Categories: Blog

The “teacher” between contempt and the need for more freedom and trust

In a society that has just emerged from the war, almost 24 years, it is not easy for me to judge. Not when I am almost the same age and life has not yet challenged me enough to see and learn many things. But something that I see that we are used to in our society is the “judgment of others”: how someone speaks, how someone behaves, how things go and how politics is developed, even when we do not have much knowledge to comment.

It seems to be in our blood, because we believe that our opinion should be expressed in any case, even when it is not asked at all. This is seen most often in the education system, where everyone’s opinion is known today: “the education system in Kosovo is a disaster, more or less work is being done on education”. These words are always heard in discussions in cafes, on the street between parents, but also from ” scholars” of education. We see how much the teacher’s work is valued and valued on a daily basis.

“The teacher gave him a lot of tasks today, since he is not educating the child at school, where is my child taking these behaviors.” Even though the teacher melts his whole being in the guidance and raising the knowledge of the students, it seems that it is never enough. Both for parents and for the state itself. We are living in a society where every little movement, every lesson, every class activity, must be reported to educational institutions, something that does not make the work of teachers easier, but only burdens them even more, to the point where teachers he doesn’t have time for real planning because he has to deal with bureaucracy by filling out ministry forms to get the green light to continue working. What level of education comes out of this, I can’t even imagine.

Compared to our country, I see how a country like Finland has managed to become the champion of education in the world, and do you know where the secret is that the Finns are managing to surpass the USA, China and many other systems? Freedom. Faith. A country like Finland that fully trusts the teacher in the classroom without the need for excessive reporting of every move, where the freedom to develop learning through best practices allows students to flourish and in their happiness, leaves many other countries impressed. . All this was made possible thanks to the faith and letting the teachers have a free hand. So the key is when the state system trusts its system of qualification and evaluation of teachers to do the work for which they are qualified and gives them the necessary freedom to advance students in a natural way.
And we, as a small Kosovo, are far from Finland. We still have a long way to go before we trust our flawed system and then appreciate teachers to do their job for which the state has played no role.

It is a social and institutional obligation to be critical and work professionally and together to take the best practices from these successful schooling models and apply them in Kosovo.