7 - Teachers of the Lyceum

During the later high school years, as we were growing up into unruly and rebellious, moody and awkward teenagers, with sexual urges, irritability, unwarranted anger, the stubbornness of a mule, that is the set of behavioural characteristics hormonal changes of adolescence bring about, the actors of our teachers' troupe changed accordingly to match the demand of maintaining discipline. Our Greek literature and language courses were assigned to an uncompromising and strict deputy headmaster, Mr Tektonidis, a gray-haired man of Pontian descent as his surname attested, who presented himself in an always sullen demeanour, but he liked to begin his lessons with caustic jokes about current political and sports affairs in a stand-up comedy style. He never cracked the slightest of smiles with his deadpan humour, but his jokes caused widespread laughter soothing our low morning spirits before his final pause brought dead silence in the classroom. With a poker face, like that of many successful comedians of the stage, and abrupt increases in the intensity of his voice from the often unpredictably angry reactions to any straying of the class to murmurs and unruliness, he had sown respect, along with a dose of fear, even to the naughtiest amongst us.

Mr Tektonides became associated with one of the most embarrassing episodes of my high school years; an incident that effected strong feelings of embarrassment and shame, along with fear. It was after the end of a dull winter school day when the classrooms were emptying from its schoolboys when I wrote one or two abusive phrases with a marker on the green top of my desk, aimed at (whom else?) classmate Eliopoulos. I cannot pinpoint to the exact reason, but there must have been valid ones that would justify those insults directed at Eliopoulos, at times when I was becoming the target of some intolerable bullying of derogatory and offensive nature, by him and his cronies, either in in the classroom or during the morning assemblies in the presence of others, which I could not deflect, or breaks in the courtyard, from which I could sometimes stir clear. Next morning before the start of the Greek Language class, Mr. Tektonides stood at the podium with a terrifying scowl in his cloudy face and unusually angry look (clearly, not his custom prelude of opening his lesson with a joke or two) in front of a class in dead silence and frozen by anticipation. In his hand he was holding a piece of paper, but without reading from it, he spelled out the profanities I had written on the desk top. The cleaner alerted him in the evening before his departure, before she wiped the them off. ‘I want to know who wrote these obscenities,’ he asked to the frozen class. He demanded that the culprit (which was me) stood up and boldly admitted in front of everyone his misdeed – ‘if he were a man and had the balls’. If not, as he claimed he had well-founded suspicions of who the offender was it, he would follow it up with a discussion in private at the headmaster’s office with immeasurably severe consequences. I could feel my heart beating strongly and rapidly and hands shaking. I was sitting frozen in my seat like the rest of the class, and sensing my face blushing and likely betraying my guilt. The couple of minutes in an uninterrupted silence Mr. Tektonides waited for the perpetrator to come forward and confess his grievous mistake felt like an eternity. During those minutes, I nearly reached the verge of exceeding a generally low courage threshold, showing some decency, what in Greece is called φιλότιμο, and honourably admitting my guilt. My mind, however, weighed also various other possible outcomes from that episode and the consequences of either admitting guilt or cowering. Would an almost certain punishment be mitigated, if I manly confessed in front of the class? Was Mr. Tektonides bluffing as to the suspicions he had? Could it be that, because of my previous decent behaviour and excellent grades, I was above suspicion? Why did he cast wild glances at me every now and then? He clearly knew that it was me and Eliopoulos shared that desk on which these words were written! How severe would that punishment be anyway? To what extent would my parents be involved? In what turmoil would that cause and what a fool would that make of myself! Surely a reputation as an excellent student throughout the four years of school should be irreparably and irreversibly spoilt, an indelible in my school career... What would the repercussions be at home? At the end of those torturous two minutes wait, I realised that I simply could not summon enough courage and, truth to be told, there was not much in stock of the courage and bravery in my boyish soul for me to unearth.

Mr. Tektonides reiterated the grave consequences in store for the culprit. Obscenities in full view of the cleaners and the personnel on a piece of public property was bringing the school into disrepute, and he concluded by saying that ‘he who did it will certainly be found out and punished in an exemplary manner’, continued sullenly with his typically dry and uninspiring lecture of modern Greek grammar and syntax. The episode was eventually forgotten, at least by the majority of an indifferent to such events class of teenagers, however, it continued to weigh heavy on me for a while after. The shadow of Mr. Tektonides possibly knowing that it was me who wrote the obscenities on the desk lingered throughout the school year. It was getting darker during his classes and whenever he casted a glanced towards me, but all the while that heavy feeling was somehow counterweighted by the relief that I escaped something far worse: an expulsion, a vilification in front of the school, repercussions at home, and even derailment of my course to university admission. This moral burden I was carrying throughout the year was lightened by the circulating rumours that Mr. Tektonides, he illicitly tutored at home students of my own and other schools in preparation for their university exams.

In our last grade of the Lyceum, Mr. Tektonides, to the relief of many, myself first and foremost, was replaced by another philologist, Mrs. Barachanou, a mature woman with a petite figure and pretty face, and mild manners. One would have thought of her as an easy prey for the troublemakers of the class, but rather surprisingly and against the apparent odds she managed to maintain order and discipline, barring an inevitable innocuous murmuring from the back rows -understandable, during the hours of tiredness, boredom and listlessness. In fact, Mrs. Barachanou proved more capable than her predecessors in enticing a group broader than just the crème de la crème of the class into actively participating in discussion on the core subjects of Greek language and literature she was teaching. Perhaps, due to several years of experience teaching grown up boys and because of having raised boys herself in her family· perhaps because of an intellectual cultivation she exuded, a lack of which other teachers replaced by resorting to yelling and punishments in instance of unruliness and disobedience; or, perhaps, because of her headteacher husband, also an experienced philologist in from a well-known family in the city; or, most likely, because after her long career in an environments of boisterous and inconsiderate and even brutal adolescents, became uncompromising and made certain from the onset that she would not play games in her class. After all, a crucial junction, the period of nationwide university entry exams, was approaching and those who wished a few carefree years of love and excitement after school (and those represented most of the class) had their heads down in their studies. The penny had dropped for many, so to speak.

From the beginning of that last year, as I was becoming more politicized, I understood that Mrs. Barachanou and I shared a few common progressive views. I also sensed she appreciated my personality, as that of a diligent student with a well-rounded culture, from novels and philosophical essays I was ardently reading from Father’s library, beside the focus into maths and physics. Throughout the year I produced well-written composition ingrained with literary elements I was borrowing from the literary styles of the novel authors and poets I read. And yet, towards the end of the year I managed to disappoint her in a major way; I might have even upset her to the point altering the high opinion she had of me.

