In many ways, education in the modern Greek State followed a symmetrically different timeline than in the USA.
From the start, it was centralized and under state control. The pedagogy instituted by the first Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias in 1828 was explicitly Lancasterian, through its French reformulation by Louis-Charles Sarazin (Papadaki 1992). The net result of his efforts was the multiplication of the number of primary schools in both mainland Greece and in the islands. The curriculum, under the influence of a Sarazin inspired manual, included mainly grammar, reading and writing and religion. The main focus was on the creation of a widespread public primary education system, with only a few higher vocational schools, such as the Military Academy and the Κεληξηθό Σρνιείν (Central School) of Aegina (Kyprianos 2004, pp 75-81). Thus, the textbook was the central teaching tool.
Following the assassination of Kapodistrias, Greece was placed under Bavarian Regency in 1833, which imposed the system of public education that was to remain in effect for the next ninety years. The three-tier structure which came into effect consisted of a primary school, the Hellenic School and the Gymnasium as secondary schools and finally the University and the Polytechnic School, as higher education institutions. However, educational matters, despite the fierce debates they provoked, were in reality not treated as central. Generally, the policy pursued was tacit rather than explicit, mostly consisted of the uncritical adoption of European laws and an insistence on a strong public education, following the examples of Prussia and France. (Mylonas 2000). Primary education was not significantly altered and thus sciences never got a stronger hold on the curriculum until the end of the nineteenth century. It was in the newly founded secondary education that innovations
appeared. In the Royal Degree of 18373the curriculum described for the Hellenic School and the Gymnasium allocates two or, in some classes, three hours per week to Natural History, Chemistry and Physics. However, no further explanations or guidelines are given, nor is a specific textbook mentioned. As a result, these lessons faded into obscurity, until in 1855, another Royal Degree changed the curriculum, allocating two hours per week to Natural History in the first classes of Hellenic School and another two hours weekly to Experimental Physics in the Gymnasium. This was an effort to create a more plausible educational scenario, as for example, many successful Greeks of the Diaspora left large grants for the establishment of laboratories and institutions, but the lack of approved textbooks and qualified teachers did not enable their full use. It would take another twenty years for a more analytic science curriculum to appear and specific textbooks to be approved. In any case, natural sciences in the Greek curriculum never occupied more than two or three hours per week.
In 1862, King Otto I was evicted from his throne and one year later the Danish Prince George succeeded him. He was to remain in his throne until his assassination in 1913. During his period, Greek intellectuals more and more turned to German institutions for inspiration. Primary education once again became the focus of all educational reforms, where the monitoring school of Sarazin was replaced by the German pedagogy of Johann Friedrich Herbart. However, the adoration of all things Western of the past was no more. Actions taken by both France and Britain during the Crimean War had made the Greek population very suspicious of everything European. It was around this period, namely in the decades from 1865 to 1895, that specialized natural scientists start graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens. It would however require another twenty years for them to be recognized as the only qualified to teach natural sciences in secondary education.
It was thus only in higher education, in the University of Athens and in the Military School, that sciences had a specified, albeit minor, role. The Physical and Mathematical Faculty in the University of Athens operated under the aegis of the Philosophy School. For the whole of the nineteenth century, there was only one Chair of Physics, while most of the subjects taught were heavily focused on Natural History (Stefanides 1948, Vol A, pp. 4-22). In any case, there were never more than ten professors of natural sciences in the teaching staff of the university.
Turning now to the Greek scientific community, it is immediately noticeable that most of the Professors of the University of Athens had studied in prestigious European universities, such as those of Paris, Munich and Berlin. They also remained in contact with their peers in Europe and took part in international conferences. Their main occupation, however, was teaching. Not only do they appear quite vocal when their teaching fees are threatened, but they also frequently write on the need to attract more students in their respective disciplines. In return, the public sees them as esteemed teachers and their role in establishing ‗Greek science‘ is always related to their teaching achievements4. Furthermore, despite some initial ambivalence towards secondary education during the Bavarian rule, the second generation of professors active from 1860 onwards are quite firm in their insistence that science needs to be part of the curriculum and that only trained scientists should teach science courses. Once again, legitimization and autonomy for the scientist is reflected in their role in public education.
