Teaching for Humanity in a Neoliberal World: Visions of
Education in Serbia
LAURA J. DULL
In Serbia, teachers and policy makers express different and sometimes competing visions
of education. Teachers express their desire to “awaken” students by using progressive
pedagogies, while European Union and World Bank reformers appropriate progressive
education in the service of neoliberal goals. The research findings presented here indicate
that many teachers also seek to help students become what they call “complete humans,”
not solely to “develop human capital” (a neoliberal goal). Teachers’ perspectives suggest
the continuation of Slavic ideas of humanism and reflect a desire to maintain an identity
distinct from others while achieving the modernity of Western Europe.
Since the fall of socialism and the end of the civil wars that tore apart Yugoslavia, educational change in Serbia has been linked with its transition to
liberal democracy and a market economy, both necessary for membership
in the European Union (EU). To these ends, the international institutions
that provide funding for Serbia’s reforms (the EU and, to a lesser extent,
the World Bank) promote progressive educational strategies in the service
of neoliberal goals to open markets and privatize public services. For example,
one EU project supports training in “modern teaching methods,” understood
as student-centered active learning, and “new curricula” to align education
with “the needs of the industry and the labour market” (EMG.RS News 2008).
In addition to nurturing flexible and creative workers, modern pedagogies
are promoted as crucial to developing citizens who respect the rule of law
and rights of others. Absent from these perspectives is John Dewey’s (1916a)
advocacy of broad learning for all youth to ensure their active participation
in an egalitarian democracy.
Progressive education is attractive to EU reformers because it can be
presented as a new and modern way for a country to move forward, but other
policy makers or educators might support these methods for different reasons, depending on the kinds of societies and citizens they seek to create.
Many of the Serbian teachers I have interviewed adopted progressive discourses to frame their practices and objectives and, like the EU and their
Received November 26, 2010; revised April 2, 2011, and July 18, 2011; accepted October 12, 2011;
electronically published April 13, 2012
Comparative Education Review, vol. 56, no. 3.
䉷 2012 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.
0010-4086/2012/5603-0007$10.00
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own national leaders, sought to build skills in problem solving and independent learning. However, these teachers did not explicitly link their work to
the labor market or increased national development. Instead, teachers spoke
of helping students to become “complete humans,” a concept distinct from
that of “developing human capital” and therefore counterhegemonic to the
neoliberal drive for profit making that underlies EU and World Bank reform
efforts in Serbia.
For this study, I conducted interviews to learn educators’ perspectives on
how and why to educate children. I then compared the educators’ visions
with those expressed in EU, World Bank, and Serbian government documents
to assess the ways in which teachers’ agendas differed from, or aligned with,
those espoused by national and international policy makers. My research
questions were, How do teachers describe their pedagogies? What are their
purposes and goals in teaching their subjects? In what ways are their visions
similar to and different from prevailing global and national discourses about
education? While studying the complex flow of hybridized discourses on
education in Serbia, I found that teachers did not feel that they were being
pressured to adopt “Western” ideas and pedagogies—in fact, progressive and
humanistic philosophies have a long-standing presence in the region (Fischer
2001; Sobe 2008). Rather, Serbian teachers’ visions of education appear to
be linked to their identities: at the same time that they aspire to the cultural
and economic development of Western Europeans, teachers work to maintain
a “Slavic humanism” that distinguishes Serbian people from the alienation
and materialism of citizens of more advanced nations (Sobe 2008, 76, 117).
I start this article by revealing how the EU and the World Bank link
educational reform in Serbia to neoliberal economic changes. Next, after
providing some historical and contemporary background on Serbia, I examine Serbian government discourses on education and connect them to
their past and present origins. Then I explain my interview methods and
describe the pedagogical visions articulated by Serbian teachers as they talked
about their work and objectives. In the discussion and conclusion, I reflect
on why teachers spoke as they did and what policy implications arise from
this study.
International and National Visions of Education
In the following two sections, I review policy statements and other documents that outline international and national visions of education for Serbia.
The first section illustrates how multilateral reformers argue for progressive
pedagogies as important for supporting democracy, open markets, and economic development in the formerly socialist region. The second section shows
how government’s educational goals draw upon progressive and humanistic
traditions, as well as EU and World Bank priorities, thus demonstrating the
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presence of diverse and sometimes “contrary currents” of educational thought
in Serbia (Schriewer 2004, 473).
