Amar, a young man, stated in the show “Perspektiva” in October this year that he is very dissatisfied with the education system.
“Our education system does not cope, it does not give us enough skills and knowledge so that we, in fact, can continue later when we leave those educational institutions.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-u-mostaru-mladi/33148040.html
In February of this year, Nadja from Podgorica was even more direct.
“Our educational system builds a system of values that builds a single mind. A different opinion and a different attitude are not accepted. And then all these problems of young people are gathered into one big problem, which is that they don’t want to listen to young people. And this ignoring lasts so long that young people have given up fighting and solving their problems.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perpektiva-mladi-crna-gora-problemi/32804765.html
The same thoughts and demands of young people for education reform are heard every year. Polina from Belgrade, two years earlier, in 2022, agreed with her fellow participant on the show, Nemanja, and said:
“What are we taught at school? We are taught to sit, look at each other’s backs, and respect the only authority that exists. Is it a teacher, is it a teacher, is it a director, a professor, and so on. What we are taught is to be submissive, to be silent, not to stand out, and to mind our own business. And then we wonder why young people are not active!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya5rmnkaQgM&ab_channel=RadioSlobodnaEvropa
Mila from Lebane, a year earlier, in 2021, also shared a poor opinion about the education system.
“The whole system, in fact, boils down to some accumulation of information that, essentially, you need to know, but you need to know why you need to know it. That would be my point, that one should study with a purpose, that one should know why we do certain things, not just accumulate information, accumulate things, without knowing why.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-qaNiRPjW8&list=PLZxapTpi4f5WdTa4kVxM3OKiVNrZmBw63&index=1
The opinions and stories of girls and boys from North Macedonia and Kosovo are identical. For a whole decade, as long as the show “Perspektiva” has been broadcast, young people have been asking for essential changes in education. So, for a whole decade, and most certainly even since before that, these requests are ignored. Are the politicians incapable of ensuring the reform or are they simply not willing? If the world rests on young people, why aren’t they given the education they want? Nemanja from Banjaluka knows the answer and says that political parties do this on purpose because this is how they maintain power. He says that educational institutions destroy a critical way of thinking and that everything boils down to – ideology.
“The first spectrum is that they have become factories of ideological education for a young party cadre who will in some way approach the right-oriented parties and again the entire political bureaucracies, political circles need these cadres to maintain their influence, to maintain their rule, its ideology together with all its privileges and of course, in the context of everything is the erosion of the system in the context of critical thinking.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-banjaluka-mladi-drzava-/32865157.html
Think, therefore, as you are told! Until when? Will young people stop describing the hopelessness and meaninglessness of the educational systems in the region or will they more vigorously demand changes?
