National Histories in South-Eastern Europe and History of a United Europe |
This project was made posible through the generous support of the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute (Zurich/Budapest) |
The Seminar was organised by: Narrative Report |
| The Second
Training Session of the South-Eastern European Project "National Histories in
South-Eastern Europe and History of a United Europe" took place in Timisoara,
Romania, from 20th to 23rd of March 2003.
Introduction This event completed the training section of the project, which consisted in two intensive training sessions, focused on: 1) the scientific teaching contents, and 2) the innovation of educational methods and tools on teaching national histories. Two major historical events occurred just before the beginning of the second training session: the war against Iraq and the assassination of the Serbian Premier Djindjic. Last minute cancellation coming from foreign participants were due especially to these events. Nevertheless, we succeeded to get together lecturers and participants from SEEC countries (Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia and Romania) and EU Member-States (Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain). Our special guest lecturers and trainers were: Prof. Florian Bieber, Senior Non-Resident Research Associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues (Flensburg, Germany), currently working in Belgrade - Serbia, and also Recurrent Visiting Professor at the Nationalism Studies Program of the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. He moderates also an e-mail group-list, called "Balkan List", which is well-known and appreciated in SEEC. Mr. Joaquim Pinto-Da-Silva, Expert of the European Commission in Brussels, Director in the General Directorate Information and Education, a well-known specialist in civil society organisations and exchanges in Candidate and Associated Countries. Prof. Vito A. D'Armento from the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Lecce, Italy and Vice-President of European Society of the Ethnography of Education (SEEE). Drd. Corneliu Berari, currently completing his PhD at University of Munich, Germany, and also Civic Education Project Fellow Research in Romania. Mrs. Ildiko Pataki, Associate Consultant to the Center Education 2000+, within the Soros Organisations Network in Romania. Deployment of the Programme FIRST DAY - Thursday, the 20th of March We registered all participants and guest- lecturers and we gave them the folders for the seminar. The reception cocktail was offered at the Technical College of Timisoara. The Project Coordinator introduced the trainers, local guests and participants. Some journalists of the regional media also attended this event. Few articles and radio/TV reports already promoted this training session in advance. Representatives from each country shortly reminded the situation of the curricula reform in the field of national history in their countries. The Editor in Chief of the Newsletter of the project, EUROLINK President, Prof. Sever AVRAM presented a short oral report on the activities of the Joint Task Force Group from the last training session in Lugoj until the current new meeting in Timisoara. He shortly presented the stage of works and the feed-back from participants and other historians in SEEC. SECOND DAY - Friday, the 21st of March The works of the training session were hosted in the Ceremony Hall of the Technical College of Timisoara. The main invited trainer, Prof. Florian Bieber divided his presentation in three presentations, two workshops and a simulation game. The topic of the first module was “Historical Legacies and Ethnic Diversity”, which consisted in two parts: “The Ottoman Empire” and “The emergence of Nation-states and forgotten history of the non-dominant groups”. His first presentation was focused on the “Balkans”, as an Ottoman Legacy, a not very old idea, stressed by Prof. Maria Todorova in a recent article. From this point of view, the Balkans are a geographical, historical, and cultural space, characterized by a large diversity of its numerous social groups. The similarities of the situations, especially from the South of Danube, are results of the characteristics of the Ottoman Empire: it was a religious Empire where the Millet system allowed the autonomy of the various social groups. It was taken into discussion also the negative image of the Ottoman Empire. One important feature of the national movements in the Balkans in the XIX-th century was that each one of them were anti-ottoman. The national movements leaded by the elites imposed their own perspective over the history since the XIX-th century and somehow tried to forget the diversity and the histories of the smaller groups. After the coffee-break, the participants and guest lecturers joined the celebration of the “Spring Day in Europe”, an event organised in school all over Timisoara, and also in the Technical College. A first part was dedicated to a debate, organised by pupils, regarding the stage of preparation of Romanian society in view of EU accession. The guest-lecturers commented the deployment of the debate and presented their own experience as European citizens. The final part of the event was an entertainment moment, consisting in a fashion parade representing