I will say nothing new if
I say that our future depends on education and
culture, but it is definitely new if I say that
future hangs on it and nothing else. That is why
it is too easy to promise the first part of the
statement and everyone does so. But genealogy
of the second part of the statement is a huge
problem for great many of those who try to reform
the schools today looking from the positions of
the past. The consequences have been very painful
and visible over the past twenty years, because
the only thing you can get from the past is unfinished
nationalism as the essence of the education system
in Serbia.
It will never attain its finite form and meaning
in Serbia, because in minds of different Cosics,
Beckovics, Antonics there are too few graves in
this country for such an idea to be contained
in a finite form - the unfinished nationalism
is for them the final solution to any problem
Serbia may have. It may claim lives of the entire
young population, unless they manage to flee the
country.
This system takes young people and turns them
into future warriors, future victims and future
criminals that will sustain and defend a mythical
and historical consciousness for a single reason
- because the concept of future must never exist
in Serbia, because future is always connected
with the notion of freedom, while past is related
with authority, politics, obedience and subservience.
Maybe this does not make any sense for some people,
but it still does not mean that I am not right
to talk about what I believe is the key
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problem. And not only
talk, but shout for all these years, because
it was the reasons human lives were stopped
before they had even started, while the
culprits still publish books (instead
of sitting in jails) for some future Mladic,
Milosevic, Arkan, Legija, Kostunica, Tadic,
and organize promotions at book fairs,
in schools, culture centers, theaters.
Maybe it would not be bad if the concept
of education in Serbia changed both in
terminology and value, because here it
lacks a free individual for which it needs
to exist. Here it can only find a minion
who is expected to live his life through
myth and history - a life that is not
life but a history that lives itself through
him. Or maybe he can go to the war, to
gain experience, as prescribed by the
authors of the books from which they study,
because history in Serbia is confirmed
through fighting, and not through knowledge
and education, because it is confirmed
by the number
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Leon Bakst, Le
Roi, -
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of its victims, and not by the number of persons
who changed the course of science and society
(those were either exiled or murdered). Should
anyone live in a country that is notorious for
its criminals and murders, who now may become
new educators and saints in Serbia?
Can you imagine a country where books written
by murderers are sold in bookstores? Can you imagine
a country in which the most important cultural
and educational institutions house persons who
wrote a document on the final solution for the
unfinished nationalism? Can you imagine a country
in which negative selection is a principle, while
obedience and subservience are the valued virtues
and qualities? Can you imagine a country where
life has no value if it contains freedom and future,
while graves are realization of the essence of
history and mythology, without understanding that
history and mythology has no essence, that they
are not principles, do not contain life, do not
have any value, that nothing can be learned from
them, nothing can be created from them, except
for the lamentable infinity of crimes that repeats
itself through generations.
I do not have to imagine a country like that,
because I live in it and its name is SERBIA…
