Children can’t go back to the same school – personal attitudes

The strike is an organized interruption that employees use as a means of struggle to protect and achieve their rights from employment. The suspension of teaching is an expression of moral attitude and political protest. It is a response to serious social and systemic problems, primarily on endangered security as a basic condition for life and education. School block is the type of civil disobedience – when space is occupied by physical presence to indicate deeply rooted wrongdoing and non-functionality of the education system.

Suspension and blockade are not the purpose of itself. They are cry for change. Their meaning is in opening space for essential, systemic change in education.

The children cannot return to the school that remained the same. They cannot continue to go to school whose programs are too senseless, a school that is not adapted to the time in which we live or children grow up in it.

But we, parents, we have other priorities. Although we often say that our children are most important, it is true that the last hole played our policies and social decisions. Never children and their growing up was a political priority in Serbia. Not because children are irrelevant, but because adults forgot what responsibility means.

Good parents don’t accept that their children go to school in shifts as if working in a factory. They do not agree to children have eight hours a day. They do not accept that school obligations leave no space to play, for socializing with peers, for a family – for a living. And they do not agree to education that rests on injustice and in whom children and teachers are exposed to unsafeesbesia. They know that education without justice and security is not education, but a system error. These are real reasons for suspension and blockage.
Our children need fair, meaningful education, directed to their well-being and and in line with the passage of time in which we live. Education that encourages personality development and builds foundations for cohesion of society, not for its fragmentation and mere survival. Without such education, it is certain that the terrible series of tragic events will continue. Ribnikar. A little nut. Duboth. Canopy in Novi Sad.

According to the applicable regulations, the teacher has the right to decide on the choice of work methods, teaching and distributes around forty percent of teaching content within the subject of the student’s development needs and the context of the school. This means that it is not a problem if part of the material is not processed – children can complete this school year.
But a much more important question is: What school will be returned in September?

We do not want to return to old. We want a school that is tailored to a child. A school that is fairer, considerate, solidary. A school that builds a different society – precisely what makes bloody fists in Serbia, opposing bloody feet today.
As parents, we have no right to passivity. The worst thing we can do is to be silent and let the children at the mercy and disfavor of the system that does not protect them. It is our duty to be proactive – to defend their right to childhood, safety, meaningful education.

It is not enough for children to « give the right to fight for their rights, » while we leave them without strength and protection at the same time. The responsibility of them is ours, and only ours. We can’t give a chance in front of my own responsibility. If we do not protect our children, who will? Ministry? Our children are only important to them as a number in statistics and as an item in political manipulations. We all know that, but no one says publicly.

For years, we say that school programs are inadequate, that repetitive learning is meaningless, that children are overburdened, to kill creativity and joy. We warn that there is not enough time or hearing for developing emotional literacy, communication, empathy. All this brutally reminded us of massacres in Ribnikar, a small nut and wooden.

That is why I demand – and invite others to demand – an emergency and fundamental education reform, based on security, justice and benefits of children.

I demand a school that does not traumatize, already empower. The school where children grow, develop and learn how to be people – not just how to remember the material and silent.

I can’t make it all right. I don’t want to agree to the system that denies our children childhood, security and meaning.

If not me – who? If not now – when?

The author is a higher scientific associate of the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade

The author’s attitudes in the dialogue not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Danas.