All happy countries resemble each other, and each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way. We can end this Tolstoy's paraphrased thought with the simple statement that the educational system is what makes a society prosperous or not. Precisely because of this, Montenegrin society has been faced with the question of changing the education system since the end of the last century. From then until today, there are two basic unfulfilled tasks before us. Development of a comprehensive social strategy of the educational system and its general depoliticization.
I guess it is clear to everyone that there is no depoliticization of such a large system, in which over 13.000 people work, without previously fulfilled conditions. All the more so if it is known that the system has ossified in political corruption and nepotism as the basic lever for its preservation and maintenance. In a numerically small society, where everyone knows everyone, schools are recruiting centers for political parties in power and centers of soft social power that stifles any critical thought and possible social progress. The current amendments to the General Law on Education and the decision on the selection of directors are in the best tradition of the soft social power of the autarchic education system.
The famous Miloš Đurić explained his refusal to collaborate with the government of Milan Nedić by saying that he has no right to it because he teaches ethics to students. Do we have the right, as educators who, among other things, teach ethics, to agree to collaboration with partisanship and nepotism in our schools? Can we be satisfied with the answer that we agreed to it all these decades and that we can do it again this time? Are we even aware that our education system is about to collapse?
The new choice of director is the reference point of that failure. The statement of the teachers' councils in the previous procedure about the principals who are still in office is a level of revolutionary justice where colleagues should shout guilty or not guilty. Or to count among themselves which of them could be their new leader. The complete picture only lacks Robespierre or Comrade Lenin in school halls. In the end, the Ministry will accept such opinions or not and will appoint the party staff of one of the parties in power. So the case for the annals. All this is happening while there are still no vacancies in the institutions for new directors.
What is striking is the obvious sequence of steps that had to be taken. Precisely because of the ethics that I teach the students, the most common statement that our students leave the classrooms without knowledge and education in an unfortunate politicized society, against which I have raised my voice all these years, I am obliged to point out the following. I am responsible to warn and suggest to the authorities in the society. Introduce a moratorium on the implementation of this law. Temporarily stop the change of directors. Create a social consensus on the criteria and values required for all new employment in education. From porter to director. What qualities are we looking for in people who will educate and enlighten our children? What qualities and characteristics are we looking for in colleagues who should lead our educational institutions? These are preliminary questions to which we must have answers in order to change this law. Decentralize the system. Allow school boards to take the fate of their institutions into their own hands. To choose and dismiss our managers ourselves. Start decentralizing the entire system. Allow the word of the profession to be decisive in the decision-making of our ministry and all educational institutions. That the ministry should not be an orderer but a coordinator.
In the end, but surely it is always at the beginning of every story - this society will continue to be a station without trains where passengers with properly purchased tickets wait for their way to happy countries, if we do not understand how important education is to us. Most important.
The author is a member of the General Secretariat of CIVISA
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