SITUATION OF HIGHSCHOOL STUDENTS IN YUGOSLAVIA First explanation: Gimnasium (Gimnazija in Serbocroatian) is a kind of highschool (secondary school). It gives general knowledge and is intended mostly for people who would go to university after it. There are two specialised gimnasiums - the Philological and the Mathematical one. The St. Sava Gimnasium in Belgrade is called that way because it's teachers wanted to suck up with Milosevic's government, by using a nationalist symbol. St. Sava was the man that got the Serb Orthodox Church it's autonomy from the Byzantine one, in 1219. His father, Stefan Nemanja was the father of a ruling dynasty in Serbia and the performer of one of the worst religious purges in history. Nemanja's bandits burned so many religious structures and drove out so many people from their homes, because they didn't accept the official state religion, that his deeds can be compared to those of Milosevic. Saint Sava got his father declared a saint for the religious purges he did. The placing of his picture on the school walls in Serbia, celebrating "St.Sava Day" and naming schools after him is supposed to show the employees in education what is their purpose in the society (to declare someone a saint, after...) All other gimnasiums in Belgrade, except the mentioned three, are simply marked by numbers. All other highschools are specialised and most of them are intended to equip their students with the working knowledge for at least some profession they could do without additional education. Education in Yugoslavia is officially free, but... The government doesn't have a habit of paying the teachers their miserable salaries every month and it doesn't always pay them in full amount. Teachers are one of the most syndically organised groups and, thanx to the rebeliousness of their students, have gained lots of priviledges (I restrain the little bastards from going to demos so much and you pay me more money). Many teachers hold private lessons in the subjects they teach at school and many of those try to teach the students nothing, so the students would be forced to take private lessons. Selling grades is neither uncommon, nor too secret. Some teachers of some highschools, in Belgrade at least, are openly demanding money from their students for grades, in the middle of classes. This is the case with a mathematics teacher in the Filological Gimnasium, an elite school in Belgrade. She has, many times, openly said to her students that the only way to have better grades, was to take private lessons of Mathematics with her. She charges them 20DM per class (45 mins). Two of her classes are an average sallary in Serbia. Some of her students complained to the director of the school. He said there was nothing he could do about it. Compared to her prices, the Third Belgrade Gimnasium, where teachers normally sell final passing grades, for 150 DM, seems cheap. The Mathematics teacher, Vesna Ilic, in the 3rd Belgrade Gimnasium is also trying to make her students not understand anything. This doesn't take much intelligence to do. The official education programmes are deliberately made so that no student can fully comprehend them. These programmes have enough factual errors to stop any genious who might be the exception. The only way for students to "learn" something at school is that 1. They know it from before 2. They learn it somewhere else 3. The teacher doesn't stick to the "mandatory educational programme" You could say that nobody sticks to the "mandatory educational programme", except people like Vesna Ilic, mentioned above. Another thing that the teachers make money out of are the excursions. The highschools normally take about 60-90 DM of pure profit per student going to excursion. Teacher relationship towards highschool students is often humiliating and disrespectful. The excuse is that the teachers don't get their salaries and therefore have a right to be grumpy all the time. Most highschool directors are members of one of the ruling parties and those who aren't (and who are) are under constant threat of sacking. The Soros foundation has a program of giving away free computer classrooms to the highschools that are most in need, but most highschool directors have refused to accept these. The schools usually have no computers of their own and the government is most unwilling to separate money for things like that. On March 9th 1991., police forces were defeated in streetfighting, after they attacked a demo demanding fair elections. Protestors occupied the federal parliament building and the tanks of the Yugoslav National Army rolled into Belgrade, saving Milosevic. The only person who was reported killed by the police on that day was a 17-year-old student of an electrotechnical highschool. In the next few says, highschool students from many schools in Belgrade and Pancevo boycotted classes and organised protest walks. In some schools, the teachers declared a strike. In Spring of 1992., same kinds of event started happening in other cities of Serbia, as well. The result was a general strike of the education sector, demanding bigger salaries (What else could teachers demand? Maybe a deacent educational program?) The mass highschool student protests of 1996/7. had forced the teachers in many schools to declare a general strike again, for 2-4 months. It would be an injustice to say that in both cases, many schools went on strike on their own, e.g. before their students started the strikes for them, but this was not the case in my highschool. When the general strike of the education sector came, in the Winter-Spring of 1997., it demanded again - bigger salaries. Teachers made their own demos in front of the government buildings and highschool and university students came in hundreds to join them. The teachers stopped the strikes, after being promised bigger salaries. They pressured most students into going back to classes. In 1998., many individual strikes of highschool students happened, but none of teachers. The most remembered highschool student demos from that year are the ones in the Pancevo Gimnasium. Milosevic's minister of education decided to disband the highschool that had existed for over a hunded years. One reason was that the teachers were "on strike" for maybe a year, meaning it had cut classes to 30 minutes (the legal way to strike). The other reason was the fact that the school director accepted the gift of computers from the Soros foundation and got removed by the ministry of education, but the teachers refused to reckognize the new director. For one week, the illegal Forum Of Students organised demos in the school yard, with thousands of people attending. The ministry backed out. I think the Pancevo Gimnasium is still on the legal strike. In Autumn 1999., a Gimnasium school board (teachers + director) in Belgrade had tried to introduce participation fees for students at a price which would only be acceptable to the children of the new burgeoisie. The decision came just after the students were forbidden from having an excursion abroad. This resulted in a strike, with every day protest walks, noisemaking and trafficblocking (last week). Faced with conformist, oportunist and exploitative teachers, and a government that does everything to prevent them from learning anything but stupidity and hipocricy, highschool students in Belgrade have learned to accept social protests as a way of life. It just becomes habitual to walk, to whistle, to make noise... Making noise is the only thing you can do to help yourself, when you are born in a country without a future. At least you know you are still alive.. Mihajlo Acimovic