Schools in Serbian enclaves teach that Kosovo is Serbia
Two mutually exclusive education systems operate in parallel in unrecognized Kosovo, which creates new preconditions for civil conflicts.
The Balkan Transitional Justice website writes about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Both Kosovar Albanians and Serbs have excluded each other’s language and history from their curricula,” the article says.
Schools in Serbian enclaves in northern Kosovo use the Serbian state curriculum. The textbooks, which are supplied free to these schools under a program funded by Belgrade, describe Kosovo as part of Serbia, not as an independent state.
“The two countries’ textbooks only show the crimes of the other side, presenting itself as the victim and the other as the aggressor,” said Shkelzen Gashi, head of Pristina-based Admovere.
In Kosovo textbooks, expressions such as “violence and chauvinistic terror”, “terror and state genocide” and “horrific scenes of barbarity of bloody squadrons” are used to describe Serbia’s actions.
Meanwhile, Serbian textbooks use phrases such as “attacks by Albanian gangs” and “terror of Albanians against Serbs.”
Note that in a recent BBC film about the meeting of two young people living in Kosovo Mitrovica and born after the war, the Serbian girl shows much more tolerance than the Albanian youth.
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