Abstract
Greek prime ministers of the interwar period used education as both a domestic policy for homogenization and as a defensive foreign policy against territorial revision. As a result, minorities were the casualties of these Hellenization policies; both their historic prominence and cultural identity proved of minor importance in light of the state’s efforts at cultural assimilation. This paper examines the primary and secondary educational policies directed toward minority and foreign operated schools in Greece between 1919 and 1939, with a special focus on Catholic foreign schools, Jewish foreign and minority schools, and the Slavo-Macedonian minority. Two issues are explored: 1) the degree to which minorities and minority/foreign schools were able to resist – or circumvent – these assimilationist educational policies, and 2) whether certain minorities and/or schools received greater leniency towards these policies and why this was the case. Ultimately, this presentation will highlight how interwar educational policies were broadly applied to all minorities and how, of the various minority/foreign schools and minority groups in Greece, the Catholic schools were perceived to be the most suspect in terms of ‘sullying’ Greek identity, while the Slavo-Macedonian minority suffered a disproportionately high degree of repression for trying to maintain its linguistic autonomy.