Greece’s remote islands are becoming a warning sign of Europe’s population decline, as falling birth rates and youth migration threaten schools and local communities KALAMOS, Greece -- Chryssa Ntalaka's classroom has become an object lesson in subtraction. The sole teacher in the last school on the idyllic Greek island of Kalamos has a shorter list of students every fall. On Sept. 23, the sixth graders sat at Ntalaka’s table beneath the whiteboard, in front of rows of unused desks and benches.
When they head to middle school on Greece’s mainland next year, her school will be mothballed. Toys and picture books still sit on shelves in the nearby kindergarten since it was shuttered three years ago. It’s a situation playing out across Europe and beyond.
The region has 16 of the world's top 20 oldest nations, particularly in Southern Europe, according to the independent World Population Review. And its remote communities act as an early warning system: Mountain villages and small islands are among the first places where schools and services disappear in a deepening cycle of population decline. Some 17 million people live on more than 4,000 islands across the European Union; Greece has about 200 of them.
It means depopulation and dead settlements that will become nursing homes.” Kalamos' year-round population is just 80. A decade ago, it had 40 kids in local schools and public daycare. We played together every day.
We went to (primary) school every morning,” Antonis Aivaliotis, a high school senior, said during a ferry ride in the predawn light. Aivaliotis is among Kalamos’ seven teenagers who today make a choppy crossing to school on the mainland. They miss class on days strong winds pose a risk.
He spent several years as a student of Ntalaka’s class, which at the time was a single room with children of all ages. Ntalaka has often been the lone teacher during her 20 years at remote schools. Half that time was in Kalamos, located not far from Odysseus’ home island Ithaca in “The Odyssey.” She fell in love with Kalamos' unspoiled beaches that are a magnet for yacht tourists.
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