both boys and girls, from both senior and junior high school as the schools are located in the same place - were overweight; but some were not at all overweight. It's not the junk food that's making the fat ones fat. It's probably a combination of factors, such as eating large portions of food and inactivity, just as much as eating hi-fat, hi-sugar, hi-carb food. This store-bought food, which requires a small fortune to buy on a daily basis, points to the fact that in this school catchment area, which ranges from the rural lowlands to the remote highlands of Hania, there is no shortage of money. It should also be noted that there were more children eating nothing, and they too came in all shapes and sizes. Obesity and junk food are only partly related - junk food is just one factor in a collection of factors, working negatively towards obesity.

Our celebration meal last night, a happy junk food treat - my son got the first prize in his category in the Pan-Cretan fencing competition held yesterday in the town of Moires (Iraklio). This is one of their favorite junk foods: fried potatoes with bacon, cheese and pink sauce. 

It's not a crime to eat junk food, but there is a place and time for everything, and it's not for breakfast on a school day. When Greek kids eat junk food, it is not a sign of poverty. It's a lack of discipline. Neither does junk food signal a lack of decent food in Greece. It signals a mismanagement of priorities. I can guarantee that in the houses of those village children, there is something stewing on the stovetop or roasting in the oven every single day. 

Loitering
Very little loitering was taking place. Who wants to loiter in the burning heat, under a scorching sun, on the concreted road outside a rather ugly-looking school? Across the road form the school, the area is filled with orchards groves and olive groves. It is a busy road linking the south with the north of the island. Most of the kids who were leaving the school moved away from it, probably going home, or perhaps hanging around in a more convivial environment close to the school. Those who had classes but were enjoying a free period in the first hour had to keep close to the school in order to hear the bell. Some parents came to pick up their kids, but most children would be going home on the school buses, whose drivers had been informed to come and pick them up early. 

Village schools are handy in this way: they do not attract undesirables. In the town cetre, there is more serious cases of loitering. It isn't the children that are loitering, though. 

Gay
At one point, a group of 5 kids passed by my car in a straight line. The sole boy in the group was wearing very brightly coloured clothes, dressed in a similar way to when I saw him on the first day of term. He had a Jennifer Aniston haircut (when she had cut it short, pageboy style, just above her shoulders), his pants were bright red, his t-shirt bright blue, and he was walking boldly in the middle of a group of girls, just like he was doing on the first day of term. His clothes were just as much out of the closet as he was; he made no attempt to disguise his homosexuality, and he was not being chastised or ostracised for who he was. In fact, I've never seen any prejudice against gays in Greece. There's always been a certain amount of tolerance to homosexuals. They are still treated as 'different', like anyone else who stands out form the crowd, but they are not targeted, as it sounds like when you read the Greek anti-press which often clumps minorities together, eg homosexuals with HIV+ carriers. Gays who get into confrontations usually do so for other reasons, and their gayness is then used derisively. It's not usually their gayness that gets them into a confrontation in the first place.

But the boy's - possibly - effeminate clothing and hairstyle still have to make us question why he prefers to stand out in this way. After all, he could have been heterosexual and still worn these clothes. This comes as no surprise to me - this is exactly how homosexual men are depicted on all Greek TV shows that feature gays. It's like they do it on purpose, that a gay man can only be effeminate. So this village boy's role model is mainly this one: the effeminate gay men on TV. But gay men that I have come across are never like that in the first place. As for gay Greek women, who? They are invisible in our society, as if they do not exist. (But they do, and Greeks can name well known ones - we just don't call them lesbians in the written press.) Greeks are still learning about the homosexuality issue. They aren't brilliant students, but at least we aren't Russia (but we probably won't become the Netherlands, either). 

Other mothers
During this time, I stayed in the car, pretending to read a book about herbs, with the window open (it was very hot). I tried to look like I was minding my own business (while I made notes of my observations). Mothers came by and stopped to make some polite standardised chit-chat. Greek village housewives do not have much to in the morning. Some walked a little further down the road to have a drink at the cafe close by to the school. From the chit-chat, it seems that they are resigned to the situation at hand: they have lived through similar circumstances, they are used to it, and they don't seem to believe that much change can take place. They have not lived in a different environment, and I probably seem too foreign to them. 

