Chaos of the Education System: More Authors Than Students

As many as 33 textbooks by different authors have been approved for first graders in schools in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the 2019/2020 school year, while, for example, for the fourth grade of primary school you have a choice of 51 textbooks. Which is the best textbook and from which children will best and most easily master the material - no one can say with certainty!

Publishers and authors vary from school to school. Students and parents, of course, do not decide on this. And that is entirely legitimate. But, if only someone knowledgeable and from a pedagogical perspective could explain why one school uses exactly 'My Environment' by Zinaid Livnjak, and not 'My Environment' by Mediha Pašić, or vice versa?

Should it be particularly emphasized that the price of textbooks is not the same, so you will pay eight KM for one textbook, while for the same grade, the same subject, only a different publisher and in a different school, you will have to set aside 11 KM.

The bookseller in the bookstore will shrug their shoulders at your complaint, explaining that it is not up to them and that the publisher sets the price.

And who oversees the publisher? Is there a control system in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

The Assembly of Sarajevo Canton adopted the Law on Textbooks, which stipulates the exclusive use of only one textbook for one subject in one generation, and the application of the Law will begin only from the 2020/2021 school year. 

Why will no one be held accountable for the madness in which a brother can no longer inherit a textbook from his older sister, or where friends from one generation, from the same football club and from the same city, learn differently when they sit at school desks? 

I realized that Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a system that will offer students the best education after the publication of a text stating that the children of Glavatičevo have no transport to school, after which the principal of the primary school contacted me to deny the text and say that it was about high school students, and high school, the principal teaches us, right, is not compulsory education?!

So, for the principal, it is more important to justify the ruling local oligarchy in the eyes of public opinion than to ensure children's basic right – the right to education.

Education has a significant function in every society. Due to the importance of education, every state and its government wants to determine its concept and content, so that through the most powerful instrument of social perception and form of socialization, individuals accept the values and norms of the system.

Anyone who has studied even a little sociology knows that school is a bridge between the family and society as a whole. School prepares a child for their role in society. Education is, in fact, an expression of the social system. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the system fails, and new generations perceive such chaos as a system, which leads us into the abyss of human civilization.