The Intersection of Progressive Education and Neoliberalism in Global Discourses
Many scholars believe that during the past three decades, neoliberalism,
or the “ethos of the free market[,] has gradually colonized teaching and
learning” (McGregor 2009, 348; see also Girdwood 2007; Harris 2007). For
proponents of neoliberal ideas, market processes are more efficient service
providers than governments are—even “individual freedoms are guaranteed
by the freedom of the market and of trade” (Harvey 2005, 7; see also Martinez
and Garcia 1997; Robbins 1999). The liberalism of this view is related to
Adam Smith’s concept of an “invisible hand” guiding the market and society
toward prosperity, making government interventions into markets unnecessary and harmful. Neoliberal reformers therefore encourage introducing
“competition” in public services, which in the case of education will improve
the “quality” of schools and “raise the overall productivity and trainability of
the workforce” (World Bank 2011).
Neoliberal objectives to maintain stable and open environments for capital investment are articulated by the EU in this explanation for inclusion of
the Western Balkans and Turkey in the European Community: “Enlargement
is one of the EU’s most powerful policy tools. It serves the EU’s strategic
interests in security, stability, and conflict prevention. It has helped to increase
prosperity and growth opportunities and to secure vital transport and energy
routes” (CEC 2007, 2). In 2008, Serbia, like other prospective EU member
states, signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA 2008) in which
the EU countries agreed to support Serbia’s efforts to “strengthen democracy
and the rule of law,” “contribute to political, economic, and institutional
stability,” “complete the transition to a functioning market economy,” and
“gradually develop a free trade area between the Community and Serbia”
(10). For its part, Serbia agreed to conditions such as adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (11), ensuring the free movement of
goods (22), and “raising the level of general education and vocational education and training” (99). An evaluation in 2007 of Serbia’s attainment of
EU goals suggests the importance of education to economic growth: Serbia
had made “little progress” in increasing education’s “links with the labour
market” (CEC 2007, 49).
Policy makers of the EU (EMG.RS News 2008, 2009), the World Bank
(2002, 2009) and governmental and nongovernmental organizations (Rozandić 2000; Axmann 2004) characterize Serbian teaching pedagogies as “traditional” and promote the use of progressive pedagogies for their presumed
ability to produce self-directed workers and citizens committed to liberal
democracy. Writing for the United States Institute of Peace, Ruzica Rozandić
(2000) argued that Serbian teachers rely on “extremely traditional instruction
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methods, with the predominant form being ‘teaching by transmission’” (16).
That is, there is little or no dialogue in the classroom: teachers lecture and
students memorize the material. A World Bank (2002) project information
report describes Serbian curricula as “highly prescribed and dense” and pedagogy as “traditionally teacher-centered with little focus on student participation or critical analysis” (2). In contrast, progressive, or “modern,” pedagogies allow for active learning as students engage in real-life problems (World
Bank 2002, 5; EMG.RS News 2008; World Bank 2009, 5). For example, a World
Bank education project trained 30 teachers to “help students apply what they
learn to daily life” (2009, 4). Moreover, the goals of a workshop funded by
the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ, Germany’s
development agency) were to make vocational education “more practical,”
increase the “independence” of learners, and encourage “relevance” of
“teaching and learning materials” (Axmann 2004, 6). According to a principal
I interviewed for this study, the teachers at a Serbian high school for business
learned the progressive lessons of GTZ training: learning there was no longer
“passive,” because children were now being asked to “find solutions to some
problems on their own.”
The use of progressivism by neoliberal proponents is the most recent
example of the malleability of Dewey’s ideas to fit diverse ends (see, e.g.,
Cremin 1961).1 By connecting his pedagogies to democracy and progress,
moving “forward to even greater utilization of scientific method in the development of the possibilities of growing, expanding experience,” Dewey
provided reformers with language that seduces stakeholders with the promise
of modernity (1938, 89). It is important to remember, however, that Dewey’s
philosophy of education was part of a vision of radical democracy based on
social equality (see Dewey [1916b] 2008, 137–38). He opposed the separation
of vocational education from general education on the grounds that a sole
focus on the development of industrial skills would “surely accentuate all the
undemocratic tendencies in our present situation, by fostering and strengthening class divisions in school and out” (1913, 3). To move from “industrial
feudalism” to “industrial democracy,” students needed preparation for citizenship that included the study of “child labor, of the sanitary conditions
under which multitudes of men and women now labor, of the methods
employed in the struggle for economic supremacy, of the connections between industrial and political control, etc., and of the methods by which such
evils may best be remedied” (Dewey [1916b] 2008, 142).
In contrast to Dewey’s vision, the EU version of democracy aims primarily
at preventing violence within a diverse population and thus presents a more
limited vision of citizenship: the main role of citizens is to respect laws and
fulfill duties such as voting. Speaking of Serbian reforms, the EU education
1
Dewey himself criticized misinterpretations of progressive pedagogies, such as those that appeared
to be “a matter of planless improvisations” (1938, 28).