Slavery
I asked them why they should support the striking teachers. Their answers were very typical of what most Greeks would answer to this question: "But what can they do when their jobs are at stake?", "They are within their rights", "It's up to them if they wish to strike", "They are being treated like slaves". They answered like sheep, with cliches; they had either once worked for the private sector or had never had a paid job, let alone been a public servant. They shrugged their shoulders and moved on. One mother claimed that she supported the teachers' strike, because they are helping the cause for anti-slavery: "When our children are supposed to find jobs, all there will be is slaves' wages." This particular mother was very strong-minded. She is a cook, and had been on a €1,500 salary, which has now been reduced to €800. (Just for the record, I am a Masters' graduate, and I barely managed to reach €1,200 at the most, which has now gone down slightly.) She was getting a high salary because her union had argued that cooks did βαρέα-ανθυγιεινά (heavy-duty and unhealthy) work, so they should be paid extra money for that, managing also to secure early retirement for them. This occupation has since been reclassified to 'normal working conditions'.

I now understand better why Greeks may be seen as supporting the teachers' strikes, and hence the status quo. They want the freedom to express their opinions and be who they want to be, simultaneously being employed on well-paid salaries, because without these two elements, they fear slavery. Slaves to who though? It can't be the Germans: my son bought home yet another paper that I had to sign for his second foreign language choices (the first foreign language choice in Greek schools is compulsorily English). "Tick German," he told me, "everyone wants to do German, not French." So that's how they are hoping their kids won't end up being slaves - by learning German. (I wonder how they'd react if Chinese was offered as a foreign language choice.)  

Sit-ins
One of the mothers mentioned how she had always supported the sit-ins that take place every year, when children overtake the school premises, stay in the buildings at night and forbid entry to the teachers. "Would you seriously allow your child to do that?" I asked her, clearly showing my annoyance - this is something that we are not used to in the Western world, children as young as 12 taking over the school premises and not allowing teachers to enter (considered perfectly normal in Greece). She explained that she was never allowed to stay overnight at school, so she only attended the sit-ins during the regular school hours, and then went home. 

So what did she achieve when the school remained closed, and the children who went to school expecting to do lessons found that the teachers had been thrown out, the teachers didn't make any attempt to enter the school, the headmaster allowed the children to have their revolution, and the school buildings and furniture were destroyed, which meant more money being needed to repair the self-inflicted damages, and more complaining teachers, students and parents when the repairs were not made swiftly?

Papathemelis
The mother may or may not have been aware of her adherence to a specifically Greek form of liberalism, which the Western world has already explained as a pseudo-left trend. Her answer was that she was glad to have had the chance to be able to express herself in a 'free' and 'democratic' manner, and she hoped the same for her kids. Another mother admitted that the only time she agreed with the sit-ins was when Papathemeli introduced a law back in the mid-90s to stop cafes in densely populated areas from continuing to blare loud music past 2am which prompted young kids like herself at the time to revolt by staging sit-ins at their school, destroying the equipment and trashing the premises at the same time, without the police being called to intervene. What is now seen as, fair, logical and reasonable, ie showing some consideration for others and having no-noise times, was regarded as a breach of freedom in her time! 

How my kids spent the national strike day - it took them three atempts to get this almost right.

National strike day
The second day of the strikes ran much like the first day. My son had 3 periods, so I arranged for his father to pick him up. On the third day - which was supposed to be a national public sector strike day for the whole country - we still had to go to school and we still had to wait to be told if his teachers would be striking. The cats teased the mice that day - he had no lessons. Coincidentally, neither did my daughter at her primary school, but she was informed the previous day, as is done in primary school. What's the difference between primary and secondary school? One of the mothers insisted that even primary school teachers did not have to tell people if they were striking until the last minute. "They're going against the law," she claimed. But they were showing more respect than the secondary school teachers to both parents and pupils.

On the last two days of the week, he had four periods on each day. This is despite the fact that on that fateful Thursday, there were two revolutions taking place on the streets of Greece: the national public sector strike which was continuing from the day before, and the anti-fascist demonstrations against the death of the far-left musician by a far-right fish market worker. So on the day when the public sector should have shown its full force, it ended up showing its full weakness - after three days of strikes, most teachers went back to work. Not even acts of fascism were strong enough to make them revolt - their pockets spoke more loudly. (I wrote this part of the post on Saturday morning; by Saturday afternoon, I heard that the teachers' 5-day rolling strikes are over, after just one week. Too few wanted to continue with a five-day strike, so a two-day strike is being proposed (a three-day strike was ruled out - again due to low participation levels). Either their pockets spoke louder, or they have tired of the 'nothing' revolution, and are showing acceptable of the inevitable). 

