PAIDEIA OMOGENON - Educating Expatriates
An interview with the Coordinator of the Paideia Omogenon project
Mr. Mihalis Damanakis
N.K. What is the Paideia Omogenon program?
M.D. The Paideia Omogenon program is financed by the Ministry of Education and the European Union Committee. The aim of the program is to maintain, cultivate, and promote Greek language and culture to Greeks abroad, by improving on the existing elementary and secondary education.
In this framework, the aim is to develop educational material in print or electronic form. The educational material produced includes many different books for various groups of students. It is educational material for Greek as a second language students – students who come to the school and already have a satisfactory level of knowledge of the Greek language. The program also produces educational material for students who come to the school with zero knowledge and are of Greek origin, but also for students of different national backgrounds. Plus, it also produces educational material for teaching historical and cultural elements as well, not just language.
The retraining of Greek expatriate educators is organized every year, usually in January for the southern hemisphere, and in July for the northern hemisphere. The re-training seminar for expatriate educators takes place at the University of Crete in Rethymno. Seminars are also organized for educators who have left Greece to go abroad. There is also a materialization of educational programs for expatriate students. The students perform a theatrical show every July. Theatre groups come from abroad, and so far seven student theatre festivals have been organized.
The creation of communication networks, databases, and teleteaching abilities exists with the help of modern digital technology.
N.K. You are one of the pioneers of Paideia Omogenon; tell us how the program developed for Greek expatriate educators?
M.D. Ideas for the development of programs regarding Greek language education abroad already existed in the 70s after the fall of the junta, when Greece began to show increasing interest in Greeks abroad. In the 80s these ideas became more specific and the materialization of these programs became possible after Greece’s incorporation into the European Union in 1981, when the European Union began to finance such programs.
One of the first programs fully financed by the European Union was an educator retraining program, and production of educational material for Greeks in Germany. In the mid-90s, the Paideia Omogenon program was designed by the Ministry of Education, but also with my own participation and help. Since 1997 we have begun to bring it into effect here at the University of Crete and we continue to do so with financing from the European Union, as well as the Greek government.
N.K. From which countries do the educators and students come?
M.D. In essence, educators and students come from all countries where Greek language education exists. We have had educators from Australia and New Zealand, both in the past as well as the present, at the University of Crete. We have educators from various African countries, primarily from South Africa, but also from Zaire, Congo, Ethiopia and others, as well as Egypt. We have many educators from European countries, mainly Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, and Great Britain where there are many Greeks, but also from Balkan countries, mostly Albania, as well as others such as Poland, Hungary, and Romania where Greek language education also exists. Of course we also have people from former USSR countries, such as Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.
All of these countries participate in the program, and the educators and students who come to Greece from these countries take part in various programs that we organize, either at the University of Crete or other Greek Universities, such as the University of Ioannina and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
N.K. With visiting educators from different countries, are you aware of the various problems or concerns faced by educators in host countries?
M.D. Greek expatriate educators are one of our sources of information. We either ask them to complete questionnaires, write essays about their schools, or we interview them or have daily discussions with them when they are here. They operate as sources of information, but also as evaluators of the work we are doing.
Of course, aside from our educators, we also gather information from small-scale studies that we do in various countries, which lead to the research design for each individual country, and the needs of each individual area.
N.K. What are some of the blazing problems that educators have?
M.D. Currently, the problem which exists and concerns the program is the systematic updating and retraining of the educators. The fact is that there is already a wealth of educational material, but all new educational material requires a well-informed and trained educator in order to be developed properly. This is a significant problem given the fact that aside from the modification of new material, as the years go by, Greek language education abroad is altered, and many mixed classes of Greek language teaching are developed.
We have new generations of children of Greek descent whose knowledge of Greek varies from zero knowledge, to excellent knowledge of Greek. Therefore, the teacher has different levels in one class, and given that very often there are children of different ages in the same class, the teacher has a serious problem. Of course, good updating and a variety of material are needed to help the teacher deal with the needs of this kind of education.
N.K. With all these problems in Greek language education, what has your team been able to do in order to improve or help this situation?
M.D. Based on our experiences and assessments, we have succeeded in the following areas: First, hundreds of educators have gone through the retraining programs. They have begun to comprehend what Paideia Omogenon means, and what educational material means, and therefore are able to use it to their advantage. Next is that we have been informed that the children find the new material more interesting than the older material, and of course once children work with educational material that is satisfactory, they are happy and therefore remain in their Greek language class, and we do not have a high percentage of students dropping out.