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commissioner Jan Figel notes that “education is one of the ways of creating
a tolerant society which is not just diverse but also respects the rights and
freedoms of all and establishes equal obligations and responsibilities”
(EMG.RS News 2009). Dewey would likely find the EU commissioner’s conception insufficiently democratic, especially in a neoliberal environment: “It
has been demonstrated that more is needed to secure freedom and equality
of conditions between individuals than to declare them legally all free and
equal, while leaving them to unrestricted competition with one another”
([1918] 1982, 139).
EU member states’ commitment to preparing workers for capitalist development and to socializing dutiful citizens constricts the focus of the educational reforms that the EU sponsors. Neoliberal visions of how society
should work create a “regime of truth” that normalizes certain discourses,
policies, and practices while suppressing or marginalizing others (Foucault
1980, 1995). As Dolores Byrnes explains, language “literally shap[es] the
contours of what is perceived, deemed of value, and studied” (2007, 135).
The values underlying the 17 educational projects listed on the Serbian Ministry of Education’s website (MOES 2009b), most of which have received
international funding, reflect the desire to improve vocational training, increase efficiency and decentralization, and secure social stability.2 Six antiviolence projects and one inclusive-education initiative are meant to foster
respect for marginalized people and reduce conflict among diverse groups;
four projects are aimed at improving vocational training (e.g., Ekonet 5
establishes virtual offices in business schools, some of which were used by
interviewees); three reform testing, standards, and information systems; two
are concerned with professional development and teaching (including “the
development of decentralized training” [MOES 2009e]); and one seeks to
“strengthen the capacities of local governments and local institutions in the
process of decentralization” (MOES 2009a). While these projects may be
useful for facilitating economic and political reforms, they are limited in their
vision for educating students: they neglect a strong emphasis on the humanities or on a critical democratic education, one that could possibly lay the
foundation for greater human respect and understanding. The absence of
these themes from Serbian reform efforts highlights the apparent incompatibility of Deweyan progressive education and neoliberal goals, which have
nevertheless become folded into each other in this global “policyscape” (Carney 2009).3
2
Ten of these projects are funded by the EU or EU nations, five by the World Bank’s Delivery of
Integrated Local Services funds, and one by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
One project (Integrated Educational Information System) had no description yet posted.
3
“Policyscapes” are “transnational in character and have at their core a particular constellation of
visions, values, and ideology” (Carney 2009, 79).
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Progressive, Neoliberal, and Humanistic “Currents” in Serbian Government Discourses
The Republic of Serbia, in southeastern Europe, is a country of about
7.3 million people. It is designated as politically “free” by Freedom House
(2010) and is placed at 67 (out of 182) on the Human Development Index
(UNDP 2009). In recent years, as state-owned companies have been privatized
or closed, fewer people in Serbia have been able to find work (Bayliss 2005;
Jovičić 2005), and at least 20 percent of the population is unemployed (Republic of Serbia 2010). Surveys of citizens in 2007 indicated that “disappointment and disillusionment” about the government and daily life had replaced
the “optimistic,” even “euphoric,” feelings reported in 2000, just after Milošević was forced out (Spasić 2008). Furthermore, a majority of citizens viewed
the country’s current living standards as worse than during longtime leader
Josip Broz Tito’s times (B92 News 2010).
After Tito’s partisan forces helped defeat the Germans in World War II,
he presided over the formation of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(SFRY), consisting of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro,
Serbia, and Slovenia. The Yugoslavian “road to socialism” was unique because
workers participated in decision making through socijalističko samoupravljanje
(socialist self-management). This practice was accompanied by an education
campaign aimed at developing “productive forces” and raising the new “country out of economic and cultural backwardness” (SFRY government official,
quoted in Bertsch and Persons 1980, 87). Yugoslavia was not as closed as its
neighbors. For example, SFRY citizens could travel abroad, shops were well
stocked, and restrictions on private enterprise, speech, and religion were less
rigid. The country “gradually became a bright spot amid the general grayness
of Eastern Europe” (Anderson 1980, A1),4 but it was heavily indebted, and
economic and political difficulties increased after Tito’s death on May 4,
1980.
The Yugoslavian civil wars began in 1991 and were fought mainly in the
countries that are now Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo (this
country is not recognized by Serbia). Slobodan Milošević, the president of
the Republic of Serbia at the time, was accused of fueling conflict to create
a “Greater Serbia” (Black 2002); Milošević himself described his actions as a
“struggle against terrorism” (BBC News 2002). In 1999, after Kosovo became
another secession battleground, Bill Clinton, then the US president, joined
with NATO to initiate a bombing campaign against Serbia (BBC News 1999a;
BBC News 1999b). Faced with Serbian citizens’ increasing hostility to his rule,
Milošević resigned in September 2000 and died in 2006 while on trial at the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Since then, the Serbian government has worked with the EU to establish
4
A recently published book addresses the tensions between the flourishing consumer culture and
Marxism; see Patrick Hyder Patterson, Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).