Their inspiration for the task - and the follow-up (an essay in English). They combined English language, physics and environment lessons together with pairwork in this project. I cannot afford to give up my salary and home-school them. But that doesn't worry me - I'm good at supplementing their schoolwork.

My son tells me that classes will be back to normal on Monday (not surprising, given Saturday's newspaper article - see above paragraph) with six-period days. Is that what a 5-day rolling strike is all about? If it's a choice that the worker can make, in this case, the teachers are preferring the work. But is a teacher a worker? I've been a teacher all my working life, but I've never felt like a worker. The word 'worker' conjures up a different image in my mind: someone whose work environment is boring, tiring, dirty, monotonous. That cannot possibly describe the work environment of any teacher, no matter how much they like their job. If they detest it, then they probably did not have a calling for the profession.

Your teachers can often predict if you have a calling to be a teacher. My school report for 1977 (above: Primer 5; below: Primer 6) is typical of my Clyde Quay School reports in general, and of course I remember all my teachers: Sara was an American Jew who had migrated to NZ and had taken up NZ citizenship, and Paul was a half-Greek Kiwi (which explains the report being written in Greek, for my parents - Paul's mother wrote it for him). High school was different.

Approachable teachers
This diatribe is not a criticism of Greek teachers' teaching. We haven't seen much of that yet! They may be highly intelligent (my son told me how he really liked his only maths class to date because the teacher appeared very knowledgeable), they may also be nice people (they are just people after all, first and foremost), but they need to remember that they are doing a job which you must have a calling for. I don't think that this is what they all had in mind when they were given their jobs. Their strike behaviour is bound to reflect negatively in their teaching if none of them put students before their political convictions. For example, students remember their teachers by saying: "Oh, that one always goes on strike". You cannot write off your students, keeping them in the dark until you feel like opening up to them again, and expect to gain their trust. They need to really think about this - they are not just public servants when they come to school to be in contact with children and young people. 

Having said this, the headmaster made a positive impact on my son: On Tuesday, he talked to his class group for two periods, possibly using the teachers' strike time to help keep the kids in school longer. He probably found a moment to talk to all the new class groups in this way during the week. "He seems really nice, Mum," was his impression. My own thoughts on the headmaster are generally very positive too, from the few occassions that I've talked to him; my son knows full well how easy it is to get on the wrong side of a headmaster/teacher, and to be ignored, neglected and misunderstood.

Lack of discipline

Discipline shows respect, and vice-versa. If I learnt anything from the strike period, it is that a large minority of Greeks lack discipline in their own homes, and therefore by extension, respect towards their fellow Greeks. Rules are treated contemptuously - they are not for us, they are only for other people. Kids eat junk food for breakfast and they ride motorbikes without a helmet or license - parents give them the money to do this. Teachers act secretively, keeping information from their pupils. This is how they expect the student to be kept in their (lower) place. But they are not showing respect to the intelligence of the open young minds of their students, some of whose parents are not teaching their kids any discipline. While they all collectively enjoy a high level of hedonism, when economic problems arise, they cry wolf; economic problems are never explained by the possibility of misplaced priorities. Greece can't get her house in order because in many cases Greek homes lack order. But no one would admit the latter - if I said this to those other mothers, they'd think of me suspiciously: she is a ξένη, she is not really Greek, she has been raised like a Protestant. 

Distorted democracy
I think it is fair to say that there is a large group of Greeks that have a rather distorted view of democracy. They regard the new fiscal order as a form of slavery, even though they have amassed enough personal wealth to continue living as if nothing has changed. They want the right to continue amassing wealth without losing their comforts, and they are not prepared to give up something in order to win something else. A friend of mine called Greeks left-wing capitalists, alluding to their communistic work ethics which they combine with their delight in amassing consumer goods. They fear slavery but they don't realise that they are already slaves to money, wanting more to have what they they think they deserve, without really having earned it in the first place, or even having compared costs to see what they can afford. If it took two decades approximately for some Greeks to admit that Papathemelis may have been right when he was seen as "trying to control nightlife and as being contrary to the Greek spirit of leisure", perhaps they will need another two decades to see why they really can't both have their cake and eat it. And when that day comes, they will know for sure that they cannot have everything, and that they cannot go back to the days when they believed that they could. 

