Isn’t It Time We Rethink Ancient Greek in Our Schools

By Eugenia Manolidou

A recent study in the UK (British Council Language Trends 2025) highlighted something that should give us pause: in England’s state schools, Ancient Greek is almost absent, while it remains strong and vibrant in private schools. Organisations like Classics for All are fighting hard to support public education by providing teacher training, free resources, mentoring, and ongoing guidance. Their goal is clear: to prevent less privileged children from being excluded from access to this piece of cultural heritage.

And yet, at the same time in Greece — the country that gave birth to this language — we are witnessing a constant devaluation of Ancient Greek teaching. We keep hearing proposals to reduce the hours dedicated to it, instead of discussing how to make it more meaningful and accessible.

It is worth looking at what is happening elsewhere. In Italy, there are around 800 Licei Classici, secondary schools with a strong program in Ancient Greek and Latin, considered a springboard to a high academic level. In Spain, too, experiential teaching of Ancient Greek and Latin is steadily gaining ground, with more communicative methods and less rote memorisation (Cambridge University Press). The message is clear: Europe is actively seeking ways to keep Classical Languages alive and teach them more effectively.

This is not about overloading students with grammar and syntax drills until they are exhausted, nor about turning them into little philologists. It is about giving them the chance to understand how their own language works. After all, a significant part of Modern Greek vocabulary is shared with Ancient Greek — the foundation is already there. What is missing is a more experiential, lively approach that treats Ancient Greek as a real language, not just as a dry examination subject. The fault does not lie with philology teachers, who struggle heroically with huge workloads under difficult conditions, but with the system itself, which for decades has allowed Ancient Greek to appear as a burden instead of a valuable tool for education and self-knowledge.

Elliniki Agogi shows a different path: it introduces spoken practice, enjoyable interaction, even theatrical play, so that children experience Ancient Greek as something natural and familiar. This does not lessen its academic value — on the contrary, it strengthens it. Because the first step to loving a language is to understand it. And once you love it, then you truly learn it.

If in England some are fighting to offer this knowledge in public schools, and if Italy and Spain are investing in new methods and classical programs, then we, too, have a duty to protect — and modernize — Ancient Greek teaching, not shrink it. As Jacqueline de Romilly often said, Greek is a language of thought. It is a powerful tool for reasoning, for understanding our civilisation, and for connecting with our own language.

Let us give our children the chance to discover Ancient Greek in a lively and meaningful way — and why not finally open a serious discussion about re-establishing classical high schools and transforming the teaching methods here in Greece as well.