“Ηistory should be aimed at shaping national consciousness” said arch conservative Education Minister, Niki Keramos introducing a new interpretation on the Science of History.
She added that she was “against the sociological approach of history” teaching in schools.
She announced that new history textbooks are on the way and thus less than a week before the school year starts in Greece. Changes in the textbooks will be made at a later date.
“For us, history should be aimed at shaping a national conscience,” she stressed.
Obviously, Kerameos considers the scientific approach of history, the sober presentation of historic facts, causes and results as hostile to the formation of “national conscience” and of extreme danger for the children/pupils.
Whether the minister wants or not, the the lesson of History is a science of sociological character and can never be transformed into a manipulation tool for”nationalist propaganda.”
So far there are sadly no reactions by the teachers and academics community.
Nevertheless, everybody is wondering how she will change the history textbooks with a narrative that will most probably glorify the Greek historic past, most likely erasing the ugly moments of the Greek nation: like that several heroes of the War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire were imprisoned and executed by their Greek fellow men?
According to education ministry sources, Kerameos will include in the new textbooks the Macedonian Wars and Pavlos Melas as well as the Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Ottomans and thus for the books of the last class of Lyceum.
The sources claimed that the Macedonian Wars were erased from the history books by SYRIZA due to the Prespes Agreement and the Pontus Greeks Genocide “in order to ease the weight of the students’ school bags.”
Nothing wrong to include in the new history books these two chapters of Greek history.
BTW today’s history textbooks teach with focus of Greece’s glorification of the past anyway…
PS However, I wouldn’t be surprised if in her high speed to retrogression she will introduce the wearing of the school uniform and other appearance restrictions and indoctrination lessons based on the old slogan of the colonel’s junta “Homeland-Religion-Family.”
Her first concessions to the Church she has made anyway by aiming to make ‘religion courses more attractive to the pupils.”
well, this is just one more reason why the state should never have been in the education business to begin with! the temptation to turn it into a propaganda indoctrination factory is irresistible. with every changing administration we get new ‘textbooks’ which are all cumulatively worse than the previous ones!
education should never be entrusted to the state. it is the responsibility of parents, and in a small real community, if those parents wish to, it is up to them to organize some kind of school at a _local_ level and never entrust it to politicians.
of course ill hear all kinds of arguments about how medieval that sounds. i’ll take medieval over 1984 any day.
It has always angered me how little true patriotism there is in Hellas, how disunited the nation has been since before Christ, how too few know our history, too few understand the great difference between being a Hellene and a Greek…
It angers me further just how few who live in Hellas ever visit historical sites. Marathon. The Parthenon. Thermopylaes. Ioannina. Crete and so many more where, from pre christ to WW2 our forebears have fought off enemies.
If this is the Minister’s intent then I support her without equivocation.