During the long period of Ottoman rule, schools were established by the communities and were controlled by the Metropolitans. In the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in the rural villages and small islands, students were taught the "kollivograms": reading, writing, and the four operations of integers.

Olympus of Karpatos was a small, closed agricultural and livestock society. Its approximately 1,800 inhabitants understood the value of education and since the mid-19th century, they strived to educate their children. They hired distinguished teachers and built a new school building.

Since 1912, the Dodecanese has been under Italian occupation. The new conquerors, methodically at first, later completely overtly and brutally, isolated the church of the Dodecanese from the Patriarchate, placed Greek schools under the direct supervision of the Italian administration, imposed the teaching of the Italian language and Italian history, and added the subject of Fascist Education to the curriculum.

In 1937, the new Governor Caesar De Vecchi completely prohibited the use of the Greek language. However, in this suffocating atmosphere, the children of Olympus, guided by their teachers, maintained their national consciousness. They knew they were Greeks enslaved to the Italians. With countless precautions, they sang:

I sleep with a dream, I wake up with a hope
to see one day light and a free homeland.
The wild animals thirst for water and the mountains for snow
and Karpatos for freedom, which has been enslaved for so many years.
Wake up my poor subject, wake up to see freedom.

Their hopes were fulfilled after the War with the incorporation of the islands into Greece.