2 - Education, the Importance of

Surprisingly, given the social status of the family and the difficult conditions they had to endure, the education of the two boys was not affected. Even though Leonidas’ education did not exceed a primary school level, whereas that of the autodidact Eudoxia not even that. Therefore, the two parents, by default, maintained a from indifferent to apathetic stance vis-a-vis the prospect of their sons acquiring some sort of higher education; simply put, their background ill-sufficed to opine on matters of education, and envision the wings an education could give to young people in a fast-changing world. However, the semi-bourgeois Melnikian tradition embedded in the culture of the wider Ibrişimci family and, particularly, of the most open-minded and enlightened of the uncles: on one hand, the leftist ‘proletarian-cum-intellectual’ Socrates and the ‘progressive bourgeois’ and liberal intellectual Georgios P and, on the other, the ‘conservative bourgeois’ Elias, inspired and encouraged Father indirectly and directly: from conversations at family gatherings on the virtues of education or by mere observations by Father of the lives of those who shone in their communities and valued human intellect. The very presence of Socrates, an active member of city’s labour avant-garde, in the parental home or close by during Father’s early years, as well as a few other personalities in the margins of the broader family, like the bookkeeper Papachristou, whose daughter Socrates married, played an important role, too.

A beacon of knowledge and education would, therefore, illuminate Father’s childhood and youth in difficult times and under adverse winds. Individual freedom, to the extent that is made possible and granted within the constraints imposed by the social environment and the historical context, the materialistic basis of existence and social progress, the understanding of the surrounding world in its dialectic contradictions, personal happiness (however one might have understood happiness at that historical junction), all those abstract or concrete elements of existence, in addition to one’s active participation in social progress, that potentially contribute to social ascent and mobility, all these elements, are manifestly facilitated by education and its principal products: knowledge and critical thinking. These gifts were offered to them by the state education system, public & free for all, almost socialistic, and received and embraced by Father in their different stages: four years in the 1st Gymnasium for Boys, in the historical neoclassical building of Queen Olga’s Avenue, a long walk through streams and the refugee neighbourhoods of Toumpa; another two years attending courses of "Practical Orientation" (or "positive" as the Father liked to call it) offered by the 5^th Gymnasium for Boys (further east along the same avenue and still a long walk from home), but not the 1st Gymnasium, which he left. The curriculum of the latter, which was considered more prestigious due to its history and the more affluent neighbourhoods within its catchment area, focused in ‘Classical Studies’ and, therefore, of no substantial future value in a rapidly growing materialistic economy. Father, with a remarkable foresightedness for his age realized timely that his horizons would broaden substantially should he pursue this ‘practical’ track with his studies. (For a reconstruction from the wreckage the German Occupation and the ensued Civil War left behind, the least Greece required from her youth would be to have their intellectual potential exhausted into classical literature studies, along with the counterproductive archaeolatry and ancestor’s worship that cultivates, as well as a range of dead-end professional careers these entailed -as Father rightly foresaw, and the Melnikian family who influenced him, traditionally engaged in productive activities,  concurred.)

During the summer school holidays, resembling his father Leonidas in pride, diligence and dutifulness –character attributes that the Greek word φιλότιμος encompasses, he took on the occasional odd jobs, mostly for meagre pocket money and for the sake of satisfying some of the temptations of adolescence, as offered by the city. At one point, he was commissioned to collect subscriptions from members of the Greek-French Association Club; that is, he was handed a list of names and addresses from the plump secretary of the Club, who answered to the oxymoron Eudoxoula (little-Eudoxia), to do the rounds and collect the money due. Other times, he helped with errands and small orders from a virtually illiterate tobacco merchant named Panitoglou, a rather foolish and crude person, incapable of performing basic arithmetic and accounting operations, which are of course indispensable to the survival and buoying up of any business in commerce. As Panitoglou was unable to grasp the meaning of percentages in his business books and bank accounts, let alone calculate interest on money owed based on rates and maturity, amongst other menial tasks he assigned to Father, timidly and apologetically, but in his stupid and crude ways characteristic of uneducated small-business bosses, he asked the secondary school student to calculate interests due, and, moreover, to explain the calculations to him. It goes without saying that tasks demanded exhaustive patience and tedious oversimplification for the thick-headed Panitoglou to comprehend. For such tedious mental chores, Father might not have been awarded monetarily, but, at least, they sharpened further the already bright mind of his.