Multiethnic curriculum strives to bring unity to Bosnia’s classrooms
By Ward Sanderson,
Bosnia bureau
Ivana Avramovic / Stars and Stripes
A list of the new students posted on the door of Brcko's vocational Economic High
School in Bosnia and Herzegovina reflects the multiethnic mix of Brcko's population.
Freshmen will start the school year with a curriculum created to suit Serbs, Croats
and Muslims. |
BRCKO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — It’s an ironic monument:
the obelisk in the park crowned with a copper raptor, wings curved like proud shields. The
Cyrillic text praises soldiers who died during World War I — “during
unification, from 1914 to 1918.”
Unification.
Unions in the region unraveled in anarchy during the Bosnian war, and
Brcko has had among the prickliest of times returning to peace. It is the only independent
district in the country, belonging neither to the Bosnian Serb republic nor to the
Croat-Muslim federation.
The town had been mostly Muslim before but was mostly Serb after. The
Dayton peace agreement failed to settle who would control the town.
In 1999, international overseers declared that the region would be
ruled by a multiethnic administration. Muslims and Croats have now returned to the
district’s south side.
But Brcko remained a flashpoint. It taught its children in separate
classrooms. Even then, there were riots — last October, more than 1,000 Serb
teen-agers threw stones, smashed windows and attacked bystanders because they shared a
high school building with Muslims. Ethnic groups used the school in different shifts.
This fall, the segregation ends. And all of Bosnia will watch.
Brcko’s schools open in September with the nation’s first
re-integrated, multiethnic school system. Students will study most subjects — such as
science and math — together. Ethnic groups will split only during language classes,
since there are vocabulary variations among them.
Clarke |
Despite that, international officials are hailing the curriculum as a
major move toward a Brcko — and a Bosnia — where all people are treated equally.
“The schools are really the last [step],” said Henry
Clarke, the international supervisor of the district. “After this, we’ll be able
to say this is a multiethnic society.”
Though Clarke did step in to impose an educational equality law that
had been blocked in the local legislature by Serb nationalists, the new curriculum was
written by Brcko’s teachers.
“This is not something cooked up by foreign experts and
imposed,” Clarke said.
Teachers of all groups decided what their common basics were and
distilled them. Critics claim the multiethnic school idea should be phased in gradually.
Clarke believes the longer children are kept apart, the more difficult it will be for them
to get along later.
“In a way, the ice has been broken,” he said.
It’s not unprecedented. Before the war, children of all
backgrounds went to school together, and they all learned Serbo-Croatian. The concession
to teach three native languages is a response to post-war ethnic nationalism. But in
reality, all three “tongues” share 97 percent of their vocabularies. When
teachers planned the curriculum, they had no problems getting their points across to one
another.
“If the word for ‘angle’ is different in a geometry
class, how long can it take to explain that?” Clarke asked. “Seconds.”
Everyone will learn both Western and Cyrillic alphabets.
Clarke contrasted the hubbub over mixed schools in Brcko with the
ease his children felt in attending expatriate schools in places like the old Soviet
Union, Romania and Israel.
“Out of 100 kids or so in the Bucharest International School, we
had something like 20 nationalities,” he said.
Clarke also doubts international aid funds would donate money to
segregated schools. And he contends that Brcko’s infrastructure can’t support
three systems. He admits everyone isn’t happy with these conclusions. Military
officials have worked out emergency plans, along with local and United Nations police, in
case of trouble.
“It’s so when school gets ready to kick off, we won’t
have the problems we had last October,” said Maj. Gen. Walter L. Sharp, commander of
U.S. forces in Bosnia.
“I’m not naive enough to say nothing will happen,”
Sharp said. “Something probably will happen.”
Sharp said U.S. patrols rolling through Brcko often bring up the
subject of mixed schools with locals and talk the issue out with them.
The general also praised Clarke’s handling of the integration
and his getting parents and teachers involved in the process.
“There’s progress being made,” Sharp said.
One of Clarke’s local aides welcomes the change, despite her
countrymen’s protests.
“I’m a Serb, and I can’t imagine thinking of children
as ethnicities,” Suzana Pejcic said. “They’re children.”
Others, though, squirm at the subject.
It was afternoon in the park pledged to unity, but none of its
amblers wanted to attach a name to an opinion on curriculums.
A middle-aged woman marched past the patches of petals and pollen,
brow furrowed.
Two teen-age boys came later, sporting curvy sunglasses and spiky
haircuts.
“We don’t want it,” they hollered as their muzzled pit
bull dragged them away.
“I’m not interested,” said a stubbled and pony-tailed
teen-ager. “I’m graduating this year.”
But one smiling woman stopped. Turned out she was a school
bookkeeper.
“I think it’s a good thing for the kids,” she said.
“I think they did a good job with the plan. I think this mono-ethnic program
isn’t going anywhere.”
And down the road from the park sat a high school, shut fast for
summer but sporting school rosters taped to its windows. The surnames were Serb and Muslim
in equal measure.
Perhaps the statue’s sentiment might live on, even if its
Yugoslavia is long gone.
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