Pamphlet for an educational renaissance

Societies rarely collapse suddenly; they slide gradually toward normalizing what they would once have considered unacceptable. The latest video from a classroom is not a scandal in itself, but a point at which this slide becomes apparent. When a relationship that should be built on the authority of knowledge and mutual respect degrades into a clash, the problem lies not in the temperament of the individuals but in the architecture that has shaped them. The event is a crack in the surface, through which the depth of a crisis that has long begun to normalize is clearly visible.

If we were to reduce this event to personal guilt, we would have missed the point. Because when words are replaced by force, when authority is overthrown and respect is dissolved within the classroom, then the problem is no longer individual. It is systemic. And the system is not something abstract, it is all of us.

We have long since built a dangerous culture of illusion. A culture where diplomas are often valued more than knowledge, where grades are sought as a right and not as a result, where passing is seen as an institutional obligation and not as a personal achievement. Parents, often driven by fear for their children's future, demand results, not processes, demand grades, not efforts. Without realizing it, they send the wrong message to their children: that success is negotiated, that failure must be avoided at all costs, that reality can be softened by intervention. But reality is not softened. It is only postponed. And when it comes to confronting it, it is often harsh.

Grades are not a gift, nor a tool of pressure. They are a measure of knowledge and commitment. When we empty them of their weight, we empty the very meaning of school. A society that simulates success produces silent failure, fragile professionals, weak institutions, and insecure citizens.

Meanwhile, there is another truth that we all know, but we treat it as a secondary detail. We talk about national strategies for early education, about reforms, about modernization, about curriculum revision, about digitalization. But in practice, an overwhelming part of our children are growing up in front of a screen. The tablet has become the modern nanny. The phone has become the universal pacifier. The algorithm is shaping thinking earlier than the book. Social networks are building identity before school builds critical thinking.

It is impossible to demand deep concentration in the classroom, when concentration has been trained to disintegrate into fragments of seconds. It is difficult to talk about compulsory early education, while social networks have become the daily formative environment of early identity. Perhaps it is time to seriously consider bold, even radical measures, such as a complete ban on social networks until the end of high school. Not as punishment, nor as a demonization of technology, but as protection. Not as isolation, but as an investment in maturity. Because freedom without maturity is not development, but, rather, exposure.

In this situation, the teacher is caught between the pressure of expectations and the vacuum of the system. He is asked to educate, discipline, motivate, manage social and emotional tensions, often without the necessary structural support. And we must say it openly: the tutorial and mentoring system, as a real support mechanism for students who are lagging behind, is almost non-existent. We have no functional structures for orientation, mentoring, recovery. We only have the traditional classroom and the expectation that it will solve everything.

Reform cannot be cosmetic, therefore, it takes courage to accept that not every teacher gives their best in the same way, and not every student learns in the same way. The system must differentiate, guide, and support, without excluding anyone from work, but without turning mediocrity into an acceptable norm. It is necessary to carry out an in-depth assessment of educational staff, with the aim of profiling them professionally: who has the capacity to continue in direct teaching and who can be more effectively engaged in the role of mentor or tutor.

The state, for its part, cannot delegate responsibility for education, because it is a constitutional obligation and the foundation of social development. Quality cannot become a privilege of those who pay more, nor depend on the zip code or the economic possibilities of the family. The standard must be the same in public and private education, while regulatory bodies must function as real quality control and assurance mechanisms, not as formal structures without influence. Suburban schools must not survive, but be strengthened, being included in the all-day learning model together with schools in cities, which must be treated as a national priority for real equality in education, because it creates structured time for learning, reading and academic support, reducing the gap between students who have extracurricular support and those who do not. There is no objective obstacle for the state not to provide transportation for students and not to make every school functional in this organizational model. However, infrastructure and organization are not enough if they are not accompanied by systematic monitoring, continuous evaluation, and clear accountability, so that quality assurance does not remain declarative, but becomes a permanent institutional practice.

We may be at ground zero. But ground zero is not the end, it is the moment of choice. It is the place where a society decides whether to continue with the illusion of false comfort, or to face the necessary truth. The video we saw is not our greatest shame. The shame would be if we continued to act as if everything was under control. Education is the foundation on which everything else is built: the economy, justice, culture, democracy itself. If the foundation cracks, the building will totter, no matter how beautiful the facade looks.

Therefore, this is not a text of (dis)accusation, but a call for responsibility and collective enlightenment. Education cannot remain hostage to negotiated grades, softened standards, and a childhood surrendered to the screen. The solution requires the restoration of meritocracy in every link of the system, the real construction of mentoring and tutorial mechanisms for those who need support, the guarantee of all-day learning with infrastructure and transportation provided by the state, as well as continuous and independent monitoring of quality. Because in the end, a nation that does not seriously protect its education is not only losing a generation, it is losing direction.

(Zahir Çerkini is a professor at the Faculty of Law of the "Isa Boletini" University in Mitrovica)