Another school year in two parallel ethnicaly-determined silabi
Today I came across a video on parallel ethnically-determined syllabi that students in Vukovar are expected to embrace. And preferably not to question at all. Great documentar, worth watching.
Back in 2005, I participated in the research commissioned by the EU agency that assessed to education, training and employment of ethnic minorities in the Western Balkans. Conducting research in Croatia, I interviewed representatives of various institutions and NGOs, and got acquainted with people from the Nansen Dialogue Centre , NGO based in Osijek. They made me aware of a phenomenon that has been persistently fostered by the local political elites, both Croatian and Serb, to pursue two parallel educational processes and curricula in Vukovar: different one for youngsters of the Serb and for the Croatian national origin. I will mention results of their study a bit below.
Indeed, a tradition of education in minority languages in Croatia has long roots. Namely, the Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Ruthenian and Ukrainian languages were in official use and education was carried out for members of those minorities before the country became independent in 1991. The right of national minorities to education in their own language and script is exercised pursuant to the Constitution, the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities (CLNM) and the Law on Education in Languages and Scripts of National Minorities passed in 2000. This Law, together with the Law on the Use of Minority Languages, regulates in detail the education of members of national minorities in primary and secondary schools. The CLNM foresees also the possibility to establish school institutions with education in the language and script of a national minority for a smaller number of pupils than the number which is stipulated for state school institutions, and in this way promotes education in the minority language. At operational level this measure is promoted by the Ministry of Education and Sceince, since it allows the establishment of minority classes that encompass only five children.
The curriculum in the language and script of a national minority contains subjects related to a specific aspect of a national minority (the mother tongue, literature, history, geography and cultural achievements). However, all pupils educated in the languages and scripts of national minorities are also obliged to learn the Croatian language and Latin script. Teachers conducting education in the language and script of a national minority mainly originate from members of that national minority and are supposed to have an excellent command of the minority language and script. Teachers who do not originate from the national minority may be allowed to conduct education for minority pupils as long as they have an excellent command of the minority language and script.
In the case of the minorities in the Danube Region of Eastern Slavonia, certain education rights were enshrined in the 1997 Letter of Intent by the Croatian Government to the UN Security Council on completing the peaceful reintegration, following the peaceful reintegration of the Danube Region upon the end of the UN Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES). http://www.demokratski-centar.hr/vijesti/novosti/item/1232-15-godina-od-potpisivanja-erdutskog-sporazuma
In accordance with the Erdut Agreement , that allowed peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Easternmost region, all schools that existed under the occupation were allowed to continue. The Serb cultural association ‘Prosvjeta’ promoted instruction in Serbian since 1995, when work on the creation of curricula for the Serb language and culture in accordance with Croatian laws began. Representatives of the Serb minority have been underlining the importance of the employment of qualified teachers originating from the Serb minority and adequate teacher training connected to it.
One might argue that such a solution actually implies that educational minority rights are being implemented. Far from truth, from the perspective of those who advocate that minorities and majority should create fora for cooperation and cultural exchange. In Eastern Slavonia, division between regular educational activities and those intended for the Serb pupils resulted in a lack of contacts between majority pupils and pupils of the Serb minority. In Vukovar, for example, students with instruction, respectively, in Serbian and Croat, while formally attending the same school, are in some instances educated in separate facilities. This for sure does not contribute to the integration of Serb pupils and, in spite of the determination of parents of both ethnic communities to foster the status quo, such a current arrangement might develop segregation. The Nansen Dialogue Centre from Osijek conducted in 2005 a research on the satisfaction of parents with their children’s primary education in Vukovar. 256 parents of elementary school children were interviewed. Contrary to the positions of the Serb and Croatian political leaders who advocate separate schooling, the research established that 71.5% of the interviewed parents believe that the educational in which minority language and culture are being taught as optional subjects is the most desirable one (55.7% Croats, 29.5% Serbs, 1.6% other minorities and 13.1% ethnically unaffiliated). According to the answers given, it allows for the abolition of the factual segregation between the two communities and facilitates education at the tertiary level of the Serb pupils). 5.5% of parents of both ethnic backgrounds were in favour of the separating educational model (64.3% Croats, 7.1% Serbs, 21.4% other minorities and 7.1% ethnically unaffiliated) and 7.8% prefer educational model in which only some subjects are taught separatelly for national minority students, whereas the rest of the curricula is being implemented for the whole classroom (among respondents 10% were Croats and 90% Serbs).
Teaching of history has also not been uniform till the beginning of the 2005/06 school year. All children, regardless of their nationality, starting from the 2004/05 school year study unified history. Namely, students belonging to the Serb minority in Eastern Slavonia were exempted from history lessons covering the period from 1990 on. This was prescribed in the Erdut agreement, which foresaw then a moratorium of recent history teaching, lasting for 10 years. After this period expired, history is taught on the basis of new history books that have been harmonised with the Croatian National Educational Standard.
Whereas the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia, as a result of post-conflict arrangements, have achieved to pursue their educational minority rights, even to the detriment of their integration to the society, in some other parts of Croatia, members of the same minority can only dream about being educated in their national minority language. Even though number of the Serb minority entitles them to set up autonomous minority education classes in the town of Knin, this right has not been assured because of the reluctance of the school principal to establish classes for the Serb national minority. Obviously, there is still much to be done to achieving both realisation of minority educational rigth as well as the integration among different ethnic groups.