Lately | Education

SMALL TALK: Who’s teaching our students? Education in focus.

By - 22.09.2017

Join us on Wednesday, Sept. 27, at 17:30 at Kosovo’s National Library in Prishtina.

There is one solid foundation of our societies, on which we, faithfully and indefinitely, will always blame everything: education.

And, looking at it from a distance… perhaps, we shouldn’t be surprised about massive cheating in pre-university exams after all.

Look at the panorama: public university curricula not being accredited; a rector publishing his PhD papers in the latest edition of a random magazine in India (via his Visa card); students buying their grades and successfully begging for them; dubious appointments of teachers in schools and professors in the university; books rewriting history; freezing classrooms…

Without getting (too) pessimistic, education is a powerful atomic power to fix the smaller and bigger problems, but it should also be one that generates entrepreneurs, leaders, workers, autonomous citizens and independent critical thinkers rather than scaring young people and the country’s brightest and best out of the country. How is the Kosovar youth going to grow under these circumstances?

Ultimately, while institutions go ahead with their duty to fix the fundamental problems in the education system, there is a group of people that have a large amount of power in the equation: teachers.

Who is teaching Kosovar students? How do they get into the classroom? What public mechanism assures transparent appointments and that the right persons end up behind the main desk in the classroom? How do they establish their curricula? And, what do institutions do to secure that everyone in their employment is clean and clear?

Join us to discuss this fundamental issue in a participative discussion on Wednesday, Sept. 27, at 17:30 at Kosovo’s National Library in Prishtina.

To get the discussion going, we’ll be joined by:

Rron Gjinovci – Executive Director (ORCA)

Kushtrim Bajrami – Project Coordinator (KEC)

Besa Luzha – prof. Faculty of Arts (Dept. Music)

The discussion will be moderated by Agnesa Qerimi – Project Manager (KYC)

Translation in English/Albanian will be provided.

Feature image: Majlinda Hoxha / K2.0.