This process is nothing if not explicit. Scientists early on take on the mantle of the textbook writer, first for higher education and later on, for primary and secondary education also (Tampakis &Skordoulis 2010). The textbook becomes an invaluable symbol of authority on the subject and a valuable way to augment one‘s income. The importance placed by the scientists themselves on textbook writing can be seen by their very public debates when one of their textbooks did not make the official list of approved school books5. Moreover, it was not uncommon for scientists to get attacked by rivals not on the basis of their research, but on the flaws of the textbooks they had written (Kritikos 1995).
Finally, in the case of Greece, the reciprocal relation between the creation of a public science education and the emergence of a scientific community becomes forcefully apparent when the demographics of science are considered. It is no contingent fact that, from 1838 to 1865, no university graduate had specialized in natural sciences. On the one hand, the agrarian and mercantile nature of Greek economy did not readily create a social demand for science. Physics, Chemistry and Natural Science remained for the most part of the century a rather esoteric corpus of knowledge, warily accepted as necessary by the cultured elite for nebulous reasons having to do with modernity and progress. On the other, secondary education offered science courses only in name, while the centralized and hierarchical structure of Greek education did not allow for different avenues to higher studies. In a very real way, the lack of science education prohibited the emergence of Greek scientific practice. And indeed, the scientists of the time were either coming from abroad or had a direct relation with a scientist of the older generation. However, with the institution of an actual secondary science education in 1865 and with the
3 All Royal Degrees mentioned in our discussion, as well as a comprehensive statistical analysis, are to be found in the first volume of Antoniou 1989.
4 The reference to the teaching ability of a Professor as a measure of his worth is a recurring theme in the honorary speeches given on the occasion of his retirement. We find in the commemorative volume in honor of Prof. Mitsopoulos in 1901, of Prof. Christomanos in 1906, of Prof. Damvergis in 1917 and in the article written to honor Prof. Stroumpos by his successor T. Argiropoulos in 1890.
5 As was the case, for example, with Prof. K. Mitsopoulos‘ textbook on Geography in 1894 and with Sp. Papanikolaou ‘s textbook on Physics in 1906. In both cases, furious public debates with leaflets ensued between the two contestants.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the ESHS, Barcelona 2010 51
appearance of state approved textbooks, the University produced more than 30 science specialists within the next years.
Science education in Greece not only went hand in hand but actually facilitated the creation of the Greek scientific community.
Conclusions
In this paper, I tried to show how scientific practice and education interacted in two different national contexts, that of nineteenth century USA and Greece. My ultimate goal is to suggest an alternative to the standard view that science education comes after the formation of the scientific communities or to put it bluntly, science education is what scientists do when they are away from their laboratory or conferences. In two specific cases, the picture that emerges is rather one of parallels, dichotomies and mutual construction. USA and Greece had a radically different social, economical and political timeline, which affected decisively the constitution of their educational and scientific space. But even while nineteenth century Greece and USA appear as two worlds apart, some striking similarities and parallels can also be noticed that suggest a larger picture. In both countries, men of science mostly taught, in higher, secondary, even primary education. The way they saw themselves and they way the public perceived them was tied to their educational activity, be it formal or popularizing. Thus, despite the historiographical blind spot that makes histories focus on pioneering researchers, most scientists of the era were engaged more with the classroom much more than with the laboratory or the field.
Furthermore, scientists were significantly more inclined to write textbooks than research papers. The development of native textbooks followed the development of the scientific community much more accurately than research publications. The strength of the scientific community was implicitly if not explicitly judged by the merits of its textbooks and scientists themselves were quite aware of the serious role that textbook writing had to play in the formation of their respective disciplines. Furthermore, especially in the US, something similar happened with the scientific instruments: the need for exhibition equipment made scientists into supporters of local craftsmen, which in turned helped scientific instruments to appear initially in the classroom and then in the research laboratories. In Greece, where instruments were not manufactured locally and scientists disassociated their role inside Greek society with their role as active researchers, textbook production acquired a highly visible role, with scientists being judged publicly by the merits of the school books they wrote.
Finally, the character of the ‗national‘ science education appears to have had a formative role in the character of
‗national‘ scientific practice. American scientists come across as very much influenced by their classical training, by the role that prevalent pedagogy gave to observation and object teaching and by the dominant role of the textbook within their classes. In Greece, the formation of the scientific community actually followed by almost twenty years the establishment of science in the curriculum. Even if it is a case of correlation rather than causation, the fact remains that it was only after public education expanded significantly enough for science to reach students that scientists started to appear in significant numbers. And when they did, the one common theme they had was their insistence on exclusive teaching rights.
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