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Why study Modern Greek?

The relevance of Modern Greek to Greek Australian students is challenged by PROFESSOR VRASIDAS KARALIS as he calls for a broader and more contemporary understanding of what Modern Greek Studies can constitute.

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Bored student. Modern Greek studies Australia.

Modern Greek studies needs to be interesting and exciting to attract students.

My perception is that numbers are dwindling because we have taught again and again what is already known and the young people are bored with the same material. For the last 30 years the same material has been recycled ad nauseam, from high school to university and anywhere else.
25 May 2009

And let’s hope that this will convince more students to think that there is something positive and interesting and useful in Greek culture, language and tradition.

I will go even further: we must reclaim ancient Greek culture from classicists; we must reclaim Byzantine studies from Byzantinists.

We must establish diplomas in Hellenic Studies together with other disciplines and areas of study.

The concept of cultural and linguistic continuity should be our starting point.

But for these to be successful, we need an extensive program of translations, into English first and then other languages.

The idea that we can establish a whole program in Greek studies based on Seferis, Cavafy and Kazantzakis, or Elytis, is evidently unsuccessful.

It was sufficient during the 1980s and 1990s when there were many people with Greek as their first language.

Today, these works are not enough and not relevant any more.

We must renew the content of studies in order to expand our pool of students by reaching out to more potential takers.

Greek studies have shrunk because what we offer has shrunk over the last 35 years.

Even at the level of language teaching we don’t have enough material produced except in a rather scattered and fragmented way.

But teaching Greek doesn’t mean just teaching language.

We need to  increase the existing material we offer-and if the Greek Government wants to assist, the area of translation studies should be its main priority.

Funding translations and, more importantly, continuous translation programs over long periods will give the necessary impetus to teachers to re-organise Greek studies and expand their potential.

Until then we will spend money every year on short-term non-viable projects.

I will return next time to my proposal.

Professor Vrasidas Karalis is the Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Sydney as well as an author and translator.

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Comments

Hi, I agree that the content of Modern Greek Language classes could stand a little improvement and I state so as having seen my children all progress through Modern Greek at school. But there are many issues at play here. Parents who simply do not have a good enough understanding or a commitment to their own heritage, possibly because their Greek school put them to sleep or left them with ruler marks on their heads. Kids who want to dance and ride and play and do everything else because they do not realise the value of language. ANd then there are those schools who do NOT want us to preserve our language, our heritage. I am not a fan of those who would kill of our language classes nor am I a fan of an education department that allows such evil.

Submitted by atkenos on Mon, 2009-06-29 22:54.

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