In recent years we have ascertained that the numbers have stabilized, and this is due to the strategic contact that exists through the Paideia Omogenon program. On the other hand, several networks for educators and students have been created, and therefore a form of communication and regulation exists among them through the Paideia Omogenon program. There are also other institutes such as, for example, the World Council of Hellenes Abroad, which promotes this feature through the Paideia Omogenon program; currently for children in areas such as Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Chile. These children are essentially creating a worldwide network and will begin to exchange ideas, send email, SMS messages, and eventually a worldwide network is created which begins in Australia, goes to Chile, and ends up in South Africa.
These events are amazing and the networks of this new generation are especially strong during July. This is because students come to take part in the Student Theatre Festival, a theatre festival of Greek expatriates, as we like to call it. They take part in it, and because they exchange ideas through the performances, they connect even more, and the networks become even stronger than those created with students who are just in a school program and so on. Let’s not forget that these students suddenly make new friends in Greece and as I was discussing with an educator/student chaperone, in the afternoons the children do not want to do anything except go out with the new friends they made at school while attending classes.
The fact that children suddenly make friends at the school they attend in Rethymno is very significant. The first student theatre festival in 1998 resulted in examples such as this; the protagonist of the theatre group from Greece who was a student by chance, was the classmate of the protagonist of the theatre group from Toronto, who was in his final year in high school and then went to University. A year later they met up at the University of Toronto studying the same thing. What had essentially happened? The student from Toronto went to the University of Toronto and drew his friend from Rethymno to Toronto. These are some of the amazing things that happen among the students.
N.K. Tell us about the future of the Paideia Omogenon Program.
M.D. Right now the program has financing until July 2007. I estimate that until July 2007 the educational material will be more or less completed. Of course our needs do not end here, meaning that the student program must continue, the retraining of educators must be extended, and the development of new technologies must also be extended, and of course the educational material must continuously be updated and improved. This means that the program’s needs will continue to exist. The continuation of the program does not depend on us; it depends on the policy of the Ministry of Education. I have a feeling that the program will continue after 2007. In this sense we can say that in the immediate future there will be a continuation of this effort on the part of Greece.
N.K. What do you see in the future of Greek language abroad?
M.D. There are difficulties in maintaining and, even more so, cultivating the language of a group of people that has developed by immigrating abroad. This is because as the years go by, the new generations don’t feel the need to communicate in Greek or the need to have frequent contact with Greece as the previous generations did.
It is significant that someone who doesn’t speak Greek can have contact with Greece, because knowledge of the Greek language is not necessary in order to have contact with the country of origin – Greece. The most important thing is that as the years go by, the social centres where Greek is spoken are decreasing… and the only place remaining and in essence perseveres, is school. But Greek is diminishing here as well because when children go on their break, they speak the language of the country in which they live, and they often speak with their teacher in English as well, because the teacher may also be part of the second or third generation. In this sense there is difficulty and this does not only concern Greek, but all languages….
On the other hand, it has been noted that in recent years there is a tendency not of resurgence of the Greek language, but of a discovery of Greek by the new generations. This is probably due to certain phenomena that have been observed in the world today: the so-called globalization with all its positive and negative aspects….
I can identify this phenomenon of discovery of the Greek language and descent by the new generations, and I interpret it through this general tendency. After all, if you read international literature, there are many references to identification systems regarding Diasporas etc.; this phenomenon does exist. In the case of the maintenance of the Greek language, this is an encouraging fact. We rediscover Greece and our place of descent; we rediscover the Greek language, etc. There is of course another factor that contributes to this; it is the fact that in the last two decades Greece is a nation that has begun to attain international recognition and has a high level of quality of life.
N.K. Mr. Damanakis, we thank you very much for your precious time. We would also like to thank the program’s teachers and your office staff for their help and support.
For more information about the Paideia Omogenon program, visit the following websites: http://www.ediamme.edc.uoc.gr/ and http://www.ediamme.edc.uoc.gr/diaspora
Nikos Kolendrianos
Diploma of Teaching (Community Languages) & Bachelor of Education
Teacher in Public State Schools.
An interview with the Coordinator of the Paideia Omogenon project
Mr. Mihalis Damanakis
N.K. What is the Paideia Omogenon program?