In one final assignment, I undertook the project to analyse the work of one of the writers whose most extra-curriculum novels I was reading at home in my spare time: the work of a leftist and, therefore, non-mainstream writer, Dimitris Hatzis. I devoted time and effort to compile my critique of his work; I wrote and edited and proofread and rewrote neatly several pages of text. I would have to present my work, the quality of which I felt proud of, would have to present of a work of quality in front of the class, whom only idea of modern literature was through extracts from outdated and ossified works of Greek literature included in the textbooks the ministry handed at the beginning of each year. Therefore, an anti-establishment writer like Dimitris Hatzis and his works were virtually unknown. I sat in the morning behind the teacher’s desk on the dais in front of the blackboard, and with my head bowed I began to mechanically read my essay to the class. All started seemingly well and in a relative silence, whilst Mrs. Barachanou standing at the very back of the room against the wall was listening attentively. But my presentation was too long; far too long for the concentration span of even the few interested students; the whispering and murmuring gradually intensified, as a restless class began to lose any interest to whatever was said and barely made any sense to her. All the while, Eliopoulos, from the first row-desk we share just under and at arm’s length from the teacher’s dais where I was sitting, started distracting me with joking comments and gestures, with teasing and grimaces exaggerating his underbite. But it was mostly as the result of nerves from the noise emanating from the depths of the classroom, rather than Eliopoulos' play, I began to smile during my delivery and at some point, half-way through my presentation, I could barely manage to contain my laughter by drowning it into chuckles. I decided to skip several paragraphs to speed up my presentation and take it arduously over the finish-line. It was becoming clear that nobody was paying attention. A well-prepared presentation was turning into a fiasco amidst a persistent buzz.

 Ms. Barachanou, from the back of the room where she was standing, as soon as I finished my reading walked towards the dais visibly irritated and reprimanded me in uncharacteristically fierce tones: for the general lack of respect and self-respect and dignity during my presentation. In essence, I was ridiculed in front of a class, suddenly turned quiet to listen to my chastening by the teacher. Towards the end of the school year, she would express her disappointment to Father on one of his now scarce visits to the school, although she mildly praised my writing skills. At least, in the last weeks of school, I somehow redeemed myself after that mishap, when she selected one my compositions for reading in front of the class. My essay of several pages on the work of Dimitris Hatzis, compiled with diligence and devotion, was dumped in a trunk under the sofa-bed I was sleeping and was eventually discarded and ended along with other notes from school in the dustbin. The incident of that hapless presentation in front of the unreceptive audience injured further a fragile self-confidence: the wound took several years to heal and any recollection of that incident filled me with those discomforting feelings of embarrassment and shame, until another more portentously embarrassing incident took its place in my soul. With self-confidence and self-assurance checked, due to some genetic origins compounded by nurturing and life experiences like the above, I was often seized by disproportionate and unjustified by the circumstances, nervousness that could lead to panic, however ultimately manageable, every time I had to confront and speak in front of a group of people.

For his part, Mr. Notarides, our portly mathematician in the Lyceum years, commanded discipline merely by virtue of his bulky figure, covered in the winter days by a solemn long black coat, and a proportionally to his stoutness deep voice. His large round face rarely displayed a timid crooked smile, which normally followed his dry explanation of a mathematical equation on the board. He seemed, nevertheless, to be a kind-hearted man, which I found typical of stout people, although he lacked in polished manners. Like the public-school teachers was uninspiring and unmotivated and his teaching skills were mediocre. But he appreciated my mathematical intelligence and knowledge above a poor class average, especially after some success I had, awarded by a prize, in a national mathematical competition, and, thus, he often relied on me for support, when mathematical questions and problems he posed to the class hit on an impenetrable wall of silence by a reluctant or unmotivated or ignorant class. I had never been an active participant in class discussions either remained so throughout of my education, because of an extremely reserved character, and because I wanted to avoid the crown of a ‘nerd’ or a ‘brown-noser’ the class pleb easily bestowed to students that associate themselves with teachers in school. Nevertheless, Mr. Notarides, especially in our last year of school when Maths reached an incomprehensible level for many, developed the habit of addressing me directly with his questions having given up for a response from the rest of the class, in the certainty that I knew most of the answers and to avoid the embarrassing gaps in the flow of his teaching. Besides, sitting in the first row of the desks closest to the podium, I was an easy target, a ‘lame duck’ so to speak.

The only time Mr. Notarides' lost his composure and saw him agitated and angry happened when the white noise from the constant omni-present whispering and chatting during most classes was spiked by the unmistaken sound of a loud fart emanated from the back rows, at a moment when Mr Notarides, with his back turned to the class, was writing on the blackboard the proof of a theorem. The fart was inevitably followed by a widespread laughter from the plenum. Mr. Notarides abandoned his proof, threw his chalk violently against the board, and headed menacingly towards the back rows to the source of the fart, with his heavy slow stride. As there he could have no inkling of who the culprit might have been (there were a few candidates for such an act, but I had my own strong clues), and it was unthinkable of a snitch to come forward, he stopped half way the aisle and after surveying the tops of bowed heads at the back of the room, he said in a raised deep voice: ‘I accept that you chat to each other during the lessons, I even tolerate the occasional giggle. But farting in the classroom cowardly behind my back is bang out of order!’ Some giggles were suppressed into quiet chuckles from us, the innocent ones of the front rows, stern faces were set at the back. Thankfully, the bell for the school break rang shortly after and Mr. Notarides’ proof of the theorem was left hanging on the board, ridiculed by the fart.

The classes on religious education, that is, of the Christian Orthodox dogma, amounted to nothing more than a repetitive and non-sensical indoctrination that effected to most (barring a handful of devout Christians) something between an unutterable boredom to a sheer indifference. Unfortunately, the recitation and the pointless analysis of passages with circular arguments from the Old and New Testament tormented us until the very last month of the Lyceum, even though the most enlightened amongst us, from different starting points, rejected the existence of the specific god the lessons propagandized and, for that matter, banished any god and religion from their lives. Chats with a self-perceived ‘anarchist’, but otherwise brilliant and diligent classmate Fotis Z, son of a poor and uneducated greengrocer, who was sitting behind me and Eliopoulos, next to Nikos Z, a close friend from primary school, were expanding into and covering the philosophical domains of Camus and Marx. Such discussions added some substance in the intellectual vacuum our classes in religious affairs presented, although it must be said the latter raised a series of existential and social questions, that is, ample material for philosophical discourse.  

The dynastic Mr. Athanasiades of our Gymnasium years was succeeded by a milder in manners, and of less dogmatic character and moderate political beliefs, Mr. Parparas, a bald little man with a pair of round glasses portraying the face of a studious scholar from a bygone era. Mr. Parparas turned out to be a neighbour in the Harilaou district we moved to just, before the last year of secondary school and in the university years that followed, and I often bumped on him in the street or the basement of his apartment building, dusting, washing and polishing his modest, yet precious Hyundai. The relationship between priests and theologians with material goods, such as cars and property, often a more intimate one than of ‘secular’ types, I had found then difficult to comprehend and not to consider it hypocritical. Yet again, those people who adhered to spiritualism belonged to the very same materialistic world. For many amongst them teaching ‘theology’ or preaching God’s testament was merely means to secure a livelihood and enjoy the conveniences and temptations offered by the advances of our capitalist society. And, therefore, they had to be treated with the respect any layman and commoner deserves, despite negative presumptions about the parasitic role of their occupation in Greek society, as stemmed from Marxist and the like prejudices.

Mr. Parparas, our neighbour, warmly congratulated me at a corner of our streets when I was admitted to the university and, in many occasions thereafter, asked with genuine interest about my studies. But the most notable memory I retained from the years of teaching us theology, was the lowest grade I was ever awarded in school exams: a 6 out of 20. The final year grade in ‘Religious Education’ was barely better: 13/20, a large deviation from the standards of excellence my family was used to. It did not mean anything to Father, the atheist and perennial mocker of priests and theologians, and he laughed at it. Mother, however, who also maintained good neighbourly relations with Mr. Parparas was clearly disturbed. For me, a low final grade in those insufferable religious studies was perhaps a badge of honour, a minute symbol of my rebellion against an oppressive educational establishment. Yet, Mr. Parparas was fair and rather lenient, in as much as it rated my overall association with our national religion was concerned.

