The School of European Education in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, belongs to the European Schools network, and provides primary and secondary education in both English and Greek. Its students come from a variety of European backgrounds, and one of the aims of the school is to give pupils confidence in their own cultural identity, as the bedrock for their development as European citizens. Earlier this summer, the fifth grade class of the English section, and their teacher Maria Kasmirli, produced the following short video interpreting Shylock’s famous monologue from The Merchant of Venice in the light of the current crisis in Greece. The project brought together the class’s work on language, literature, ethics, and European studies, and their discussions of issues of prejudice and social exclusion. I repost the video here because I feel it offers an interesting perspective on the events in Greece from young people of a variety of European backgrounds. (For full disclosure, I note that the class teacher Maria Kasmirli is my partner.)
