Changing school texts is required, with incorrect content

School texts, especially those in history, should be changed because they contain incorrect information.

So it was said at the table organised by the Fund for Humanitarian Law in Kosovo, with the theme “Bazacon with the past in history school textbooks and civic education”.

Bekim Blakaj from the Fund for Humanitarian Law in Kosovo said history textbooks must be changed so that students can be properly informed.

“Change textbooks, especially those of history, involving the 1990s, respectively, during and after the war. Because our findings were, that this part of history contains some data that are incorrect and we've hoped they could be changed, that primary and high school students at least should be properly informed about the damage to war, respectively, on human losses during the war. On the other hand in no textbooks, neither in elementary school nor in high school, are the mechanisms of transitional justice”, Blakaj said.

Fatmir Bytyqi, adviser to the minister of education, said confusion has been created as far as history books are concerned and that this has influenced the very few books to believe.

We had another story, which we had hidden, a story that we didn't even know who wrote, that we read. We've been before a reality, trust the history book and teachers, or trust that book, that we've been keeping secret. All this confusion among young people has contributed to the fact that we believe very little in the book. Sadly, we have been through a war. After the war we know what qualities, who wrote books. Today we are in the face of a situation that we can talk about history books and we can say that the book must meet these academic criteria... We're in the face of a situation where we can really erase the past. It's extremely difficult. However, the work to be done and I wish to do with these books is hard work because it is hard to forget. But I believe we can make books as good as possible, so that we can actually afford and actually face the situation we've been through”, he said.

Meanwhile, Arber Salihu, from the Association of Educators of the History of Kosovo, said there have been shortcomings and errors in history texts and that there must be new texts.

While saying that history cannot be written without facts and accurate data that have been lacking in the period of the last war.

“History cannot be written without sources, without facts. Unfortunately for this last period, we still don't have the right data. Because there are conflicting facts about an event, people there give different opinions. And we have come to the conclusion that it is good to introduce the latest war story in Kosovo“, Salihu said.