As far as this stumble was concerned there were specific reasons. Indifference and negligence in marginal subjects carrying no weight for admission to university, like the tedious religious studies were subjected to, led me to lose track of the order of topics Mr. Parparas’ addressed in his course. In anticipation of the exam towards the end of the term, I facetiously studied the one or two preceding the latest one he covered and on the material of which we were tested. The questions did not make much sense to me and the anxiety of a potential disaster in the exams engulfed me. To respond to the theological questions, I summoned fragments of my scrappy knowledge on the subject, from six years of religious education, and improvised piecemeal and full of hot-air answers with whatever was coming to mind.  A theologian of Mr. Parpara's experience easily discerned such a foolish improvisation. He might have perceived it as a mockery of the divinity of the content of the course and, perhaps, his role as a teacher of this ‘divine’ subject.

The pantheon of the teachers who stood at the dais, at arm’s length from the first-row of desk where I was condemned to sit next to Eliopoulos, to lecture us, was appended with a few more characters of different gravities. There was the benevolent chemistry teacher, Mr. Eleftheriades, who won the class-wide sympathy and esteem and attention, with his smile, kind manners and soft voice he never raised. He never had to. When I bumped into him outside a café, a few months into my university days, he greeted me with my full name. In our brief exchange that ensued, I mistakenly addressed him as Mr. Athanasiades, the unpleasant theologian of the Gymnasium, instead of Mr. Eleftheriades. It was an error I rued for a while after I realised it. Then there was the neurotic and forgettable Kara... something, an insignificant and uncouth individual with a provincial accent and alien blond features, possibly of Vlack origins from the mountainous regions of the mainland. A trace of respect he might have received in his by and large irrelevant biology, zoology and geography classes he taught, evaporated, when rumours circulated that he was seen by a schoolmate watching porn films in one of the city's seedy cinemas. He was the only one who, after some giggles I could not suppress, triggered by some Eliopoulos’ and Zois’s jokes, he evicted me from the classroom.

At the very bottom of our teachers’ ladder, if there was any kind of grade scale for the teaching staff, there was a hapless, in many ways unfortunate, young teacher of psychology. He turned out to be a PhD candidate in one of city’s university departments and was appointed as a temporary teacher of an inconsequential as much as insubstantial one-hour-per week class in Psychology, which, to compound his misfortune, was scheduled for the last hour of Friday, when most everyone wanted to break free from the shackles of a tedious week at school. He taught a subject hardly anyone understood or had any desire to pay any attention to. He had curly hair on top of a nerdy gaunt angular face and wore small rounded glasses, but his the most noticeable by the school mob feature face was the acne pimples that covered much of his cheeks. Those pimples, according to Eliopoulos and the other alpha males and bullies of the school, who did not miss any opportunity for vitriolic comments on the matter, considered them an unmistaken sign of habitual masturbation. He spoke in undertones and in a soft and low voice barely audible at the back of the class, where the bulk of the troublemakers were sitting. Inevitably, from the first day he became an easy target from the ‘gallery’. When the wild beasts of school sense weakness, they charge and devour their prey.

In the classroom, in his presence, paper airplanes, pencils and other projectiles, including condoms, were thrown towards the dais and the blackboard. The class was raging with giggles, screams, exclamations, insults. Many went in and out of the class, without asking permission, supposedly to pee, most likely for a fag. To his mild rebuke in slightly raised tone of voice to temperamental Eliopoulos, the latter visibly offended by the reprimand, he got up from his seat next to me, violently pushed my chair aside, stood in front of the psychologist with his fists clenched and squared up to him shouting -for the rest of the room to hear: ‘Oi, watch it, man!’ The psychologist, clearly shocked and frightened, interrupted his lesson and left the room, threatening to report the incident to the principal: ‘I don’t give a fuck!’ was Eliopoulos' angry reply. The class laughed. It was entertained.

The acting principal at the time, Mr. Tektonides, did not intervene; neither to that one, nor any other of the numerous incidents, whereby school savages forced our psychologist to interrupt his lessons and sometimes in tears, to abandon the class in a chorus of jeers. The compassionate soul in me genuinely felt sorry for his predicament and generally I behaved during his classes with a relatively minimum deference, despite the deleterious presence of Eliopoulos next to me, despite my disinterestedness to psychology, despite the poor quality of the teaching and the awkwardness I felt during extreme incidents of bullying and disorder. He was looking down into my eyes for support during the martyrdoms he endured from a cruel class of teenagers. His tenure with our school, not surprisingly, was cut short -for whatever reason. His advanced studies in psychology and the research he was involved into outside our classes apparently offered no much help with his personality and dealing with adverse and distressful situations. A year later, as a student of the same university, I came across him in the library. He was sitting in a remote corner of the reading room, in front of a pile of books and papers, apparently taking notes for his dissertation. I greeted him. He tried to start a long conversation, seeking perhaps redemption from a dark past (who knows?), but I courteously kept it short. Later in my university years, I spotted him late at night, a lonely sad soul wandering along the promenade, talking and gesturing to himself. He was the most tragic figure of my Lyceum years, amongst teachers and students.

Our school years were approaching the end all of us were yearning for. Long after I was wondering -amongst others: What legacy my teachers left? What did I learn from them from six full years of our incessant secondary education? I reached the same conclusion as many of my friends and peers. It was not that much. Perhaps, I enriched my active vocabulary and managed to handle the cumbersome grammatic and syntactic intricacies of the Modern Greek language (to the extent that this was possible with an awkward and unstructured language), so much so that I could express myself orally or in writing, with skills above the national average. I acquired some useful knowledge of maths and physics, handy in life and for thinking rationally and to a lesser extent for my professional career. Most of that knowledge, however, was obtained on my own initiative, motivated primarily from family members rather than my school teachers. And its utility in life proved limited, despite endless hours locked in a room, studying for tests and exams, despite the dozens of thick books I read from cover-to-cover -books handed gratis at the beginning of each year before ending up at the stakes outside our school by the least dedicated graduates or, at best, buried dusted in a trunk or a store room at the end of school.

The systemic compulsion to follow a rigid timetable with the aim of covering an arbitrarily and irrationally organized ‘learning material’, to implant knowledge in young brains, barely equipped us for adult life and most was out of touch with reality, as well as anachronistic or unhistorical. It left its mark and had an arguably profound effect in our behaviour and psychology, our inner worlds and ultimately the personality we formed as we were growing into adulthood. In the first steps of life proper, adult life, in addition to quantitatively accumulating knowledge, one also needs inspiration to channel one’s creativity and talents, support and encouragement in discussing ideas, thoughts and concerns. The Greek public school system failed in many respects and very few, if any, of the teachers we came across provided substantial help to those ends. Besides, the core studies and the fundamentals required by the university entry exams were furnished in their entirety by private tutoring, at home or ad-hoc centres, which nearly everyone who aspired to further education attended. The brightest and most ambitious amongst the children of the middle class needed the exhausting school hours only as a stage mandated by state law, at the expense of other valuable parts of young lives. The joys I felt during the years of high were limited. My freedom was constrained, my liberties curtailed. Motivation towards attending school virtually non-existent. I do not remember many happy days thereof. 

