Today we celebrate the Day of Bulgarian Enlightenment and Culture and of Slavic Writing. Happy May 24th! On this day in Bulgaria, the national holiday of enlightenment, culture and the creation of the Glagolitic script by Cyril and Methodius is celebrated. What are the challenges facing our education… Diyan Stamatov, director of 119 secondary school "Acad" spoke to FAKTI. Mikhail Arnaudov”.
- Mr. Stamatov, today is a very special day for Bulgaria – 24 May. We celebrate our writing, education, culture. As a person devoted to education, what are the conclusions. However, do we remember the educational activity of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius only on one day?
- In the school environment, we think about the educational activity every day, because it is about the preparation of the students, about the efforts of the teachers, about the enthusiasm, about the work in the classical sphere of education. May 24 is a wonderful emblem that has found its historical significance in the country's holidays.
- Do you see an educational activity today?
- For every student, when he gets a six, it's a kind of celebration of enlightenment. This is the feeling of Bulgarian writing and culture. That's how I understand things. I believe that the young generation also thinks so, because every successful small victory is a kind of celebration of educational activity. And this continues almost everywhere, in every school, with every child, with every teacher there is an educational activity. Yes, it is a little different than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, but this change is a result of everything that surrounds us today. It is a result of the development of the educational process. We are already talking about digitization, about the introduction of technology into education. In general, today there is a completely different attitude that every single generation shows towards enlightenment, towards education in general.
- Do we value our writing? Do we value our words? Do we disguise our language, use foreign words, loanwords?
- It is much different today, if we compare it with 30, 40 years ago. At that time, the attitude towards language was completely different. Now, every touch on a mobile phone goes through editors that instantly correct one or the other mistake. Perhaps the attitude to good writing, to correct spelling, is somehow belittled, because technology turns even small mistakes into flawlessness.
- What does the word homeland mean to you?
- Homeland is what it was when I was born. What it was when I was in the barracks, when I was somewhere and returned to Bulgaria, the feeling of something nice, something respectful. And other. Almost always, when I notice something I don't like, I always say to myself: “This is what we could improve together, change.“ And there are many small things throughout our country that we can change for the better together.
- It was no accident that I asked you about the word homeland. Do we understand today what is the meaning of the word…
- Maybe because of the fact that the world today is much more open and you can easily cross the territories of one or another country, given the freedom that each new generation has. Now we have an open Europe, and that feeling is very different if we compare it to before. The world today is radically different and the word homeland has, as it were, only a patriotic meaning and a meaning of attachment to the place where one was born.
- It is May 24, and the universities went on strike days ago. It's no accident, is it…
- Look, secondary education and higher education were left in the queue of additional funding for a long time, and this permanent underfunding in the education system led to various problems.
At first glance, elementary, household, but there is no way a person can be spiritual and with a good feeling towards the world, when he cannot satisfy very elementary household needs.
For this reason, support for those working in higher education and science should be of primary importance for all of us. Secondary education in the last five years has taken a financial step forward, but higher education has remained in the background, and that is not good. The reason is that it is there that the frames are born – with the acquisition of higher education, with the necessary knowledge in the sphere of every single area in our lives.
- We keep hearing from those in power that education is a priority, that they think they know about the problems. And what is the reality in the school? How much is taught to children…
- You are talking about two different extremes. For politicians, education is a priority mainly in their election campaign, and we are constantly in an election campaign. For teenagers themselves, education is a daily routine, and as their daily routine, things are a little different, their priorities are different from constantly learning. Otherwise, there is no difference between learning before and learning now - it is a daily, constant and meaningful process in which, in order to have good results, no compromises should be made. Today's teenagers, today's students should know that they are part of a global competition that every Bulgarian teenager faces. And there is no way to make one or another compromise when it comes to personal successes.
- You are a principal, managing a teaching staff. How does a teacher stay on the job?
- There are various reasons for keeping a teacher at work today. And things are much different than they were years ago. The young teacher today expects to get a good salary, a high salary, whereas the generation I belong to somehow had a different attitude.
- You were more idealistic…
- You can say so - more idealists. But this is due to the fact that we lived in a more peaceful time and a society where you could wait. The current generation cannot wait. That's just how it's set up. And for this reason, retaining a young teacher is much more difficult. In addition to salary, motivation, good attitude in the school team, daily communication with each of the colleagues, his support in relation to all the stresses that adolescent students can and do cause him are also extremely important. And they - without a doubt, spare absolutely no one. They are just such a generation.