And Now.... GREECE
Teacher Page

WHY GREECE?
"This world isn't ours, it's Homer's," wrote George Seferis. And while his poem, "In the Kyrenia District," has many layers of meaning, this noted Greek Nobelist in Literature (1963) was surely contemplating his country's heritage with some irony. Richard Clogg echoes Seferis in his Concise History of Greece: "The past weighs particularly heavy on Greece," writes Clogg. When writers use the term "modern Greece," he muses, it is as though the name "Greece," by itself, "must necessarily refer to the ancient world...." As though Greeks have had no history in the 2,500 years since they gave birth to democracy.

But they have. Indeed, Greece today is a vigorous nation, an active player in European affairs, a promoter of global democracy. It also happens to be a country whose strengths students cannot understand without bringing its past into focus. This unit should help them do so.

CURRICULUM STANDARDS
Besides its attention to the issue of tradition and change, this unit offers students in Grades 9-12 a chance to work on the following skills, cited from the National Standards for World History (NSH) and from Expectations of Excellence (EOE), the guidelines provided by the National Council for the Social Studies. Thus, students using this unit should be better able to:

• "explain the origins and continuing influence of key ideals of the democratic ... form of government...." — "Civic Ideals and Practices" (EOE)
  
  
• "describe and assess ways that historical events have been influenced by, and have influenced, physical and human geographic factors in local, regional, [and] national ... settings." — "People, Places, & Environment" (EOE)
  
  
• "identify ... significant historical periods and patterns of change within ... cultures, such as the development of ancient cultures and civilizations [and] the rise of nation-states...." — "Time, Continuity, & Change" (EOE)
  
  
• "identify patterns of social and cultural continuity in various societies and analyze ways in which peoples maintain ... traditions...." — "Era 7," Standard 6 (NSH)

CRITICAL TERMS
Democracy is a term whose meaning evolves. If students know that early Athens (whose democracy is discussed on the Student Text Page for this unit) did not extend voting rights to women, ask: Does this imply that Athens was not a democracy? If they answer Yes, test their reasoning: Does the USA have to defend its system as perfect, in order to claim the label "democracy"? Other terms to preview: Balkans, budget deficit, drachma, GDP, enterprise (economic), Kosovo, parliamentary republic. Tip: Students using the Greece Map Page may be interested in researching FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). Tell them that they'll usually find this country indexed under "M."

FOUR BIG QUESTIONS
The questions at the top of the Student Text Page are meant to help students begin researching issues related to this unit's topic. Access to the Greece Map Page and Greece Data Page for this unit will give students additional context for understanding those questions. Basically, the questions point in the following directions:

1.   How have Greece's geographic features influenced its history? In the segment on "Courage," students read that Greece's island and mountain features made "its small, isolated communities immune to forcible change," and thus more able to protect their traditions during the period when Greece was dominated by empire builders. When discussing such influences — and when examining Greece's position in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula — you might want to point out, however, that Greeks were not resistant to all change. They were, for example, among the world's very first Christians.

Students should also be able to infer from the reference to early Greek colonies (and from any map — see the Greece Map Page), that Greeks were/are seagoers. Indeed, Greek shipowners today have amassed the largest merchant fleet in the world.

2.   What does Greek history teach us about the pursuit of democracy? One lesson it teaches us is that the freedom to practice democracy can be lost! Another: the lasting power of a great idea. A third: that democracy cannot flourish where people do not choose their own government. Greeks won independence as a nation in the 1820s, for example. But they were delayed in their quest for self-determination by the "great powers" of Europe (Britain, France, Russia), which decided that Greece would have a monarchy, not a republic. (See, e.g., "The Great Powers Intervene," under "Greece," in the Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000.)

3.   How has Greece's role as a Mediterranean country, a Balkan nation, and a member of the EU affected its policies? Certainly, the first paragraph on the Student Text Page allows an inference that Greece (a Mediterranean nation) has a policy of promoting tourism. By the early 2000s, tourism was contributing about $10 billion annually to Greece's gross domestic product and adding thousands of jobs to its economy. And economists predicted those numbers would swell, as Greece prepared to host the 2004 Olympic Games. (The Games originated in Greece in ancient times, lasted 1,000 years, and were revived there in 1896.).... To follow Greece's current-day policy toward its Mediterranean neighbors, students might begin by searching for "Greece AND Israel" or "Greece AND Cyprus" at the BBC Site.

As the "Commitment" segment reports, the future of the Balkans is a critical concern for Greece, which works hard to promote peace and stability within the region and which does so as the only Balkan member of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Greece joined NATO in 1952) and the European Union (entry date, 1981). In the wake of the Kosovo crisis and other disturbances in the region, Greece committed half a billion euros to economic reconstruction throughout the Balkan peninsula. More: The Greek Government reported that companies in the nation's private sector had invested almost three billion euros in Balkan nations by the year 2000. That's right: euros. After more than 2,500 years, the drachma is no longer the official currency of Greece! On January 1, 2001, Greece joined 11 other EU members in adopting the euro as its currency — an adoption for which Greece became eligible after successfully reducing its budget deficit and interest rates and achieving other criteria that have been set for admission to "Euroland."

4.   What are Greece's goals for the future? Its recent goals are spelled out in the "And Now...." section. You might also ask students to ponder a Greek statesman's view of the psychological context within which such goals would be pursued. Addressing an American audience in May 2001, (then) Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Papandreou, observed: "We live in a part of the world ... which yearns for alliances: alliances between communities, between countries, between regions, between citizens. It starts with the citizen and connects the citizen to the world. This ... [will be] a challenge for all political leaders in the coming years." Ask students whether such widespread yearnings might help, or hinder, Greece in striving for the goals cited at the end of the Student Text Page. After discussing the statement, students might like to suggest goals they think their own country should adopt for the next 10 years!

MORE SOURCES
For direct access to official Greek positions on current issues, see the Web Sites maintained by the Embassy of Greece in the United States and by the Permanent Mission of Greece to the UN. (On the page that opens, scroll through the list of Permanent Mission countries until you reach the link for Greece.) By way of complement to these official Greek Web Sites, the Latest News From Greece — a Site maintained by the Hellenic Resources Institute, Inc. (Massachusetts) — provides an interesting insight into the viewpoints of many Greek citizens and their descendants in the USA. (Note: The "Macedonian Press Agency," which is linked from this site, is sourced in Greece, not in FYROM.)

The U.S. State Department also provides an excellent profile and overview of Greece (sections of which are addressed to the interests of the American business community). See "Background Notes: Greece, October 2003."

For students who want to explore the period in which Greek democracy originated, you might recommend the Perseus Project, a scholarly "digital library of resources for the study of the ancient world." And for those who are fans of the Olympics Summer Games, the Athens 2004 Web Site is surely a best bet — not only for its news about Olympics events, but for its links to pages that focus on the history of the Olympics and related topics.

Here's a short, short list of other sources consulted by LE editors.

Clogg, Richard. A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge University Press. 1997.

Europe. The November 1998 issue of this EU publication discusses Greece's role in the EU, prior to that country's adoption of the euro.

"Greece." CIA World Factbook 2003.

"Greece." Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000.

Seferis, George. Collected Poems. Princeton University Press. 1995.

Greece Student Text Page | Greece Map Page | Greece Data Page

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