Georgios Kleovoulos

Georgios Kleovoulos (, Philippopolis, c. 1785 - Syros, July 28, 1828) was a Greek scholar and educator of the early 19th century. He was born in Philippopolis (present-day Plovdiv), in the Ottoman Empire. He was a supporter of the mutual-teaching schools and one of the people who brought this teaching method to Greece. He taught in Iași, Odessa, Syros and Poros and died on the 28 July 1828 in Syros of pneumonia.

Biography

Kleovoulos was born around 1785, There he studied alongside renowned scholars of the time such as Benjamin of Lesbos and Grigorios of Kydonies.

He completed his studies with a distinguished performance and then lived for three years in Vienna where, alongside his studies, he was teaching the Greek language. He also studied in Bavaria and later he visited Switzerland where he became familiar with the mutual-teaching method practiced by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg. Thrilled by this method of teaching, he went to France in order to learn how to use it and after his studies he became principal of a Greek school in Iasi in the Danubian Principalities (1819-1821). From that school almost 100 students graduated and then moved to Greece where they practiced the same method.

In 1825 Kleovoulos went to the Cyclades in Greece, where the Greek War of Independence had broken out in 1821. There, after fruitless efforts to create mutual-teaching schools in Paros, Naxos and Tinos, he settled in Syros where he taught the mutual-teaching method to the children of Greek refugees who had found shelter on the island4. In April 1828, after an invitation of the Governor of Greece, Ioannis Kapodistrias, he was appointed principal at the exemplary School of Poros. However, shortly after that, he caught pneumonia. He went to Syros to take his family and return to Poros, but in the meantime his health deteriorated and he died on 28 July.