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new democratic and economic processes. Toward these ends, a statement
issued in 2001 by Serbia’s Ministry of Education and Sports envisioned Serbia
as a place where citizens are “oriented towards living together in a modern,
European, multiethnic society” (MOES 2001, 5). Significant here is the new
government’s striving to emulate Western European nations, which are both
admired and resented for their power and wealth. Many Serbs blame their
perceived history of victimization—including 400 years of Turkish occupation
and the 1999 bombing—for their position on the economic and social margins of Europe.5 Alexander Kiossev (2003) describes Balkan identity as a
“traumatic mirror-discourse” that responds to the stigmatizing gaze of Westerners “at times, with anger and aggression against the Significant Other; at
times, with failure and shame, even self-disgust.” Illustrating these tendencies,
a Serbian teacher expressed these feelings: “That relationship with Europe
is negative toward the Balkans and makes us feel bad. . . . They see us as
barbarians and actually it was vice versa: at the time when the Balkans was a
state . . . they [Western Europeans] were barbarians.”
The contrast with the West is not linked only to historical grievances.
During the 1920s and 1930s, “Slavicness” was cultivated to unite the diverse
peoples living in the region known as Yugoslavia. This complex of ideas and
sentiments was based on the Enlightenment thinking of Dositej Obradović,
an eighteenth-century intellectual who is remembered for writing literature
in the language of “the Serbian people” (Fischer 2001, 72). Through Obradović, people’s “aptitude for sociability” became a universal ideal and, in
consequence, “the creation of Slavic belonging meant that one simultaneously
belonged to humanity” (Sobe 2008, 120). In a book published in 1934, “Slavic
humanism” was contrasted with the practicality ascribed to “self-estranged
Anglo-Saxon America” (quoted in Sobe 2008, 117). Serbs continue to nurture
the idea of a distinctive national duša (soul) and dedication to gostoprimtsvo
(hospitality) that differentiate them from materialistic, stressed-out, and alienated Westerners (Shriewer 2004, 521).
This history complicates the idea that nations are converging in the assumption of certain standardized values, structures, and practices because of
the actions or pressures of powerful global actors (see, e.g., Inkeles and Sirowy
1983; Berman 1984). Rather, historical and “civilizational backgrounds”
(Shriewer 2004, 492), individual agency and identities, and other factors have
mediated the transfer of policies and ideas, creating “hybrids” that are open
to revision at all times. Renato Rosaldo (1995) explains hybridity “as the
ongoing condition of all human cultures, which contain no zones of purity
because they undergo continuous processes of transculturation (two-way bor5
See Wayne Vucinich (1962) for the argument of the Turkish underdevelopment of Serbia,
which is a long-standing historical narrative (e.g., Greenawalt 2001; Vukomanović 2008; Stojanović
2009; Tanner 2010). Not long ago, the Turkish minister of education asked Balkan countries to “alter
. . . negative portrayal of the Ottomans” in school materials (Hamidi 2010). Michael Palairet (1997)
disputes the thesis of the Ottoman underdevelopment of Serbia.
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rowing and lending between cultures)” (xv). As a result, ideas can be categorized in different ways, depending on how they are viewed at a particular
moment and which groups are taking these positions: “Differently positioned
subjects . . . could apply the label traditional and modern to the same objects
but for quite different reasons” (xvi).6 Jürgen Schriewer (2004) provides a
way to think about the “present world” that accounts for the complexity of
educational borrowing and lending: our world, he states, is “an interweaving
of contrary currents—of ‘internationalization’ and ‘indigenization,’ global
diffusion processes and culture-specific reception processes, and of the global
spread of standardised models and the persistence of diverse sociocultural
configurations” (473).
Diverse currents of educational thought and social goals are woven into
the educational objectives of Serbia’s Ministry of Education and Science.7
Some reflect the desire to attract investment and secure EU membership by
creating a stable social environment with a well-trained workforce, as in the
aim to develop “responsible” citizens who are “capable of living in a democratic and humane society based on the respect of human and civil rights,
[the] right to be different and care for others, as well as the basic principles
of justice, truth, freedom, honesty, and personal responsibility” (MOES
2009d). Invoking neoliberal discourse, the ministry explains that reforms will
“creat[e] conditions for the quality education of all children, in an efficient
system that is adapted to the interests of children and youths, and where
competences are gained that make our students competitive on the global
market of knowledge” so as better to face “upcoming economic and social
challenges” (MOES 2009b). The objectives also include progressive and humanistic perspectives: goals to “enable persons to learn independently, engage
in lifelong learning, and take part in international educational and professional activities” and “develop creative abilities, foster creativeness and esthetic
[sic] perception and good taste” (MOES 2009d) are to be achieved through
a “child- and pupil-oriented education” that is “in keeping with the needs
and interests” of learners (MOES 2009c).
