Association of Teachers of Sarajevo Canton: Let's bring ethics and upbringing into classrooms, and banish administration

The Association of Teachers of Sarajevo Canton, led by President Nihada Čolić, sent a letter to the mother of the deceased boy Mahir Rakovac, as well as to his stepfather, Professor Dubravko Lovrenović, colleagues, which the Patria agency transmits in full:

- Dear Mother of our Mahir, esteemed Professor Lovrenović, respected colleagues, who have sworn eternal loyalty to our children, dear people, for whom one child is the same as the whole world!

We are reaching out this way, with the desire and sincere hope that this never, to anyone, anywhere happens again. We have the right to do so, because we have sworn eternal loyalty to our children, because we have sworn that their world is our world and that we will protect and love them, no less than we love ourselves.

We call on those who have not acted and lived this way in their classrooms to hold themselves accountable and explain why looking into a child's eye, a hug, and a warm word were too costly for them and why they were untouchable.

Teachers, for whom a child is sacred, have the right to this, because we are aware that every success of a child in our classroom is our success, that their happiness is the happiness of all humanity, that their happy and human gaze is a mirror and a window to the world. We also call on parents to take responsibility if their children have extinguished one youth and closed the horizons of a happy childhood. Punish yourselves, live without a sense of happiness, because that is the greatest pain you can experience, after the feeling of our Mahir's Mother. No one has an excuse for what happened, we all must and should breathe in the direction called 'let it never happen to anyone again.'

As teachers, it is our duty to persist in proving the truth, to punish the guilty and all those who do not feel that way but truly are, so that our children experience only moments in their childhood that lead them to a dignified person and paths taken only by honest people.

Dear colleagues, let us persist in our efforts to banish administration from our classrooms and introduce ethics and upbringing, so that we are not followed by watchful eyes for whom legal legislation is the beginning and end of upbringing and education; let us banish fear and despair from ourselves, because we must satisfy this; let us persist in seeking happiness only in our children, even when they are not „doing“ well in what others have imagined they must „do“.

Let us persist in the desire to stand by Mahir's Mother, parents, and all children who deserve and have the right to happiness, sadness, desire, and all the beautiful moments in life.