With another school year having just started, the education issues of concern to students, parents and teachers are clearly many and pressing, on a national, state and community level. These issues are requiring mass support for progressive policies, at least as legislated for by the Gillard government, if the benefits of education are not to bypass and leave behind the great majority of children who cannot afford to buy one.
The current national debate and fight, if you like, as to new and regressive reforms proposed by the Abbott government strikes at the very heart of what kind of an education system and human society we need and deserve. What is taught at schools and how well funded or otherwise schools are is a subject of never ending concern, of social and class politics, about which Greek Australians cannot afford to be silent.
In their great majority, children of Greek Australian descent attend government schools which the Abbott government is trying to further disadvantage in comparison to their favourite private schools. Greek is taught to a minority and declining number of state schools, after hours community, church and private schools and a handful of Greek Community and church colleges. As is often and correctly stated, the viability of Greek and other community languages depends above all on the integration of these languages in the curriculum and their teaching in the child’s day school.
In this short article I wish to raise the question of when the last time was that there has been a thorough review of what is taught in the Greek classes in all these schools.
How relevant the Greek curriculum is to children born and raised in Australia with Greek being a second or even ‘foreign’ language. I know of many attempts over the years to address these issues with some good outcomes, assisted by diasporic and local Greek academics.
However, in none of these reviews and subsequent publication there has been any significant reference to Greek Australian history, the struggles for settlement, social justice, language, cultural maintenance and the fight against racism.
This sense and knowledge of history, made in fact by people, organisations and movements, many during our lifetime, is so obviously invaluable to knowing and reinforcing our distinct presence in Australia, our involvement in the nation’s affairs, in the creation and development of Greek Australian Communities and the flourishing of multiculturalism.
The Greek Australian Communities, as the largest and democratic Greek Australian institutions, should lead in the undertaking of such review, assisted by Greek Australian historians, academics, teachers, other experts, and representatives of the education authorities. Funding should be sought from state and the federal governments. Not long ago, the state governments of South Australia and Victoria jointly funded the production of learning materials by local teachers for the teaching of Greek in schools.
But even without such funding I am sure there will be qualified people from within our own communities to volunteer for this review to include, among other changes, what is missing most – the Greek Australian history in the teaching of Greek, a task only we in Australia can and should undertake. I am certainly willing to assist.
*George Zangalis is a former trade unionist.