"To remove without delay from public education in Serbia, both in terms of teaching staff and teaching materials, everything that serves or could serve to create propaganda against Austria-Hungary." This was the third point of Austria-Hungary's ultimatum addressed to the Government of the Kingdom of Serbia, which set in motion a series of events that ultimately resulted in the outbreak of the First World War. In its response, the government of Nikola Pašić undertook to fulfill this condition when the Dual Monarchy provides it with evidence for such a claim. Regardless of all the leniency, the ultimatum, which the First Lord of the Admiralty of the British Empire, Sir Winston Churchill, called "the most insolent document of its kind ever devised", eventually led to one of the greatest armed conflicts in the history of mankind.
In the summer of 1914, the Kingdom of Serbia had an educational system founded by King Milan Obrenović, as one of the pillars of the modern Serbian state. The Primary Schools Act of 1882 introduced compulsory education for both male and female children. Despite all the resistance of the patriarchal society and the chronic lack of teaching staff, the nation's education progressed from generation to generation, the state provided scholarships to gifted students to continue their education abroad, and in 1905 the University of Belgrade was founded (it should be noted that it did not have all the fundamental faculties needed for the development of a modern society, eg the Faculty of Medicine was founded only at the end of 1920).
In addition to that, grammar schools and vocational schools were founded, buildings were built, which in most cases represented the most monumental buildings in small Serbian towns. The teaching staff consisted mainly of men who were also reserve officers in huge numbers, which proved to be excellent for the army, but also disastrous for the school system.
32-002b...Children during study time...
With the outbreak of war, a large number of schools do not start work on September 1. In cities like Belgrade and Šabac, there were no basic prerequisites for teaching. Most of the school buildings became hospitals, such as the gymnasium in Niš where the Russian medical mission was located, while the First Boys' Gymnasium in Belgrade (today the "King Peter the First" Elementary School) became the center of the Red Cross, which did not save it from the bombing, but a similar fate also experienced the women's high school in Ulica Kraljice Natalija. The third gymnasium became a shelter for refugees and people who were left homeless in the bombing, and later it housed the Belgrade municipality. The Captain-Misha building, which housed the University, the National Library and the National Museum, was attacked by Austro-Hungarian artillery because it was one of the tallest buildings in Belgrade at the time. Some high schools are trying to move inland, but without much success, and at the high school in Skopje, a graduation course was established for students who completed seven or eight grades of high school. And there, from April to July 1915, a large number of students from the pre-Cumanian borders of the Kingdom of Serbia passed the maturity exam. Primary schools function better, primarily because there are more female teaching staff, and in some places where teachers are mobilized, local priests take on that role as well.
After the epidemic of spotted typhus was contained, the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbia legally regulated the renewal of classes in gymnasiums for the 1915/16 school year. Matriculation courses were opened in Niš, Kragujevac, Kruševac and Zaječar, but the collapse of the Serbian state in the fall of 1915 prevented this plan. It should be emphasized that over 150 high school and high school teachers died during the war as members of the Serbian army.
Already during the retreat through Montenegro and Albania, the Minister of Education Ljuba Davidović, having realized the necessity of evacuating and continuing the education of students who happened to be with the army and civilian refugees, at the end of November 1915 in Shkodër ordered the formation of groups of students who would be sent without delay to France for education. During the subsequent evacuation, more than 1500 students were evacuated in this way. In parallel with that, a group of a thousand male and female students was formed in Thessaloniki, who were also sent to France for further education. Even the French Parliament included in the budget funds for the reception of 500 pupils and a special mission was sent with Professor Witt at the head, which had the misfortune of having their ship torpedoed and on that occasion several nuns who were attached to the mission drowned.
EVACUATION OF STUDENTS
The first Skadar group was evacuated from Medova by an Italian ship
Citta di Bari. On the same night, January 6, they survive an attack by Austrian seaplanes, while another group (mainly with younger children) was put on a Red Cross ship that was intercepted by an enemy submarine and taken to the war port of Kotor. After a two-day stay, they were allowed to continue their journey to Marseille.
The students, accompanied by their professors, were assigned to various places in France and its colonies. The first group, mostly elementary students, was sent to the Bastille in Corsica, and later the students were placed in schools from Algeria, through Tunisia, to places in the French Alps. As the number of refugee pupils continued to increase, certain groups were sent to Great Britain in the spring of 1916. The description of the reception of the Serbian students in Martel is characteristic, which was opened by a young Serbian flutist with the Marseillaise, and then everyone sang the Serbian national anthem.
