My schooldays at Korais were wonderful. We had excellent teachers - M. Parlamas, S. Vasilakis, Petrakis - all of them were wonderful.
We girls wore tunics at school and the boys had caps. They didn't have long hair, and we didn't wear earrings. The Korais tunic was blue, with a white collar, and was worn over our clothes.
There were very few children in each class, which was why it was such a top school... It was like a state school, there were no differences. The pupils were high achievers- if you were a second-rate pupil you couldn't stay at Korais. That's how strict the school was.
I respected my teachers a great deal, just as they did me. They would call me "Mistress Nikitopoulou" and use the polite form. There was none of the off-handedness there is among pupils and teachers in schools nowadays. There was a strictness about teaching and you couldn't turn up unprepared. If I hadn't prepared before going into class I would tell the teacher, and the next time we had a lesson he would make me go up to the front and recite the previous lesson and that day's one. We had respect both for ourselves and for our teachers.
