NEWS FEATURE: Eastern Orthodox School Teaches Faith-Based Greek, Latin and `Holy Wisdom’

c. 2004 Religion News Service PORTLAND, Ore. _ On the walls of Ingrid Schor’s classroom are maps of ancient Mesopotamia and pictures of the creation of the animals from Genesis that her students have colored in bright hues. The students’ handiwork offers hints of the central theme of Agia Sophia Academy _ providing faith-based, classical […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ On the walls of Ingrid Schor’s classroom are maps of ancient Mesopotamia and pictures of the creation of the animals from Genesis that her students have colored in bright hues.

The students’ handiwork offers hints of the central theme of Agia Sophia Academy _ providing faith-based, classical education.


The new school housed in the basement of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church here has 24 students, is the first Orthodox school in Oregon and is one of fewer than three dozen Eastern Orthodox schools in the United States. The Rev. Jerry Markopoulos, who helped create Agia Sophia, says he hopes someday the school can stretch from preschool to 12th grade.

Agia Sophia (“holy wisdom”) opened this fall with preschoolers through fourth-graders in three mixed-age classes. About 70 percent come from Portland-area Greek Orthodox churches. Most of the others are from Russian Orthodox churches. The school bills itself as pan-Orthodox, meaning it welcomes children from any of the ethnic branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church as well as non-Orthodox students.

The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church share a common ancestry and similar understandings of the sacraments. But they split in the 11th century because of political, cultural and doctrinal differences.

Two of the major theological differences concern the primacy of the pope and the nature of the Holy Trinity. The Orthodox Church holds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; the Roman Catholic belief is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Eastern Orthodoxy believes the pope is an equal in a council of bishops, not the ultimate authority of the church.

Markopoulos says Agia Sophia is little known outside the Portland area’s nine Orthodox communities.

“Even people who know about us have a wait-and-see attitude,” he says. “The parents who have committed this year have a great deal of faith in us.”

The school won approval from the Holy Trinity Parish, the Portland city planning office and Metropolitan Anthony, the Greek Orthodox archbishop of the Western United States. Organizers toured the Orthodox Christian Schools of Northeast Ohio, where five Orthodox schools have been launched in recent years, and borrowed heavily from their curriculum.

Markopoulos is associate priest of Holy Trinity, which is on Portland’s east side. It is a logical location because the church, which operates a Sunday school and formerly a preschool, has enough classroom space for as many as eight grades.


Agia Sophia students are organized into three groups: five preschoolers, who attend half-day three days a week; eight kindergarten students called primers who go full time; and 11 full-time students in what’s called Year One, which now has first- through fourth-grade students in one class.

The preschool tuition is $1,600; the Primer and Year One programs are $3,600 a year.

Deacon Kevin Haan, school director, says the preschoolers get an introduction to reading and math, but serious academics start in kindergarten. Students begin and end the day with a prayer service, and in between they study reading, writing and math. The primer students begin conversational Greek; the Year One students continue Greek and begin the study of Latin. Other subjects include history, music, physical education and science.

But Agia Sophia emphasizes a faith-based education. The students pray together as school opens, again at lunch and as school ends. Forty minutes a day are devoted to stories from the Bible and the history of Christianity.

Markopoulos says the educational approach follows the three stages of a classical Greek education: grammar, logic and rhetoric. In essence, he says that means students learn basic subjects, then learn to recognize relationships and analyze information, and finally learn to express what they know in a coherent and persuasive manner.

“The ancient Greeks knew these three stages correspond to the way children develop,” he says.


On a recent morning in Schor’s classroom, students were taking a math test, working on multiplication on a math worksheet or reading a book from the small library in the teacher’s room.

Maria Kassapakis, 9, says she likes her new school and still sees her friends from her former public school on weekends. She rattled off words in Greek for a visitor. Then she showed off a few words in Latin.

“On Latin days, we take the textbook home because we have to study,” she says.

Markopoulos, whose three children are enrolled in Agia Sophia, says he hopes the mix of a religious and classical education will appeal to more Portland-area families.

“The purpose of a classical education is not so much about scoring well or tests, getting a good job or gaining social status,” he says. “It’s about learning to be a good and virtuous person.”

MO/PH RNS END

(Steven Carter is a staff writer for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.)

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