When the kids go back to school...

While the public was busy with graffiti for weeks, the authors of which vainly fantasized about what would happen if a miracle happened and the army returned to Kosovo, in the shadow of that fruitless and mostly pointless discussion, an immediate and certain, but also terrifying reality approached us - the children are going back to school today.

Just as in the message from the mentioned graffiti at the end of the writing there are three dots that suggest that even if a miracle happened we would not know what would happen then, so the answer to the question "What awaits us when the children go back to school?" is identical - we don't know. Children don't know, parents don't know, teachers don't know either. Even the school police officers who are entrusted with the task of contributing to making schools what they should be - places of carefree and happy growing up of children - do not know.

I have no doubt that these people will do their best and that, if nothing else, their presence alone will prevent many cases of physical violence, however, how will it help to prevent the violence that is most prevalent among children, which is mostly carried out in the form of verbal violence in virtual space? Will the school police officer be able to censor TikTok? Or to prevent the sharing of discrediting content on viber, telegram or other groups, psychological violence that excludes the weak from society, constant pressure and humiliation of everyone who is different?

Finally, one question we won't answer with "we don't know" because we know - they won't.

United in ignorance

Even school psychologists and pedagogues, who until yesterday were treated as a necessary evil, and now expect miracles from them, do not know what will happen when the children return to school. These days it's trendy to talk about unification, and that's how we get to the fact that children, parents, teachers, psychologists and pedagogues have never been more united - in ignorance and uncertainty filled with a common sense of concern. Why they are all there, what they are doing and where it all leads, again, they don't know. And someone in this country would have to know the way.

Naturally, but also unfortunately, all our views, our anxieties that are greater than our hopes and our expectations are directed in the direction of the ministry.

Like any good bureaucracy, the ministry did not remain silent and the answer soon arrived in the form of Guidelines for the organization of work in the new school year. The main goal of educational work in the new school year was "the development of positive human values ​​in students and the improvement of relationships based on mutual respect, cooperation and solidarity with respect for diversity."

Of course no normal person has anything against such defined goals and ideas, but anyone who is even remotely realistic is concerned or at best skeptical about the outcome. At the same time, a grandiose and innocently defined goal would be within reach if such a social experiment could be carried out in laboratory conditions, without any, let alone negative, external influences, and if Jesus Christ and Moses participated in their implementation together, and in the best way possible. form.

As their return among us sinful earthlings is on the scale of probability just behind the return of the army from the now famous graffiti, we will have to rely on the currently existing forces in the currently existing and decades-created conditions.

Miracles are expected from teachers

The return to reality means the following - we expect such miracles from teachers and professors whom we have not appreciated for a very long time, whose work we have not valued, who are left at the mercy of parents' expectations, objective and subjective obstacles, the burden of their own conscience that imposes on them the imperative to do more than they can realistically, and they are disappointed that such miracles generally do not happen.

We expect them to instill "positive human values" in children in a society that has neither a basic consensus nor a mechanism for affirming those who have earned the role of role models.

Can educators instill in children a culture of "mutual respect, cooperation and solidarity with respect for diversity" if, as soon as they leave the classroom, those same children are bombarded with reality TV simpletons from national frequencies, primitivism and intolerance from the National Assembly, hatred and violence in sports, promotion of violence and vices in popular culture, which represents the amount of material possession as the only criterion of acceptance and achievement?

Can one teacher overcome the harmful influence of the daily glorification of war criminals and the even more daily relativization of those who so naively ask "why she didn't report", know that she "searched and provoked herself" and well-intentionedly advise you to look for your rights "within your own four walls" ?

And the question is not only whether they can, but also whether they will and do all teachers think they should?

Where did we get the idea that a profession that is both status- and materially degraded and a job that pays less than the otherwise miserable average salary, while more than half of the teachers do not have a permanent employment relationship, will end up being handled exclusively by highly moral and impeccably correct people who have a perfectly correct moral compass and the skill to have, nurture and shape virtues in our children?

Where do we draw the confidence that only the cream of society, its best offshoots, will deal with the teaching job, when the reality tells us that nine out of ten graduated students will rather choose to work for a bookmaker than to devote their lives to the upbringing and education of hundreds and thousands of children, at the same time sacrificing his existence?

That is why the hopes that the introduction of a teaching activity called "values ​​and virtues" will overcome the malignant influence of unbearable reality are as desperate as the arguments that the army will make a young man what family, society and schooling are not in 18 years - a conscientious and responsible member of society. community.

The sincerity of the intention is further doubted by the fact that even civic education has not been able to become a compulsory subject for decades. The reasons why he can't are not bureaucratic, but democratic in origin. A system that is focused on teaching children how to memorize, instead of, as the Prime Minister once said, "to understand how to understand", is certainly not aimed at producing young people who fully understand and exercise their status as citizens, free and a conscious individual, but as quiet and neutral as possible members of a collective that only imposes duties. "Patriotic", of course.

This kind of education system is not sustainable

As a solution - budget rebalancing is announced, elections are also announced. In practice, this means one thing - there will be money, short-term, instant. Will something fundamentally be "rebalanced", balanced, repaired?

Maybe it will, by 5-7-10 percent, but will the perspective fundamentally and long-term change, reverse trends, stop negative selection?

They won't. Teachers, educators and teachers will continue to be on the edge of the average salary, and below the edge of dignity, buried in administrative tasks and imprisoned in a system that captures them as well as the creativity of children who need to learn something.

The current system is maintained solely thanks to the great enthusiasm of a limited number of people who perform their work in accordance with the social importance of their calling, and not in accordance with the valuation that we as a society express towards their work. And thank them to heaven for that, but both they and we know that such a system is unsustainable in the long term and that every new "guidelines and rebalancing" exhausts almost to the last drop the strength to swim upstream and fight against windmills for decades.

Can we expect the generations that grew up in a system that despises the profession to take on that Sisyphus stone with equal enthusiasm and how much to keep the system on its feet?

We all know that there is nothing to be gained from that work.

New social architecture

We are aware of the fact that nothing changes overnight, that a systemically neglected society requires many times greater and longer-lasting efforts in order to improve the situation, and that the results cannot be seen immediately. The problem is that in such a system there is no beginning, no will, unfortunately not even an awareness of the need to change something.

If the tragedies of May 3 and 5 were not enough incentive to change the system from within, then the only thing left is to change that system from the roots. Therefore, it is necessary to preserve the only forum that has the social capacity for such a change, which is "Serbia against violence".

But we must not trivialize that potential by reducing it to daily political tactics and counting election columns, because "Serbia against violence" is something much more than that. It is the foundation of a new social architecture, the product of which must be a fairer, more civilized and more humane community that has the capacity to recognize and affirm what is the connective tissue of every successful society, which is, among other things and above all else, education.

"Serbia against violence" is a social movement that not only recognized the importance, showed awareness and will, but also proved that Serbia has the capacity for change for the better.

Serbia without violence is a movement of people who found the strength to open their eyes, look at each other and say that they do not agree to let their lives pass by waiting for such an organized society and state to lead to new disasters by force of law.

We have no right to that, no matter how hard it is and no matter how long the struggle lasts.

The author is the president of the Movement of Free Citizens

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