History With Errors and Inaccurate

History textbooks for high schools have many errors and inaccuracies that they teach students in classes 10, 11 and 12. With the review of history texts not much improved, as there are uncontested round figures, it was said in a debate today organised by the Human Rights Initiative “with the theme “History in school texts”.

Ramadan Sokoli of the Human Rights Initiative has presented research that has been conducted, saying high school history books have a lot of inaccuracies and errors that students are served as accurate.

He said that in the 11th grade book, he found that for the last war, the number of 15 thousand people killed has been rounded up, not arguing at all, nor where it was taken.

When we talk about the last war I'm reading to you some examples that were taken from the history book. Only during the months of the NATO bombings did the Serbian Army kill more than 150,000 Albanians, among whom there were many children, women and elderly people. That means this information is devoted to high school students with a combined total of 15 thousand Albanians victims. We don't even have an input here that says this number was taken from the research that was conducted by someone, or it was put into discussion as a matter for discussion, that means it's taken as a fact and a fact that students don't discuss. What we might mention here is that the number 15 grand is nowhere but history textbooks. From research conducted by the Fund for humanitarian law, we have another number, which is over 13 thousand victims of the recent war in Kosovo, of them alone in 10,000 are Albanians, the rest belongs to non-Albanian communities”, Sokoli said.

According to him, from discussions they had with high school students, they know very little about developments that took place in the 1990s in Kosovo. All they know, Sokoli said it was the last war in Kosovo in 1998-1999 and then the declaration of independence.

According to these textbooks, Sokoli stressed that high school students do not know about the organisation of protests during the 1990s, and do not even know about peaceful resistance.

While the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Professor Bujar Dugolli, said that he and his master studies students have faced many recordable issues that must be improved in history textbooks.

Our findings have been the truth of historical data, which has no authenticity, or no reality that something happened, in authenticity, because we have to write original texts, because we're a state and we have to have original texts. The objectivity that is the subject of discussion often on other issues, forms, interpretations, which often historical events are such and do not change, but the interpretation by historians changes the whole approach, the language used in text, the illustrations of how they are used and how true they are in the right form and many other issues and the inaccuracy that we have observed”, Dugolli said.

He said the Ministry of Education has not shown seriousness in improving history books.

While Mrika Limani of the Institute of History stressed that the idea for reviewing history texts was born several years ago, when Turkey has asked Kosovo to make a review of the language in the history texts used during Ottoman rule.

This is problematic, but this has had a positiveness, because it has sparked an open debate about how we interpret our past. Despite that Turkey's demands could be interpreted as historical colonialism, such as perhaps they don't have much place in our history, yet at the diplomatic level it is very understandable even reasonable that Turkey as an ally of Kosovo has made that request. On the other hand, we as historians are seriously dealing with this problem and of course not to fall prey to political pressures, because at the end of the day as historians we don't have to submit to daily policies”, Limani said.

Dren Terzici of the Organization of Teachings of History stressed that the drafting of textbooks has been made urgently, even by the lack of experience of their designers. Until the use of methodology, according to him, is the biggest mistake to make.

“Text processing is not that it never happened, so there have been revisions, there have been changes. However, there have been no changes in methodology, which is the biggest mistake, because in fact or with historical accuracy very little changes, it means we have no new discoveries to make any essential change, but the problem is the methodology used. This methodology brings to what we say, in fact, students are asking two subjects that are most angry with math and history, because of the methodology used in those second-hand texts, which is de-mode that belongs to an old-time period, which is not with world trains”, Terzi said.

In 2011 Turkey had applied to the country's institutions for reviewing the history texts to improve the language used for Ottoman rule in these texts, which had prompted numerous reactions.