Greece ranked near the bottom of the latest PISA international reading assessment, outperforming only Mexico among all p...

Greece ranked near the bottom of the latest PISA international reading assessment, outperforming only Mexico among all participating countries. The results, published by the OECD every three years, tested 16 and 17-year-olds who are nearing high school graduation, and a significant share of Greek students could neither fully comprehend nor correctly read a basic text. The findings drew sharp commentary from Grigoris Kalfеlis, a law professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, writing in To Vima. He pointed to the assessment director Andreas Schleicher's own conclusion: the single biggest factor behind collapsing literacy scores across wealthy nations is the constant presence of smartphones and unrestricted access to social media. Greece fell several places below Germany, France, Spain, and Israel on reading comprehension. The Economist, covering the broader results, asked whether teenagers today are simply becoming less intellectually capable, while noting that Asian countries with fewer but better-paid teachers posted far stronger scores. Kalfеlis also blamed Greece's university entrance exam system, the Panhellenic exams, which pushes final-year students to focus almost exclusively on tested subjects while abandoning everything else. He cited research showing many Greek students cannot identify who Eleftherios Venizelos was, let alone Kant, Hegel, or Marx. Greece already moved to restrict phone use in schools, which Kalfеlis called a step in the right direction, but he argued the deeper problem is cultural. Greek society has never been a strong reading culture compared to other European countries, and when teenagers never pick up a history or philosophy book outside of school, no legislation fixes that. His conclusion was stark: a country where 17-year-olds cannot understand what they read has no future. #Greece #Education #PISA