M.D. The Paideia Omogenon program is financed by the Ministry of Education and the European Union Committee. The aim of the program is to maintain, cultivate, and promote Greek language and culture to Greeks abroad, by improving on the existing elementary and secondary education.
In this framework, the aim is to develop educational material in print or electronic form. The educational material produced includes many different books for various groups of students. It is educational material for Greek as a second language students – students who come to the school and already have a satisfactory level of knowledge of the Greek language. The program also produces educational material for students who come to the school with zero knowledge and are of Greek origin, but also for students of different national backgrounds. Plus, it also produces educational material for teaching historical and cultural elements as well, not just language.
The retraining of Greek expatriate educators is organized every year, usually in January for the southern hemisphere, and in July for the northern hemisphere. The re-training seminar for expatriate educators takes place at the University of Crete in Rethymno. Seminars are also organized for educators who have left Greece to go abroad. There is also a materialization of educational programs for expatriate students. The students perform a theatrical show every July. Theatre groups come from abroad, and so far seven student theatre festivals have been organized.
The creation of communication networks, databases, and teleteaching abilities exists with the help of modern digital technology.
N.K. You are one of the pioneers of Paideia Omogenon; tell us how the program developed for Greek expatriate educators?
M.D. Ideas for the development of programs regarding Greek language education abroad already existed in the 70s after the fall of the junta, when Greece began to show increasing interest in Greeks abroad. In the 80s these ideas became more specific and the materialization of these programs became possible after Greece’s incorporation into the European Union in 1981, when the European Union began to finance such programs.
One of the first programs fully financed by the European Union was an educator retraining program, and production of educational material for Greeks in Germany. In the mid-90s, the Paideia Omogenon program was designed by the Ministry of Education, but also with my own participation and help. Since 1997 we have begun to bring it into effect here at the University of Crete and we continue to do so with financing from the European Union, as well as the Greek government.
N.K. From which countries do the educators and students come?
M.D. In essence, educators and students come from all countries where Greek language education exists. We have had educators from Australia and New Zealand, both in the past as well as the present, at the University of Crete. We have educators from various African countries, primarily from South Africa, but also from Zaire, Congo, Ethiopia and others, as well as Egypt. We have many educators from European countries, mainly Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, and Great Britain where there are many Greeks, but also from Balkan countries, mostly Albania, as well as others such as Poland, Hungary, and Romania where Greek language education also exists. Of course we also have people from former USSR countries, such as Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.
All of these countries participate in the program, and the educators and students who come to Greece from these countries take part in various programs that we organize, either at the University of Crete or other Greek Universities, such as the University of Ioannina and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
N.K. With visiting educators from different countries, are you aware of the various problems or concerns faced by educators in host countries?
M.D. Greek expatriate educators are one of our sources of information. We either ask them to complete questionnaires, write essays about their schools, or we interview them or have daily discussions with them when they are here. They operate as sources of information, but also as evaluators of the work we are doing.
Of course, aside from our educators, we also gather information from small-scale studies that we do in various countries, which lead to the research design for each individual country, and the needs of each individual area.
N.K. What are some of the blazing problems that educators have?
M.D. Currently, the problem which exists and concerns the program is the systematic updating and retraining of the educators. The fact is that there is already a wealth of educational material, but all new educational material requires a well-informed and trained educator in order to be developed properly. This is a significant problem given the fact that aside from the modification of new material, as the years go by, Greek language education abroad is altered, and many mixed classes of Greek language teaching are developed.
We have new generations of children of Greek descent whose knowledge of Greek varies from zero knowledge, to excellent knowledge of Greek. Therefore, the teacher has different levels in one class, and given that very often there are children of different ages in the same class, the teacher has a serious problem. Of course, good updating and a variety of material are needed to help the teacher deal with the needs of this kind of education.
N.K. With all these problems in Greek language education, what has your team been able to do in order to improve or help this situation?
M.D. Based on our experiences and assessments, we have succeeded in the following areas: First, hundreds of educators have gone through the retraining programs. They have begun to comprehend what Paideia Omogenon means, and what educational material means, and therefore are able to use it to their advantage. Next is that we have been informed that the children find the new material more interesting than the older material, and of course once children work with educational material that is satisfactory, they are happy and therefore remain in their Greek language class, and we do not have a high percentage of students dropping out.
