School programs and textbooks in Montenegro mostly ignore the existence of homosexual and transgender people and topics that could be related to LGBT people, and in some places even the less common sexual orientation is presented as a disorder.
Where and where these topics are present in textbooks, they are not covered in practice and education about the human rights of LGBT persons and different identities is reduced to relying on informal workshops conducted by non-governmental organizations.
In the Secondary Medical School, the textbook on "Neuropsychiatry" talks about lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender and intersex people in a pathologizing way, describing them as disorders and equating them with the worst sexual crimes.
That textbook was published in 1999, published by the Belgrade Textbook Institute.
Topics related to gender, sex and sexuality, and therefore to gender equality and human rights of marginalized groups, are often taught in optional subjects, or through one or two lessons.
During 2021, the Center for Civic Education conducted a survey Representation of LGBTI topics in current school programs. As part of the research, 18 subjects for secondary schools were analyzed, i.e. 24 textbooks, and the contents of the school programs were compared with the textbooks for the given subjects. The analysis shows that LGBTI topics are dealt with mostly in the Healthy Lifestyles elective (elective for I and II grades of High School), while significantly less in the Individual in the Group (supplementation of the matriculation standard for the Psychology subject in III and IV grades). Additionally, within the mandatory literature for the subject Montenegrin-Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian language and literature (for I, II, III and IV grades of high schools and for I grades of secondary vocational schools), LGBTI topics are almost not mentioned at all, although it was stated that there was considerable space for adequate processing of these topics. Numerous other subjects, from Ethics (for the IVth grade of high school) to Psychology (for secondary vocational schools) do not mention LGBTI persons at all.
Research by the Spektra organization has shown that gender and sex are often considered the same. According to that research, half of the students believe that sex and gender are the same, most of them do not know which biological structures determine one's gender, and there is an extremely high degree of prejudice in relation to gender differences between men and women. As many as 83% of high school students believe that men and women think differently, while half believe that they have different intellectual abilities.
The research also showed that almost every second high school student does not want or thinks that he does not want to know anything more about transgender people, and that LGBT topics should not be represented in educational programs.
At the recent tenth jubilee Pride in Podgorica, a request was heard to begin teaching about different sexual orientations in schools. The day before Pride, in front of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Podgorica, a prayer service was held organized by the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, in which opposition to the holding of the pride parade was expressed. "We call on the government of Montenegro to protect both the people and the state, especially children who have been exposed to the contents of LGBT propaganda and ideology since elementary school, from the earliest age, through school programs and textbooks," is one of the messages from the SPC proclamation from that prayer.
Croatia: On Gender and Gender in Civil
Sexual/gender equality and responsible sexual behavior was one of the four modules of the Health Education curriculum, but in 2013, when the aforementioned curriculum was included in primary and secondary schools in Croatia as a mandatory cross-curricular subject (which means that it is taught through several subjects such as Nature and society, Biology, Croatian, Physics, class community class from the first grade to the end of schooling), the mentioned module "sex and gender equality" was never taught in Croatian schools as a separate part. It was simply removed from the curriculum due to the opposition of the public, parents, professors and the Constitutional Court of Croatia.
From then until today, Croatia has implemented an education reform in which the health education curriculum was changed to the cross-curricular content Health. In that reform, another cross-curricular content was introduced in all Croatian schools, called Civic Education. There is no separate element of sex and gender in any of the content that is taught through different subjects, but that does not mean that this content is not dealt with at all, especially in the content of Civic Education. Namely, students in the cross-curricular content Health, among other things, deal with the domain called "Mental and Social Health".
Through it, for example, in elementary school, they learn to respect differences; learns to explain the developmental changes that occur before entering and entering puberty, learns the differences in individual development, differentiates between the concepts of self-esteem and self-confidence, accepts changes in one's body, stands up for oneself... Through the curriculum of the interdisciplinary topic of Civic Education, students from the sixth to through History, Croatian, Geography, Nature and Religious Studies, eighth graders learn to recognize cases of discrimination in everyday situations and react appropriately to them.
Namely, then, among other things, they learn to identify the causes and consequences of examples of discrimination based on all the bases of the Law on Suppression of Discrimination - racial or ethnic affiliation or skin color, gender, language, religion, political or other belief, national or social origin, property status, union membership , education, social position, marital or family status, age, health condition, disability, genetic inheritance, gender identity, expression or sexual orientation. They adopt that part by, for example, organizing a debate at school, going to forums with professors, studying and visiting various organizations that promote human rights, encouraging themselves to participate in various humanitarian organizations.
Also through History, Croatian language, Biology, Religion; classroom teacher and cross-curricular topics: Sustainable Development, Health and Personal and Social Development, they learn to recognize discrimination based on gender and react appropriately to it. In the first grade of high school, students explain the most important terms in addition to gender equality, among other things, they know the institutions and organizations that protect gender equality, as well as their role.
In the upper grades of secondary schools, through various visits to numerous institutions, students master the questions of what are the appropriate ways to address the competent institutions for the protection and promotion of human rights in the community, while teaching students to oppose any form of discrimination and violation of human rights and to learn the important personal contribution to the promotion of human rights.
"Controversial" lessons about sex and gender in Serbia
The public in Serbia well remembers the fall of 2004, when the then Minister of Education and Sports, Ljiljana Čolić, on her own initiative removed the topic of the origin and development of the human species from the biology curriculum for the eighth grade, with the explanation that Darwin's theory was dogmatic. After the stormy reaction of the public, Darwin still survived in school programs and textbooks, and the epilogue of the whole story was Čolić's resignation as Minister of Education.
Eighteen years later, biology was again "under attack", this time by right-wing political parties and the Church, who in a lesson on the biological meaning of adolescence, in which a distinction is made between sex and gender identity, denounced it for "propaganda of homosexuality and transgenderism to minors ".
The right-wingers did not stop only at biology textbooks. Boško Obradović, the leader of the Dveri Movement, one of the parliamentary parties, found "controversial" sentences in history and sociology textbooks. In one of his posts on Twitter, he even called on "parents who believe in God and traditional and family values" to tear out a page from an eighth-grade history textbook in which the LGBT movement is mentioned in a lesson on social movements.
The aforementioned text states that LGBT social movements are those "social movements whose activists advocate for the improvement of the position of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (hence the abbreviation LGBT), who are often socially exposed to very widespread discrimination". Next to the text is a picture of a rainbow flag next to which it says: "The rainbow flag, known as the LGBT pride flag, is a symbol of LGBT social movements."
As part of the education reform implemented by the previous educational authority, in 2019, a new biology program for the eighth grade was adopted, which began to be applied from the 2021/22 school year. years. The profession had only words of praise about that program. The procedure was such that the expert commissions of the Institute for the Improvement of Education and Training (ZUOV) wrote a program proposal, which was then given a positive opinion by the National Education Council (which also includes representatives of the Serbian Biological Society, the professional association of biologists), so that the minister with his signature and officially approved for use in schools.
Based on the program, eight publishing houses prepared textbook manuscripts that also passed the expert evaluation of the ZUOV commissions (members were university professors or researchers from institutes and teachers from schools), and were approved by the Minister of Education. Out of those eight that are on the market, only one textbook was approved by the previous minister, Mladen Šarćević, and the remaining seven were approved by the current prime minister of Serbian education, Branko Ružić.
The first accusations against the content of one of those textbooks appeared in the spring of last year, at a time when a public debate was held in Serbia on the Draft Law on same-sex unions.
The critics were bothered by the fact that the biology textbook makes a distinction between sex and gender, the statement that sex and gender do not match for some people, that young people sometimes question their gender identity during adolescence, and that there are people who consider themselves gender neutral.
In response to the comments that "teaching is being imposed on children that is most blatantly against our tradition and faith", ZUOV said at the time that the aforementioned biology textbook contributes to the realization of the general principles and goals of education prescribed by law, that it is in accordance with the defined outcomes, and that all selected examples and pictures are age-appropriate and follow the basic text.
The thesis on the promotion of homosexuality in schools was brought up to date on the eve of the recent Europride event, which was hosted by Belgrade, and against which the loudest voices were those who recognized the imposition of "gender ideology" in biology textbooks.
At the rally against Europride, which was organized by several right-wing groups, with the support of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirje spoke about school "lessons that propagate gender ideology" in his homily at the end of the prayer for the sanctity of marriage and family.
"We are already faced with the fruits of silent engineering and LGBT ideology. Lest anyone say that we are exaggerating, that we are suspicious, that I am exaggerating: these days we found out that in our primary and secondary school textbooks, under the grain, far from the public eye, lessons that propagate gender ideology have been inserted. Who did it? Has anyone asked you, whose children go to school, about this? Do you agree? If he didn't ask you, and I know he didn't, we ask the competent authorities to immediately withdraw from use all textbooks and teaching aids in which there are such lessons", said the patriarch.
Under pressure from a part of the public, the Minister of Education Branko Ružić asked the National Education Council (NPS) for an expert opinion on the part of the program that refers to the biological basis of gender and gender characteristics, primary and secondary, which include behavior and an individual sense of belonging to one of the genders, aligned with accepted theories, facts, conclusions and interpretations.
The profession was asked to comment on the part of the program, in which the biological meaning of adolescence (gender and sexual identity in the context of hormonal activity and individual genetic variability) is mentioned among the recommended contents within the field of "Man and Health", and among the outcomes, which is what the student should know at the end of the class, it is expected that the students will be able to connect the changes that occur during puberty with the effects of hormones.
To achieve that outcome, as written in the instructions for the didactic-methodical realization of the program, it is necessary to connect this topic with hormonal regulation, which is dealt with in the area of "Unity of structure and function", and with knowledge from previous classes regarding changes in puberty.
It also states that in processing sexual and gender identity, in addition to developing tolerance and acceptance of diversity, students should be provided with a broader perspective of genetic variability, as a natural phenomenon, which does not provide grounds for prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination and violence. It is recommended that, through an adequate choice of content and working method, a connection with content from civic education related to the topics of sex, gender and sexuality is established.
The NPS listened to the minister's suggestion that when considering part of the program, it should consult the chairs of biological faculties in Serbia. All of them took the unequivocal view that the eighth grade biology curriculum was based on scientific facts. And there should have been a full stop, bearing in mind that the minister himself said in a letter to the NPS that the opinion of the profession will be "the basis for further action regarding biology textbooks".
Although neither the NPS, nor the biologists from the faculties and institutes explicitly stated the content of the textbooks, the President of the Council, Radivoje Stojković, received the support of the majority of members (the exception was the representative of the Serbian Biological Society) that the conclusion to be sent to the Ministry should also include, as explained , a universal position that no interpretation of the program can contain elements of ideology and that the psychological and sociological background of students must be taken into account when it comes to the interpretation of the program, since students learn psychology and sociology in high school.
From the presentation of a small number of NPS members, and above all the president of that body, the conclusion emerged that the existing textbooks are ideologically colored, although the representatives of ZUOV emphasized that they stand behind the assessment that all approved textbooks fully follow the program, and that they the authors themselves consulted psychologists when writing, bearing in mind the sensitivity of the topic and the age of the students.
It soon turned out that the "universal attitude" served as a key word for the decision that the "controversial" lessons had to be changed. It is symptomatic, however, that this decision was made in secret and that the public found out about it from an unforced announcement in which it only says that the working group of ZUOV, formed at the request of the Ministry of Education, determined that it is necessary to correct "deficiencies" in seven, of the eight approved biology textbooks.
What specific shortcomings are we talking about, who made up the mentioned working group, why there was no biologist in it, neither the Ministry, nor ZUOV wanted to reveal, which is why the editorial office of Danas requested this data under the Law on Access to Information of Public Importance, and the answer is still awaited.
Shortly before the release of the announcement, the relevant minister announced this scenario in the parliament, at the session of the Board of Education, stating that "the promotion of tolerance can be done in a much clearer and more receptive way than it was done in textbooks".
Until now, the Serbian Biological Society has not commented on this move, and Faculty of Biology professor Biljana Stojković, one of the authors of the biology program for the eighth grade, assessed everything that happened as a victory for the church and clerical and conservative structures in Serbia.
