In 1821 the Greek people revolted against the Ottoman Empire after nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule. After the Greek Revolution (1832) the Greek state built its schools and curricula around the notion that the modern Greeks were the direct descendants of the ancient Greeks. In the Greek school, students learned that they were part of a broader national community that was linked by a shared national past and common blood. Through the vehicle of the school students were taught what it meant to be Greek.

During much of Ottoman colonial rule (1453-1821) most Greek communities had operated a Greek school. By the 18th-century, the Ottoman Empire’s millet system granted a substantial degree of self-rule to religious denominations (Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, and Armenian Christians). Under the Sultan’s suzerainty, the Greek Orthodox millet was governed by the Greek Orthodox Church. The Church was responsible for collecting taxes, maintaining order within its own millet, administering the Sultan’s laws, and operating its own schools.

For most of Ottoman rule, Greek education varied considerably. It was a loosely organized educational system intended for children at the primary school levels. Greek schools had operated for centuries in major trading cities like Alexandria, Constantinople, Smyrna/Izmir, Iaşi, and Venice; these tended to be better organized and more resourced than the schools found in Greece. The Church also ran the majority of the Greek schools in Ottoman Greece. Greek Orthodox priests conducted lessons in reading and writing as well as on the general tenants of religious doctrine. By the late 1700s, Greek education became more formalized and better organized, more schools were opened, and the Church devised a general framework for a curriculum.

Although there is no precise count of the number of Greek schools that operated during Ottoman times, most Greek towns and villages operated makeshift schools, housed in a church or other public building. Few communities could afford to build a designated school building. Funding depended primarily on the local church and community, philanthropic organizations, and wealthy individuals. Schools located in large cities and wealthy trading centres were typically better funded than schools located in rural towns.

The school-going age was between six and twelve attended, children generally attending classes in the late afternoon because they worked during the day. Orthodox priests were responsible for the daily management and served as the schools’ primary teachers. Books and other print materials were typically written in Koine Greek, rather than the vernacular Demotic. Students practiced reading, writing, pronunciation, and spelling from a text used by the priest. Lessons typically emphasized religioon, history, arithmetic, and basic reading and writing.

After the achievement of independence, a national school system was established. The system was based on the French Guizot Law, which had established primary schools across France, and the Bavarian secondary school system. It consisted of a four-year elementary school and a secondary level. Secondary schools were organized into a two-tier system, the obligatory, three-year Hellenic schools and the optional gymnasia which added another four years. The gymnasia were intended to prepare students for university, while the Hellenic schools were practically and vocationally oriented. A teachers’ training school was also opened in Athens in 1834 to prepare teachers to give tuition in the Greek schools; and in 1837 the National Kapodistrian University of Athens was established by Greece’s first king, Otto.

As, over the next decades, the Greek territory expanded, more schools and more teachers were needed to help educate a newly incorporated population.  In 1922, Greece’s defeat in the Greco-Turkish War caused a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Of the 1.5 million refugees that settled in Greece nearly half were children. More resources were put into schools to help accommodate these new arrivals.

By 1929, a major reorganization of schools was implemented. The Hellenic schools were abolished. Students were to attend 6 years of gymnasia instead of the previous four years. Schools were to also foster Greco-Christian values such as loyalty to the nation and state, the importance of family and the community, as well as the dangers of anarchism and communism Zervas. Many of these beliefs were promoted in the school textbooks; many lessons included stories about family, community, and the Greek Orthodox Christian religion.

In 1959, a far-reaching law was enacted entitled “Reform of Technical and Vocational Education, Organization of Secondary Education.”  It reorganized the entire secondary and vocational track, and expanded vocational and technical education.

No significant edcuational changes took place until the mid-1960s. In 1964, the King of Greece sought to modernize Greek education by extending free and public schooling into university. The King also abolished entrance exams for secondary schools, and admissions standards into university were loosened. Most of these reforms would be overturned by the military junta that seized power in 1967. Textbooks however remained free to students up into university.  Leaders of the Junta also hand-selected educational committees to oversee teaching syllabi and teaching methods. Purified Greek (Katharevousa) was made the language of instruction in schools.

In 2007 the Greek Ministry of Education introduced a new textbook for middle school students. The textbook covered Greek history from 1453 to the present, and the revisions were part of an agreement between the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey. One of the goals of the project was to downplay the inevitability of national/ethnic/religious conflict in the Balkans in order to reduce both the sense of Greek victimization and the demonization of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey. Many Greeks opposed the revisions because they believed that the changes underemphasized the role that the Greek Church and the “secret schools” had played in preserving Greek culture and identity under Ottoman rule. The Church and leaders of far-right political groups adamantly denounced the textbooks. Despite efforts by the Minister of Education to maintain the changes, most were eventually overturned, and the new texts remained substantially the same as the old ones; the texts continued to frame Turkey and Greece as traditional enemies.

After the collapse of the Greek economy in 2008, many Greeks became disillusioned with the country’s major ruling parties. Other parties like SYRIZA and the far-right Golden Dawn (Χρυση Αυγη, Hrysī Avgī) gained support, and by 2015, SYRIZA took the majority of seats in Greek Parliament. While SYRIZA revised the curricula based on the recommendations made by the previous government, one major change was a revision to a sixth-grade textbook. The new textbook (by Koliopoulos et al., 2012, with a student workbook and a teacher’s manual), introduced during the 2012-13 school year, was viewed as being less Greek-centric and more global and multicultural in perspective. The text itself stressed the need to respect people of different backgrounds, and to find similarities rather than differences between the diverse peoples of Europe. Critics in Greece found the textbook to undermine the accomplishments of Greece and celebrate those of Europe.

Against SYRIZA, Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn pushed for changes in the Greek curriculum and Greek history textbooks, advocating a greater emphasis on ancient Greece, Greece’s past wars, Greece’s imperial experience during the Ottoman years, and the country’s invasion during WWII.

Today the Greek past continues to provide the basis of a Greek national identity. Greece almost exclusively claims its ancient Hellenic past to the point that it will challenge other nations who try to claim that same past. The question still remains, to whom does a particular history belong to? Greece insisted that the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) change its official constitutional name, “The Republic of Macedonia”, to one that divorced itself from anything to do with an Ancient Macedonian past. The “Macedonian Issue” (To Makedoniko), was seen by many Greeks as threatening Greece’s territorial sovereignty and national identity, thus creating political tensions between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. It also raised doubts whether the Ancient Macedonians were truly Greek. Greece used its vote power to block the Republic of Macedonia’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and to the European Union unless it changed its name.  The issue was resolved in 2018, when The Republic of Macedonia agreed to change its constitutional name to the Republic of North Macedonia and to withdraw its claims to ancient Greek and Hellenic history, including the history of ancient Macedonia.