Students in 36 elementary schools in the Central Bosnia Canton (CBC) are not sitting together at school desks this year. They are divided by ethnicity. Bosniak children attend classes in one part, and Croat students in another part of the school.
This so-called phenomenon of “two schools under one roof” in the CBC has been present since the end of the war. Court verdicts obliging the competent ministry to abolish discriminatory practices are not being implemented either.
Children ask their parents why they are separating them
Almost three decades after the war in the 1990s, elementary schools in Jajce, in CBC, operate according to the “two schools under one roof” principle.
Although they share a common roof and school entrance, Bosniak and Croat students attend classes in different classrooms and according to different curricula.
Amra Agic’s son is a ninth-grade student at the “Berta Kucera” Elementary School in Jajce. Amra says that children ask why they are separated from their peers, but that the answer is difficult to give.
”They play together in the schoolyard – during breaks and after class. Of course, this is very strange for the children and they ask why they have to go to separate classes. It is very difficult to explain it to them, because it is a ‘high’ policy that has nothing to do with the normal education system that we should strive for,” Amra points out.
With protests in 2018, high school students from Jajce prevented the further division of schools in that city. Today, they attend classes together, with the so-called “national group subjects”, which include the native language, history, and geography.
Schools as training grounds for ruling elites
Activist Samir Beharic also completed primary and secondary education in Jajce and is currently studying for a doctorate in Germany. He believes that “two schools under one roof” are the most successful training ground for the ruling elites for the education of future voters, which is why they insist on this concept.
”A young person who goes through years of ethnically segregated education can hardly think and vote in a way that implies the fight against division and nationalism. It is not the walls in schools that are the greatest obstacle, but those in the head and they grow stronger every year in which we have “two schools under one roof” as the dominant norm,” Beharic emphasizes.
He emphasizes that society is less and less questioning and criticizing the justification for the existence of such a system, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