various European traditions in this field. Mr. Joaquim Pinto-Da-Silva from the European Commission presented the topic: “The educational role of the extra-curricular activities and youth exchange programs supported by the European Union in renovating the methodological approach on national and SEE history”. Starting from the ground of the cultural process of European integration, “Unity through Diversity”, the lecturer pointed out the important issue that culture, in a very general sense, is not a statical situation, but a permanent movement of opinions, images and discourses, united by the unavoidable and stereotypical way of thinking of one single culture. In this context, the lecturer stressed the importance of the relation between the academic area of knowledge and the subject to be taught. Both of them need to take into account the diversity of opinions and the pluralistic perspective as a whole. He evoked also the significance of educational and youth projects promoted by EU, in order to support the new general educational approach of young new European citizens. The first Workshop of Prof. Bieber has the following topics:
The participants were divided in three workshops with the aim to analyze the two topics. They analyzed the images of Bulgaria in Serbia and Romania, the mutual perception of Serbia and Romania and of Moldavia and Romania and the mages of Hungary in Romania and of Ukraine in Moldavia. As a study-case, the trainer introduced the relations between Serbians and Bulgarians. They are and were very good except the memory of the all war from the modern period they have participated and they were always enemies. It was recognized that the most important instruments in constructing and perpetrating this type of public memory are the textbooks and also media. Also, as common features for the region of the Balkans, possible topics for a further common non-conflictual history of the region, were taken into consideration: the Orthodoxy, even in its national forms, the specific Balkan mentality, with positive and negative implications (unfinished modernity, strong traditionalism and sense of group, unwillingness to change etc.), socialist mentality and realities of post 1989s period, the well recognized and common desire of integration in the European Union and the organic vision of the idea of nation, which do not allow the re-evaluation the nationalism in the Balkans as a primarily civic one. Mr. Corneliu Berari focused on “The introduction of elements of the history of the European Union and its institutions within the curricula of contemporary history in SEEC – Problems, dilemmas and prospects” The presentation concerned the historical contents about the European Union in the faculties of the political sciences in Romania, and especially within the Western University of Timisoara. Also, as a conclusion of the comparison between the history students and political sciences students, it was issued the important observation that the students from History tends to see the past as a narrative discourse while the students from Political Sciences tends to see the past in a more sistemic perspective. In the evening, a guided historical tour of TIMISOARA by night was organised for better socializing participants and trainers. THIRD DAY - Saturday, the 22nd of March The topic of the second module presented by Prof. Bieber was: “Representing Minority in Textbooks and Curricula”, and it was focused on two major themes: Contemporary challenges to teaching and education in diverse societies. “How minorities are portrayed in the educational system and how this is a reflection of larger social trends”, and “Classical issue of stereotyping and ignoring non-dominant groups. Critical reading of both media and textbooks”. The most important idea of this presentation was that within the process of teaching/learning History, the analysis ad adaptation of the text-books are not enough for the aim of reducing and even eliminating the stereotypes regarding different discriminated minoritarian groups. It is useless to simply change the text-books and to maintain unchanged the old corpus of teachers who would continue to disseminate the old stereotypes. So, it is important for the goal of a politically correct process of teaching to educate the teachers, who are the most important components of the process of education of the pupils. Also, common textbooks are based on facts and simply data and events, therefore the political history and the complex contexts are incompletely presented, and the minorities many times avoided, simply because they have not participated in the past in the process of taking the political decisions. As a common characteristic of the South-Eastern European Countries, it was presented the situation of non-liberalized market for textbooks as a part of a general situation of incomplete educational reforms. Prof. Vito A. D’Armento The 'institutional analysis' model as a way of reforming the teaching/learning process on history of national minorities within the national histories. The lecturer took into consideration, in his institutional analysis, the process of teaching/learning as an input-output process. The lecturer reminded to the participants that during the XIX-th century, the main fundraiser of education was the State, the community of the citizens, which has the aim to educate all its new generations in an uniform way. But, as a result of the strong social differences, one important outcome of this goal was the maintaining and increasing of the illiterate people. As a result, the input of the State was very big in comparison with the output, a situation in decline of the public education. In order to renovate the current state of facts, the lecturer suggested the following measures:
