The President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, received in the Presidential Palace the participants of the Student Olympic Teams.
Among them was our student Athanasios Fokaidis-Psyllas, last year?s Olympiad winner that will also represent Greece in the Chemistry Olympiad this year.
In the photograph, the President of the Republic is accompanied by the Chemistry Olympic team (Alexandros Terzopoulos, Emmanouil Kokkinis, Athanasios Fokaidis-Psyllas and Konstantinos Dounis), Mr. Antonios Chronakis (mentor of the Greek team, Education Department of the Greek Chemists? Association), Mr. Nicholaos Psaroudakis (mentor of the Greek team, Chemistry Department, NKUA) and Mr. Athanasios Papadopoulos (Nutrition and Dietetics Department, S.T.E.I.T, President of the Greek Chemists? Association).
In the following photograph, our members of the Olympic team with their parents.
The message of the President of the Republic regarding Excellence is also very important. The President mentioned that ?Excellence, not only does not transgress the principle of Equality, but also highlights and serves it.? Addressing the young excellent participants in the National Student Olympic Teams, he underlined that through their selection, they have proven their own value and stressed that this value is that we owe both to recognise and honour. ?Because this is exactly the meaning of Excellence. Of Excellence, which all people, but especially we the Greeks, must serve. We must not forget that the concept of Excellence was highlighed, for the first time, in this Place, by Homer. The ancient Greek dictum ?αιέν αριστεύειν και υπείροχον έμμεναι άλλων? is what rules the Greek Spirit and the Greek Thought. I also wish to stress that Excellence not only does not transgress the principle of Equality, but also highlights and serves it. Because the principle of Equality, according to the Constitution, is relative Equality?, he added.
As the President explained, relative Equality, according to Aristotle, equality according to the Constitution, means equal treatment of essentially similar situations but also unequal treatment of essentially dissimilar situations, also noting that Equality is also transgressed when we treat in a dissimilar way the equal, and when we treat in a similar way the unequal. ?When we even a human personality. Because this means equal treatment of the unequal. In this case we just confirm mediocrity?. Nevertheless, he noted that for Equality and Excellence to have this meaning, the Society and the State owe, especially to students that start their career, to ensure really Equal Opportunities for them. ?Equality in the beginning, so that you start from exactly the same base. Only in this way can each one reveal their personality without facing any discrimination?.
Congratulations to the children and their teachers for these important distinctions!
The Headmaster