Remember Kosovo

Greetings from Kosovo where my husband and I are visiting our son who is serving with the UN mission here. As you may know, Kosovo's struggle to achieve independence from Serbia was prolonged and acrimonious, involving a bitter war and atrocities on both sides. Now the challenge is to get Kosovo back on its feet, including restoring peace between the majority Albanian population and the minority Serb population. 

This effort is being hampered, according to this article in a local paper, by the textbooks used in Kosovan, Albanian, and Serbian schools. These textbooks are riddled with errors, all in the direction of highlighting "the crimes of the other side, while remaining mute about their own....Instead of facts, figures and arguments, you find hate speech. The Kosovan books talk about state genocide against the Albanians. The Serb books, on the other hand, present the Kosovo Albanians as terrorists and fascists."

This is an extreme example, but it illustrates the power - and the dangers - of government-controlled schooling. As much as we would like to think that schools stick to the presentation of objective and correct facts and attitudes, we should be aware that schools can and do indoctrinate their students - and not just in terms of history. There are many many topics where the presentation of objective truth is simply not possible - for example, sex education, environmentalism, religion, family values, nationalism, the arts, and substance abuse. We should remember Kosovo when we invite the government to teach our kids about these topics.

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