Pretty much everyone who has been to Greece has experienced the country’s backwardness. What most people don’t understand or refuse to accept is how Greece has been victimized for the last 500 plus odd years. To begin with, Greece is a 50% Democracy and 50% Theocracy
http://www.hri.org/docs/syntagma and as such, more similar to Iran than Austria, since the religious leaders are an integral part of the government.
Greece in 1453 was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire “by choice”. At that time there were approximately 1,000,000 Greeks of which 100,000 or 10% were religious monks. If we recall that was precisely the time when the Renaissance period was born from the Dark Ages during which all of Europe was wholly rediscovering and embracing Ancient Greek literature, poetry, philosophy, mathematics, science, etc. The religious leaders fearing Greece would again rediscover its “pagan” ways prefered the Ottoman Empire instead “
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, by Edward Gibbons p1187 and “
The Passion of the Greeks, by E. G. Vallianatos”. All-in-all, Greece never experienced the renaissance period like the rest of Europe.
Greece does not have a Ministry of Education and it never did – instead they have the
“Ministry of Education and Religion”, meaning educational instruction is heavily influenced by the religious clergy. An acquaintance once told me: “I completed 17 years of education in Greece, elementary school, high school and Athens Polytechnic. In those 17 years I cannot recall, a single occasion of a teacher asking at the end of the class – “
Does anyone have a question”. However, what they did teach us during the 12 years of religious instruction was exactly the opposite – “
not to ask questions”. Their educational system today is mediocre because, among other things, is significantly influenced by the religious leaders who exercise great power and authority throughout Greece. Seven out ten workers have a high school diploma or less. American and European 7th graders today know more about Homer‘s Epics than Greek high school graduates. The sad part is there is nothing they can do about it until they make the necessary change of separating state and religion in their constitution by a “
bipartisan effort” of both PASOK and New Democracy, and join the rest of the industrialized world.
Until the Greeks identify the root cause of why things are as they are they will not escape the Dark Ages and enjoy their own Renaissance.
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