PHOTO ESSAY: Greek Island Kids Have to Catch a Boat to School as Europe Ages
Only two students remain at Kalamos Primary School, and ferry delays can keep island children out of class as Greece closes more schools.
- Teenagers from the Greek island of Kalamos face a predawn boat commute to the mainland for school, as Kalamos Primary School will close next year when its last two students advance to middle school.
- Greece faces a sustained population decline, potentially falling from 10.5 million to 8 million by 2050, forcing authorities to close 75 schools this year and suspend classes at more than 400 others.
- Primary schoolteacher Chryssa Ntalaka has spent 20 years working in remote Greek schools, where the classroom on Kalamos is now largely empty; student Antonis Aivaliotis noted there is "no development at all" to keep young people on the island.
- Byron Kotzamanis, co-founder of the Institute of Demographic Research in Athens, argued school closures should be made "very sparingly and carefully" because shutting down schools encourages working-age families to leave remote areas.
- Keeping the school open would require only two more families, according to Ntalaka; without such intervention, the island risks becoming a nursing home as young people leave, creating a cycle of depopulation.
24 Articles
24 Articles
Empty classrooms on remote Greek island signal crisis across Europe
Chryssa Ntalaka’s classroom has become an object lesson in subtraction. The sole teacher in the last school on the idyllic Greek island of Kalamos has a shorter list of students every autumn. This year, just two. On September 23, the sixth graders sat at Ntalaka’s table beneath the whiteboard, in front of rows of unused desks and benches. When they head to middle school on Greece’s mainland next year, her school will be mothballed. Toys and pict…
Rutland Herald
PHOTO ESSAY: Greek island kids have to catch a boat to school as Europe ages
Before the sun rises over the Ionian Sea, teenagers from the tiny Greek island of Kalamos file into a sea taxi, backpacks slung over their shoulders, to make the half-hour crossing to the mainland.
Greek island kids have to catch a boat to school as Europe ages, in photos – WTOP News
Before the sun rises over the Ionian Sea, teenagers from the tiny Greek island of Kalamos file into a sea taxi, backpacks slung over their shoulders, to make the half-hour crossing to the mainland. They are on their way to school, the predawn commute a glimpse of a broader problem facing most of Europe: There...
Winnipeg Free Press
Greek island kids have to catch a boat to school as Europe ages, in photos
Before the sun rises over the Ionian Sea, teenagers from the tiny Greek island of Kalamos file into a sea taxi, backpacks slung over their shoulders, to make the half-hour crossing to the mainland.
Chryssa Ntalaka's classroom has become a practical lesson of subtraction.
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