In recent years we have ascertained that the numbers have stabilized, and this is due to the strategic contact that exists through the Paideia Omogenon program. On the other hand, several networks for educators and students have been created, and therefore a form of communication and regulation exists among them through the Paideia Omogenon program. There are also other institutes such as, for example, the World Council of Hellenes Abroad, which promotes this feature through the Paideia Omogenon program; currently for children in areas such as Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Chile. These children are essentially creating a worldwide network and will begin to exchange ideas, send email, SMS messages, and eventually a worldwide network is created which begins in Australia, goes to Chile, and ends up in South Africa.
These events are amazing and the networks of this new generation are especially strong during July. This is because students come to take part in the Student Theatre Festival, a theatre festival of Greek expatriates, as we like to call it. They take part in it, and because they exchange ideas through the performances, they connect even more, and the networks become even stronger than those created with students who are just in a school program and so on. Let’s not forget that these students suddenly make new friends in Greece and as I was discussing with an educator/student chaperone, in the afternoons the children do not want to do anything except go out with the new friends they made at school while attending classes.
The fact that children suddenly make friends at the school they attend in Rethymno is very significant. The first student theatre festival in 1998 resulted in examples such as this; the protagonist of the theatre group from Greece who was a student by chance, was the classmate of the protagonist of the theatre group from Toronto, who was in his final year in high school and then went to University. A year later they met up at the University of Toronto studying the same thing. What had essentially happened? The student from Toronto went to the University of Toronto and drew his friend from Rethymno to Toronto. These are some of the amazing things that happen among the students.
N.K. Tell us about the future of the Paideia Omogenon Program.
M.D. Right now the program has financing until July 2007. I estimate that until July 2007 the educational material will be more or less completed. Of course our needs do not end here, meaning that the student program must continue, the retraining of educators must be extended, and the development of new technologies must also be extended, and of course the educational material must continuously be updated and improved. This means that the program’s needs will continue to exist. The continuation of the program does not depend on us; it depends on the policy of the Ministry of Education. I have a feeling that the program will continue after 2007. In this sense we can say that in the immediate future there will be a continuation of this effort on the part of Greece.
N.K. What do you see in the future of Greek language abroad?
M.D. There are difficulties in maintaining and, even more so, cultivating the language of a group of people that has developed by immigrating abroad. This is because as the years go by, the new generations don’t feel the need to communicate in Greek or the need to have frequent contact with Greece as the previous generations did.
It is significant that someone who doesn’t speak Greek can have contact with Greece, because knowledge of the Greek language is not necessary in order to have contact with the country of origin – Greece. The most important thing is that as the years go by, the social centres where Greek is spoken are decreasing… and the only place remaining and in essence perseveres, is school. But Greek is diminishing here as well because when children go on their break, they speak the language of the country in which they live, and they often speak with their teacher in English as well, because the teacher may also be part of the second or third generation. In this sense there is difficulty and this does not only concern Greek, but all languages….
On the other hand, it has been noted that in recent years there is a tendency not of resurgence of the Greek language, but of a discovery of Greek by the new generations. This is probably due to certain phenomena that have been observed in the world today: the so-called globalization with all its positive and negative aspects….
I can identify this phenomenon of discovery of the Greek language and descent by the new generations, and I interpret it through this general tendency. After all, if you read international literature, there are many references to identification systems regarding Diasporas etc.; this phenomenon does exist. In the case of the maintenance of the Greek language, this is an encouraging fact. We rediscover Greece and our place of descent; we rediscover the Greek language, etc. There is of course another factor that contributes to this; it is the fact that in the last two decades Greece is a nation that has begun to attain international recognition and has a high level of quality of life.
N.K. Mr. Damanakis, we thank you very much for your precious time. We would also like to thank the program’s teachers and your office staff for their help and support.
For more information about the Paideia Omogenon program, visit the following websites: http://www.ediamme.edc.uoc.gr/ and http://www.ediamme.edc.uoc.gr/diaspora
Nikos Kolendrianos
Diploma of Teaching (Community Languages) & Bachelor of Education
Teacher in Public State Schools.
3 comments:
Study in Australia, is a dream of youth generation. Even i wanted but i can not go there but luckily my all friends are study in Australia and i miss them.
"The Importance of Second Language Acquisition"
In Victoria the last few years we unfortunately have noticed a decline in the number of public schools offering Greek in their curriculums. Whilst in Oxford England many schools are introducing Ancient Greek in their public education. According to language experts in England, Ancient Greek helps students with their English grammar, maths, science, drama, and history just to name a few.
