Lessons Of Life

Miodrag Jocic, a villager from Mail Popovic on Mt. Kosmaj brought his two children to Belgrade on Monday to enroll them in high school. Then a few things happened on Tuesday and finally he turned up in front of the education ministry building to protest.

That day, Serbia's Education Minister Dragan Mladenovic announced that this year's high school entrance exam tests were being sold on the streets prior to the exams; the ministry declared the Serbian language tests invalid (pupils took them on Monday); the math tests were interrupted (Tuesday). The minister added that a new date would be set for the tests.

Some 100,000 pupils in Serbia were left hanging nowhere after being drilled through eight years of grade school and studying for the entry exams. The education machine failed and as usual decided to hand someone else the bill. Jocic even said: "I had some hopes for this state till now, but I don't any longer".

According to what the education minister said, everything started on Monday at 8:45 a.m. when an assistant high school principal in Belgrade brought a copy of math test he had bought from a street vendor to the ministry. The minister immediately ordered the police to investigate.

Detectives detained five kids from Belgrade's 1st Economics School that day. They took statements and school IDs from the boys and girls they found in possession of the incriminated tests.

Immediately after the minister's public statement, not knowing of the efficient police activities, Belgrade's pupils started gathering at the education ministry. The first group was chased away by the police, as well as a second group. The third group, reinforced by parents, managed to stay long enough (till 3:00 p.m.) to see Dragan Mladenovic go in.

They pulled his sleeves, the parents demanded an explanation and the minister apologized to pupils and disappeared. At 4:25 p.m. Vojislav Braunovic, deputy minister for high school education, left the ministry building and there were no more officials left there. In front of it, pupils and parents (and the police) slowly gathered in increasing numbers.

The first mess ended at 10:00 p.m. that night when the crowd decided to come back the following morning. The minister was scheduled to hold a press conference that Wednesday to solve the problem.

Nemanjina street was blocked again at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Soon Braunovic addressed the crowd to try to calm them down. Then he told VREME reporters that the language test scores would be declared valid and a new math test would be scheduled for Friday.

At 11:00 a.m., Mladenovic held a press conference in the Serbian government building, a few hundred yards from his ministry building. He first denied what his deputy said and added that the language test was invalid and that the language scores would taken from grades in the last four years of elementary school. He confirmed math tests would be held on Friday.

Mladenovic kept apologizing to "pupils with good grades", saying he was sorry for them, that they had been damaged, that they would be OK. He didn't mention pupils with bad or medium grades and it seemed he was convinced that he wasn't their minister.

All through the little pupil rebellion, the education ministry never revealed details of the cause of incident. They didn't say anything about who sold the tests. The minister just said there were indications that the tests came from central Serbia and Belgrade. Everyone else is in the clear but they have to suffer as well.