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.