The newest challenge that teaching history is facing is to identify the ways to increase its contribution to the basic competencies that the graduate from public compulsory instruction has to prove in real life situations. The Second Workshop of Prof. Bieber used study-cases and work-group and general debate around the concept of ethnicity. He stressed the way of framing the ethnicity within the history classes and the significance of events with an ethnical connotation in the framework of larger historical contexts. The third presentation of Prof. Bieber was concentrated on “Minority Rights and Education”, and consisted in two parts: “The larger challenge to addressing diversity in the educational system, in the framework of both minority rights and in the context of educational reform which remains a crucial issue in most countries of the Southeastern Europe”, and “How accommodating minority specific education on one side and on the other side to foster cooperation between the SEEC communities”. The preoccupation for minorities is old enough and it is associated with the theme of human rights. Only in recent past, a few decades, it was issued a more developed interest on the sources of information for the public education as an important topic for disseminating stereotypes and not trying to avoid this situation. Many times, the sources do not say something against minorities but the human rights must be enforced and underlined. For example, the State should not discriminate, but to protect every social group living within. Prof. Bieber defined the term of ‘functional minority’ as a problem of relation and interaction rather than a specific subject (human individual of social group). For example, black people were the majority in South Africa, from a numerical point of view, but they were a minority, form a political and even social point of view. The minority rights are the right to their own language, the right to participate in taking decision concerning themselves and the right to their own memory. Simulation Game: Teacher Training for Albanians in Montenegro This was a simulation game of a real situation from the nowadays Montenegro, where there is a great need for teachers for the Albanian community and there are great disputes where to place the training location of these teachers. The disputes issued in unfinished negotiations and the participants had to prepare their own solutions. They were divided in two groups, each one also divided in representants of the Albanians and of the Montenegro government. One group issued a peaceful solution, but it was considered as unrealistic, and the other group finished the period of negotiations with no solution. As it was observed, the common characteristic of all the participants was the preoccupation for funding, while the real problem is one of identity: the Albanians insists with no compromise to establish the teacher training location within their living territories even if the logistics are not available. At the end of the day, a final trip followed by a social event was organised at Cheversh Student Camp, 35 km from Timisoara. FOURTH DAY - Sunday, the 23rd of March Mrs. Ildiko Pataki presented an interactive and practical module entitled: “Promoting and disseminating the content and the functions of the pro-active pedagogical methods. The role of using new teaching materials and basic resources for research” The trainer started from the “question of the day: to be (or not to be) a teacher… in Europe”. The participants were divided in four groups, received a serial of materials and they were provoked to think about how to make their further pupils to work in workshops. The idea was to presented a pattern of organizing a lecture as a project: to make the further pupils to identify interesting topics of discussions, to leave them the liberty of choice, to identify needed qualities and resulted new abilities after the finishing of the ‘lesson as a project’. Each group presented its own applied version and, in the end, all the outcomes were discussed together. Report of the JOINT TASK FORCE GROUP On the basis of discussions and suggestions from lecturers and participants, the coordinators of the project summarised the following proposals. 1. On the text-books development: The ministries of education, curricula committees and the publishers should ask the teachers to send their opinions on how they work with the textbooks, what is the impact of the use of the new textbooks in their classroom activity. It is important to remember that a history textbook is not a scholarly book; the authors should ask themselves about the skills which pupils should achieve when learning from textbooks. 