Greek Schooling for a Foreigner

Starting school in Greece was a nerve wracking experience. How different could it be to the schooling I was used to in England? One word to explain it perfectly is incomparable. From the school hours to the lessons, from the class to the pupils and from the subjects taught to the teaching procedures, the whole approach was peculiar to me.

Let me begin with the largest hurdle I had to overcome during this time. The spoken language of Greece, it was undeniably all Greek to me. As I didn’t know any Greek at all before we moved to Greece, I remember learning the alphabet but that didn’t aid me at all in any way, I was astounded listening to the Greeks jabbering away and not understanding diddly-squat. So began my scurry towards the finish line to understand, to read, to write and to communicate in Greek the way I would in English, fluently. I spread my time across joining everyday lessons with my fellow classmates, who by the way were so intrigued by my choices, and spending time in the library studying, cramming so much new information into my brain as possible. Slowly but surely my hard work paid off. I was understanding words, phrases spoken to me, conversing even in the smallest way, reading and practicing writing, it helped I had started off with baby books: this is an apple, this is a dog etc. Eventually I did move on to a harder level of learning but I’m intending on writing about learning Greek in another post, so more all Greek to me will be here soon…

Schools in Greece tend to be the same some way or another. Greek schooling consists of primary school: from the age of 6 for 6 years, high school: from the age of 12 for 3 years and a school similar to six form for the ages of 15 to 18. The pupils are split up into classes of around 25-30 children and they have their own classroom; the teachers are the ones who tend to flit between classes. They teach a various amount of lessons during each period of school depending on the ages. The basics are maths, English, Modern Greek, Ancient Greek, science, history, religious studies, social studies, physical education and a second foreign language which is usually French. These subjects branch out as the child gets older, for example maths will become algebra and geometry, and science will become biology and chemistry. In one school day 5-7 lessons are taught with each lesson lasting around 45 minutes, this varies depending on the break taken before; I won’t go into that as it can be confusing, but just for the record there’s a break after each lesson.

For me it wasn’t a great age or best time to start Greek school, it was February and two months later the exams were to start, I was 13 nearly 14, dropped into the deep end and told to swim. Although I have to say I did enjoy the change and the range of new studies I was about to put on my shoulders, even if it did mean a lot of hard work, it didn’t scare me.

One thing that did terrify me was making friends. I was a little wary at first, the way everyone looked at me, spoke in whispers between themselves when I walked by. I had to expose myself to the risk of being friendly, something I wasn’t quite adapted to. Over the first few days of school I had many pupils talking to me in the broken English they knew; let’s say it was like a learning curve for them practicing what they had learnt over the years at school. A real experience talking to someone who’s English is the mother tongue, without the use of the Greek they were so accustomed to. It didn’t help that my strong Lancashire accent was very confusing, speaking slowly and clearly seemed the only way to go. Over a short time I felt myself fit in, I made friends, people talked to me in English and Greek, we hung out during and after school hours like real friends do, I was starting to believe that I actually belonged. School life wasn’t so bad after all, I survived.