Greek Orthodox Schools

Greek Orthodox schools in America can be organized into three main categories: (1) day and afternoon schools, including the Sunday schools; (2) parochial day schools; and (3) the seminary/higher education. These programs operate under the direction/guidance of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. When discussing Greek Orthodox schools in America, one must consider the issues of an isolated subculture retaining the language and ethnic customs of the Old World in contrast to the changing character of the Church's membership after World War II, which included Orthodox Christians born in the United States.

The tension between the old—that ethnicity and religion could not be separated from the mother tongue—and the new—a belief that the Church should respond in the English language to the people's faith—resulted in heated debates in Greek Orthodox communities. The Greek language, embedded in religion and culture, was central and at the core of Greek Orthodox immigrant families' lives in the United States. This factor resulted in [Page 415]organized Hellenic groups putting pressure on boards of education in several large metropolitan centers to include the Greek language as part of the public school curriculum as early as 1930.

The Greek Orthodox parishes in America began as a result of immigration in the 19th century. The first Greek Orthodox Church in America was located in New Orleans in 1866, founded by a group of merchants. As parishes were established to form a link between the culture, language, and faith of the Old World in Greece and the new, the jurisdiction over the communities of Greek Orthodox Christians was placed under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. For 10 years, leadership presence was lacking in America, but by 1922 the Church of America was made an archdiocese with an archbishop of North and South America as its head.

In 1932 the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese formally established the Department of Sunday Schools with the publication of several religious education texts in Greek. And in the 1950s, English was incorporated into the liturgical service as well as children's religious education programs. This was a departure from the Old World, where the Greek language and religious teachings were part of the school's curriculum. The use of the vernacular in both church services and the schools became a subject of debate when Archbishop Iakovos, cognizant of the diversity of the followers of the Greek Orthodox faith in America, proposed an examination of the use of the languages of the faithful at the 1970 Clergy-Laity Congress. This was a bold move, and the majority of the delegates affirmed the archbishop's recommendation to include the vernacular, whether it was English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French, as needed and at the discretion of the parish priest in consultation with the bishop.

The early Greek parochial schools in the United States maintained the use of the Greek language and did not formulate a curriculum geared to meet the needs of new arrivals, specifically, to learn English. Advocates of the Greek parochial schools were confounded by immigrant families' decision to send their children to the public Greek bilingual programs. The church established after-school Greek language schools, which took priority over the parochial schools. The archdiocese lists 340 Greek Orthodox afternoon schools in the United States with 30,000 students and numerous evening Greek classes, mostly supported through the parishes. Presently, there are 29 Greek Orthodox Parochial Day Schools, located for the most part in metropolitan centers across the United States, that range from nurseries, preschool centers, and kindergartens to elementary and secondary grades. Eleven of the schools are located in the state of New York. The day schools' curricula are diverse and idiosyncratic and may or may not include classes in modern Greek. Nevertheless, the central mission of these schools is to teach the Greek Orthodox faith. Some schools require that all students attend Greek language and religion classes regardless of nationality or denomination. While some day schools date their founding in the 1930s, several were organized as recently as 30 or 40 years ago. Faculty are typically state certified and come from diverse backgrounds.

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