Greece seems to be a very divided country at the moment, with her visible extremism, but the different labelling of political parties is a misnomer. The far left is no better than the far right (they are both enti-establishment and violent), while the centre is not in a position to exercise self-power: they are simply there to execute the EU's/IMF's orders. The leader of the main opposition to the government even went as far as to ask schoolchildren to support their teachers in their 'cause'. Tsipras thinks he can brainwash them, and why not? Most voting Greeks have been brainwashed into believing the promises of one political party or another. Tsipras also knows how effective it is to draw people near him in their young age - he spent a lot of his time in his youth staging sit-ins at school, holding banners and protesting on the street. (That's one reason why his English skills are severely lacking - his rich dad's money was not enough to keep him in frontistiria; there was a lack of discipline in his home, for sure.) People relate to him well - they can see themselves in his person.

The murder of the musician confused the teachers' strike, exacerbating the tension, causing a melee, making the strikes lose their focus. We don't know which revolution we are fighting for anymore, or whose side we are on. Are they much different anyway? If we still had παιδεία, we would know that they are not.

It's Monday morning now, and I'm about to take my son to school again and wait at the gates until he tells me what he is told will be happening for the day. It's difficult to imagine that I will have to go through this for the next 6-7 years. The teachers will get tired of this game, and their pockets will suffer. I don't think it will last long. Patience...

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Breaking down barriers (Γκρεμίζοντας τα εμπόδια)

After the sprinkling of the Holy Water (known as Ayiasmo) on the first day of the school term at the high school, the children were split into class groups alphabetically, and were then designated to a classroom where they would be given books (my son came home with 32 books in a blue plastic carrier bag, the kind you get in a fresh produce market for carrying potatoes, etc) and a teacher would give them a little pep-talk. During this time, my husband and I chatted with some of the other parents that had also accompanied their kids on their first day of high school. We were all waiting to ask the headmaster about some things we weren't informed of during the Ayiasmo, which consisted mainly of niceties, chanting priests and half-hearted speeches by the local politicians (deputy mayors). Some parents don't need to hang around the school to ask anything because they have other children (or know of other children) who have already been through the first day of term, and they know the ropes. But since we are new to the game, we decided stay and get a feel for the place.

Greek public school education relies on books: if it's not in a book, it's not taught. All books are distributed in the first week of the new year. Apart from the more traditional subjects of Language (both Modern and Ancient Greek), History, Maths, Biology (I note a lack of Chemistry and Physics), there is also Music, Geology-Geography, Life and Writings of Herodotus, Homer's Odyssey, Information Science, Art, Religious Studies, Physical Education (yes, there are books for those too!) and Home Economics, which particularly interests me, so I may read it before my son.

The headmaster sensed our newness and when the children had all been assigned a class, he explained a few things to us about how the school would operate, the kinds of things he knew parents were waiting to have explained to them: the availability of school buses (sadly, they usually arrive after the start of the first lesson), how absences are treated (it's not as though we can take our kids on a London holiday anymore, like we used to do when they were both in primary school), what times the school would operate in the first week (that first school week always take some getting used to in Greece, after three months of summer holidays for primary school children), and what times the school would operate under normal circumstances. That 'normal circumstances' phrase reminded me that we have been barraged with the news of the teachers' rolling five-day strikes, starting from this coming Monday. Yet, nobody, nobody, nobody dared mention the taboo question of how the school will operate on those days, and how we will be informed about striking teachers.

Striking in Greece has always been a common way in the public service of expressing dissent about anything. It is the first thing that people used to resort to when they wanted to show their annoyance about a new law/rule/edict. Sadly, it is now all that they have to use as a weapon - and to date, no strike has been successful in any public domain. What's more, striking is as personal as voting - you never tell anyone if you will take part in a strike, until the very last minute. This includes teachers - they behave in exactly the same way as any other public servant, which gives them much more power than the average pen-pusher, since they disrupt a parent's work routine and a child's study routine. The student and the parent are never their priority when they strike - striking is regarded as a democratic form of personal expression. This is something I knew full well when I decided to break the taboo and specifically ask the headmaster and the teacher who was accompanying him about it.

