An early controversy over educational innovation: Christos Evangelides vs. John Valettas in Syros (1851-1852)

Abstract

The history of educational innovation narrates mainly the efforts of the teachers, the educators and of all those who form the educational system to spread literacy and also to invent methods and tools for an easier, child-centered and more effective education that would be connected to life as well as the market needs. The early and unique venture of Christos Evangelides in the Greek island of Syros between 1842 to 1855 is a premature fruit of an educational innovation at a time when such attempts were completely absent from Greece. However, the conflict it provoked was not only the conservative reaction to that spirit but it was also connected to motives of personal and sectional dislike, at a place where the spirit of educational competition and its commercial exploitation had become more and more obvious. © 2017 eum (Edizioni Università di Macerata, Italy).