Over the past two months, criticisms of the state of Bulgarian secondary education have come from different directions, but lead to the same general conclusions – low motivation and low achievement of students, focus on memorizing facts, lack of key skills for the 21st century and a dramatically expanding scissors between the small proportion of top achievers and the ever-increasing proportion of those remaining below the minimum literacy threshold.
While these findings are not new, a serious “what do we do” debate is lacking. “To forcefully keep children in school for 12+ years for 8 hours a day without giving them anything meaningful is a crime, pure and simple,” says Irina Manusheva. And it is taking the first step towards stirring up the hive with a petition to review national external assessments (NECs) and compulsory application after grade VII.
Irina, what motivates your efforts to push for changes in education?
I am a mother of three children. I’m also a translator and a philosopher of education, and before that I graduated from high school mathematics, which gives a pretty broad view of different aspects of education. I worked for years in a private school where the freedom and creativity of the teachers and the essential things in the children’s development were valued. In my practice there, I first met such educational ideologues as Celesten Frene, Shalva Amonashvili and many others. And I saw how it could be.
So when it came time for my kids to go to school, I went into a bit of a stupor. We went through private school with the oldest. Then through public school where it was great at first. But the time came for him to become the fifth grade, and I increasingly disliked this job – not specific teachers or specific schools, I just didn’t like it as an idea, as principles, as emphases, priorities, learning content, everything. It was at this point that they passed the law allowing self-directed learning, and I left my kids at home.
Sounds risky.
That’s right, we jumped in the deep end. My son was supposed to be in fifth grade and my oldest daughter in first. Every year we asked them: “Do you want to go to school now?” and by the seventh grade, both of them did not want to. After that, they applied for high school according to the general rules, entered wherever they wanted. Now the youngest continues in the same way.
Are your children prepared at home, have they appeared at the Higher Education Institution and through the mechanisms of the NVO exams have they entered the schools they attend now, in high school?
Yes, the big one has already graduated from the National Natural and Mathematical High School. They entered without private lessons in Bulgarian and mathematics. But I hasten to make it clear that when we made this decision, we had no way of knowing it would turn out like this.
Probably someone would tell you: here, for your children, the NVO has worked well. Then why do you want us to change it?
Because it’s self-preservation. I leave my children at home, this option is possible for me, because I work at home as a translator, I can support them pedagogically in practically everything, give them directions and they deal with themselves. But this obviously cannot be an option for everyone, it is not an option for mass education. Just as private lessons are self-saving, so are private schools to a large extent. Who can do what he can.
However, the idea of mass education is to serve everyone – that’s why it’s mass. Its purpose is not simply to raise children somewhere while their parents are at work. Its purpose is to ensure some development of these children, so that they can then be active citizens of society and work in professions that are necessary for the whole society, to be able to make decisions for the development of the whole society. …
