Formal and Informal Education During the Rise of Greek Nationalism Learning to be Greek Theodore G. Zervas Formal and Informal Education during the Rise of Greek Nationalism Theodore G. Zervas Formal and Informal Education during the Rise of Greek Nationalism Learning to be Greek Theodore G. Zervas North Park University Chicago, Illinois, USA ISBN 978-1-137-48414-7 ISBN 978-1-137-48415-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48415-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960892 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. For Elenios P reface This book began in the fall of 2014 with a very simple question. Have children always learned and did people always teach children? My per- sonal and academic background led me to look at this question more closely in Greece. Both my parents were born there, and according to them our ancestors have lived in Greece for as long as they could remem- ber. My grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were all farmers. My earliest Greek ancestors were also likely farmers, with the occasional builder, priest, trader, or philosopher, going back to about 7000 BCE when agriculture was first introduced into the Balkans by Neolithic farmers from the Middle East. These early farmers ran into local hunter-gathers and taught them how to farm. It was one of the greatest technological breakthroughs ever introduced in human history. Farming provided easy access to food, it was safer than hunting and gathering food, and gave humankind more free time to come up with new ideas and ways to make human life easier. From the time these farmers arrived in the Balkans, a revolution in farming spread rapidly throughout the rest of the world. Whole communities worked the land alongside one another, with parents, grandparents, children, and other members of the community depending on the land for survival. Extended families lived within a com- munity. Children bonded with their parents and grandparents through their work with them. They watched and admired their mothers and fathers as they transformed the land, took care of the home, and created wonderful things with their hands. Children were great assets to the fam- ily. They provided labor on the farm and help within the home and family. vii viii PREFACE Farming was a breakthrough in the way people lived, worked, and interacted with one another. The land was undoubtedly important to these early peoples, so much so that parents and grandparents taught the skills of farming to their children who passed it on to their children. Towns and cities sprung up around the land and with them came institutions such as government, religion, organized armies, and a complex writing sys- tem. This way of living would continue for several millennia. Some 9000 years later, my father and mother would break our perennial family tradi- tion of farming. They would give up farming and adopt more “modern” ways of living. My father became an insurance salesmen and my mother a factory worker; both later would become successful restaurateurs. Both their first names are nonetheless vestiges of our family past: my father is named Yiorgios “farmer” and my mother Demetria, after the ancient Greek patron goddess of farming Demeter. They are the first in my fam- ily to have never picked up a spade or scythe and systematically worked a Greek farm. Even today, a recent DNA test I took shows that more of my ancestors were farmers than hunter-gatherers. I suppose farming still runs in my blood. My older brother and I are the first within our family to receive a formal education beyond high school. Our forebears also never taught us the intricacies of farming the Argolis plain. How did farming continue for so long in Greece and other parts of the world? Education was at the core of faming’s longstanding success. But for most of human history there were no schools to teach people how to farm, nor were there formal institutions to teach this practice to children. There were no set curricula, no lesson plans, nor formal assessments on farming. This book is set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Greece, and it is about learning in both formal and informal learning set- tings. Like the practice of farming, people have always learned from one another in informal learning settings. Children have always learned and there were always teachers who taught them. Four years ago, my son was born. For several weeks prior to his birth, my wife and I perused several books and Internet sites trying to find a fitting name for our soon-to- arrive son. Finally, we came up with the name Elenios after my paternal grandmother Eleni. We were surprised to find that there was no mention of Elenios in the historical record. Even today, when we travel to Greece and people ask our son his name, they look curiously at my wife and I and ask “And who was Elenios again?” Even they seem to think that there was someone important at some point named Elenios. PREFACE ix Why has the topic of informal learning gained so little attention from historians, educational theorists, and teachers alike? Why do we think of education as only occurring after the modern period and within the four walls of a school classroom? John Dewey understood the importance of learning by doing or learning through experience. Dewey, who spent time as a child on his grandparent’s farm in Vermont, found this experience to be one of his most valuable learning experiences. For Dewey, “Education was not preparation for life; education was life itself!” Like Dewey, I won- der what is the best education for children today. Will children learn more in school, or will they learn more outside the school and classroom? And if children learn more from their life experiences should we continue to assume that a good education is only found within the school? Theodore G. Zervas Chicago 2016 c ontents 1 Introduction: Learning Beyond the School and Classroom 1 2 Family, Community, and Childhood in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Greece 31 3 The School and the Textbook 63 4 Greek Children’s Literature 89 5 Learning Informally Through Story, Song, and Children’s Shadow Theater 111 6 Lives of Informal Learning 137 7 Conclusion: Informal Learning Today and Beyond 159 Bibliography 167 Index 177 xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Learning Beyond the School and Classroom In today’s world, learning occurs in almost every social setting. Some of these learning settings are more noticeable than others. The more obvi- ous is the school classroom where each day children explore a number of topics, engage in a variety of learning activities, and raise questions on a number of issues and problems. Learning occurs in the local library or bookstore, where reading and research enables one to discover something new and interesting. Learning also occurs in the home, where reading the Sunday morning newspaper, working on the following day’s homework assignment, or dabbling over the Internet often exposes one to some- thing novel and fresh. Other learning settings are not so noticeable: the work offi ce, where attending meetings, answering emails and phone calls, and perusing lengthy reports, becomes more of a burden than a learning experience, or the local coffee shop where patrons sometimes learn from one another about the day’s news and weather, or even share local gossip. Most people learn something new every day. This is because most humans are curious creatures with an innate desire to learn something that they did not already know. When people process information, we could say that they are engaged in the act of learning. In fact, learning is often taken for granted. Certain books may be more interesting to us than others, certain people may be more insightful than others, and we may fi nd certain movies, television shows, or games to be more entertain- ing than others. In many instances, we are not aware that we are learning (perhaps because that light bulb on top of our heads does not radiate as © The Author(s) 2017 1 T.G. Zervas, Formal and Informal Education during the Rise of Greek Nationalism, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48415-4_1