The new educational policy for the reform of the curriculum and the change of school knowledge in the case of Greek compulsory education

Abstract

This article looks critically at Greek educational reform to the curriculum of compulsory education—reform that took place so that Greece could put into practice the decisions of the European Union of Lisbon (2000) for the contribution of education to the adaptation of the new data of the ‘knowledge society’. Bernstein's theory about pedagogic discourse is utilized. Also, with the use of qualitative content analysis in specific resources (parliamentary debates, new curriculum and textbooks) we tried to answer the following questions: Which are the dominant social principles that led the Greek state to change the curriculum? Through which process and with the contribution of which factors did the reform of the curriculum come about? And which are the characteristics of the new school knowledge and of the pedagogic practices that are selected for their reproduction at the level of the classroom?

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. The state in the Greek case has always been centralized, bureaucratic and paternalistic (Kazamias, 1990; Bouzakis, 2000, 2002). According to Kazamias (1990), the state in Greece after the Second World War has been urban and has intensively got all the characteristics of a typical liberal state of welfare, which appears to act as a neutral medium benefiting the whole of society. Also, the Greek state totally controls the whole educational system, which is closely connected with bureaucracy and with the centralized state mechanisms. Moreover, it appears to act for the protection of the dominant social principles and for an effort for cultivating the Greek national identity through the formation and operation of the educational institution.