“Everything I learn is interesting,” says Vasilis Panayiotapoulos. “Being here opens my heart.”
It's 7:45 p.m. A bell rings in another class, and the world of classical Greece beckons to the pensioner, whose pencil case and textbooks are neatly arranged on a small wooden desk.
Wearing a dark suit and polished loafers, Panayiotalopoulos is not only a dapper figure in a room with spray-painted graffiti on the wall behind him, but also by far the best student at the second night school in central Athens. He is also an older student. At least half of my classmates are my grandson's age.
Nearly 70 years have passed since a bespectacled man in his 80s last went to school.
“I left home at the age of 12 to help my father in the fields,” he says, recalling his childhood in a village in the Peloponnese. “But in my heart and soul, I always had the desire to go back. It's a desire that will never go away.”
At the age of 80, the former taverna owner told his wife Maria, a retired seamstress, that he was finally going to carry out his wish. After working as a chef and running a restaurant in the Greek capital for almost 50 years (“Hard work, hard life”), last year he passed through the iron gates of the second night school.
Today, he enrolls in classes typically attended by 15-year-olds. When he thinks about this, a smile breaks out on his face. “Oh, I can be 15 again,” he says. “I have always dreamed of being filled with knowledge, but I never thought I would actually achieve it.”
Panayiotapoulos' life-changing decision came as a flag bearer leading a school parade to mark last month's Oxyday anniversary, which commemorates Greece's decision to resist Italian forces and enter World War II on the Allied side. They were photographed marching proudly and became a hot topic on the internet. Passed in front of the Greek Parliament. Government officials gathered under a canopy in front of the sandstone building seemed to do a double take when they saw the gray-haired pensioner marched in, flanked by two mature schoolgirls.
“He was given the honor of flying the flag because he was the best student in his class,” said Evangelia Pateraki, the school's principal. “He is extremely hardworking and gives so much to the other students. It’s so moving to see people who didn’t have the same opportunities and had to work come back to school. And that was also a lesson: I went abroad to study, my kids went to university, I got a good job. Until you meet these people who didn't have that possibility. I take that for granted.”
In a country whose population is predicted to decline significantly over the next quarter century, the retirees' decisions have some resonance. According to Eurostat, by 2050 around 35% of Greece's population will be over 65 years old.
“In a society like ours where life expectancy is increasing, we are sending a message to people our age that it is never too late in life,” said Dr. Pavlos Baltas, a demographer at the National Center for Social Research. says.
“But it also helps younger age groups fight ageism.”
He said it was time to redefine the “artificial markers” that describe the aging process. “The definition of 65 as the starting point for retirement is very artificial and needs to be reconsidered,” he says. “After all, as we live longer, 65 is the new 75.”
Greece records an average of 70,000 births per year, but the annual death rate is twice that, at an estimated 140,000.
As in Italy, falling birth rates are forcing schools in remote areas of the country to close due to a lack of students.
Panayiotalopoulos, a father of two daughters who are both attending university, said he “can't wait” to graduate from secondary school in June.
“My favorite classes are Ancient Greek and Mathematics,” he says. “There are things and facts that are a little confusing in my head. For example, before, I didn't know when the Byzantine Empire began or when it ended. That's wonderful.”
Greece's centre-right government says it is determined to strengthen night schools, at a time when they have all but ceased to exist in other parts of Europe. The country's population problem has been described by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as a “ticking time bomb”.
“We are focusing not only on the needs and requirements of our teaching staff, but also on the needs and requirements of our graduating students,” said Deputy Education Minister Zetta Macri. “Any adult, at any age, who decides to return to a school desk is truly admirable. These dreams, efforts and beliefs deserve every support.”
But like many of her poverty-stricken contemporaries in the 1950s, Panayiotapoulos, who gave up her rural life for the city, was never seen as a model student or a role model to be emulated. I don't want it either.
“The truth is, I've always been curious and loved reading,” he says. “And the cafe culture wasn't for me. But if you want to write that dreams never end and that dreams can come true even at this age, that's fine.”