2. On the Curricula development: While objectives seem to have the acceptance of the majority, some adjustments still need to be made, such as the elimination of certain redundancies, the harmonizing of the objectives with the timeframe established through the learning plan. It is necessary to stimulate teachers to try to innovate in the class-room, to try to change their educational style (debates, group work, the analysis of historical sources as activities and methods promoted by the curricula). The curricula changes have to take as their starting point several documents of the Council of Europe, first and foremost Recommendation Rec (2001) 15 on history teaching in the XXI-st century Europe. The changes, the participants underlined, should contribute to the improvement of the curriculum, and, most importantly, to take into account the effects of its application in the classroom. 3. Teacher training activities: There is a common responsibility of teachers and experts in developing the curricula, and writing the text-books. The educational process should be innovative, in the sense that pilot schools should be established in order to introduce new approaches; it should benefit from widely published recommendations of good practice, and it also should involve the mass-media; it also implies that school/local centers for learning should be developed, as well the development of a variety of resource materials; teachers should act as examples of good practice, respecting different opinions and the critical attitude. In order to attain these points, the curriculum should be reasonable (in terms of contests), flexible (for more work outside of curriculum), accessible (enabling the increased use of sources), and objective-based. At the same time, all partners in education (students, teachers, parents) should be questioned in relation to the educational materials. In order to go further in the educational reform in history teaching it will be important to focus on elements aimed at:
However, the main point is to create a trend that might influence all the components:
At the end of the session, after collecting and sealing the Evaluation Feed-Back Forms from the participants, a short evaluation of the seminar revealed that the training session was an inspired and interesting idea, which offered the participants the opportunity to meet and learn from each other. The quality of the presentations and workshops, as well as the diversity of the program were also recalled. Some proposals for enriching the content of future seminars included: a larger SEE participation, including young teaches from Turkey; a special section with contributions from the participants (15 minutes each); on-line debate and e-list on national histories issues. All participants received Certificates of Graduation, confirming their participation to the Second Training Session within our project. As an additional event, on the occasion of the sixth anniversary of EUROLINK - House of Europe, we organised on the 24th of March 2003 a special Public Debate, under the High Patronage of the Mayor of Timisoara, dedicated to the “Key-Role of Timisoara and of the Western Region in the accession process to the EU”. We analysed the study-case of intercultural diversity and inter-ethnic harmony of Timisoara, as an example to be promoted for the association/stabilisation process and regional integration in South-Eastern Europe. The Third Issue of the Newsletter will synthesized the content of the training session, as well as the expressed opinions, suggestions and proposals collected during the event.
ANNEX -PRESS ECHOS Our training session enjoyed of a special attention from the local and regional media, both before and after the deployment of the event. The following TV channels promoted the seminar and the Public Debate, and also reflected during their news editions and programmes the international participation, its impact and suggestions coming from participants: public TVR Timisoara-TVR 2, private channels Analog TV and TV Europa Nova. Also, the following radio channels were present to the works and reflected especially the cultural and educational dimension of the event in the context of Europe Spring Day, celebrated at the Technical College of Timisoara, in the presence of official guests from the Romania Parliament, Ministry of Education, local authorities etc. :public radio channels: Radio Romania Actualitati, Public Radio Timisoara and private radio channels: Radio Europa FM, Radio 21, Radio Analog, Radio Europa Nova The following newspapers largely promoted the event, presented the topics and aims of the project.
Also, the event was presented in the following newspapers: Magyar Szo (Hungarian language) and Neus Banater Zeitung (German language). These newspapers summarised the mission and the goals of the project regarding the change of curricula in national histories, shortly described the included activities, profile of participants and trainers, explained the achievements and further expected results . The seminar and the following Public debate were considered to be an important regional event for Timisoara, the Western Romanian region and the whole cross-border SEEC region. They underlined the large number of foreign attendees, the qualities of lectures and the educational importance of suggested reforms for the educational process in Romania.
For conformity, Coordinating partner organisations: Youth and Student Department of the EUROLINK-House of Europe Student Association in History Studies “ERASMUS” |