During the weekend, Mothers of Srebrenica requested an urgent reaction from High Representative Christian Schmidt regarding the curriculum in the Republika Srpska (RS) entity, which from this year includes the study of the unit called “Homeland Defense War” for ninth graders. It was checked how certain it is that they will get answers – what do the legal profession think about the new situation, and what do the teaching staff think?
“After the Pedagogical Institute of the RS entity published the curriculum, we expected that the competent authorities, and above all the Office of the High Representative (OHR) as an inviolable authority with unlimited powers, would give notice that such a violation of the law would not be tolerated,” said Mothers of Srebrenica.
The OHR is silent, but legal expert Vlado Adamovic doubts they will react on this occasion.
“When we involve the OHR, then it’s a different story. The question of the responsibility of persons who hold some kind of political function is easier to define because the OHR can intervene. However, when someone does his job, he is a responsible person, but in a different sense. Then it is difficult to talk about the fact that someone can be punished because he profiled something that he considers to be professionally justified,” he said.
To recall, the State Prosecutor’s Office declared itself incompetent to intervene in the field of curricula of the competent ministries of science, and the competent ministry said in this case that it would not give up and that a manual for teachers is also being prepared. Until then, they will be guided by old textbooks – those in which important explanations for key figures highlighted in the curriculum are missing. Like, for example, why they were sentenced to life imprisonment.
“At the end of the text there is a marker that says – he was sent to the Hague Tribunal. That information ends there. That marker gives the average reader the opportunity to get informed and see what the result was in The Hague, but the one who doesn’t want to search will have that information. There is that misunderstanding. Whether it is advisable to publish information that is not complete is a matter of editorial policy, really,” adds Ademovic.
Education has always been a political issue, not only an editorial one. However, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), instrumentalization is taking radical forms, so we have sinned against children at every step of the way, says Nedim Krajisnik, teacher and director of the Step by Step Association.
“Since I have nothing else to appeal to, I appeal to the conscience of good teachers who will close those doors and raise good people. There is another dangerous thing that we should all ask ourselves: By raising values and in these kinds of narratives, we are preparing children for a new conflict, for something they did not choose, we made this, it is not their responsibility to change this world. It is something we should be afraid of,” said Krajisnik.
And the parents are already shocked and have the same questions. One of Muhamed’s three children in Srebrenica is starting the sixth grade this year.
“Let’s ask ourselves what will happen in five, ten, fifteen years. What kind of generation will we produce and what kind of views will they have? Are we preparing new generations for new crimes of genocide, for a new war? What is the goal? It’s not a problem for me what an individual thinks, it’s a problem for me that we have a system that tolerates war crimes and propagates war criminals,” said Muhamed Avdic, a parent from Srebrenica.
While Muhamed and the other parents are appealing for more precise reactions from the authorities, it is not certain that they will follow. However, in a society where education serves to raise even higher walls among children, fifty percent of whom are functionally illiterate, there is certainly not much good to be seen.
“The old good saying – if you want to destroy a nation, lower the quality of education, and we are certainly on the right path,” concluded Krajisnik, N1 writes.
E.Dz.
