In the life of every state, history assigns a single generation the task of leading the entire society to new values of well-being and happiness. Aware of this fact and ready to take responsibility for our entire life activity, we promoted a platform that crowns the principle of meritocracy and education as the cornerstone on which our path to a better Montenegro rests.
We are also painfully aware of the fact that the political elites of the previous state authorities did almost nothing for the wider integration of social layers and the promotion of values important for the education and upbringing of new generations of citizens of Montenegro. Moreover, the educational system as the nerve of social progress in the past thirty years has been put in existential danger. Populism, voluntarism, clientelism and kleptocracy are traces that we see in all our schools and educational institutions.
The noise of semi-literate self-proclaimed people who even Šćepan Mali would envy is unbearable. We raised our voice and gave it to the Government, which must change this in education based on the principles of meritocracy and responsibility for its actions. We say that we gave our vote to the Government, but we did not present it to it. We expect.
It is the last moment to do something right in the education system and to save the new generations from the abyss into which we have sunk as a society. Otherwise, the river of young people fleeing from Montenegro will be wider and wider, and we will be a society of tired mythomaniacs and kleptocrats.
That is why we are asking for the first step of the Ministry of Education, which is an analysis of the education system at all levels. The analysis should be made by domestic personnel who are the only ones who know all the specifics of the system. At the same time, the minister must not lose sight of the fact that education is a very conservative system that does not tolerate sudden changes and seeks carefully thought-out gradual solutions. Measurable by all actors in education.
Depoliticization of the system is an urgent matter. The reputation and authority of educators cannot be restored as long as political parties see us as their voting flock. By amending the Labor Law and the General Law on Education, the criteria for employment must be restored. The selection of principals must be returned to the schools through a three-stage procedure, and the minister's role is to appoint principals. This is the only way the battle for the depoliticization of the education system begins.
The duration of classes in schools must be increased. Unfortunately, we see that now our students are left to fend for themselves on the street without any parental supervision, because parents practically have to work all day. In this part, the so-called sliding norms must be introduced for teachers in the second and third cycles, as well as for secondary schools. All previous ministers wrongly reduced the work of teachers and students only through the organization of lessons. In this way, schools have become penitentiaries.
The Institute for Education and the Center for Vocational Education must organize classes in schools in a different way. The Institute for Education must as soon as possible abandon the failed model of teaching through educational outcomes and return to the center the standards of knowledge that teachers and students reach through various forms of learning, PISA testing constantly reminds us of how dysfunctional plans and outcomes we have.
That is why we are asking for a new conception of curricula for all subjects, up to university education. We are looking for standards of knowledge with formative material conceived as useful knowledge. The Center for Vocational Education must be the center of the ministry in the search for an answer to what professions we need in society.
We expect the Ministry of Education to draw up a strategy for the education system with all these modest proposals of ours, so that for the first time in the history of Montenegro, we would give an answer to the question of what kind and how many educated citizens do we want?
The author is a member of the General Secretariat of CIVIS
Bonus video:
