At a time when education is flooded with pressing problems - from educational workers who do not receive a salary and survive the school year, until the school ceilings fall, it is inappropriate to deal with the law on textbooks.
However, Ministry of Education recently presented the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Textbooks and submitted it for public discussion from May 15 to June 4. Educators and the public saw in this move, above all, a diversion of attention from the real problems.
At a public hearing in Novi Sad on Thursday, Minister of Education Dejan Vuk Stanković pointed out that the aim of the amendments to the Law on Textbooks is to preserve national identity, develop a sense of belonging, respect the mother tongue and nurture traditions, while at the same time encouraging interculturalism and preserving cultural heritage.
Public publisher
In order to reach the set goal, all primary school students in Serbia will receive textbooks of national interest, namely in the Serbian language and literature, history, geography, nature, music and art. The Government of Serbia, if it so decides, will be able to extend them to secondary education as well. Everyone will have identical textbooks. They will be prepared by a public publisher, printed by a public company.
There is one public publisher and one public printer in Serbia - Institute for Textbooks, that is, the Official Gazette. This means that these changes enthrone their monopoly, which means that competition in textbook publishing is abolished in Serbia.
Programme
The content of the textbook depends on the subject program, for example, a poem is published in the textbook, which is stated in the program to be studied. However, no one in the Ministry of Education mentions changing the existing program.
Will the new textbooks follow the old curriculum? How will they differ from the existing ones?
Everything is already in the law.
The latest Amendments to the Law on Textbooks do not bring anything that does not already exist in it.
Because, in the part that relates to national textbook it is prescribed that "it is used for the purpose of developing personal and national identity, developing awareness and feelings of belonging to Serbia, respecting and nurturing the Serbian language and mother tongue, the tradition and culture of the Serbian people and national minorities on the territory of Serbia, developing interculturalism, respecting and preserving national and world cultural heritage".
The Law on the Basics of the Education System already applies a provision that states that "among the basic goals of education and upbringing are the development of personal and national identity, the development of awareness and feelings of belonging to the Republic of Serbia, respect and nurturing of the Serbian language and mother tongue, the traditions and culture of the Serbian people and national minorities, the development of interculturality, respect and preservation of national and world cultural heritage".
Has anyone judged that these laws are not good, or effective enough, so they need help and support?
Where is the national textbook?
The Ministry of Education no longer even mentions the national reading book. It was published last October as "Treasury I" for first and second graders. Three more parts were planned, it was announced that they would arrive successively during the year, but - they did not arrive. It is not even known whether the first part reached all schools in Serbia.
Based on the first part of the "Treasury", did the national reader prove to be an inadequate project, and why? And that after only two or three months, how many normal classes were there this school year?
Back to the beginning
Now, in fact, everything has been returned to the beginning, to the original idea of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, that the awareness of national identity should be drilled into children's heads.
Let us remind you that a few days after the television premiere of the film "Dara from Jasenovac", which was on February 20, 2021, the then police chief Aleksandar Vulin gave a patriotic speech in the Serbian Parliament under the influence of the film and said, among other things, that "the history textbook must be written by the state of Serbia".
Immediately afterwards, in a televised address, Aleksandar Vučić appropriated and extended Vulin's idea to several textbooks, saying that textbooks in the Serbian language, history and geography "can only be made by the state".
"The rest of the market you can write whatever you want, I don't care." And if you write this and have Jasenovac be ten minutes out of an hour, that's a cat by the tail... They won't interpret anymore. Now the state will write the textbooks..." said President Vučić at the time.
They quickly went to work. However, already in April 2023, it was decided that the textbooks will be replaced by a national reading book, so the first copies of "Treasury I" for first and second graders were shown by the then Minister of Education Slavica Đukić Dejanović in October last year.
Now we will still get textbooks.
What about the money?
What happened to the money for the national reading book? In February of last year, the Ministry of Education allocated 329 million dinars (2,7 million euros) for it from the current budget reserve - at least that is what was reported. It has not been confirmed whether the Institute for Textbooks, which was in charge of the implementation of the national reading book, received that money at all.
How much the state will allocate to the Institute for Textbooks and the Official Gazette for National Textbooks is not mentioned.
And, one more thing: why is there confidence that the Institute for Textbooks will create textbooks that will be able to teach children national identity, when the research of the Association of Textbook Publishers has proven that they are not? Namely, they researched eight history textbooks from different publishers on the example of the topic Serbs in the NDH.
It turned out that the Institute for Textbooks covered the topic the least. Unlike all other textbooks, there are no photographs of the Stone Flower monument in Jasenovac or of Ante Pavelić in their textbook.
After all, how can one not think that diverting attention from the burning current problems of education and giving a monopoly to the Institute for Textbooks are the real reasons for this entire state enterprise with national textbooks?