Greek high schools all look like this; the structures generally resemble prisons. This particular school has not had a second coat of paint. The main consideration for me in judging school buildings is whether they've been built according to anti-seismic standards (Hania lies in a seismic zone, but we have certain advantages over other parts of Crete). 

I'm not afraid to break down barriers. I never bother with grey forms of politeness when dealing with people of any strata. We are all human beings to start with - some of us are prettier, smarter, richer, etc than others, but in my mind, no one is better. As people, we are all equal. To most people, I think I sound horribly rude with my directness. But nowadays, I think that these people know I am simply demanding transparency. To my mind, I am just getting on with whatever job I am dealing with at that point. And I think the teachers saw that this is what I was ultimately aiming to do - I wasn't trying to offend them: I was simply trying to show some regard for my own self-esteem.

"Excuse me, could you tell us what's going to happen during the strikes?"

Both the faces of the headmaster and the teacher literally soured, like an old lemon that starts to wrinkle. The headmaster lost his smile. I had confronted him head-on with an issue that he thought he had cleverly avoided throughout the Ayiasmo, not mentioning a single word about the proposed strikes of the high school teachers, despite this being the main news item in nearly every mainstream Greek news site. What on earth is he avoiding, I wondered. Everyone knows about it; why didn't he show some sympathy to our plight? And with this in mind, how can I show any sympathy for his?

The teacher accompanying him immediately jumped to his aid. "That's a personal issue," she said, lips pursed. "We can't tell you who will be striking and on what day." But that's not what I asked or what I wanted to know.

"I'm not asking who is striking or whether the school will strike. I am simply asking what on earth I do with my child to make sure that he is safe."

The headmaster felt as if his authority and the tacit agreement that he has made among his staff were being challenged. "Of course your child will be safe!" he insisted. But he hadn't really answered my question, had he? I could have left all this shit to be dealt with on the day of the first strike (if there will be one - we simply do not know), but I've always been the kind of person to plan ahead; most of the mothers who were with me do not work, so they can always be around for their children if something does not go to plan. I found it very insolent and rather egotistical on the part of the teacher and the headmaster that they did not remember this. Village schools are used to the housewife mother; I refuse to apologise for being an exception.

"So when I drive my child 10 kilometres to bring him to school and then drive another 20 to get to work, while his father could be anywhere on the island, even as far as Iraklio, what do I do in the event of a strike being called at the very last minute? I think I have a right to be told from now how you handle this issue."

Tensions rose. Still, no one else among the other parents wanted to break the taboo of not mentioning strikes. Both teachers and parents were cruising along as if they were completely ignorant of current affairs, completely unaffected by the crumbling world around them, completely indifferent to each others' apprehensions. Greeks have often sat it out, waiting for things to change without changing them for themselves, even watching the tide come in, and simply hoping that it won't take them with it. Plan Bs are often devised at the last minute. But that's not me. I refuse to work that way.

At primary school, because children have only one class teacher, they are informed the day before if the teacher will take part in a strike the next day. But at high school, where children are taught by different teachers, this is not done. Of course, it is easy to do this, but the teachers themselves refuse to shape up: surely they know if they intend to get up early the next day to go to their job - surely they have already decided if they are striking or not: I  know for a fact that teachers do have knowledge of who will be striking or not, and they inform their friends (the in-group, so to speak) who have children attending their school. They are simply not telling the students until the last minute, kind of like a cat-and-mouse game. This means that children must turn up at school at 8:10am, even if they end up having not a single lesson that day.

My following outburst had the most effect on the teachers:
"I am only asking for this information because I really don't want to go away from here with a feeling of mistrust and suspicion against teachers. You are in a position to tell us what will happen. We're new here, we don't live in the area, and we really don't know who to ask. I don't really feel like asking more experienced parents what happens - I want to hear it from you, για να μην υπάρχουν παρεξηγήσεις." Which basically means "I don't want there to be any misunderstanding", clearly implying that I don't want to be in the position to be able to accuse them of mismanagement or neglect.

The headmaster then realised that I had put his two feet into one shoe, as we like to say in Greek. He could not avoid the issue. So he did the only thing left to do: he explained what happens during a strike at the high school:
"All children have to be at school on time and all teachers must have declared whether they will strike by 8:10am of that morning. After that, we reschedule the children's classes with the teachers who are not striking so they can all finish earlier. Then the children can phone their parents to inform them of when they will finish--"

"Do you allow the use of mobile phones?" I was very naughty to interrupt him, I know. But it's a tactic applied as feedback - I wanted to show him I was paying full attention to him, hanging onto his every word. So his word had to be good and true.

