Abstract:

Immigration is one of the most prominent phenomena in the second half of the 20th century. The social structure of the countries that accept immigrants has changed at the end of these immigrations and multiculturalism became widespread. As the demands of the immigrant groups from different cultures have been difficult to be solved by the nation-state structure, varied educational policies were implemented in order to ensure their social integration. Intercultural education is one of these different educational approaches. Greece has distinguished as a country of immigration since the 1980s. The children of immigrant groups changed the student profile in Greek schools which made them gain a multicultural identity. One of the most important obstacles to participation of the children with different mother tongues (L1) in the Greek education system was the Greek language which is the official language of the country and also the medium of teaching. Starting from the 1980s the government, in order to solve the problem, opened Acceptance Classes and Preparatory Courses in schools, in which Greek and Greek culture classes is being taught intensively. In schools the mother tongue of foreign students is being ignored and the priority is given to the teaching of Greek as the second language (L2) which causes this teaching method to be characterized as linguistic and cultural assimilation. Parallel to the practices in other European countries, the Intercultural Education approach has been adopted for different cultural groups and with the law issued in 1996, 26 schools were given Intercultural School status gradually. Compared to the ratio of immigrants in the country (10%), the number of these schools (0.17%) is very insufficient. For this reason, Intercultural Education, which should in fact be a common ground in the entire education system, is far behind in reaching the goal of developing social and cultural pluralism awareness in all students, not just foreign nationals.

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