This book refers to the education provided in Greece by the schools of the Catholic monastic educational orders through the example of the school of the order of Saint Joseph of the Apparition in Athens in the second half of the 19th century. The history of this specific school is of particular interest, since it is the first Catholic monastic order to secure a license to operate a school for girls in the Athens area, in a legal framework still quite unclear for the education of girls. The educational, political and cultural stakes that arise in the second half of the 19th century around the operation of the school, along with the development and formation of the neo-Ice Greek state and its educational system, form the central core of the research.

The concept of "enclosed" education refers precisely to the closed character that Catholic schools in general had anyway, but also to the defensive attitude that St. Joseph's school was forced to maintain due to its often difficult coexistence with state institutions.