These progressive aims reflect ideas that have been present in Serbia for
some time. Dewey’s writings were first published in the Serbo-Croatian language in 1918. Dewey’s philosophy, associated with already-existing beliefs
that school should be based in “real life,” inspired various initiatives in the
region. According to Noah Sobe (2005), between World War I and World
6
Yugoslavia in the 1920s and 1930s provides an example of this phenomenon. At the time, progressive education was desirable in part because it was viewed as a “modern” practice from an admired
culture (Sobe 2008, 74)—that is, it was “American,” not German. But here again the origins are complicated: according to William J. Reese (2001), “Child-centered education [was] born in an age of
romance and revolution, in the rich soil of human imagination” during the European Enlightenment,
and spread to the United States during the nineteenth century (23).
7
The Ministry of Education and Sports was renamed the Ministry of Education and Science (Ministarstvo Prosvete i Nauka) as part of recent restructuring.
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War II, Dewey’s concepts of active learning were “balkanized” (136), that is,
incorporated into Yugoslavian conceptions about education and modernity,
as part of a rejection of German pedagogies (138). Yugoslavs’ creation of
their Slavic world became “one of the means through which ‘global’ best
practices were disseminated and spread in the 1920s and 1930s” (Sobe 2008,
123). Today, foreign donors and lenders sustain the flow of progressive ideas,
albeit linked to capitalist development, in professional development meetings
(see, e.g., Axmann 2004; Fifth South-East European Workshop 2010), while
teachers learn about Dewey in education courses and textbooks.8
As noted previously, humanist ideas are also not foreign to educators
in Serbia. During the late 1700s, Obradović became the first minister of
education and is remembered for spreading humanistic, Enlightenment
ideals about the possibility of human progress through rational thought.9
Socialist educators also stressed the importance of a high level of study
in the academic disciplines (Ljubomir 1966; Cenić and Petrović 2005,
257). Today, students in both general studies and vocational programs
take required courses in the liberal arts—philosophy, history, geography,
literature, arts, and languages, as well as math and sciences.10 For Martha
Nussbaum (2010), a commitment to humanistic study is commendable.
In her view, “education for profit” that puts a narrow emphasis on the
study of technology and applied sciences as vital for economic growth
is a threat to democracy itself. If young people do not study the humanities, arts, and the “humanistic aspects of the sciences and social
sciences” (2), they will become “generations of useful machines, rather
than citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements” (2).
In Serbian state discourses, the humanistic and progressive traditions to
which Nussbaum (2010) alludes are intertwined with neoliberal values. I now
turn to the teaching frameworks and philosophies of Serbian educators and
how they compare and contrast with those of national and international policy
8
For example, a history-of-education textbook includes sections on pedagoška progresivizam (progressive pedagogies) and pedagoška pragmatizam (pragmatic pedagogies), which are differentiated from
tradicionalne, diktatorskim metodama (traditional and authoritarian methods). While progressive education
is presented as helping people solve social problems, the textbook’s authors do not mention Dewey’s
interest in preparing children for democratic citizenship (Cenić and Petrović 2005, 237–44).
9
Obradović has been popularized as a hero of all Serbs, but he was writing for elites, urging them
to become literate to catch up with “more fortunate nations” (quoted in Fischer 2001, 74). Vuk Karadžić,
a nineteenth-century intellectual, standardized the language and published Serbian folklore to bring
to light the culture of a region viewed as uncivilized (Berend 2003, 52–55, 83–86).
10
In 1958, the vice president of Yugoslavia’s Executive Council envisioned “a society in which all
roads [are] open to the worker for a better, finer, and more cultured life” (quoted in Bertsch and
Persons 1980, 87). Being kulturni (cultured) is based on behavior and appearance as well as education
(Bringa 1995, 58–60). For example, as part of the socialist effort to eradicate religious and ethnic
divisions, “Muslimness” was presented as “belong[ing] to the past” and “need[ing] to be modernized
or changed through education.” Muslim children were teased by Catholic schoolmates as seljaci (villagers,
but in a derogative sense) when they did not speak proper Serbian (Bringa 1995, 77).
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makers. I address these questions after explaining my interview methods and
data analysis.