"-- wait a minute, now just listen to us first! We don't allow mobile phones, they can call you from my office. We also inform the school bus services to come earlier, and we wait until all the children have left the school grounds with a parent or the bus."

I thanked the headmaster for this explanation; he gave me the answer I wanted. And I was so pleased to hear the teacher who was with him say: "You were right to ask about this." She was the one who originally said it was a personal issue whether a teacher went on strike. I knew I had done the right thing, and I was glad that someone could see things my way.

This kind of secretive behaviour is not exhibited in more transparent societies  where each party knows its rights and has been exercising them for a long long time, even when people are in extreme disagreement over how an issue should be handled. It wasn't common in Greece to challenge authorities - it may not even ever be fully accepted - but the more often people do it, the more acceptable it will become. I couldn't go away without doing what I did. It's sad that I had to act like this on the very first day of school, at the very beginning of the new school year. I also foresee times in the near future when I will again demand a full explanation of how things work (eg I know there is a way for my children to avoid religious studies altogether - I will eventually work that one out, too). But if I hadn't done what I did, I would have gone away that day with suspicions and negative sentiments towards people who often take it for granted that we do as they tell us to do and not ask too many questions.

Thankfully the kids weren't around to witness these events because they often see their mother behaving 'differently' among a group of parents. The behaviour of the minority is judged by the beliefs of the majority, so they still need some time to understand what I am doing. I may not have been brought up in Greece, but I learnt about democracy in another country that espoused the virtues of this ancient Greek invention.

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The new school year (Η νέα σχολική χρονιά)

My dear children, and perhaps especially, dear Son, because you are starting junior high school under a difficult socio-political climate in your home country, with promised disruptions and barriers to your education, and your well-being in general,

You know how I feel about Greek school. It's not as good as it could be, and that is a fair statement. So far, your primary school teachers were generally hopelessly immature young women with no children of their own, all nice enough people, but they weren't the best school teachers.
(You were really lucky one year, Son, when you had that nice man with two kids who was from another Greek city and had taught overseas, even raising his kids abroad.)

Not that you  need to have children to be a good teacher; they were simply clear examples of people who never had to put their house in order - they were simply positioned by the state in a system with no system. Sadly, even your headmasters so far have not been the most approachable people.
(The high school head teacher seems nice; maybe we will get lucky this time.)
It wasn't their fault. They were educated in such a way so as to educate you in the same way.
Their primary aim was not to become a role model for young children; it was to become a state school teacher.
(They were lucky in that respect - they caught the train early. But they didn't expect it to crash.)

Remember what your job at school is: you need to show the teachers that you have learnt what they have told you. Teachers praise you for this. All you are required to do at school is read what they give you and parrot-learn from set texts. When you don't understand something, they will simply tell you to 'read more' (να διαβάζεις περισσότερο). And that is all a teacher will ask you do: 'read, read, read' (διάβαζε, διάβαζε, διάβαζε).

Funny, isn't it, that they do not ask you to 'study' (μελέτα) - in Greece, we read, not study. In New Zealand, we were told to study what we learnt, not just to read it. But there's not point in my telling you what I did in New Zealand 35 years ago. Things will have changed there too, in all likelihood. To get through your system, you have to do what is expected of you. And in Greece, it is to read, read, read. So just remember to do as the teacher says: read, read, read.

A blast from mummy's past. I was always an average student at secondary school, as attested by my national grades (ie the same exam was sat by all students in the country on the same day). The blue certificate (end of Form 5) shows that I didn't do well in science (I didn't like the subject) or English (I didn't understand the subject, possibly due to reasons explained by a alck of cultural perceptions). My NZ teachers always praised my potential though, as attested by the pink paper (end of Form 6) which contains subjective grades awarded without examinations. The green paper (end of Form 7) shows my grades in the exams of the final year of high school, which were not very high at all, but I recall that I didn't study at all for them in that year. By this time, I was terribly bored of school, and I knew that these exams did not count towards my university entrance (I had got into university the previous year). Since I didn't apply for university the previous year (I thought myself too young, and I believe in retrospect that I was absolutely correct about this), I just bided my time, until the year ended and I could start the next phase in my life. 