6 - Teachers of the Gymnasium

 Several teachers walked through the door of our classroom, stood in front of the blackboard or behind their desk on the little platform to deliver their lessons or strolled condescendingly between the columns of desks to establish quiet or identify culprits. Some of them with remarkable and colourful personalities, others insipid and dull; some charming and respectable, others contemptible and despised; some seasoned teachers, others young on temporary assignments; some kind, with cultured with mild manners, a few uncouth savages – despite a university degree in their possession; some old-school, a few young liberal innovators; some ardent right-wing nationalist, a few left-wing progressives, and a handful amongst them trade unionists -initially covertly and after the transition to democracy, amidst the populist waves of ‘Change and Reform’ of the socialist party swept through the country, more overt and demonstrative, even within the school confines. In short, the body of teachers, το whom Greek society and state entrusted with the education and bringing up to future citizens of young people, were as diverse as the student mass they were commissioned to teach. An attribute in the public school system binding most of its public servant-employees was the little or no passion and the lack of ardour for teaching; the procedural and soulless ways they got on with their duties, the distance from their student flock. Some distinct political pseudo-progressivism bore little in the way of conscientiousness amongst some of them, while the right-wing nationalism of others equated to obscurantism and regression. But such trends, or rather maladies, afflicted the state education system for years; to date, in fact.

During the first years of secondary school, the year of Gymnasium, discipline for the most part was relatively easily imposed, mainly because of the young age of the student populace and the well- known freshman’s immaturity and sheepishness. Mrs. Sardelis was a cultured bourgeois philologist who resided in one of the penthouses of the still fashionable Vasilissis Olgas’s Avenue that once after my graduation visited for a reason I do not remember. in fact, most philologists impressed me learned and cultured individuals because of their classic and modern literature subjects they taught). She had lively eyes behind some thick myopia glasses, well-groomed, dyed auburn hair and was always elegantly dressed in light-coloured skirt-suits. She was the very first to enter our class of freshmen, and she did with the air of her many years of experience in work and life. She asserted herself and commanded respect by virtue of her good education and the majestic grace she conducted herself and taught her class. Father used to visit the school in each of my first years, without missing any of the parents' school evenings, to get to know my teachers, first and foremost the year’s philologist and mathematician and discuss my progress. He considered modern Greek and Maths as cornerstones of secondary education. He had the occasional chats with the physics or chemistry teachers, but that more to introduce himself as a former colleague, as well as demonstrate his superior knowledge on those subjects he himself studied in university. He ignored teachers of Geography, Zoology and the likes, as he considered those subjects unworthy in someone’s education and advancement in life, and their teachers graduates of inferior courses in university.) In any case, Mrs. Sardelis was amongst those he held in great esteem, for her kindness and culture: ‘You are fortunate to have such an excellent philologist!’, he exclaimed after their first meeting. Nevertheless, from my first year in Gymnasium and the classes with our philologist Sardelis, I retained just one piece of rather useless knowledge -the first two lines from our textbook of Ancient Greek: ‘I believe in friendship. You know a faithful friend in danger’, whose grammar and syntax we had to analyse and discuss. Not much else, even though she was an ‘excellent’ philologist indeed and even though I loved my reading of books (of modern literature, that is) ever since I was a child.

On the contrary, the philologist in the second and third grades created a bad impression from the first parents’ evening on an a priori negatively predisposed Father. And a very bad one, in fact. Mr. Alexiades was an old-fashioned, old-school teacher, obsessed, as many philologists of his generation (and not just) with the cumbersome intricacies of the Ancient Greek. As the historic predecessor of modern Greek, in a proud cultural heritage, it was one of the major preoccupations of the nation and the Ministry of Education (and Religious Affairs) since the establishment of the modern Greek state in the 19^th century. Mr Alexiades channelled this passion for the ancient language, so to speak, into compiling and publishing a textbook with the conjugations of irregular verbs in ancient texts. Apparently, It was the opus of his career as a teacher and he considered it as his scholarly contribution to the continuity and influence of that precious for the nation’s psyche ancient language. He discreetly advertised his self-published book in the classroom and encouraged his students to purchase as an indispensable ‘aid’ in school exams on classic Greek texts. I had to purchase it too, from the local bookstore which was selling its limited stock exclusively under Mr Alexiades’ instructions.

In the first parents evening of the second year, in the first encounter of Father with Mr. Alexiades, an initially innocuous conversation about my progress in his ‘Greek Language & Literature’ subject, erupted into an intense argument, about the significance and even the methods of teaching the classics for them to attract any interest from young persons. Father's voice could be heard to the courtyard outside where I was waiting for him to do the rounds, to the astonishment of parents and teachers and the janitor and, of course. It must have astounded the bewildered philologist, who was unaccustomed to such scorn from parents of presumably inferior education achievements than him. Since that event and during the school year, any reference to the Ancient Greek classes and Mr. Alexiades prompted sarcastic remarks from Father, with puns and anagrams of the cumbersome tenses and conjugations of the verb έχω (have) in ancient Greek, in particular: the initial root σ- of σ-έχω, which evolved by Hellenistic era scholars to ἔχω, could be an anagram of derogatory and a foul word in the modern language. Clearly, Father never liked Mr. Alexiades.

Ms Konstantinidou was the mathematics teacher in those early years. A short and stocky woman, with unkempt greasy black hair, a deep and fierce gaze from deep black eyes through circles, a countenance rather in accordance with her personality. She usually wore a condescending smile and spoke with a flat monotone voice, as if lecturing was a chore and her audience, barring the few eager to learn and bright enough perceive, maths was generally dumb and unreceptive. Yet, those were typical characteristics of most teachers of mathematics I encountered. (After all, an expressive voice and with emotional inflections and rhetorical skills do little to help with the transmissibility and comprehension by an audience of maths knowledge, which targets mainly centers of logic rather than emotions in the brain.) She delivered her dry and boring and, thankfully, brief lectures, with her left hand through the lapel of a heavy long coat covering her short body down to her ankles, like Napoleon Bonaparte, and her right hand permanently holding a piece chalk.

From the first instance she entered our classroom, she commanded a due respect stemming more from the core subject she taught than her personality: mathematicians and the way they handle numbers and symbols on a board, incomprehensible for many and wondrous for some, arouse nevertheless admiration for their deftness, especially for an audience uninitiated in mathematics and regardless of the level of understanding individually. She caused some kind of awe even to me who I was nurtured by Father to the paramount importance of the subject as in the core of any potential career in sciences or engineering for the few bright brains that embark and excel in those careers.  Ms Konstantinidou caused a minor shock in the first parents’ evening with her abrupt assessment of my performance in her lesson: ‘Ah! Are you must be Br_s’ Father? Your son is doing badly in maths. Terrible, Mr Br_s!’ Br_s was the surname of the boy sitting next to me in the same desk in one of the back rows, with a surname bearing a strong similarity to mine. Br_s was a quiet and benevolent boy, however blunt towards mathematics or any school subjects for the matter -not the sharpest pencil in the box, as they say. I used to help him as much as I could in tests, although any support bore no fruits as far as his grades were concerned. He was merely dim-witted, and of those not born to excel in letters and numbers. Seeing Father’s surprise and detecting his intellectual makeup from the way he came across, Ms Konstantinidou realized her mistake, had another look in her little grade book and, modestly and with her usual dry style, praised my initial performance and progress thus far. Father was pacified and we both were satisfied with my baptism of fire in the world of mathematics. I had since rapidly and relatively effortlessly ascended the maths ladder, from the elementary school arithmetic to algebra and later to calculus in the latter years of high school. Those were tough times for the less gifted or privileged and Ms Konstantinidou was not the supportive and constructive teacher with her anti-pedagogical methods for teaching maths in a comprehensive school with various degrees of ability and attainment amongst the pupils. But those defects in teaching did not really matter to anyone concerned.

