Social Change And Education In Greece

The postwar orthodoxy postulated that education is both a mechanism for upward social mobility and an engine for economic growth. This book challenges these mainstream conceptions. Using Greece and the Roma people in particular as a case study, Themelis examines qualitative and quantitative social mobility findings to explore the changes associated with education and to analyze their importance for individuals and society.

Review: 'Social Change and Education in Greece is a probing and trenchant analysis of the class dynamics of Greek society and the social, cultural, and educational fallout from the war on Greek democracy by the transnational capitalist class. This is necessary reading for any comprehensive understanding of capitalism today.' - Peter McLaren, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Spyros Themelis's research on social inequalities and their relationship to education is an insightful analysis of social reality in postwar and post-civil war Greece.

Discussing a time when education still functioned as a vehicle for social mobility, this book illuminates how a cultural minority, a semi-agrarian Gypsy community, fought its way into mainstream society. Seen from the perspective of the growing gap between a diminishing middle class and the real holders of material and symbolic capital in post-crisis Greece, Themelis's book could explain also why the integrative pattern he describes for the past is no longer valid for large segments of the population undergoing a painful experience of downward social mobility in contemporary Greece. - Athan Gotovos, Professor of Education, University of Ioannina, Greece