As we going through the enrolment period, we must ask ourselves: why would students choose Modern Greek today for their university degree? First of all we must try to answer this question before understanding why enrolments have been so low, especially during the last ten years.
Funding should be given to students who continue Greek from the first to second and third year and even more to students who chose to write a masters or PhD in the subject.
In the past they used to enrol because of their strong identity connection with the metropolis and its culture; it was a political issue, related to the identity politics of multiculturalism that dominated the eighties and the early nineties.
However, after 1996, the student numbers have been falling dramatically. Today, many universities have effectively abolished their Modern Greek studies, or reduced them to minor programs within their own degrees.
The situation is equally dramatic at secondary level as HSC students do not choose Modern Greek for different reasons in each state. The movement towards national curriculum, that mobilised the community over the last three years, seems to have been stalled by the new government; furthermore the mobilisation of the community showed how differently we see the teaching of Modern Greek.
I must admit the differences seem to confuse students: and students want simple and functional answers. They don’t want to get involved in culture wars and avoid the community politics that have fragmented our cohesion for far too long. They need to learn about their roots but they also need vocational training. They want to find a job after their studies; it is interesting that in some universities more students of Greek background enrol in Japanese and Chinese than they do in Modern Greek.
In the past they could find work as teachers; but now this is a diminished possibility. The only viable option to a certain degree is to be translators and interpreters: however there are many problems there too, which must be addressed.
How can we convince students to choose Modern Greek? This is a discussion that we must have and organise ourselves instead of wasting our energy in rhetorical excesses and conspiracy theories. My idea is that primarily all sectors involved in teaching Modern Greek must sit around a table, unify their strategies and coordinate their efforts. The mobilisation for the national curriculum showed that we fight on things we agree upon – only for prestige and power.
The promotion of Greek is both a matter of studying our culture but also of making it relevant to what happens in this society now. Curricula from primary school to tertiary education are usually left to the imagination of each teacher: attempts to unify the programs have not been successful and every teacher is left alone to re-invent Greek studies. Online teaching is good but in the long run it is not going to be successful – students who choose Greek want the communal feeling of sharing a culture. The success rate of online programs diminishes – let alone there are universities, like our university, which uses online components only as a secondary source. Universities of the so-called G8 group avoid offering online courses as their academic and pedagogical value is considered to be less effective to that of face-to-face teaching.
Until now, the most successful strategy has been to collaborate in other programs, attract students from non-Greek background and thus boost our numbers. We have been doing this at the University of Sydney over the last fifteen years and it has been successful to a considerable degree. Academically, it is very interesting to organise a program on Balkan history from a Greek perspective, or study Greek myths in European and world literature, or explore the contribution of Greek cinema in global perspective.
Only connect: the era of studies focused on one specific author, movement or phenomenon has ended for all academic curricula. It is not sufficient, not even for French or English programs anymore, as students live in a globalised world.
A strategy suggested is to fund students, through scholarships, who study Modern Greek upon their enrolment. I am afraid that this will attract the worst students and will undermine the academic standing of the subject. Funding should be given to students who continue Greek from the first to second and third year and even more to students who chose to write a masters or PhD in the subject.
In order to make Modern Greek attractive we must convince that there is an academic merit in pursuing it: the prestige of Ancient Greek and Latin is enough to have seen their enrolments increase dramatically during the last five years. How can we increase the prestige of Modern Greek as a discipline that is both useful and significant? We must stop seeing it as a community, ethnic language: it is a language of national significance and has to be promoted as such.
These questions of course must be answered locally: universities have their own structure and their own policies towards languages and cultures. After 2009, as funding by the Greek government has vanished, we must rely more and more on local organisations. Funding for promotion of Greek can be provided by the countless Greek organisations; a donation of $4,000 by each one of the fifty active associations in NSW would have been enough each year to solve all our functional problems for all departments of Modern Greek.
It will be good for each association to organise their own functions in order to make separately their contribution according to the needs and the enrolments of each department.
This year, our department proceeded in collaborating with other departments in order to attract students: this year we start our collaboration with the Archaeology Department and the Australian Archaeological Institute of Athens in order to train archaeologists in Modern Greek terminology and of course how to communicate with their colleagues in Greece. This increased our enrolments considerably and that’s a positive development.
What is needed is more collaboration with other departments, centres or organisations within the universities but also outside them. International speakers, conferences and research workshops will show that active, extroverted and inquisitive Greek academic community, always in a bilingual setting: we need to produce first rate quality research on Greek culture – and we need funding for publications.
Only if we publish original research and have a regular publication series will we be able to be both self-sufficient and apply for research grants to the government.
Enthusiasm is not enough anymore: we need systematic planning, coordination and unity – it is pointless not to collaborate when we are losing students and therefore we sacrifice the future of Modern Greek studies.
* Vrasidas Karalis is Professor of Modern Greek and Chair of the Department of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Sydney.