Mr. Athanasiadis, the theologian, was the stern and formidable deputy headmaster of our Gymnasium, and the meticulous coordinator of blessings, Sunday church services, morning prayers, etc. and the like elements of our religious education. An uncompromising disciplinarian he managed effortlessly and by his mere presence in the class to maintain silence and attention and discipline during his classes. It was not just his severe countenance behind the dictatorial toothbrush style moustache that barely disguised a haughty smile, or the dark suit and tie he was always wearing at school. Nor was the eloquence with which he preached the ‘hot air’ of religion, analysed the gospel and troparia. Most theologians admittedly possessed the gift of eloquence, despite the dullness of a subject which at times overwhelmed most pupils, either devout Christians or religious or non-religious. In essence, were subjected for hours on end to catechism and indoctrination into a Orthodoxy dogma and compulsive attendance of hours long liturgies along with the devout church folk.

We obliged, unwillingly or not, and who knows why? Was it the fear of God that was still lurking in young souls, was it that the Orthodox church had penetrated deeply into the conscience of the Greek nation and stained fabric of its society for historical reasons? I once asked a question to Mr. Athanasiadis' in one of his classed, as he invited queries on theological assertions which barely made any sense to me. In the phrasing of my question, he discerned nuggets of doubt as to the existence of God, His omnipotence and other properties attributed to Him by the church, and then he proceeded and devoted the rest of the forty-five minutes of the lesson, and a good part of the break to dispel such heretical seeds of doubt. In his sermons he often referred and resorted to polemics against satanic atheistic ideologies, predominantly Marxism, and the repressive communist-totalitarian regimes behind the Iron Curtain, the then main bearers of a materialistic atheism, although as young people we only had a nebulous understanding of that was going on globally in that historical junction. Despite there was barely any need in Greece of the time, he had an insatiable desire to proselytize and propagandize some deep-rooted reactionary ideologies. He did that prevent any radical inclinations, fearing, perhaps, any anti-establishment revolutionary ideas finding fertile soil in young minds. Father, with his consistently open-minded progressive a moderately left-wing stance (in front of me, family and close friends at least) unhesitatingly characterized Mr Athanasiadis as a ‘fascist’ who was afflicted by the anti-communist psychoses of the post-civil war era and the seven-years of military dictatorship in Greece.

There were other souls in our school implanted with remnants of the so-called junta mentality, less politicized than Mr. Athanasiadis, but equally fettered by the extreme nationalist and religious Orthodoxy dogmas established in Greek society since the end of Civil War. Mr Topalidis, our physical education teacher was one of them, in his protruding belly under a grey shiny tracksuit and a moustache of the authoritarian ‘Pinochet’ type not dissimilar to Mr. Athanasiadis’. Affixed also to a nationalistic tradition was he,  so much so that the bulk of his ‘physical education’ hour, after brief periods of jogging along the perimeter of the courtyard and light Swedish exercises, involved the tedious and repetitive teaching and rehearsals of folk dances, like Kalamatianos or the more intricate Chamikos and other traditional group dances, as well as, torturous preparation for participation in the student parades taking place in towns and cities on national holidays. The final grade in his classes would have reflected our performance in those dances, but they would mark our posture and zeal, individually and in groups, in the school parades.

There were lighter and more relaxing moments in those first years. The young and beautiful Miss Kangelis brought a fresh breeze to a class, whose nerves were often straining or its patience and endurance were being exhausted by other teachers. She taught Geography, but along with her subject broadly considered insignificant, she rekindled teenager boys’ desires and inflamed their urges. Many of us, males in a vortex of unprecedented hormonal changes of our age, were stupefied by watching her moving elegantly between our desks and were inevitably carried away into our secret world of fantasies and daydreams, by the sight of her beautiful female figure in a tight one-piece dress and high heels and the resonance of a sweet and sensual voice. Such fantasies in some teenage minds produced more conspicuous effects on occasions: a thick mass of semen on the seat of the last desk behind me caught my eye one afternoon after the end of her class. Yet, Miss Kangelis, on par with Mr Athanasiadis, managed to command silence and assert herself thanks to the sweetness of her manners and sexuality. Most brains were frustrated recycling sexual fantasies during her hours.

The Chemistry teacher in the first grades was the only other young person in the school staff, besides Miss Kangelis.  That young man was on a temporary assignment to our school after his graduation from university. He belonged to the so-called ‘polytechnic school’ generation, after the insurgence against the dictatorial regime in 1973 instigated by student of the National Polytechnic School in Athens.  As such, he was an anti-conventional type, almost bohemian, with anti-authoritarian if not anarchist sentiments. He sported a well-trimmed beard, wore John Lennon-style glasses, and turned up to his class with a khaki military jacket. I do not remember his name or any of the Chemistry he might have attempted to teach in the couple of hours a week allotted to the course, but I do remember him opening his lectures with a few spicy anecdotes and concluding them with discussions about rock music, Pink Floyd and the like of the progressive and rebellious rock genre.

He left the school unsuspectedly and his Chemistry course taught by Biologists or Physicists. The rumours had it that he was suspended after a motion by the ‘fascist’ Mr Athanasiadis. That would have been unsurprising, as much as unsurprising would have been his reinstatement in the profession a few years later. One can imagine the general awkwardness and discomfort a young man like him coexisting with the likes of Mr Athanasiadis or Mr Topalidis or Mr Alexiadis… Also unsurprisingly, he caused antipathy and dislikes amongst classmates with ‘reactionary’ family heritage and backgrounds, with right and far-right wing creeds. Eliopoulos, for instance, was the son of an army officer who was duly promoted through the miliary ranks by virtue of a long-term tenure in the barracks rather than qualification and training obtained in a military academy and had the shallow ideological-political as much as fanatical beliefs, typical of military personnel that served in the army during the junta regime and the few first post-dictatorship years. The alphabetical order in assigning seats in the classroom brought us on the same desk, next to each other for the best part of our Gymnasium and Lyceum years. Eliopoulos was one of the first to confront our Chemistry teacher during his class, first by questioning and mocking his progressive musical taste. It was a time when political persuasions on either side of the spectrum, of conforming to the mainstream and trendy, on the one hand, and challenging the established norms, on the other, were demonstrated in Navarino Square of the city, often with yoghurt and fights taking place: between groups of rockers and anarchists, aptly named ‘freaks’ for their unkempt appearances, on the one side, and, on the other, of pretentiously dressed and groomed dudes -of the John Travolta type,  branded τσινάρια (chavs) by the former who frequented the most fashionable discotheques of the city. The latter group, and amongst them Eliopoulos, the handsome, athletic, sociable bloke with the bravado and swagger typical of army officers and cops, had undoubtedly a comparative advantage and scored early conquests amongst the female population. Those amongst the boys who did not belong to any of those fractions of teenage society and, thus, deprived of disco dancing with girls ahead of other pursuits, furtively envied Eliopoulos’ ilk.

