Rejecting Imposition Through Self-Organisation in Education

Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Research in Humanities

Year: 2019

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2nd.icrh.2019.11.761

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Rejecting Imposition Through Self-Organisation in Education

Florent Rrahmani

ABSTRACT: 

This paper aims to bring up and analyse the chronology of educational education life in Kosovo in1989-1999, considering expulsion from school facilities and imposition of parallel school policies. In 1989, Serbia made changes to the Kosovo Constitution whereby Kosovo was stripped of its political, cultural, educational and legal autonomy that was enshrined in the Constitution of 1974. Constitutional changes of 1989 amounted to a direct attack against Kosovo’s society and produced new social, political and cultural contexts in 1990-1999.It was those changes that brought about, not only formally, but substantially as well, a major dissatisfaction within the Kosovan society and made it find ways to self-organise and function on its own.Of course, survival was paramount to a society facing such a challenge, especially in a situation in which its education was the primary target. A directive stipulating that Serbia’s laws and bylaws on education (school curricula and other documentation) must be implemented compulsorily in Kosovo schools as well, as of 1990/91 school year, made teachers, principals, students and parents reject implementing such a directive, which also resulted in the closure of Albanian schools and expulsion from school premises.Bearing witness thereof, the society organised itself and operated on its own, managing, thereby, to provide for the survival of education in Albanian. Hence, many houses turned into school premises, and many people of good will gave their all to make sure that education in Albanian survives and Albanian children have the opportunity to receive education basically and practically say “no” to submission in the face of such a pressure.

Keywords: Rejection, imposition, constitutional changes, education in Albanian, survival.