Interview Methods
During a four-month stay in Serbia in 2007, I conducted interviews with
20 teachers in the southern Serbian cities of Vranje and Niš in order to
discover whether or not—and, if so, how—nationally and globally disseminated ideas, such as neoliberalism and progressive education, inform teachers’ thinking. I conducted six of the interviews in English, and I used two
interpreters (an English teacher and a university student of English) to clarify
questions and answers during the other 14 interviews because my Serbianlanguage skills were at the beginning-intermediate level.11 Both interpreters,
as well as a librarian and another English teacher, helped me recruit interviewees by explaining the research questions and interview process. I had
met the interpreter–English teacher when I worked at a summer exchange
program for southeast European students and teachers, and I had become
acquainted with the librarian, the other English teacher, and the university
student at the American Corner, a cultural center, in Vranje. At the beginning,
my questions focused on learning how teachers spoke about their teaching
objectives, because my intention was to compare their responses to the views
of US teachers. After I started conducting the interviews, however, my research
questions changed as I began to wonder about the sources of teachers’ philosophies and how they compared with the goals articulated by multilateral
and national policy makers.
For the interviews, I selected teachers of different subjects and from
different school settings in order to achieve “maximum variation sampling”
aimed at “capturing and describing the central themes that cut across a great
deal of variation” (Patton 2002, 234–35). The teachers whom I interviewed
included 6 from middle schools (grades 6–9); 10 from vocational high schools
that taught business and economics, law, agriculture, hairdressing, firefighting, and technology; and 4 from gymnasia that taught general studies in the
liberal arts and sciences.
To gather perspectives across disciplines, I spoke with 20 teachers from
the following subject areas: languages (2 in Serbian, 1 in Russian, 2 in English
language and literature); social sciences and humanities (3 in history, 1 in
philosophy, 1 in civics); sciences and mathematics (2 in math, 1 in biology,
1 in physics, 1 in chemistry); and practice-oriented courses (2 in business
and economics, 1 in law, 1 in physical education, 1 in art). Of the interviewees,
11
About half of the participants were colleagues of the English teacher who served as an interpreter
and were either of the same generation as or older than she. The English teacher had never supervised
these colleagues, so those who agreed to be interviewed did so without any sense of obligation to her
or to a particular viewpoint. Teachers were not compensated and were told that they could review the
tapes and transcripts at any time.
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7 men and 13 women agreed to tape-recorded interviews, each of which
lasted 45 to 75 minutes. Interviews were conducted in classrooms, homes,
libraries, and cafés.
At the start of each interview, I asked participants to explain the number
of years they had worked as a teacher, the subjects and grades they taught,
where they studied, and how they became a teacher. I then asked the following
questions, with additional follow-up questions as needed to clarify statements
or gather further information:
1. Would you describe one of your classes or lessons: the students, routines,
content, activities?
2. What (about the subject, life, skills, and so on) do you think or hope
students learn in your classes? What academic, social, and other objectives are you trying to achieve in your lessons? How do you teach
these things?
3. Are you satisfied with your teaching? What would you change if you
had the means?
So as not to lead teachers into speaking about any particular ideas, the
interview questions were intentionally broad.
Data Analysis
I began the interviews with no clear conceptions about what the teachers
would say in response to my questions; the categories of humanism, progressivism, and neoliberalism arose during analysis of interview transcripts
and policy documents. Generally, responses to the first and second parts of
the interview helped reveal the teachers’ goals and philosophies as well as
the pedagogies they claimed to use. For the third set of questions, teachers
spoke broadly about issues that concerned them—their teaching practices
first, but also curricula, school resources and environment, students, colleagues, parents, and reform ideas.
Since “data do not stand alone,” my analysis of the interviews was “at
once inductive and deductive” (Emerson et al. 1995, 144). To interpret responses to the questions about the teacher’ practices and objectives, I read
through the interview transcripts to learn what discourses participants invoked
as they discussed how they teach, why their subject is important, and what
kinds of citizens and society they envision. I then began to categorize the
responses based on the language and concepts used.
Many teachers appeared to draw from progressive education, broadly
defined, to characterize their practices and/or goals. To test this, I examined
the context of ideas or phrases usually associated with progressive education:
“practical learning”; “relevant” topics or “connections” to students’ interests
and experiences; “active” learning, as in workshops or labs, not “rote” memComparative Education Review
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orization; and “problem solving” (during daily challenges).12 The rest of the
teachers’ pedagogies and objectives were related to humanist teaching. This
stance was apparent when teachers spoke of developing youth into “complete
humans,” encouraging a love of learning, implementing Socratic seminars,
and cultivating qualities such as rationality and beauty. After characterizing
the teachers’ perspectives on how and why they teach, I considered the ways
in which the teachers’ goals reflected, extended, and differed from those of
international and national policy makers.
Serbian Teachers’ Perspectives
With an understanding of the teaching frameworks and philosophies
articulated in policies that guide Serbia’s transition to a market economy and
democratic government, I now consider teachers’ visions of education. In
the first section below, I present examples from the teacher interviews to
illustrate the ways in which progressive education has become “balkanized”
(Sobe 2005), that is, incorporated into teachers’ conceptions of teaching and
learning. In the second section, I show how teachers stressed that they were
“teaching for humanity,” as opposed to teaching for Serbian national development. Throughout, I note the ways in which educators’ visions were related
to those of global and national policy makers.
“Balkanization”: Teachers Speak of Progressive Education
Of the 20 teachers I interviewed, 15 expressed an awareness of John
Dewey by drawing on his famed contrast between traditional education and
modern education. This number includes 9 teachers who also claimed to be
traditional teachers and framed this position in progressive terms. As in Serbia’s national objectives, teachers drew from multiple philosophies (progressive, traditional, and/or humanistic) to describe their teaching practices
and goals.
Many teachers insisted that they tried to be different from the eks katedra
(ex cathedra, or lecturing) method of teachers in the past and spoke of using
“active” learning in order to “provoke” and “awaken students.” As a Serbianlanguage teacher put it, she wanted students to be excited about coming to
her class: “Jao, imamo čas!” (Wow, we have class!). A teacher who taught
business in a simulated office started our discussion by noting that his subject
“can’t be done that way [lecturing]” because business is based on hands-on
work. Alluding to a Deweyan concept, he characterized his role as that of a
facilitator, helping pupils to “come to the conclusion on their own”: “That
is, a kind of labyrinth and the exit is known only to [me], so [I’m] there to
guide them.” Another teacher argued that present teaching is “innovative”
12
No teacher discussed problem solving in the Freirian sense of asking students to name their
own problems (Freire [1970] 1997).
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and evoked imagery used to caricature traditional teaching to describe his
experiences: “When we were in school . . . the teacher [was] only standing
in front of the board, usually with a stick, because that was used to beat them
[students]. And it was unimaginable to use maps, globes, or something like
that.”
Teachers who described themselves as “traditional” made implicit comparisons with “modern” teaching in their efforts to explain their pedagogies.
For many, the state’s learning plans are “too wide” to allow for in-depth study,
making student-centered learning difficult, if not impossible. For others, lectures are necessary for mastering knowledge tested in high school and university entrance exams. A Russian-language teacher portrayed herself as a
klasićan profesor (a traditional teacher, relying primarily on lecturing) because
it helped “make a good foundation.” While his simulated office space requires
hands-on learning, the business teacher provided an extensive explanation
of why it is sometimes necessary to lecture: “So it all depends on the subject.
Some fields have to be done through ex cathedra. There is no other way.
And also it depends on the students’ knowledge. How much they understand,
are there things that are not clear to them, so that you have to do those
things again . . . so sometimes [I] have to [lecture] because of the previous
education of the students.”
In articulating their teaching goals, over half (12) of the teachers said
that they want students to be able to apply their subjects in their daily lives
and in the future. That is, the teachers used their curricula to enhance
students’ independence and abilities to solve problems on their own. Of the
10 teachers of science, math, and practice-oriented courses (biology, chemistry, physics, math, law, business, and art), 7 espoused these ideas, but 5
teachers of social sciences and humanities (civics and language) also spoke
of these objectives. For example, a Serbian-language and literature teacher
concentrated on themes that are “not far from them [students]” so that her
students could learn to make good choices. A teacher of law explained that
she wants students “to learn how to learn and be able to find solutions to
different situations.” One of the math teachers argued that the “point” of
math is “how to find, how to solve the problem the fastest and easiest.” In
line with Deweyan philosophy, he uses real-life examples to motivate students
to learn math. The art teacher explained that art is important to making
daily decisions—even the “simplest man [sic] must know” about colors and
design when choosing clothes or planning the layout of a home. His perspective was related to practical uses of art, as when people build or renovate
their own homes (as is common in Vranje).
Teachers’ interests in enhancing students’ independence and problemsolving skills align with EU objectives and national goals for education. Moreover, although none of these teachers explicitly linked individual development to national economic growth, the lessons of the business teachers and
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the law teacher prepared students for work in a capitalist system. As one of
the business teachers explained, he wants to train his students for the “real
world” by giving them practice in resolving actual dilemmas faced by businesses. Progressive pedagogies, such as role playing and simulations, helped
students learn to take their “own initiative.” Students in commercial law classes
learned about stock markets and solved problems in groups to practice “teamwork.”
Also like the EU and national frameworks, most of the teachers did not
extend their references to progressive pedagogy beyond its “practical” or
“relevant” aspects to argue for a deep immersion of students in communal
decision making and social activism as Dewey did. Four teachers linked personal growth to social and political change in ways that concur with statements
from the Ministry of Education (MOES 2009d) and the EU commissioner
(EMG.RS News 2009) about living in a tolerant and peaceful society. For
example, the philosophy teacher encouraged students to be “tolerant” of
others’ opinions through Socratic questioning. A history teacher taught about
freedom struggles in the hope that his sons and “also . . . all the children of
the world” would “have no wars . . . [and] live peacefully.”13 Several teachers
spoke about the moral development of their students, presenting themselves
or historical figures such as inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla as models of
honest and responsible behavior.
