The cultural and social profile of the Muslim Minority

The members of the Muslim minority in Greece, the largest minority group in the country, are mainly of Turkish ethnic origin, Greek citizens since May 1920, when Western Thrace became part of the Greek state. According to the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), this population, along with the Greeks of Istanbul, were exempted from the exchange of populations. Currently, the size of this minority group ranges from 115.000 to 130.000, constituting the 34.5% of the total population in Thrace (55% of the total population in the county of Rodopi, 43% in that of Xanthi and 5.5% in Evros).

The particulaties of Minority Education

Education is provided at segregated, minority schools, regulated by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and bilateral agreements between Greece and Turkey. The curriculum is divided in two, half of the subjects are taught in Greek (i.e. Greek language, history, geography, environmental studies and civic education) and the other half in Turkish (Turkish language, religion, mathematics, physics, music and physical education). The 99% of the minority pupil population goes to these schools.

In 1999-2000 the minority pupil population, amounts to 7,364 children aged between 6-12 years of age. There are 250 minority schools, dispersed all over the region, many of which have few pupils, all taught parallelly in the same class.

Attempts for educational reform

In a multifocal effort to introduce reforms in the field of human rights, the Greek government introduced measures regarding education. In 1995, the Ministry of Education took an affirmative action measure, allotting to the minority .05% of the total numerous clausus, with special University exams. This means that 200 students can enter every year the Greek Universities. This number corresponds to new, extra positions. 

The project on the reform of the education for Minority children

As part of these efforts in the field of education, a  project co-financed by the EU and the Greek Ministry of Education, was launched in 1997 by the Ministry's Special Secretariat of Intercultural Education. This project aims at the reform of the education provided to the minority. The main goals of the project have been threefold:

(a) Understanding in depth the reasons for the massive under achievement and the deficient learning of the Greek language. The research questions address language use and language competence, motivation for education, the social representations held by the community, pupil and student mobility.

(b) Production of new text-books and materials for the teaching of Greek language, as well as for the rest of the subjects belonging to the Greek side of the curriculum (i.e. history, geography, environmental studies and civic education), adapted to the special difficulties encountered by pupils whose maternal language is not Greek.

(c) In-service training of the entire population of teachers (majority and minority) in the principles of anti-racist education, in new pedagogical techniques and in the use of the new materials produced.

The Ministry of Education entrusted the implementation to the University of Athens. The intervening team is of an interdisciplinary nature, comprising sociologists, sociologists of education, pedagogues, psychologists, conflict resolution specialists, historians, linguists, social anthropologists, jurists, geographers, musicians, and trained school teachers.

The reasons of underachievement

If we were to briefly summarize the main reasons of the massive under achievement of the minority school population, we would mention the following (in order of importance): attached to the maternal language and ethnic identity of the children. The geographical and social isolation, mentioned above, affects knowledge of the Greek language, resulting in the great majority of children arriving at school without knowing any Greek at all. The fact that Greek teachers have had absolutely no training required to exercise their role in these conditions. The disadvantaged socioeconomic background of the family is naturally another universal cause for under achievement. The very traditional pedagogical notion and, the already mentioned, inappropriate text-books, lack of infrastructure, the bad condition of the school buildings, lastly contribute to the widespread underachievement.

The areas of intervention

The two broad areas of the intervention for the reform of the above condition was:

(a) the creation of new school books and teaching materials, and

(b) intensive teacher training.

(a) Teaching materials

The teaching of the Greek language should aim at rendering pupils bilingual and equally competent in the two languages. For the teaching of the Greek language, the academic team in charge of the reform project had to develop materials, covering a great number of needs. (i) Greek is not the maternal language of the minority pupils; some of the pupils come to school with very little, and some with no contact at all with the Greek language; (ii) Greek language is embedded in complex sociolingual relationships of power with Turkish, Pomaki and Romani languages. Greek is the dominant language spoken by the majority. Turkish, on the other hand, is the strongest of the minority languages, and the second official language of the school; (iii)The lack of methods of teaching Greek as a second or foreign language, and essentially the lack of a complete grammar for non-Greek speakers. The academic team in charge of the project, thus, had to create methods for the teaching of Greek as a second language, adapted to the particular difficulties created by the big differences between the Greek and the Turkish language.

New books and various teaching materials have been created, aiming at getting the children to communicate, thus rendering language use meaningful and useful. They are very friendly, so that the stigma attached to the language of the enemy is attenuated.

An electronic method on CD Roms has also been created, excercizing pupils to the most difficult grammatical and semantic features of Greek, though pleasant activities. Its electronic adress is ippotis@ilsp.gr

Training cultivated successfully, as its evaluation shows, the necessity of the new policy supporting the reform intervention, by gradually helping teachers adopt the premise that ignorance and isolation reinforce conservatism, and render human groups victims of demagogues, while education shapes free conscience and ability for critical thinking

Teacher training aimed at:

(i) instigating a dialogue between minority and majority teachers who alternate in the minority school classes, and establish the notion that collaboration between teachers is not only necessary but inevitable; (ii) cultivating the idea that respect for a different religion, culture and language, and the integration of minority children into society is to the benefit not only of the minority, but of the entire population; (iii) introducing conflict resolution techniques; (iv) introducing bilingualism and giving to the teachers evidence that a different maternal language is not a barrier for the acquisition of a second language, and that a new method of teaching Greek as a second language is required; (v) training in the social causes of school failure, since most of the children come from poor and isolated villages, and in suitable pedagogigal techniques.

Thus, the training themes evolved around bilingualism; the social causes of school failure; new pedagogical techniques; experiential learning; the pedagogical principles empowering the new teaching materials; communication strategies, such as active listening, aknowledgment, expression and communication of feelings, understanding another person’s point of view, and bias awareness

At the same time teams of trainers regularly visited the 102 pilot schools, where teach the volonteer teachers who are being trained, and monitored the progress achieved with the new materials and the new techniques.

Gradual changes were witnessed by the teachers. Pupils in class started to communicate instead of being silent, which was their standard practice up to now, to become creative instead of repeating, to understande instead of rote learning. Teachers understood the thematic approach, familiarized themselves with the method of teaching Greek as a second language, and they initiated group work in class. Many of them are not disheartened any longer and several parents express their satisfaction.

For the needs of teachers’ training, two films have been created.

(1) What is your name?, A 90’ video, filmed in Thrace during the Automn 1997, on the multicultural population of the area, the multiple identities of its members, the differences as well as similarities, the expectations of the younger generations.

(2) Atime for us, a town for us all. A 25’ video, filmed in Komotini on May 1999, during a special event, inviting for the first time children of the Minority and the Majority together, to participate in educational plays, while teachers from various minority schools were exposing the work of their pupils.

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