Recently in Victoria there is an immersion program being introduced to schools called Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL); a program that has been implemented for over a decade with impressive results in Europe. It is not a bilingual program as such, but a kind of half-way point in which students take one or two core subjects in a foreign language.
The work that is required involves patient and well-informed curriculum building, alongside significant expansion and improvement in language teacher development; so that more thorough programs are offered in as many languages as possible, in which students study their usual subjects through the medium of a second language.
Experts and educators of this program consider it benefits students immensely as there is engagement in the higher intellectual procedure required to learn a subject in a foreign language. This program also enables the students’ literacy skills to improve and there is a better retention of the content, because there is a need to always be very focused on content to learn things.
Research also shows that students who learn another language from an early age and being exposed to a well-planned and dynamic learning situation acquire lasting and better proficiency than adults will. It also shows that as well as providing children with greater knowledge of other cultures, language learning helps them to refine and improve their numeracy and literacy in English.
Languages are an essential part of a well-rounded education for all Australian students as citizens of a rapidly growing world. This education should begin as early as possible to give students the best linguistic and cultural competency. At the same time, teachers and schools need to be constantly keeping up to date with new teaching methodologies and practices, so that second language learners can maximize their full potential in language learning.
Having the above facts in mind, parents, teachers and communities need to work together to lobby their local schools, councils and state governments to reinstate Greek in their public schools once again; as Greek is regarded a language which assists students encountering problems with their English grammar and literacy.
By Nikos Kolendrianos
"CLIL Education in Greece" By Nikos Kolendrianos.
During the last twenty years a significant number of people from various countries and diverse cultures have entered in Greece. In the 1980s many were repatriated Greeks, while during the last decade it has been primarily foreign immigrants (Paleologou, 2001). This is reflected in the large number of foreign and repatriated students that attend Greek schools (Frangoudaki and Dragonas, 2000). From 1995-200 there was a significant rise in the number of repatriated and foreigner students. The largest group was by far in the country were the Albanians which the majority resided in the large urban areas and a small number reside in rural areas where they also attended small rural schools with no special educational provisions (Paleologou, 2001).
In 1996 Greece took its first serious steps towards addressing the issues regarding multicultural classrooms, through the establishment of the law “Intercultural Education”. The law proposed CLIL or Intercultural Schools where the content and its organizational structure would conduct education in their own language and culture. Unfortunately despite the law regarding the formation of Intercultural schools, the immigrants were subject to assimilation pressures and the governmental measures were not implemented to encourage the maintenance of the students’ ethnic identity (Paleologou and Evangelou, 2003). This non-dialogue or exchange of ideas between different cultures and religions hinders the integration of the foreign students into the Greek society.
The legislation clearly provides for the teaching of Greek as a second or foreign language to immigrant students, in practice this only occurs in specific pilot schools within the framework. In most cases teachers have experienced a certain amount of anxiety and stress as they feel inadequate when teaching immigrant students and because there a few bilingual textbooks which are non-racist or prejudiced in their content.
It is clear that there is a greater need for further teaching training with CLIL or intercultural dimensions. The training should include teaching methodology, as well as psycho-pedagogical techniques that would make the teachers work more effective in the multi-cultural class, whilst dealing appropriately with their immigrant students’ difficulties (Palelogou, 2000, 2001).
In conclusion, Greece has formally adopted a CLIL model or Intercultural Education and needs to stop treating foreign students as monolinguals. It requires that they recognize their linguistic background and to teach them with books that are bilingual or in their own language. The Greek policies need to sufficiently address various challenges of the multicultural classrooms. Unfortunately, one of the consequences is the exacerbation of discrimination and xenophobia in schools (Paleologou and Evangelou, 2003). Greece needs to avoid from falling into the trap of ‘euro-centrism’ by creating and building boundaries or walls which are considered ‘European’. This tendency creates biases and stereotypes on the way we view non-Europeans and threaten the global identity(Paleologou and Evangelou, 2003).
Positive steps need to be taken to implement educational programs that support mother tongue learning and the further development of corresponding instructional material. It is of utmost importance that bilingual programs continue after the completion of primary education. Intercultural Education represents the most suitable model for educating immigrant students, and this should be supported throughout the whole time of a child’s linguistic growth, and beyond adolescence (Paleologou and Evangelou, 2003).
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