It’s easy to talk about the
need for education. Kosovo needs more modern school curriculums, facilities and
well-qualified teachers able to transmit the knowledge demanded by the labor
market. But the actual problem is far more daunting. Educators in Kosovo today
consist of older teachers schooled in the old communist era, almost completely
illiterate in modern methods and technologies, and the inexperienced young.
That nothing exist between them is a consequence of a decade of life under
Serbian rule. After the abolition of its autonomy in 1989 by the Milosevic
regime, Kosovo’s entire public life went underground. Everything from
government, parliament, health services, to schools operated in illegal
parallel institutions separate from those run by Serbs. That the system
continued to function was a testament to the resolve of Albanians at home and
abroad, but an informal educational structure with no laws and insufficient
resources was hardly an ideal place to train a new generation of teachers.
Unfortunately, there are no
magic formulas that can summon a pool of well-trained teachers overnight to
plug the gap. Like much else here, it’s a process that will take years, if not
decades.
