At the CIVIL panel discussion on “Non-discrimination and multiculturalism in schools” Blendi Hodai, President of the High School Union spoke about multiculturalism as a value in the family and schools.

“As a union of high school students, when we talk about inclusion in society, we always conclude 2 important phenomena. The first phenomenon, the roots of the problems are in the family. Hate speech is used in our families towards some communities and in that way young people who will not respect multiculture as a value are built. And that is a serious problem. Diversity is seen as a threat unfortunately.

We go to school as a family and study there. It is unfortunate when we have hate speech content like in geography and sociology textbooks, which means that they offend certain communities in their country. When a young Albanian learns that Albanians come from another country, that is, content that offends them. Unfortunately, in recent years, the Ministry of Education and Science and the municipalities have been carrying out a situation when schools are divided into two buildings, for example in Struga when there is a wall between Albanians and Macedonians in the school so that there is no conflict. For the then minister, it was a short term solution.

Since 1991, I have been the first Albanian president of a high school union. And for that they say that Blendi wants to take our country. We need schools that unite us, not one that divides us. Multiculturalism in our country is reflected in more linguistics. Linguistics is our multicultural advantage.

The Minister would give a very nice example if she addressed the students in another language. For me, it is a treasure that I know my native Albanian and the main language of the country where I live.

We welcome the initiative of the Ministry of Education and Science, which has a complete strategy on how education should take place in our country. We are working with the alliance to have more focus groups to discuss strategy with students and what we can contribute to the strategy and educational reform. The MES should include more stakeholders in education policies. When designing a project you should consult with all stakeholders and the policies should be targeted to the requirements of the stakeholders. This can not be skipped because there will be reactions from stakeholders. It is important for us as an alliance to have the political will for reform. If you take the example of European countries, when discussing education reform, they always have a consensus on these things.

The political scene is led by stubbornness. If, for example, the minister brings a new good reform, and after 3 years the government changes, due to the stubbornness of the political parties, we will go back 10 steps.

We will not allow education to be played with. “When we look for something, we go to the end and achieve it.”