Article 2: Informal Learning in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Greece: Greek Children’s Literature in Historical and Political Contexts

After Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire (1827), a newly formed Greek state looked to retrieve its past through the teaching of a Greek national history. For much of the nineteenth century Greek schools forged common religious, linguistic, and historical ties among the Greek people through the teaching of a Greek historical past (Zervas 2012). A Greek historical past that dated back to ancient Greece sought to legiti-mize the Greek state and unite the Greek people around a common national identity.

By the late-nineteenth century state educational interest and involvement extended beyond the school. High illiteracy rates, low school attendance rates as well improper school resources led the Greek government to look at other possibilities for promoting its national project (Gennadius 1925). The relationship between formal and informal education and more generally the freighting and appropriation of learning for political and cultural purposes by the Greek state sought to extend national identity formation beyond the state sponsored school. A Greek national identity and an understanding of what it meant to be Greek was thus extended into private life through the teaching of children’s stories.