Special colonies were opened in Aix-en-Provence, St. Elie near Marseilles, Vorrep and Viryville near Grenoble, Mont Dauphin in the Alps, as well as a sanatorium for the sick in Menton. Gymnasium starts working in Nice, matriculation exams are held. In the archives of the Ministry of Education and Church Affairs, the written assignments of high school graduates on the topic "Task of youth in renewed Serbia", "My path to exile and days in a foreign country", etc. have been preserved. The archive also contains complaints from the French education authorities that it was observed that among the students there were older youths fit for the army, who were presented, by their wealthier and more influential families, as students in order to avoid military service.
There were about 4000 students in total. Student and university battalions were formed as a sort of compromise between the educational and military authorities, so that students who were eligible for conscription would continue their education with military training. Apart from France, schools are opened in Greece such as grammar schools in Corfu, Thessaloniki and Volos, primary schools follow them, with the primary school in Vodena (today's Edessa) establishing a scouting society, at that time very popular in England and America, and calls its male members little Chetniks, and its female members mountain women. There is a seminary in Great Britain, and Serbian students in Edinburgh play rugby and have notable successes in school competitions.
32-002...and rest
Serbian schools also worked in Imperial Russia until the October Revolution, where refugees from eastern Serbia who crossed the Danube in the fall of 1915 and took refuge in Romania, and later had to move to Odessa and its surroundings due to Romania's entry into the war on the side of the Entente. The "Odesa Boarding School" is established there, where about 160 girls and boys are educated. At the beginning of 1918, they all join the river of refugees and volunteers who intend to reach their new ally America through Siberia. Refugees lived in railway cars, and in July 1918, at the small Siberian railway station Tiret, schools began to operate, where classes were held in the shade of Siberian birch trees. As the summers in Siberia are short, the school continued to function in wagons, where "Mr. Mirko Jovanović, a graduate student of the Petrograd Spiritual Academy, taught Serbian literature and Serbian history with geography". Soon, the school got a church-wagon in Irkutsk, where weddings among refugees were also performed. The English language was especially insisted upon in the hope that the education would be continued in the USA, but it continued in the homeland after several years of travel through Vladivostok, Singapore and Suez.
Schools and courses are also opened in military hospitals, and the first Serbian books in Braille were created for the needs of blind convalescents in Bizerte. Graduation courses are organized in Thessaloniki, at the military hospital in Zejtinlik, where fighters who did not have the opportunity to complete their education in civilian life succeed in the Thessaloniki student company. Some other students stopped their education because they were interned in numerous camps and labor colonies throughout Austria-Hungary. The "Serbian High School for Interned Pupils" was opened on June 10, 1917 in Nežider, a similar institution was created in the Asah camp. They were allowed to use Cyrillic textbooks in their classes, which was strictly forbidden in the Austro-Hungarian occupation zone in Serbia. This was another of the paradoxes that abounded in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in the last years of its existence.
003 – Students of the 4th grade of the orphanage in NiceSTUDENTS OF THE 4TH CLASS: Orphanage in Nice
After the occupation in the fall of 1915, Serbia was divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. In the Bulgarian occupation zone, the Serbian language was forbidden in public use, schools were used for mass Bulgarianization, with very brutal methods. The teachers were "taken to Sofia", which was a common expression used by the Bulgarian local authorities to lie to the families of the teaching staff who were shot in the nearby execution ground. In front of the high school in Vranje, a bonfire was made of Serbian books from the school library.
A somewhat milder regime reigned in the Austro-Hungarian occupation zone, which was officially called the Military General Governorship. The schools were opened in the spring of 1916, while teachers were brought from the South Slavic regions of the Dual Monarchy, along with the curriculum and textbooks. The real high school in Belgrade used the modified curriculum of the high school in Osijek. Cyrillic was allowed only during religious studies. The Serbian language was taught with the use of the Latin script, and on the maturity exam one of the topics was "The Influence of Poetry on Humanity". The private women's real gymnasium organized an excursion that started from "...the Racecourse where the schoolgirls went along Grobljanska street over Slavujevo Potok, through the Belgrade cemetery, then through the Veliki Vračar field to Laudan's trenches and through it to Mirijevski brdo".
There were frequent reports to the Austrian authorities that local teachers continued to teach history lessons according to the old curriculum, which bothered the Dual Monarchy so much that it dedicated one point of the ultimatum to him.
In an attempt not to idealize the past, we should be aware that even the ruling elite at that time was prone to corruption, nepotism and abuse of political power, but they still understood that they must ensure that future generations are provided with education, as one of the important prerequisites for a more fulfilling life for their descendants. , more beautiful and lighter. Under the term
the ruling elite today we mean the will of one man, and that is one of the many causes of this state of affairs in society, which must always rest on education.
No matter how difficult the circumstances were during the First World War, almost impossible from today's point of view, the schools tried to function. Jovan Kangrga somewhat pathetically, but fundamentally correctly, noted that "in an oppressed homeland, everyone's first concern was that their children be educated, that they don't get sick and fail, and in this respect, our elders, especially our poor mothers, were not spared any sacrifices." ".