"This is not a victory for either the profession or education, on the contrary, this is a blow to education and the capitulation of the state to the church," believes Stojković.
For now, only a group of non-governmental organizations and individuals have requested in an open letter to abandon the changes in textbooks, with the message that "prayer meetings are not places where it is decided what is or is not science, and that scientific achievements are not regulated by referendums".
In all biology textbooks used in primary schools in Serbia, the difference between sexual and gender identity is covered, and on dozens of pages the authors consistently adhere to recommendations to promote tolerance towards diversity.
That the right to gender identity and sexual orientation is a legally guaranteed right of each of us, reads a sentence from one of the biology textbooks that has been the target of criticism. In the textbooks, it can be read that "unlike gender, which is biologically determined because we are born exclusively male or female, gender identity is formed during life, as we learn which activities, attitudes, roles and behaviors are appropriate for men or women ".
Some of the authors state that through the process of socialization a person reconsiders the roles and behaviors he identifies with and over time develops a clear sense of belonging to the male or female gender - that is gender identity.
It explains what happens in the body with hormones, why some people recognize themselves as transgender... It also says that sexual orientation is a characteristic of an individual.
It is also stated that the matching of gender and sexual identity is imposed from birth through the choice of clothing or hairstyle, that "female" and "male" toys are an introduction to what is expected of children when they become adults, and that this division is exclusively into two predicted genders leads to discrimination between the sexes or discrimination of persons whose gender and gender identity do not match.
In one of the textbooks, the authors state that there are people who have the feeling that they were born "in the wrong body", that is, even though they have characteristics of a certain gender, they feel that they belong to the opposite sex, and that we call such people transgender. The concept of intersex is also explained, with the statement that sometimes it happens that the structure of the reproductive organs does not fit into the definition of exclusively male or female sex.
Gender identity has been explained, among other things, as the way in which an individual identifies with gender categories, for example as female or male, or in some cases neither.
BiH: What is a lock and what is a key
On the eve of the first pride parade in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2019, an informal group of citizens ordered to know what is a "key and what is a lock" and selfishly asked "why the will of the majority is not respected". We witnessed similar reactions on the eve of the second and third protests against inequality. All marginalized groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to be systematically oppressed, and one of the mechanisms for this - perhaps the strongest one - is the educational one.
While students in the region are taught the differences between the concepts of sex and gender, the possibility of these two concepts not matching, the existence of people who consider themselves gender neutral, intersex, transgender, sexual orientation, students in BiH are served a socially desirable story.
In the biology textbook for the 9th grade used in the Republic of Srpska, it is stated that "gender represents a social category - it means the way we behave, as boys or girls, that is, men or women."
In a more detailed explanation, it was stated that gender means "how society thinks we should behave as members of one sex, what roles we should have, attitudes, activities" and that "in this sense, the environment educates and educates boys and girls".
"Given that they are socially regulated, you should know that gender and gender roles are subject to change and adjustment," the textbook says.
On the other hand, in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the book for the same age does not mention the concept of gender. The Federal Ministry of Education and Science explained that "the objectives of teaching biology in the 9th grade are related to the disciplines: genetics, evolution and anthropology".
Referring to the task of "providing answers to the challenges that lie in wait for today's young generation", and in order to help young people "to make the right life choices", the Ministry started the process of developing the Manual for teachers "Comprehensive education about youth health".
According to the plan, topics related to sex, gender and social norms will be implemented in the classes of the departmental community. What will they talk about? Will it be known sooner what are the correct life choices and what we base them on? Prejudice? Why haven't the topics of gender identity, roles, and the existence of a large part of the population that doesn't fit into the imposed frameworks and expectations been dealt with (in more detail)? Why aren't young people taught about the importance of respecting diversity and guaranteeing basic human rights for everyone - without excuses or justifications? Why must a family specifically consist of father, mother and child? Why should women have long hair and men should have short hair? Is it enough to just ignore the existence of everything that we fundamentally do not understand - because social norms have taught us that it is not right? And why is it not correct - many are without answers. And they are still silent. Because, obviously, BiH. society must know what is a lock and what is a key.
Bonus video:
