by Christos Zabounis

There are also “eccentricities”. I graduated from the 1st Lyceum of Veroia. My daughter from Ecole Bilingue Jeannine Manuel. What’s the difference; The first school has a number, and the second, a name. An old initiative of the Ministry of Education, already in 2008, is starting to take shape recently. The 8th Primary School of Nicaea, for example, was recently named “Georges Sarri” after the author of children’s books, while the name of the Cypriot hero Evagoras Pallikaridis was chosen for the Oreokastro in Thessaloniki. It was preceded by the renaming of the 91st Primary School of Athens to “Mikis Theodorakis”, and the 3rd Gymnasium of Patras to “Nikos Teboneras”, the teacher who had been murdered in the same place. The process of naming is not a simple matter, because the Teachers’ Associations of each school group that make the proposals often choose the same names, usually those related to local history. How many schools in Crete are called “Eleftherios Venizelos” and how many in Lesbos are called “Odysseas Elytis”? On the contrary, in small places, such as Amorgos, the choice of Nikos Gatsos, who wrote the poem of the same name, is rather a one-way street. such as the proposal to give the name of the principal of a school. The idea, however, as a whole is interesting, especially if the students also participate in the process. A propos, for the 1st Lyceum of Veroia, I recommend Dimitrios Vikelas, one of the protagonists of the revival of the contemporary Olympic Games.