Interview with Dr. Eleni Theodoru from European University, Cyprus
by Nóra Barbara Szabó & Michael Zholobovsky
First of all, could you tell me why exactly you decided to do the things you do now, and tell me just a little bit about your unique background?
Eleni: Well, there's no one reason for doing what I do. You mean in terms of the projects that I do or in terms of..
Why do you find it important to do the things that you do? Why don't you find it important?
Eleni: Well, first of all, I do different things, so what motivates me is my interest in understanding the world around us. I don't know if that's important enough of a reason, but I think it matters. I mean, if you were talking about work on social and educational inequalities, it matters because, you know, I think we should all aim for improving our lives and for improving the lives of those around us. I think just as a general principle, we should be striving for social justice. So that's part of what motivates me. In doing work in that area. Now, in terms of other areas of interests, such as the datafication that I mentioned or youth activism, I think that's the motivation from that comes from understanding what happens in contents and how the way that life is changing affects children and young people and what it means to be a child in today's world.
In terms of the work on youth activism, climate change, or the work on anti-militarism, activism, I think that against them, from a wider interest in social issues, inequalities. For example, environmental activism linked to social injustice, and then anti-militarism, which were particularly linked in the context of Cyprus, were linked to ethnic conflict. Cyprus is a conflict society, so these two are intertwined.
That's exactly one of my biggest interests in Cyprus, which is also why I was making a presentation about just reading an article about education in Cyprus that which is also divided based on the territories and the systems. So, and also from you as a person who is probably working on this and facing it nowadays. So what can you say? How does it work in Cyprus? Can people from the territories in the northern part come to the southern part, if they are children or students to come and study, and vice versa? So was the current situation with that, and how does it happen and work also within the European Union, as Cyprus in the EU?
Eleni: Yeah, well, it's kind of complicated, because after 1974, when it started before that, started in the '60s, the sort of intercommunal conflict. But then it escalated to a war, an invasion from Turkey, and that led to the segregation of the two communities. So there were forced displacements from both communities, so Greeks moved to the south, and Turks moved to the north. And they have been living separately since. There's no interaction in terms of the educational systems as it is now. Now, people with a Cyprus citizenship are allowed to come to the South. And they are European citizens, but many people are brought in from Turkey, who have no historic relationship to the island and are Cyprus citizens. So that's different. Now, in terms of the role of education, if that's what you're asking, I mean, historically, education has played a role in polarizing the two communities and in creating these on both sides, this is not just one side, because education has always been divided on the island. As a matter of the two communities, even before 1974. So I think it played a huge role in strengthening a kind of ethnocentric ideology that contributed to the escalation of the conflict between the two communities. So education has a different impact and can make matters worse, but can also make them better. In a sense.
And if we talk about immigrants in general who are coming to Cyprus, especially, I know that there are many Russians now in Cyprus, where maybe Ukrainian speakers are as well. So what can you tell me about the current situation of immigrant education, intercultural education in Cyprus? Does the government help those kids integrate to the societies in some ways?
Eleni: Yeah. Yeah, well, again, it's a very multilayered issue. Cyprus has mostly exported people up until I would say the '90s. So, it was a country sending immigrants abroad rather than deceiving them. After the 1990s, there has been an increase in immigration, which comes from different parts of the world. There was a big part of that that was Greeks of the diaspora, so ancient Greeks were a big part of the immigrant group. There are also immigrants from Asia, but for different purposes. So you have immigrants from Europe who may travel as families, including the diasporic group I mentioned, and then there are immigrants who may come as temporary workers, mostly from Southeast Asia. And then, more recently, there was a big number of Russians moving to the island, again, as families, so different immigration reasons, factors attached to that, and then after the war in Ukraine, there was also a considerable number of Ukrainians coming to Cyprus also. So if you look at all these types of immigration and the reason that they find themselves on the island, you will see that there's a lot of diversity within, so you have different, for example, groups of different socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, Russian communities in Cyprus in Limassol came as families and more extended networks. They established schools, for example, radio stations or whatever. They've established a community that has different resources. So they're not attending in large numbers mainstream schools. If you look at other types of immigrant families, from Asia, or the Greek diasporic parts groups, those are integrated in the mainstream public schools. So the Ministry of Education has started to get an interest after '90s, when this phenomenon sort of became new for Cyprus. But through the years, the emphasis has mostly been on the acquisition of Greek. So there's still a way to go in terms of understanding interculturification as a more holistic kind of approach. So changing the curriculum, investing in teacher training, on leadership education. So I think there is still a way to go. But there has been progress at purposes on learning Greek as a second language and also in terms of establishing policies, anti-racist education.
It's going to be my last question, just sum it up. What is the current way of separating the education system? Is it more intercultural, or would you say that they are still trying to build the identity of these people who live in Cyprus? Is it more intercultural or monocultural?
Eleni: No, I would say it's monocultural. Still, I mean, there have been efforts, like the ones they outlined before, and there's certainly there's been progress, but it's still a very much monocultural and monilingual educational system.
Is it based on the curriculum or the politics, or how can we tell that it's more monolingual/monocultural?
Eleni: Well, there's no provision for supporting the native languages of immigrant students, for example, there is no provision for bilingual education. There is no provision for integrating interculturalism in the curriculum back across. So, there is no substantial teacher training on the issues. Even though there have been efforts towards that direction, I mean, it's not like the state is oblivious to that, it's not. But there haven't been systematic and systemic enough efforts to address these issues in all of these sectors. I'm talking about the public educational system. Because the private schools have a lot more autonomy to work on these issues, and they also, most of the private schools, use English as their Lingua Franca, so that makes it gives them more autonomy to do things in the curriculum and in the way the school operates. They also follow mostly the UK-based curriculum. It's a different situation.
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