Migracijske i etničke teme (Sep 2008)
Attitudes towards Schooling among Pupils, Parents and Teachers: What Has Changed over the Six Years in Vukovar?
Abstract
The year 2007 marked the 10th anniversary of the Erdut Agreement, which, among other issues, regulated the rights of the Serbian minority in the Croatian Danube region to education in their mother tongue and the Cyrillic script. In practice, this agreement separates the children in schools according to the ethnic principle, so that Croatian and Serbian children attend separate educational programs, thus preventing their interethnic contact also in a school which is their everyday environment. At the same time, the city of Vukovar has become an ethnically divided community in which out-of-school contacts among children are not encouraged either. The objective of this study is to compare attitudes towards several aspects of education in Vukovar that were assessed twice, in 2001 and 2007. In the first study, 718 pupils in the 6th and 8th grades of elementary school, and the 2nd grade of secondary schools participated, together with 953 parents and 113 teachers lecturing on the so-called “national group of subjects”. The children attended the educational program either in the Croatian or in the Serbian language. In the follow-up study, 703 pupils of the same age participated, with an additional sample of pupils from the 1st grade of secondary school, and a total of 849 parents and 88 teachers. Attitudes towards school integration, out-of-school social integration of children, multiculturalism and assimilation of minorities were assessed, as well as preferences for the three options in which the education of ethnic minorities in Croatia can be organized. The results showed small but consistent and statistically significant convergence over the period of six years in attitudes of the majority and the minority groups regarding some aspects of education and out-of-school relations. The implications of separated schooling of children in Vukovar for current and future inter-ethnic relations in the community are discussed.
