An educational exchange designed to bring Greek culture to American school children will be one of the elements of the University's Celebration of Hellenic Culture planned for next fall. The School of Education and Human Development, working with the Southern Tier Institute for the Arts in Education, will collaborate with the Melina Project, an educational outreach effort of the Greek government, on a program for teachers and students in the Southern Tier. Spyros Mercouri, artistic coordinator for the Celebration and brother of the late Greek actress Melina Mercouri for whom the project was named, said schools are crucial in the transmission of culture.
Culture is behavior and a way of thinking.
If we are to make it part of society, culture must enter at the schools. Mercouri was in Binghamton to visit with SEHD Dean Linda Biemer and Floyd Herzog, director of the Anderson Center for the Arts, about plans for the educational exchanges during next fall's Hellenic Celebration. Mercouri said his sister, as the Greek minister of culture, recognized the need to bring the arts to school children in order to keep the Greek culture vibrant. The Melina Project currently works with 82 elementary schools in Greece. Mercouri said the Melina Project is just one part of the legacy his sister left to Greece and the world.