Romania to develop teaching materials on minority history

[Harold Schiffman]

  Romania to develop teaching materials on minority history [image: Print]
<http://www.eurolang.net/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2943&Itemid=1&pop=1&page=0#>
  Budapest,
Wednesday, 05 September 2007 by Judit Solymosi

 The Department for Interethnic Relations of the Romanian Government in
collaboration with the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) Regional Centre for
central, east and south east Europe, organized a seminar on the content for
teaching materials on the history of national minorities in Bran (Romania).
The seminar (29th August to September 1st) continued a series of debates on
the role of history teaching in interethnic relations organized by the PER
Regional Centre with the support of the Department for Interethnic Relations
as well as the Ministry of Education and Research in October 2006, February
and March 2007.

Mrs Maria Koreck, programme manager of the PER Regional Centre, stressed
that the previous meetings highlighted the need for provisional teaching
materials on the history of national minorities in Romania to be used in
history teaching until the new curricula and text books are finished. This
material is meant to be used for teaching all students between 14-18.

"Three principles had been specified to serve as a basis for the educational
package", Mrs Koreck said. "The material will reflect the image of
minorities as they perceive themselves, it will show the common historical
moments shared by minorities and the majority, and also the contribution of
each minority to the development of the country."

A new ministerial order on introducing the presentation of cultural (ethnic,
linguistic, religious) diversity in education came out in July 2007 and
constitutes the basis of the work.

Besides experts from the relevant ministry, the seminar was attended by
history teachers coming from different minority communities: Ukrainian,
Hungarian, Roma, Albanian, Greek, Czech, Serbian, Slovak, Tatar and others.
Most of them are at the same time the authors of the specific minority
history and cultural textbooks used in minority education.

10,000 copies will be published by March 2008 and will be distributed free
of charge to all history teachers in the country. The package will consist
of a book and a DVD.

Carol Căpiţa, lecturer at the Faculty of History of the Bucureşti
University, told Eurolang that the publication will not qualify as a
schoolbook and therefore will not require the consent of the Ministry of
Education and Research if the teachers want to use it.

Rodica Precupeţu, Head of the Department of Programmes and Relations with
Civil Society of the Department for Interethnic Relations, said that in the
long run the organizers envisage widening the scope of the project and to
involve Austrian, Slovak and Hungarian partners to develop minority history
teaching for all students. As a first step, experts from Hungary also
attended the seminar to share their experiences with the participants.
(Eurolang 2007)

Ministerial Order No 1529/2007 in Romanian:
http://www.edu.ro/index.php/legaldocs/8319

http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2943&Itemid=1&lang=en<javascript:window.close();>


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