5 - 1st Public Gymnasium of Thessaloniki

During the first three years of secondary education, until the great earthquake of the summer of 1978 which shook the foundations of my birthplace, I attended the historic 1^st Public High Gymnasium & Lyceum of Thessaloniki for Boys. It was the first Greek institution of secondary education of Thessaloniki and since the end of WWI was housed in an elegant mansion on Vasilissis Olga’s Avenue, former residence of a wealthy Bulgarian merchant, Theodor Hadjimisev. After WWII and the decimation of the Jewish community of the city, the villa that originally belonged to the family of the Jewish industrialist Joseph Modiano, another neoclassical jewel next to the ‘Villa Hadjimisev’, in the absence of legal heirs came into the possession of the state and annexed to the 1^st Gymnasium. Several years after the earthquake, ‘Villa Hadjimisev’ was eventually restored to its former glory, and still houses the 1^st Gymnasium, more than a century after it was surrendered by the Ottomans to the Greek Army.

The classrooms, testimony to an aristocratic past of the building, had high ceilings and their tall windows allowed plenty of sunlight, but the large numbers of pupils they cramped in those unventilated classrooms made the air dusty and hazy. When the school bell rang in the mornings, our ranks and files gathered in the concrete backyard of the first building for the morning prayer ritual and a heads-up by the schoolmaster. The courtyard was no less dusty and no more spacious than the interiors of the two buildings. It featured a single basketball hoop and a shelter intended for physical education in rainy weather, but it was devoid of any sports equipment or facilities. During the breaks that main courtyard, under a cloud of dust, was buzzing from hyperactive boys of ages spanning six teenage years, wandering aimlessly from one huddle to another, shouting and arguing: a cacophony by sounds by vocal cords thickening and voices getting deeper and hoarser.

The second year my class was relocated to the annex and during the breaks the scene was repeated in miniature: in the smaller front yard of the ‘Villa Modiano’, which was as dusty but felt pleasantly cool in hot summer days under the shade of a tall pine tree at its centre. The façade of the building was overlooking the avenue, but its entrance and front yard were hidden from passers-by and cars by a palisade fence covered with unkempt shrubs. A chin-up bar was installed in one of the corners, on which the fittest of my classmates missed no opportunity to show off their physique and flaunt their yet unripe masculinity to the rest of the school, with ‘pull-up’ competitions.

The main courtyard at the back the main building, the Hadjimisev mansion, was fenced by tall brick walls, like a prison. A heavy steel door opened in the mornings from the narrow Sparta Street and its array of apartment blocks, to welcome us. The grand main entrance, featuring a wide marble staircase and a veranda, with the Greek flag hoisted in front of the porch, was reserved exclusively for our teachers, and the occasional official from the local authority or the school inspectorate visiting the school. The gate of the equally majestic entrance of the school annex, the Villa Modiano, once upon a time opening to the Vasilisis Olga’s Street and a short walk to the seafront, was permanently locked and inaccessible for teachers and students alike.

For the whole school year that followed the earthquake of the summer of 1978, we had to abandon the damaged and judged as unsafe building of the old school, to become tenants in the ground floor of the more modern technical college ‘Euclid’ on Papanastasiou Street, until longer-term accommodation was found or built. The college it housed had absolute priority over the use of its classrooms, which meant a double and even a triple shift system, with classes often extending to late evenings and Saturday mornings. Yet it was by far a more spacious and dignified environment for learning, as well as team sports, as it featured proper basketball and volleyball courts. Alas, it served my class as a temporary accommodation for a few months and by the end of ‘78-‘79 and for the last two years of Lyceum, we were moved to a prefabricated building haphazardly constructed by the ministry within nine months, on an available plot by the ‘New Seafront’ not far from the old school.  Not surprisingly for Greece’s ways of doing (or not doing) things, it does still exist and accommodates the ‘1st General Lyceum of Thessaloniki’ –for both boys and girls now. In our time at this place, only some heavier than usual rain would cause water leaking and dripping through cracks or gaps in the ceilings, and collected by appropriately placed buckets, often in the middle of classroom. Its virtually non-existent amenities made the rooms unbearably hot in the summer and cold in the winter, although our breaths in the crowded rooms ameliorated the latter. Nonetheless, during the class breaks, we were unconsciously enjoying though not fully appreciating, the freshness of the sea breeze, the openness of the sea and the broad horizons of the Thermaikos Gulf with snowy peaks of Mount Olympus in the distance.

Then, in my penultimate year in high school, in advanced adolescence, after another bout of educational reforms, the historical ‘only boys’ school eventually became mixed-sex, starting from the first grade of Lyceum, when I was beginning its last year. The mixed-sex classes of the first were housed in an also prefabricated annex of the main building, behind the main building still reserved for boys only. The courtyard of that mixed-sex annex was separated by a wire fence and a separate entrance. Sharing the main courtyard with the older males of the second and third grades, with their high testosterone, was deemed as a daring step too far. Therefore, most of the boys of the last two years of the Lyceum, were effectively blocked by the daily playful or flirtatious and lustful interactions and encounters with the school's small, but craved for female population. In short, the merging of boys and girls, as far as my stage was concerned, proved pointless and frustrating yet again, and, therefore, most of my classmates, remained sexually deprived and repressed, with many unfulfilled temptations, along with the mountain of exams ahead to climb and distract and divert us after each school day, when some rare opportunities of interaction with the opposite presented themselves.

My unfortunate years in Lyceum were thus marred by the unprecedented sequence of nationwide exams, as mandated by the ninth government reform in secondary education during our young lives. With stoicism, social isolation and deprivation of love and sex weighing on us, we would have to attend the largely pointless school in its inordinate dullness, which tested the limits of patience and endurance of a frustrated adolescence, until its aim is achieved: a graduation certificate -with excellent grades, if possible, success in the university entry exams and the coveted admission to university: to the promised land, as  we were told by parents and family, teachers and tutors, of abundant freedom and personal integration· success would transform the immature teenager to an academic citizens proper· our new status in the society would be worth it and more than repay efforts and sacrifices of many years. Surely, parents and teachers and government, with their designs for my generation could have afforded a golden mean in the trade-off between life as a young person and school and exam work for admission to uni.

4 - A Brick in the Wall

Secondary education, the compulsory three years of the Greek Gymnasium, followed by another three of Lyceum, initially, after the tedium of primary school, opened before me an apparently new exciting paths I was looking forward to walk. It was a terra incognita keen to explore for new knowledge, hopefully useful and practical in life, even though aim was attainable through a maze of rigid and, in a way, soul-destroying preparations for the succession of unforgiving exams it involved. It was also a path along which individual characters and personalities would be shaped and matured, one that would open doors along the way for interactions with people, and, for some of my peers, would lead to the discovery of love. In one way or another, it could be said that it was the painful, but the necessary stage in life for growing into a man, a real and proper man.

