By Maria Paradia for Occupy – At last count, one-third of the 60,000 refugees currently stranded in Greece are school-age children. Trapped in the country due to the E.U.’s inability to address the escalating humanitarian crisis, the children’s educational prospects are shrinking by the day. Now, since summer school programs for refugee children failed last summer due to budget constraints and lack of specialized staff, individual teachers have begun taking it upon themselves to teach Syrian children elementary Greek. However, a lack of government-appointed translators has made the volunteers’ work all the harder, forcing them to improvise or pantomime their way through classes while relying on older students to help get the message across. Despite their attempts, little progress has been made toward integrating the refugee children with Greek students. If anything, it appears the process is being actively discouraged by a Greek educational system that separates Syrian students’ class schedules from locals, exacerbating the rift. According to Aura, a child psychologist working in the Softex refugee camp in Thessaloniki, “Being present at school during totally different hours makes it impossible to make contact and friends with local children. The longer they are excluded, the harder it gets to seek out contact because of the feelings of shame – not knowing the language, living in a camp – which of course has an impact on the self-esteem of the child.”
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