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Gymnastics and education: the difficult years (1833-1880)
The
diffusion of sport in modern societies and the adoption of
that practice by broad social strata were founded to a certain
extent on the introduction  of
gymnastics in public education during the 19th century. The
Greek educational system was formed, as to its basic structures,
during the first years after the foundation of the independent
Greek State (1833), through a series of decrees bearing on
primary education (1834), secondary education (1836) and university
education (1837). According to these first decrees gymnastics
was to be instructed in schools two hours weekly. Nevertheless,
almost five decades had to elapse before gymnastics was introduced
in school education, a process that started gradually from
the early 1880s. The time that elapsed from the initial announcement
until the introduction of gymnastics in education marked the
social and cultural processes that had characterized the Greek
society during that same period and led, during the last quarter
of the 19th century, to the development of the institutions
and mechanisms of Greek sport. A prerequisite of the above
processes was the gradual relinquishment of "traditional"
practices of management of physical ability and vigour, such
as the outdoor demonstrations of strength exercises, acrobatics,
rope-walking etc., and the adoption of innovatory models of
physical exercise organized in relation to gymnastics and
sport in general. It is not a coincidence that the palace
square in the time of Otto (1833-1862) was the main location
where the above activities took place. They were particularly
popular itinerant performances, which were usually held on
feasts and holidays. The first two, of the altogether four,
Zappeian Olympiads, namely those organized in 1859 and in
1870, reminded more of the above-mentioned "performances"
than sports games. Besides, those years were characterized
by the total absence of any sports activity in Athens. In
this way, for almost half a century gymnastics was absent
from the Greek schools, although the Greek educational system
had been organized in imitation of the corresponding German
system, a principal element of which were the gymnastic exercises
and the use of special apparatus (dumbbells, horizontal bars,
rings, bars etc.). During that period of at least four decades,
one or two gymnasiums operated in Athens on an occasional
basis. Besides, it seems that the very few people who exercised
there were firemen mostly, who had to exercise often due to
their profession. As to the location of training back then,
gymnastics was limited, as a discipline, in the Didaskaleion
of Aegina at first and later of Athens. According to evidence
of that time the gymnasium of the Didaskaleion had been organized
in 1834 by the German F. Kork. He was probably one of the
many Germans who came to Greece during the first years of
Otto's rule. From 1837 the gymnastic education of trainee
teachers was assigned to the pedagogue Georgios Pagon, who
was the author of the first manual on gymnastics in Greece.
The situation was the same until 1860, when gymnastics was
removed from the disciplines of the Didaskaleion and the gymnasium
that existed there was taken down. During the next two decades
gymnastics and education were two concepts at odds for the
Greek reality. That changed gradually during the 1880s.
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