I want you to know that it does not matter to me or your father if you don't get the best marks in class. We both know that your life's path will not rest on what you did in school at age 12. What we want you to do is to finish each class in high school with passing grades in all your subjects. It doesn't matter to us if you get a 50% or an 80% or a 99%. But if it matters to you, then make sure you read, read, read, to get the mark you want. You know we will not send you to frontistiria to raise your grades - that can only be used as a last resort, and we have not reached that stage yet. Some subjects will seem difficult for you. That's OK, though; some subjects were difficult for us too when we were your age. Neither of your parents were A-grade students, nor were they top of the class.
(I was top of the class Form 3, my first year of high school, but that really doesn't count, because I was placed in a class of girls who were not expected to do very well academically. This was due more than anything else to the teachers' prejudices - they regarded the primary school that I came from as lower status than the ones in the high school's catchment areas. So they placed me with the dumbells. They admitted that they had made a mistake the following year, when they gave me the 'Student most likely to succeed' award at the end of Form 4, placing me in a smarty-pants class in Form 5, where the girls in it were expected to do well academically. Indeed, they did. But I was never top of the class after that. So in essence, I was never really top of the class.)

You know we will never scold you if your mark is not as high as other children's. We just want you to get through the system. We want to say, "Bravo, you did it!" at the end of the school year. And I am telling you from now, that that is what we will do. So just remember that we will not scold you for what you don't know (not even teachers know everything); we will only scold you for not working out a way to show your teachers what you do know.

We had just as much help as you did, too; your grandparents may not have known as much as, perhaps, your parents do now, but they provided your parents with the right conditions to help their children get through school. And that's what both your parents did - they got through school and became valuable members of society. So, just remember, it's up to you to get through school, not us. We're just providing the conditions. You will work out your own ways to get through school. That's what is going to help you ultimately, when you leave school: you will have worked out ways to get you through life, and you will continue to work out ways to help you get on with your life.

Some people are already trying to scare us by telling us that high school is really difficult, because it isn't like primary school, as if your parents were naive or something, like we do not know the difference. They tell us that learning Ancient Greek (a dead language, like the Latin I learnt at school) is terribly hard and if we don't provide you with 'extra' help, you won't pass the exams. I don't know why they try to scare us so much. But I know they are the same people who stare at us in disbelief when we tell them that our children never do any homework during the weekends, because we have disciplined you into finishing your homework every weeknight, so your whole family can have the weekend free, with your school bags packed on Friday night for Monday morning, while your classmates were still finishing off their homework on Sunday night.
(You know how annoyed we get when you cannot undertake that one responsibility that we place on you - getting your homework done promptly and appropriately. That, together with keeping your room tidy, is what we mean by putting your own house in order.)

These people don't know how you have been raised. They don't know the underlying principles that your parents have used to bring you up so far. And even if we told them what we were doing and how we were doing it, they would not be able to understand it. They might even say that we are not doing things the right way.
(They often berate us for getting you to finish your homework as soon as you come home from school, because they claim, and quite unjustly in our opinion, that you are tired. So they recommend that you come home, 'play' (whatever that means at the pre-teen stage), 'relax' (by watching some crap on television), 'eat a snack' (hello, there aren't any in our house these days, unless you make them yourselves), and then do your homework (just when your after-school sports activities are about to start). Each to his own - they really have no idea how we are raising you. )

So try not to listen to them. It's not that they are doing things the wrong way; they are just doing things the way that things have always been done before them, and they are too scared to change now. For some of them, it is too late to change, anyway. So just remember who raised you and how they raised you. You can't choose who raised you and where you were born, but you can choose everything else in life. You can choose the way you want to get through life, and that's ultimately what we want to help you to do.

Ayiasmos - the first day of school everywhere in Greece begins with a priest blessing the teachers and students with Holy Water. After today's Ayiasmo at the high school, the children were then broken up into class groups according to their surnames. The children then picked up their new set texts for the year - 32 books - and went home. Day 1 over. 

Good luck, kids. We know you will find a way to get through school. But good luck, anyway; sometimes, luck is very handy.
(Son, did you hear what was said in the Αγιασμό this morning? Your high school won a national prize for the methodology it uses, which is now being touted as πρότυπο for other schools. Maybe luck will be on your side after all.)

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