By: Dr Stane Granda
School is a “politicum”, whether we like it or not. This was already proclaimed by Maria Theresa. “Politicum” does not mean ideological indoctrination, but rather public engagement, being rooted in time and place, social reality, and Slovenisation.
Education, schooling, and culture are pillars of the state, not its destructive force. Those who advocate for its “depoliticisation” are in fact trying to impose the opposite: the complete dominance of a particular ideology and their personal or party-based worldview. They glorify the ideas and opinions of “authorities,” wrapped in the cellophane of “scientific theories,” while scorning facts and principles. They invoke humanism, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism, values they actually despise. Their ideal is “socialist democracy,” “socialism with a human face,” which the father of Slovenian independence, Jože Pučnik, wittily described as wooden iron. The central point of contention in Slovenian history is not Janša or Kučan, but the consensus that an independent Slovenian state is the greatest historical achievement of the Slovenian people. Everything else is secondary, and there will always be, whether we like it or not, nontrivial differences in individual perspectives and evaluations. The Austrian situation is particularly telling in this regard, where many historians competed to speak most mockingly about the Austrian state. Upon closer inspection of their positions, it quickly became clear that they were supporters of the “Greater German concept,” according to which Austria must either be part of Germany, or not exist at all. Here in Slovenia, our “leading” historians, including academics, are imposing Yugoslavia. Without the slightest moral restraint, they demand and receive Slovenian money, part of the national income of Slovenians, while dreaming of a “return to Yugoslavia.” As long as Croats remain Croats, it will never return!
Slovenian independence had many shortcomings – not because any human endeavour is perfect, but because of the humanistic nature of the greatest Slovenian revolution. It envisioned that the realisation of the great Slovenian “utopia” would unify Slovenians, that they would accept it as citizens, embrace it, and love it. In the meantime, war intervened, demanding its moral toll: the lustration of criminals.
Slovenian independence was abused, especially due to the shift in the economic-political system from communism, and horrifically plundered. Members of the former regime were unwilling to give up their privileges, prerogatives, and superiority, which manifested in the fact that in a socialist society of equals, some were more equal than others. That is why the old forces still control education, and students practically do not learn about independence. The worship of totalitarianism and intolerance prevails. Political and ideological division threatens our very survival.
According to media reports, Slovenian schools are preparing a new history curriculum. This will also determine textbook content. Because we have little national history and do not know our own roots, and because even those are denied by “academics”, a conceptual and content-based alarm must be sounded. Slovenians have strived for a United Slovenia for over a century, and for an independent Slovenian state for seventy years. Not all, but those who placed Slovenian identity and democracy at the top of their values. Opponents of the Slovenian concept have historically most revered Austrian, then Yugoslav, and especially communist rulers. These figures had to be worshipped like gods. Tito was a lifelong ruler, like a monarch. Servants want to remain servants! Yugoslavia was not the ultimate goal of Slovenian history. Nor is it true that the final and highest outcome of peasant revolts and the efforts of Prešeren and Cankar was socialist Yugoslavia. Both, as Slovenians and democrats, would have rejected it with disgust.
The democratic Slovenian state must be the highest educational value of the Slovenian school. The current government has systematically, and with the help of Yugoslav-nostalgic historians, systematically dismantled it. Will we finally live in a democratic and tolerant Slovenian Slovenia?