Cyprus-Forum.com

[Ghandi]

I have been reading your sight and have enjoyed the opinions and banter.
I think that it is great that there is a forum for people on this island to share there ideas,beleifs and prejudices.

My reading leads me to ask do the people on this forum from the South consider themselves Greek,Cypriot or Greek Cypriot.

if it is Greek i would understand,the Olympics and Philosophy need i say more.Cypriot makes sense as it is a separate island and Greek Cypriot,well we all have mothers.

To the Greeks,does your education system teach you to think and to find unity like the great Greeks ?

The Cypriots were do your text books come from ?Does your system teach annextion to the Greek motherland ?

The Greek Cypriots who controls you curriculum ? Can you question Greek policy in your classrooms ?

[karma]

why shld Ghandi wonder all these, he supposed to be busy with Kashmere problem

[askimwos]

I have been reading your sight and have enjoyed the opinions and banter.
I think that it is great that there is a forum for people on this island to share there ideas,beleifs and prejudices.

My reading leads me to ask do the people on this forum from the South consider themselves Greek,Cypriot or Greek Cypriot.

if it is Greek i would understand,the Olympics and Philosophy need i say more.Cypriot makes sense as it is a separate island and Greek Cypriot,well we all have mothers.

To the Greeks,does your education system teach you to think and to find unity like the great Greeks ?

The Cypriots were do your text books come from ?Does your system teach annextion to the Greek motherland ?

The Greek Cypriots who controls you curriculum ? Can you question Greek policy in your classrooms ?

First of all let me welcome you to the forum, it would be nice though if you took the time to introduce yourself - just a few things - so that people know a bit about your background.

Now to your questions...and there are a lot of them.
To start with the question about the identity issue (Greek/Cypriot/GC)
The majority in the south would describe themselves as Cypriots of Greek origin (G/Cs), most of them from within this group will say that they are Cypriot first and then Greek.
The other two groups (Cypriot and Greek) are smaller in terms of % of the population.
Although, I am not aware of any independent poll about this, my guess would be a 70%, 15%, 15% split for GC, Cypriot and Greek respectively. Other forum members may have a different opinion about this.

Now about the education system, this is a very very big issue that you open and it may need hours and hours of discussion to lead us somewher.
Here is my opinion anyway:

The education system in the south traditionally revolved around what people called a hellenic-christianity core. It was a mixture of a bit of both and in my opinion included a lot of elements that didn;t really promote tolerance towards turkish people that were traditionally viewed as the eternal enemy - not suprisingly so as Turkey is an aggressor in the region.
After the 80's and with the rise of the left/communist party which has traditionally been more tolerant and promoted rapproachment between the two communities things started to change a bit and both teachers and students felt more free to question certain things. I remember that when I was in primary school I almost got expelled because I declared that I am Cypriot and not Greek -that was in early 80's though. Nowadays, pupils are much more free to question things and debate in the classroom. The ideology of rapproachment is now accepted by all political parties and the great majority of the society while 10-15 years back if one said that TCs are brothers and not the enemy many people would have labelled him traitor.

A lot needs to be done though to reach that point where one can say that the education system 100% promotes tolerance towards not just TCs but towards ordinary turkish people.

Now about the curriculum, this is set by the ministry of education of the RoC. Nobody else interferes, apart maybe from the church that still refuses to accept a completely ciccular education system. Time will show if the church will have it their way.

As for the text books, most of them come from Cyprus while in the 80's almost all of them came from Greece. I think the aim of the ministry of education is to reach that point where all text books come from Cyprus with a few exceptions like Greek literature and ancient greek etc.

[humanist]

Ghandi, may one day you be as great as the Great Ghandi a man who truly believed in freedom and a leader that Cyprus could use on both sides of the fence.


I AM A CYPRIOT (who speaks English and Greek and would love to learn Turkish).

[LENA]

I AM A CYPRIOT (who speaks English and Greek and would love to learn Turkish).

[Ghandi]

Firstly why is my backgroung important.I understand social etiquete and manners runs much of our lives for very good reasons but still feel like it will be used to pigeon hole my comments.

The 4 responses contained 2 with very little thought and were very predictable eg Ghandi and Kashmire.This highlights the behaviour which i am not interested in at the moment.

It is interesting to note that Turkey was seen as the eternal enemy-not suprisingly so.Same could be said about the Jews it is a dangerous philosophy.

It is great to see that there is more room in a classroom to question but i wonder if this something that it promoted in your teaching institutions?

[pitsilos]

behaviour which i am not interested in at the moment.

when then?
and
what makes you think that anyone is interested in your behaviour?

very predictable eg Ghandi and Kashmire

ghandi spit it out or you'll be spat on

ps. what do the jews and the price of fish have to do with anything?

[karma]

Goshhhhhhhhh Gandhi, it was just a joke..
ofcourse u have the right of being curious abt Cyprus like I m curious abt Kashmere..similar cases..
Only Kashmere has mountains and lakes and sheep..Cyprus has sun and sea and donkeys

[Ghandi]

Pitsilos,

There isnt anything that makes me think that people are interested in my behaviour.This explains why i did not say anything about my behaviour.

Maybe if you had learnt that to read with some form of comprehension you would not have to rely on ignorant aggression.

The Jews are disliked some believe with good reason,as are the Americans.I am merely saying that this can sometimes causes problems.

Turkey may be seen as the eternal enemy because of its actions in the past.Does this make it allright to teach then considering all the heartache that taught prejudice has caused the world over.

i will ask again are you teachers familiar with a thinking curriculumor is infrormation just given to a passive audience of school children?

[Ghandi]

Karma, joke( HA Ha ) and point taken.

Kashmire and Cyprus as the Thais would say Same,Same but different.