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Why living - from time to time - in a former communist country could be an astonishing experience.
I will shortly give an example - in a very condensed way, because, of course, in Eastern Europe, the stories are long and a long explanatory background is more than necessary - from the long process of reform of the education in Romania. It is not selected purposely to be ridiculous or ironic. It is simply how some of the fact took place chronologically.In 1999 - 10 years after the end of the dictatorship -, following an agreement with the World Bank, it was decided to start a reform of the school textbook, including by the creation of an alternative system of textbooks. By then, there were a list of handbook, one version for each domain, compulsory at every level of education. The alternative system was making possible to choose among a list of textbooks, agreed by a special Commission set by the Ministry of Education. One of them, designed for teaching history of Romania for high-schools, was the subject of an intense political and media campaign.
Shortly: the authors - mostly young historians from Cluj - tried to present in a very systematic and synthetic way the historical moment, focusing more on the history of the present time. One important detail, when we are talking about textbooks in Romania: due to the communist legacy of propaganda, many of the texts for the school use were/and in some cases still are extremely rich in information, data, details, chronology. You don't have the opportunity to think too much by yourself, because you might learn thousand of data about reigns and historical periods. This new texbook was relatively free in this respect and, as the authors themselves explained, it was tailored to answer the preoccupation and the cultural sources of the nowadays Romanian teens.
The scandal started after, one day, the Romanian MP Sergiu Nicolaescu, film director, well known for his movies with heavy historical bias, extremely successful during communism. He took the floor and protested against the way in which the history of Romania is presented in those handbooks, the short space alloted for the moments considered, in his opinion, very important for the historical evolution, as the unification moments, the successful wars etc. At the end of his intervention, he recommended that such a textbook deserves to be publicly burned. Sounds familiar? Not too, for the Romanian MPs who listened indifferently.
From this moment on, the scandal was getting bigger and bigger. The nationalist parties united against the Ministry of Education, the government, the Hungarians, the historians - one of the historians, Sorin Mitu, whose workings haven't been discussed before this public undeserved exposure, is married with an ethnic Hungarian - the World Bank, the European Union and everything was different of speakers. Some of the young historians supported the idea of an alternative presentation of history and a couple of discussions were held, but the "anti" noise was so big, than hardly a professional point of view was heared. The Romanian Academy and a couple of historians from the History Chair of the University expressed their disagreement with creating alternative narratives of the national history and considered the textbook not meeting high standards - nobody pretended it is perfect, it was, we might remember, the first such an alternative textbook after more than 60 years - asking equaly moderation in addressing the issue in the media.
But, the media was continuing the accusations against - hardly to specifically mention who was the target, as nobody was considered clean in this "scandal". The highest point of this tensions was an inquiry made in a Romanian prison: the inmates were asked what do they think about the way in which the national history is presented in those alternative textbooks. Do they consider fair and normal such an approach? Of course, they disagreed.
Shortly: the authors - mostly young historians from Cluj - tried to present in a very systematic and synthetic way the historical moment, focusing more on the history of the present time. One important detail, when we are talking about textbooks in Romania: due to the communist legacy of propaganda, many of the texts for the school use were/and in some cases still are extremely rich in information, data, details, chronology. You don't have the opportunity to think too much by yourself, because you might learn thousand of data about reigns and historical periods. This new texbook was relatively free in this respect and, as the authors themselves explained, it was tailored to answer the preoccupation and the cultural sources of the nowadays Romanian teens.
The scandal started after, one day, the Romanian MP Sergiu Nicolaescu, film director, well known for his movies with heavy historical bias, extremely successful during communism. He took the floor and protested against the way in which the history of Romania is presented in those handbooks, the short space alloted for the moments considered, in his opinion, very important for the historical evolution, as the unification moments, the successful wars etc. At the end of his intervention, he recommended that such a textbook deserves to be publicly burned. Sounds familiar? Not too, for the Romanian MPs who listened indifferently.
From this moment on, the scandal was getting bigger and bigger. The nationalist parties united against the Ministry of Education, the government, the Hungarians, the historians - one of the historians, Sorin Mitu, whose workings haven't been discussed before this public undeserved exposure, is married with an ethnic Hungarian - the World Bank, the European Union and everything was different of speakers. Some of the young historians supported the idea of an alternative presentation of history and a couple of discussions were held, but the "anti" noise was so big, than hardly a professional point of view was heared. The Romanian Academy and a couple of historians from the History Chair of the University expressed their disagreement with creating alternative narratives of the national history and considered the textbook not meeting high standards - nobody pretended it is perfect, it was, we might remember, the first such an alternative textbook after more than 60 years - asking equaly moderation in addressing the issue in the media.
But, the media was continuing the accusations against - hardly to specifically mention who was the target, as nobody was considered clean in this "scandal". The highest point of this tensions was an inquiry made in a Romanian prison: the inmates were asked what do they think about the way in which the national history is presented in those alternative textbooks. Do they consider fair and normal such an approach? Of course, they disagreed.
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