Primary schools around Victoria are facing a cut in Modern Greek language studies due to resourcing and funding shortages.
While the Victorian government has indicated it wants to distance itself from these issues, and allow each school community to decide for itself which language will be taught in their school, the Greek community has had to step up and fight this battle to save the Greek language.
Angelo Dritsas’s son and daughter were students of Wales Street Primary School when the school decided to cut the three language program – which included Modern Greek and Mandarin – in 2009.
The Greek language program had run at the school for over 30 years so the decision to stop it – with little consultation to the school community – came with a lot of dissatisfaction, not only from the parents and students but from the whole Greek community. “As I understand it,” Dritsas told Neos Kosmos, “the school was citing financial reasons, funding issues with regards to the teachers.”
The school told Dritsas a number of issues were responsible for the cessation of the Greek and Mandarin language program. They said there were issues with getting a quality Modern Greek teacher even though Dritsas said that the teacher they had was more than adequate. “There was a strange comment about behavioural issues with regards to kids undertaking the Greek program,” said Dritsas. “I am still not able to get to the bottom of that but take from it what you will. They said that it was difficult to organise and structure the program to fit within the school curriculum and the scheduling of classes which required kids to be removed from classes and physically moved to other areas.”
But the Italian language continued in the school without a problem. “It was difficult for a lot of us to understand when their reasoning was scheduling classes. There was ample time for the school to fit in an Italian LOTE program, and even with extra resources as the then government funded a full-time position.”
Although Dritsas said the community received support from the Labor government, the success is attributed to the Greek community. “The school is currently advertising a vacancy for a Modern Greek teacher. But, being a typical Greek, I will believe it when I see the Greek language program up and running.”
Fairfield Primary School and Westgarth Primary School are apparently next on the Modern Greek language chopping block but Dritsas believes in people power to stop this from happening.
He urges parents to “nominate themselves for school council positions, work to see if they can get a Greek parents group at their school up and running and it would be an ideal situation if they could get involved in fundraising and involve the Greek community in ways that would be a financial benefit to the school.”
