20 speakers took part in the 2nd meeting and presented 17 papers. The participants represented one Children’s Library and 16 schools, of which 12 were public and 4 private. Of the latter one was International and one Special.
Three schools were primary schools and 13 were of secondary school level.
Three schools came from the provinces: Volos, Harakas at Crete, and Tranovalto at Kozani.
A total of 240 individuals attended the Symposium coming from 19 different cities.
The presentation program started with an introduction to the history of the Acropolis (Hatzi Z. 53th Middle School of Athens, 3rd grade). 170 students from one grade created the book “Students paint the history of the Acropolis” as part of their Art class.

Three presentations on the Olympian gods followed. Learning about the twelve Olympian gods is very popular, especially among the youngest students. In the first talk (Vasilaki P., I. M. Panagiotopoulos School, 3rd grade Elementary) we were introduced to a theoretical approach to teaching the myths. The second paper (Ralli G., Campion School, 4th grade Elementary) showed how learning about the twelve gods became much more interesting to the students when they started to portray the characteristics of each god on their Scandinavian dolls, while the third talk (Papoutsi St., 5th High School of New Liosia, 2nd grade) described how older students had created a show, in which the gods on the Parthenon Frieze were discussing the pollution of the monuments.

The next three papers focused on the teaching of the Acropolis and of classical art in Middle School. The teachers (Antoniou A., Middle School of Keratea, 3rd grade, and Messinis Th., 1st Middle School of Argiroupolis, 1st grade) described their teaching plans and teaching points, and developed their study plan. The following teacher (Giannakopoulou Aik., 1st High School of Holargos, 1st grade) had the opportunity to teach through Middle and High School the same students, whom she had accompanied on the program “A Day on the Acropolis”. She thus compiled an anthology of their regular reports about the Acropolis during the years she was teaching them, pointing out the varying approaches of the maturing students.

The following talk (Paschalis D., 12th Elementary School of Maroussi) described the teacher’s paedagogic procedure when compelled to organize a program for the students to deal with the unpleasant atmosphere created during filming by a thoughtless TV crew.

The next three presentations dealt with workshops using museum kits that took place in the provinces, in Volos, in the island of Crete and in Aiani, Kozani. In Volos (Tsima P., Philologist) and in Harakas, Crete (Prokopiou E., High School of Harakas) the programs were conducted in school, using the museum kits. At the same time, teachers in ancient Aiani (Karra A., Kechagia L., Papakyriakou K., Middle School of Tranovalto, Kozani, 1st and 2nd grade) planned a special program on every day life in antiquity and applied it to the local archaeological site.

Subsequently, a program designed for a group of retarded adolescents (Voutira A., Zafeiropoulou H., Foundation of the Mother of God) was introduced to the group, focusing especially on the adaptations made by the specialized educators to suit the needs of their students.

Next were two reports, on the subjects of nature on the Acropolis and on the explosion of the Parthenon in 1687.
The first teacher (Vasiliou N., Experimental Middle School of the Protestant School, 1st grade) selected particular aspects from nature and created a teaching unit using these as the focus. The next one (Vouda A., 4th Middle School of Piraeus, 3rd grade) taught her students about the history of the Middle Age, from Morozini’s expedition through the explosion of the Parthenon. Of particular interest were the students’ journalistic projects: production of a newspaper of the time, and a TV news clip.

The following two papers (Vranopoulos E., Athens College & Nakou E., Moraitis Middle School) vividly described the tremendous opportunities that lie in setting up special clubs at school, especially an Archaeological Association. Their account of a variety of activities gave the teaching staff plenty of ideas.

All the educational programs are integrated with a good library where students can research their particular subjects while being further stimulated by the world revealed in the books. The possibilities of either a mobile library, or even better a portable museum library was the theme of the last talk: the “Blue Bag” is a journey through ancient Greece offered by the Centre of Books for Children and Young Adults (Kavvadia – Hatzopoulou E.)

The full text of these presentations was published in Archaeology under the title “Teachers talk about the Acropolis”, issue 52, Athens 1994.