Reality rarely lives up to the initial expectations. A man, after those six, long slowly dragging years of secondary education,  hardly reaches the point in maturity that he had imagined and, perhaps, had dreamed when this project, dictated from outside and above, began.  The path to adulthood, this physically and emotionally complex process of growing up and maturing, became scattered by the weeds of exams, milestones of either success or failure, and the mental burdens they brought along; in short, a marathon with many hurdles. Exam after exam, a sequence burdened, in my generation’s rather unfortunate case, by a conjuncture of incessant interventions in the education system by successive governments (promoted as necessary modernizing reforms). From this (and not just) point of view, we were unlucky having to sit and endure: exams for entrance to the Gymnasium, from the Gymnasium to the Lyceum, demanding nationwide for entry to university twice in the last two years; exams which over time, one after another, were abolished; exams, amongst others, in now obsolete subjects, such as Ancient Greek or certain chapters of Physics, devalued after a while as anachronisms and omitted from the core of the curriculum. The expectations to perform in those exams was of course high, extremely high, the pressure from the immediate family environment maybe indirect and latent, but real, noticeable and oppressive. Admittedly, I possessed the necessary above-average intelligence and other similar skills not just to succeed, but also to excel in those exams. It was not difficult. Due diligence, basic dedication and consistency, and holding one’s nerve during the exams sufficed.

Pressures from Mother, the primary school teacher, and Father, the once proud scientist, were strong and constant throughout. It was occasionally reinforced by a friendly, school and wider environment, nevertheless it became unbearable at times, especially when I was being introduced and shown around as the ‘pride’ of the family. In a way, I became a showcase for a proud family and its name, the always ‘positive’, intelligent eldest son with an aptitude for knowledge and understanding and few minor gifts, the main amongst them being diligence and tenacity. And I had to somehow handle and justify, in school and gatherings with family friends, those aggressively flattering designations and exposure. Failure at any step along the way would have certainly disappointed; it might have even caused embarrassment and grief, if not a backlash.

Yet on the very first step in this long process, in the twilight of childhood, in the entrance hall of adolescence, I stumbled. The idea of preparing for and taking, as a twelve-year-old child, some demanding exams, for admission to the so called ‘Experimental School of Thessaloniki’, a model school for selected few, conventionally gifted boys of the city, who would be taught by the elite of city's teachers, had its roots in those social micro-prejudices, possibly, propagated by our closest family friends of the time, the Akrivides’. They had strong links with this elite educational establishment of the city. I failed despite my gallant efforts to prepare, imprisoned for hours and days in a little room to study and deprive of our street games, when friends were enjoying their first weeks of summer holidays. Billy, Akrivides’ sone of  the same age, succeeded with ease and bravado. The disappointment at such a tender age was great, almost traumatic. Then I realized for the first time that wounds from such failures in life (exams, rejection in job applications, and so on) heal relatively quickly. Someone gets up, dusts off, forgets that singular pain and sorrow, and carries on. It was one of the fist important and useful life lessons of my youth, the failure in those inconsequential exams, which, at the end of the day, might have been worth it, as it was followed by small glories and the euphoria from a sequence of ‘successes’ in school and the exam arena. The prestige of the family had been more than restored in the following years.

3 - Thoughts on the Social Backdrop

Performance in school and exams, as mandated by the system for progress to higher education stages and its climax, that is, entering the university and obtaining a degree, was the imperative of every petty middle-class family, faithful the established social dogma and traditions for their offspring: in the suspended anxiety for the preservation of social status, for stability, entrenchment and self-affirmation, and ideally ascendence to a higher income and wealth bracket, all those elements of class mentality I criticized and treated with contempt and sarcasm later in life, despite being an organic member of these classes. There were, of course, some infernal goals, less obvious than the ingenuous of graduating with a degree and whatever knowledge that certified, which laid bare the class cynicism in the whole project: it was a position in the state-bred and -fed apparatus and bureaucracy that would ensure forever, without worries what tomorrow would bring, until death, a relatively comfortable life away from the plebs of wages and toil, or ascendence to the proud bourgeois caste of doctors, lawyers, engineering contractors, etc., the bourgeoisie proper of the city. At the root of all this, of course, were the accumulation and preservation of private property and wealth, this materialistic vanity that man in capitalism measures and preserves as something sacred, which one daily looks after like as much as he does his eyes, as the saying goes, ignoring the fact, one day, all this will be pulverized and scattered in the chaos of the universe, along with the bodies of the men that produced it.

This system of raising children and bringing up adolescents into adulthood in Greece has become more elaborate over the years. During the post-dictatorship period and its generation (that is, my generation), a gradually counterproductive and parasitic development of the Greek economy was taking place, evident even to immature young eyes. It was directed, in some deterministic way, by globalization, international competition and global division of labour. Such changes of historical magnitude, which direct the future evolution of a nation’s economy, were normally hidden behind sporadic, apparently insignificant news nobody paid much attention to: such as the shutting down of a textile or electric machines factory or the ritual advertising of each government increased tourist arrivals and revenue. Dependent on the global economic centres in a obsequious manner in a clientelist framework, panting behind technological advances, despite the anaemic and usually ineffective reform policies attempted by governments from time to time. The contradictions of this unproductive model of growth would unfold spectacularly a few decades later in a historically large and unprecedented economic crisis.

Economic reality and systemic crises, now and then, demystify given preconceptions and beliefs about the socioeconomic structure of Greece, although they are quickly forgotten, until the next crisis occurs. As a rule, they fragment and impoverish layers of its middle class, and devalue the political system and state apparatus that was built on and recycled -to serve and in turn be supported by this class.  In the meantime, however, it forms the peculiar characteristics of those transitional, ‘floating’ small and medium-sized strata and defines the temperament, idiosyncrasy and peculiarities of Greek society: children of the middle classes have to be educated at all costs, hoard degrees and certificates; at worst, follow in the footsteps of their parents in the public sector or in their professions in small primarily retail businesses, at best, advance a bit further than the previous generation, but not diverging too much from the same, ‘well-trodden path’. In short, many personal ambitions were drained in the pursuit of a rather predetermined career, under the auspices, directly or indirectly, of the gigantic and ubiquitous state. The motto of civil servants (the elite amongst them prefer the euphemistic title of ‘public functionaries or official’), the multitude ‘freelancer professionals’ and to a certain extent the vanity of the Greek middle class, stems from latent social instincts of self-preservation and perpetuation. It could be summed up in the phrase a family friend, a grand local lawyer of the ‘shark’ species, had solemnly uttered in one of Mother's rare soirées: ‘Sans-culotte I may end up, but I will make sure my daughter gets her university degree!’ And she did. And she worked and succeeded as a solicitor in her father’s legal practice, along with her more capable brother, whose education cost less.

In conclusion, the absolute minimum degree of success of the offspring of a family of civil servants or city professionals would be measured by a degree or certificate, their number and prestige. The sought-after type of university subjects and the possibility of further postgraduate studies was usually based on an arteriosclerotic and, by and large, obsolete by contemporary standards and irrelevant assessment of the employment opportunities the Greek society could offer and which was generally belied by a rapidly evolving global reality. And the final restoration of the young graduate into the  ‘comfort zone’ of prescribed and entrenched professional spaces. In turn, the achievement attainment of intermediate or ultimate goals (the acquisition of that one or more and better degrees and diplomas), presupposes incremental successes and advancement in a closed education system of successive loops of ‘delivering the curriculum’ and examinations on this ‘teaching material’. The level of comprehension, resting often on learning mechanically and by heart and memorizing the study material, and the final success in the exams naturally depended on the zeal and intelligence of the student, but also on the support one would happen to receive, amounting to the supervision and where necessary the ‘push’ from the close family and, lest we forget, the private tutoring centers run side-by-side and ‘shadowing’ the public school system. The latter and its teachers were simply the long arm of a ministry in a bureaucratic educational organization, the intermediaries so to speak, who mechanically taught (‘delivered’, would be a more apt term) study material compiled by ‘expert’ civil servants in a cramped office of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. Creativity, critical thinking, initiative, cultivation of skills and talents were attributes forgotten or neglected. One wonders: what creativity could one draw from repetitive orthodox religion studies or the grammar and syntax of a half-dead language? What history can be learnt from texts tailored to a narrow national and nationalistic narrative? The means provided for an aim or to an end in life, were grossly inadequate. And blessed were those who left school with their initiative and spirit not fully checked.

