10 November 2009
In Divided High School, Students Find Ways to Interact
Organizations bring students of different ethnic groups together
Stolac, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Stolac High School has a reputation of being a problem school. But it’s not the students causing the problem.
The secondary school is commonly referred to as “two schools under one roof.” In the morning, Croat students attend classes; in the afternoon, Bosniaks fill the rooms. Not only do the students not share classes, they do not use the same books or learn the same curriculum.
The school and attempts to integrate the students have received international attention.
The scrutiny is often focused on a complex political and legal struggle between school administrators, education officials and city leaders. The school is not legally recognized because it has failed to create a statute that meets the requirements of the canton’s education law, said Esad Dželilović, the minister of education in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton. The statute, required of all schools, outlines the school’s operations. For more than a year, Dželilović, school officials and the municipal government have been trying to create a statute that satisfies all parties. International groups like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe have also tried to broker an agreement.
Because of conflicts with the cantonal minister, a Bosniak, the acting principal of the school, a Croat, has refused to stamp certificates of Bosniak students. These stamped documents are needed for students to prove they completed their academic years. There are 10 cantons in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the country’s two governing entities. Bosniaks and Croats primarily live in the federation, while the other entity, Republika Srpska, is mostly Serb.
STUDENT COLLABORATION
What is often unnoticed is that while adults debate about how to organize the school, some of the students from both ethnic groups are already spending time together. At a Stolac cafe, two of the students, a Croat girl and a Bosniak boy, tell America.gov that although they don’t attend classes together, the 17-year-olds know each other and are comfortable talking with one another. Given the political sensitivities, they have requested their names not be used.
The two ethnic groups are relatively friendly to one another, said the girl, noting that the teens hang out in the same cafes and other town spots. “It is important to exist together because in the future when we have jobs, we will work together,” she said. “Children have the right for an opportunity for education; this program is destroying their right.”
The boy acknowledged that teens from both ethnic groups have on occasion behaved offensively and that many in the community like having separate schools. But it does not stop him from saying hello to Croat teens he sees around town. “As a parent, I would say, ‘Go and hang out with good people; it doesn’t matter their ethnicity.’”
Students can choose to work together on extracurricular activities, thanks to the help of international groups like the Norwegian nongovernmental organization Nansen Dialogue Centre. The center helped students and teachers work together to setup a “neutral place,” a classroom where students can organize interethnic clubs and projects.
The center is also helping the students run a joint newspaper, in which they select and write their own articles. Each student’s article is published in his or her own language. School administrators were surprised that the students opted to publish, and read, a multilanguage paper, but as the students pointed out, the differences between the languages are very small. “For me, it’s all one language,” the girl said.
Administrators were even more surprised that the students selected one editor to oversee everyone’s work, said Vernes Voloder, project coordinator at the Nansen Dialogue Centre. The students were not willing to split themselves up along ethnic lines, Voloder said.
Knowing that the school is unlikely to provide support for extracurricular activities anytime soon, each of the groups’ student councils work together to solicit funds from international donors.
Some organizations have arranged seminars and field trips to encourage students to interact. Recently the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo organized a trip to visit the USS Higgins when it was docked at the town of Neum.
However, Voloder acknowledged that it is difficult to keep all of Stolac’s students open-minded when they are influenced by parents and politicians that don’t want to see ethnic groups interacting.
It is important to teach the students that the progress they make will help the next set of students, he added.
A SPECIAL VISIT
In May, the neutral classroom had a very special guest — Martin Luther King III. The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo brought King, the son of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., to Bosnia and Herzegovina to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the court case Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared segregated schools in the United States to be illegal. During his weeklong visit, King met with education officials, religious leaders and civic activists.
During his Stolac visit, King shared America’s experience with segregation and civil rights. He told the students, many of whom lost relatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s war 15 years ago, about losing his father. He also told the students that they play a part in eliminating discrimination, although it takes a long time.
School administrators and the minister of education also met with King. It was the first formal meeting between the Croat acting principal and the unofficial leader of the Bosniak branch of the school. King told them that the good thing about a problem is that there is always a solution, said Dželilović.
Stolac needs to be organized as one school in which students from both ethnic groups attend classes at the same time, Dželilović said. There are other schools in the nation’s mixed ethnic neighborhoods in which students take some classes together like science and math, but other classes apart like history, language and geography.
Dželilović said he’s not sure an agreement will be reached soon. But regardless of the politics, the Croat girl said she is optimistic Stolac will one day change. “It cannot be forever,” she said. “The voice of the youth population can be heard.”
