Greece: a long lasting problem in illiteracy
Illiteracy in Greece
When it comes to measuring illiteracy, Greece can be considered one of the worst performing countries in the European Union. According to the 2016 OECD survey, the 26.5% of the total adult population scored poorly reaching only the lowest levels in literacy. Among this 26.5% recent estimate set the number of people who cannot read at all at 680,000 meaning that around 2.75 million people in Greece cannot help the country develop.
This is not surprising: Greece had great difficulties when it came to educate its inhabitants, last century only 7% of children attended school in 1901 and such percentage only raise to 11% in thirty years. When the problem is further analyzed, the situation becomes even more concerning. In fact while in the majority of the analyzed countries the literacy levels vary due to sociodemographic factors like age, gender, or income, this does not happen to be the case with Greece where the situation is far more homogeneous and to make matters even worse, the number of people reaching high literacy levels are also well below the European average, with only 1 in 20 people reaching level 4 and above.
When we look at other countries, young people generally perform better than elders, so it is still possible to debate on the effectiveness of the possible policies that the countries integrated to rase the level of literacy over time; however the situation in Greece is more uniform, with young people performing virtually as poorly as the elders, and employed performing as bad as unemployed meaning that the policies used to higher the levels of literacy in the country were not effective.
Policies Adopted
The first attempt to fight illiteracy in Greece done by the government only came in the early 30s with a broader educational policy and the opening of new schools, however the dimension of the problem was not going to shrink until the late 50s when a parallel network of training centers, like the ‘Laiki Epimorphosis’ started to operate providing literacy program for adults, such network was of highly importance since half of the rural population was still affected by illiteracy in 1958.
Even though reforms were made in the 70s to fight this social plague, like the establishment of a nine-year system of mandatory education in 1976, the number of illiterate people remained high and despite a rise in literacy in the 80s, 36% of the employed force in 1981 was still organically illiterate in the industrialized areas, while the situation in rural areas was even worse highlighting a proportionality between urbanization and literacy, also due to relative ease to find educational institutions and a higher demand for skilled workers in cities.
Greece joined the European Community in 1981 and when the situation concerning illiteracy became known to the other member states, help was given to Greece in two fronts in the fight of illiteracy: by compulsory education for kids and the teaching of literacy for adults. This because a higher education was required by the growing and demanding market. As a result there was a steady decrease in school drop-outs in mandatory education, even though an important amount of people kept on leaving school without getting a diploma, which also helped leading the problem of illiteracy to switch from complete illiteracy to functional in these years.
The present reality
Nowadays a high percentage of people in Greece are still trapped ‘in the ignorance of the time’ (Sipitanou) by illiteracy, meaning that they have big difficulties to participate in society since they do not have sufficient means to inform themselves and communicate their thoughts, which is one of the very essential skills to participate both in the production of goods and services and in the cultural and intellectual (re)formation of society.
To make matters more concerning no new regulations have been introduced since the 80s to fight illiteracy in Greece, the authorities simply lost their interest on the issue and the focus was switched to people with severe illiteracy problems, like migrants and refugees with linguistic differences meaning that the situation is unfortunately not going to get better anytime soon unless new regulations are adopted. In the current state however, high literacy can be considered a somewhat elitist concept that only few are able obtain in Greece, but as the greek philosopher Diogenes famously said:
The foundation of every state is in the education of its youth.
Diogenes the Cynic, 412-323 BCE
Your blog was really helpful to understand the situation in Greece, but I just have a question regarding a statement you make in your introduction. Why would people who cannot read at all not be able to help the country develop? Is it the way you think or is it something you read?
Thank you very much for your interest in the topic. When I stated that people who cannot read are unable to help the country develop I was talking about the fact that people without basic literacy knowledge face many problems when it comes to transmitting their knowledge and opinions by any means apart from the oral one. Another problem these people are facing is that at least basic literary abilities are required in order to join the labour force in contemporary times, also for low qualified jobs. A person who cannot read will thus have many problems both to express their opinions and to find a job, excluding them from the possibility to develop their country. This topic, which I agree on, was developed by many scholars, such as Sipitanou.
It was very interesting to get an insight into the situation in Greece! However, I was still wondering (regarding your last paragraph) if you think that the focus for future policies should be laid on education in order to improve the situation?
Personally I think that the situation in Greece is pretty bad when it comes to literacy, what concerns me the most is not merely the lack in literacy skill among the adults and the elders, but the fact that young people are performing equally bad. This situation is pointing to the fact that apparently there have been virtually no progresses in Greece when it comes to literacy, despite what the government did.
What I think is that ideally everyone in Greece should receive a better education, however I also think that it won’t be possible to educate that many people in only some years. What the government can do now is to laid down new policies in order to at least improve the situation in schools so that at least the young generations will improve their literacy skills.
Hi! Very interesting piece to read! It gives a good overview of the problems that appear in Greece. You are talking about low school attendance in the former century. I was wondering, did you also come across the reasons for such low school attendance? Was it just because of a lack of schools and poverty, or were there maybe also specific rules (such as only boys could go to school)?
Hello Judith, thank you for your question. As I am aware of public school in Greece has always allowed students of any gender to attend classes. I think the reasons why there was such low school attendance in the country were many but among all poverty, low development, and the lack of infrastructure played a very important role.
I think your blog is very interesting. I do have a question regarding the last paragraph, where you state that the authorities have switched their interest to refugees and migrants – severe illiteracy problems. While researching, have you read anything about the possible policies that were implemented here and whether they were efficient or not? And maybe even: if those policies could have a positive impact on the Greek population with less severe illiteracy problems?
Hello Isis, thank you for your interest. While research I came across this report made by Theirworld in which the main problems of refugees’ education in Greece are underlined. The most concerning aspect, in my opinion, is that nether Greece nor the EU are investing enough resources to help the migrants, especially when it comes to education, in fact the charity association THeirworld stated in its report that they are the major financial supporter for the education of the refugees in Greece. However, even with their help, only one third of the school-age refugee children received education prior to Covid, and the situation probably got worse with the pandemic, I believe.
I hope I answered your question, if you want to know more about the refugee’s education crisis in Greece you can read the report on this link
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/RefugeeEducation-Report-240420-2.pdf
Hi Giovanni, I was very intrigued by your topic! Your blog is well written and full of interesting information! Could you tell me, what do you think Greece could do next in order to accommodate its literacy levels in relation to the last quote you mentioned?
I really enjoyed reading your blog! When you write about the present reality in Greece and state that a lot of people are trapped in the ignorance of the time and there are no new regulations since the 80s to fight illiteracy, do you think that Greek people are complacent and it is related to a more relaxed way of doing things?