In the previous days, I heard various stories about myself. I have become an unbecoming man. From a traitor to a thug to a covert DPS. And I wouldn't pay attention to that, or even to the fact that fake profiles with my data appeared on Facebook, because it's rude and immodest to talk about yourself. I wouldn't, if it weren't for the topic of abuse of Montenegrin educational institutions and my publicly stated position in News on that topic. Let me repeat briefly what I said then. Between laws without principles and the principle of traitors, I choose Aristotle's principle that I like Plato but I prefer the truth. Instead of a career, I choose a principle. I choose to be a man to man.
Even during the time of DPS, I publicly spoke and wrote that one director of the school where I worked at the time declared me an Ustasha, and later another director of another school where I then worked, during the position in the ministry of this first advanced director, before the next characterized the elections as Chetnik. And that was sent to the local DPS committee where I lived for verification. YES! I also wrote that the directors convinced me and literally gave me a DPS membership card. They also gave it to other colleagues. I have no problem with the fact that the vast majority of my colleagues kept quiet about these pressures. After all, I don't judge anyone for succumbing to political pressure. For God's sake, it lasted thirty years. The only thing I have a problem with is the fact that today, after the change of government, most of my colleagues, educators, are asking to be politically liberated. They and schools. As in the past in Montenegro, young people from SKOJEV are leading revolutionary justice. Only now we have rabid party apparatchiks. What's the difference? What is the difference that once my school at Stari Aerodrom should have belonged to DPS, and the other one next door to the Bosniak Party, and now instead of these parties the Front, Democrats or URA are running? What's the difference? Do changes to education laws bring the principle of meritocracy from the Prime Minister's exposé? They don't bring. They bring new commissions and political features.
The trade union submitted amendments to these changes in the law. We asked a long time ago from the former as well as from the latter. Let us make school boards independent and stronger. Let's make them responsible for running schools. We ask teachers to take responsibility for their actions. Let the teachers decide according to the principle of expertise and credibility. The Assembly did not appreciate our initiative. The MPs, together with the relevant ministry, decided on the principle: all directors are replaced because it is easiest to blame everything for politicization. The principals are to blame, and we teachers are not to blame for being silent and acquiescing to pressure for years. The biggest damage will continue to be suffered by the students because this is how we undermine the authority of the educational vocation. How? By still addressing the blame and responsibility to the collective, that is, the mass. With these statements of the law, no one is to blame. Neither past nor current ministers. Nor the directors. Everyone will say that it is a matter of politics and the wheel turns once again.
The director of a school in Podgorica once asked me for 1.000 marks to let me work at that school permanently. Another principal of another school kept me at work exactly as long as my cousin did the gutters on his house. And not to write any further, there was more. All these examples made me decide to deal with trade unionism, for my rights! I also know that no one else in those schools even jokingly mentioned similar examples of their own, and I know that there were some. I also know that some educators paid back loans to people from school administrations, and that some others suffered someone's hands on their bodies for the sake of permanent employment. They were silent. I also understand all of my colleagues - it was necessary to feed families with salaries below the national average. I understand.
But what I don't understand at all now is the fact - why is it that none of my colleagues raise their voice to change such a school management system? Why, like a bunch of people with torches in the night, are we rooting for all the directors to be replaced and the system to remain intact? Is it that we can't wait to jump into the directors' chairs? There.
Because of these things I will still be a traitor and everything has already been told to me. I choose principle. I choose to be a man to man. I choose to be remembered for the good of my students, because I am solely responsible for them.
The author is the president of the City Committee of the SPCG Podgorica
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