2 - Schooling for the Transitional Classes

Adolescence, for the main body of Greek youth, that is, the offsprings of educated to semi-literate members of the lower and middle urban strata, whose population was increasing rapidly after the war (and not much slower, since the transition to democracy and growing dependence of many a career on political clientelism and favouritism), revolved around the days spent in public secondary schools, appended, by daily attendance and throughout the calendar year, of that innovation of the Greek educational system: private tutoring schools on the main subjects. The effort of tutors, parents and pupils, of everybody barring the uninterested teachers of public schools, were focused on the imperative of success in the final year nationwide exams that would ensure admission, preferably to a university or, if that was not achieved, to some form of college education. At the end of this process a holy grail for many families would be reached: one or more university degree or certificates, which would, supposedly, open the doors into a future materialistic prosperity –an ambiguous state of well-being that for most was akin to a leisurely paced, low-stress, ideally government sponsored employment for life with a fixed income, for fewer with an applicable  family tradition, to more lucrative careers in law and medicine.

Although lacking structured class consciousness in the early years of adolescence, admittedly I also belonged to this mass of children, merely by virtue of the fact that I was born into that lower middle class, which is the backbone of Greek urban societies; from relatively educated parents, neither poor nor rich, parents who ardently and often desperately strived to maintain and strengthen their economic and social status in the city,  as well as, of course, that of their descendants; without, however, too many an aspiration outside the city and national borders, and the pre-eminently state-run economy that would safeguard a regular income, monotonically increasing with years of service, along with some ‘tranquillity, peace, and security’ ad vitam, paragons of middle-Greece (and, to be fair, not just Greece!)

Those low family horizons and mundane goals, as contemplated by Mother, Father and members of the extended family, were rather predetermined, as much as clear and distinct in their minds. Education and schooling, along with the succession of mandatory exams at different stages the arteriosclerotic and sterile educational system required, in which success meant more or less an end in itself, omitted or, at best, bypassed more important attributes: intellectual edification via creative and critical thinking, maximum possible utilization and optimization of one’s inclinations and talents -latent in every human from birth, the liberation and strengthening of one’s physical and mental powers, the cultivation of soul and mind to embrace the timeless virtues of human nature, such as love, sociability, companionship, sympathy and empathy, cooperation, logical thinking, provide insight into the world and nature around. The Greek school, even when viewed through the eyes of an immature person lacking life experience, even more so now from a temporal and geographical distance, did not offer much more than a quantity of knowledge, by and large of no practical use and detached from reality outside its high perimeter walls; a reality, however, which was in a fervent evolution, changing at an incessant pace and leaving an inert educational system lagging.

The weak initial interest in subject lessons, therefore, was exhausted after a few first weeks at school; notes from the lectures covered a maximum of one or two pages of subject notebooks over the school year. From then on, attending classes became a routine undertaking. We only opened the piles of textbooks furnished gratis by the state at the beginning of the school year, for a quick, indifferent look, and that in anticipation of a written or oral examination. These were the tedious drags the most conscientious amongst us, nevertheless uncomplainingly, performed at the expense of personal freedom and happiness. Spirits were understandably lifted in the days before the holidays or those sunny days of school trips, when few hours and days of sought-after freedom from the shackles of schoolwork were granted.

1 - Thankless Times

Through the endeavours of maturity: for ordinary mortals to bring food to the table and roof over their heads, for many of them to raise children, for others to care about their old folk, for a few just to enjoy and please their partners and friends, the little time amongst the innumerable and forgotten days of a daily grind leave for inner reflection and a chat with ourselves,  to review actions and thoughts, it is in this little time the nostalgia of childhood is rekindled; with its innocence and naivety, its purity and sweetness, its vitality and carefreeness. At this time, we are often overwhelmed by the feeling of missing longed-for past situations: sunny afternoons playing on the dusty streets and sandlots of the old neighborhood, the hot summer holidays by the sea, times and places of joy and carefreeness, when each day we reached new horizons. But the more we long for and miss those, the more we feel the inadequacy to slow down the passing of time, the more they hopelessly fade in our minds until they have become forgotten change in a box. For many, however, nostalgia does not have the attain the same magnitude with the recollections from the years following those of childhood, those of adolescence. It may have to do with the thudding intensity and dull colour of the experiences associated with this age, and a chaotic perception of the world. Perhaps, it has to do with the fact that we come to a better understanding with ourselves via a bumpy and rough road towards the crystallization into whom we finally become.

The review of adolescence, that whirlwind in our inner world, the complex and awkward as much as transformative period for spirit and body, remains very personal and subjective, at least, for an introverted boy, soon to become an ambitious young man, but who was eventually shaped into an inward looking and withdrawn person. I felt adolescence was an almost exclusively esoteric experience, with few occasions and examples of outwardness and externalising thoughts and feelings along its course. It is clearly a period when one develops at a rapid pace, both physically and mentally, conquers higher levels of self-consciousness and begins to perceive through emotional regressions, sometimes severe, one’s becoming and being. As the time gap from adolescence widens, the deeper that period is pushed into the memory banks of the brain and, thereafter, rarely recalled: with its secrets, the feelings of repression, the disorders, and some unhealthy or unsavoury habits. Whenever those memories resurface (and that occurs every time I dig into the being-in-itself, the person I grew up into) that period is projected as disorderly sequence of abrupt hormonal and physiological changes, as an emotional turbulence without a defined cusp, with vague beginnings and undefined ends, not easily affording a rationalisation and correlation with the present. Although paramount in the process of integration as human beings, it rarely becomes a point of reference and barely recognized as one of the foundations on which our life rests. For me and possibly a few others like me, it was in life what the Middle Ages represented in the history of the human kind: a dark, but historically deterministic prelude to the Renaissance. The era when a major chunk of the character and personality is sculpted and painted.

There were the times when oppression by the family environment, as itself formed by preset structures and established dictates of the Greek society of its milieu (because oppression seemed and was intensely felt as such), the weariness of the school and the ordinariness and mediocrity of most of our teachers, the exclusion from wider circles of friends and schoolmates and the joys I saw they could offer, in short, the curtailing of individual freedom, created situations that at times became unbearable to the point of implosion. Compulsions found fertile soil inside the soul, often I found myself stripped out of creative imagination, and dried of creative thinking and feelings; frustrated by unfulfilled desires and the absence of outlets for joy and creation, where passions and repressed desires could be channelled or where some latent talent could be detected and flourish. The result was an ever-increasing inwardness and circular or dead-end thinking, further isolation from the external world of peers and adults, unwarranted hostility towards people around me; all in all, a vicious spiral starting from and ending into myself. There were moments when I felt that I could not claim even a tiny share of the external world around me, that I belonged to it only in nominal terms, an emotionally alienated oddity, a stranger amongst strangers. I had no mates but a family and a room, and a school to go and get educated. For the most part, life revolved around the latter.