АFP: Kosovo dispute spreads to classrooms
The battle for Kosovo rumbles on in its classrooms, with ethnic Albanian students taught they reside in an independent country while Serb students learn they still live in a part of Serbia, AFP reports.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Thursday, June 04, 2009
This is the case at schools across the disputed Balkan territory even though some Albanian and Serb students are under the same roof, as in Rubovce, an ethnically mixed central village with some 2,000 residents.
Although each side gets instruction in a different language, standard subjects like science and mathematics are generally in accordance with worldwide curriculums. But substantial differences arise for history, language and literature.
"We follow Serbia's educational programme exclusively," said Jugoslav Crvenkovic, principle of the Serb part of the school which has 26 pupils.
Crvenkovic, appointed to the post by the government in Belgrade, insists his teachers would never lecture "our children any other history except our own, which clearly states Kosovo is a part of Serbia."
But Rubovce's 172 ethnic Albanian pupils got an extra chapter on Kosovo's first anniversary of independence.
Ethnic-Albanian history teacher Bardhul Rudari makes no secret of his pride in the new lesson. "It is a unique pleasure to teach pupils that they now have their own state," said the 30-year-old.
His Serb colleague, 28-year-old Srdjan Stankovic whose classroom is just a few metres (yards) away, said he ignored directives by Kosovo's education ministry to mark independence.
"We firmly refused," he said.
In Rubovce, not only are classrooms for ethnic Albanian and Serb pupils separated by a wall but the two groups each have their own entrance into the building.
"We don't keep in touch very much with the other side. We meet only occasionally when international officials visit the school and gather us," said Beqir Murati, the Albanian headmaster.
The two communities even use different names for the same school, the Serbs calling it after Serbian World War II heroes and the Albanians naming it "Drita", or light in Albanian.
The pupils share one yard, but school officials are careful to avoid any interaction between them during recreation periods.
"Our children go on breaks when the Albanian pupils are in class," Stojkovic said. "They cannot meet each other during the breaks, so we minimised the possibility of conflicts between them."