The philosophy teacher hinted at more radical outcomes for her teaching,
hoping that her students would “never strive only for individual benefits but
also for universal benefits.” After I asked her if any philosophers supported
this idea, she mentioned “pragmatists in America” including John Dewey and
William James—but she did not expand on her meaning beyond noting that
James was more interested in “individual benefits.” One business and economics teacher said that “everything is economic”—that economics is not
only essential to understanding other academic subjects but also helps citizens
understand the news and be alert to deception. At the beginning of every
class, she and her students used economics to analyze what was happening
in politics and around the world. One civics teacher modeled “how to organize local actions” by conducting a community survey about cultural development with her students, because “our country already has problems with
democracy.” These two came closest to enacting activist versions of citizenship
as envisioned by Dewey, with the economics teacher applying economic analysis to current issues, and the civics teacher encouraging students to study
local conditions by engaging in communal actions.
13
However, this teacher’s representation of history evoked a narrative that reinforced Serbian
exceptionality, potentially fueling intolerance: “In the fourteenth-century, Serbs were the first one in
all of Europe who wanted to fight against Turks. The first one, nobody else in Europe, but the Serbs.”
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Counterhegemonic Visions: Teaching for Humanity
Of the 20 teachers, 12 invoked perspectives distinct from the neoliberal
focus on schooling for economic development. These teachers argued that
study of their respective disciplines is fundamental to making students human
in the sense of nurturing both a love of learning and a cultured life. While
7 of these teachers were in the social sciences and humanities (3 in language
and literature, 2 in history, 1 in philosophy, and 1 civics), 5 were teachers of
math, business and economics, science, and physical education. Those who
did not articulate this perspective included both the English teachers; the
law, physics, and art teachers; and one each of the history, business, and math
teachers.
In describing why she taught, one history teacher emphasized that without
history, “you are not a complete human, you are not a [hu]man at all.”
Another stated, “History is a teacher of life,” and expressed a desire to teach
students to be good, ethical people who have a “sense of beauty.” One biology
teacher argued that biology is important because it teaches us about our
origins: “No one should run away from their origins.” The philosophy teacher
asked her students about the meaning of life, eternity, and other human
concerns so that they could learn to “think about life on a higher level.” She
wanted her students to become “better human beings” who are “rational,”
not “materialistic.” “Questions, questions, questions” characterized her Socratic methodology: “I usually pose questions and then provoke them. Every
question provokes many different opinions and new questions.” An English
teacher spoke about how “school is not only about facts and ideas, but it’s
about learning life” as well. A literature teacher argued that while her subject
was not directly related to her students’ future careers (hairdressing), she
hoped to teach them a “love for literature” so that they might read books
and pass that love on to their children. The physical education teacher also
framed his work as fostering fuller and happier physical and mental lives for
his students: “They [students] must do something about their health not just
mind [sic], and the mind will be [healthy] when the body is [healthy].”
Like Nussbaum (2010), six of the teachers acknowledged the importance
of a broad education by connecting their subjects to other disciplines: “Besides learning Russian, they are learning science, art, literature, psychology,
everyday life”; the study of history includes learning about the “great successes
in every field [science, technology, literature, and the arts].” One history
teacher implied that the limited focus of the national education plan prevented the cultivation of empathy: “If we had learned more cultural history,
maybe we would have done things differently [referring to recent wars].”
Instead, the emphasis on “political” history increases “hatred, nationalism,
racism, chauvinism,” and “that’s why we [humans] hate.” The civics class’s
community survey questions collected information about knowledge that people gained through study of the humanities, such as knowledge of the abstract
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artist Wassily Kandinsky, the Delphic Temple, the origins of Buddhism, and
the playwright Eugène Ionesco.
Just as national policy makers had done, several teachers invoked objectives on which humanists, progressives, and neoliberals would all agree. For
example, the Russian teacher sought to nurture students’ creativity when
drilling them in language: “[I] don’t allow them to repeat the same sentences
but to implement their own, to be creative.” Besides learning content, the
chemistry teacher strove to teach students “to think on their own, to make
conclusions on their own.” But, this was difficult, as students’ increasing
interest in monetary gain was undermining respect for learning: “They see
that knowledge is not appreciated enough here [in Serbia] as it should be.
. . . When they see a kind of mafia, that [the mafia] are living much better
than those who studied, who suffered, and [who are] not paid enough for
that, so [the students] look more to [the rich], they’re important to them
because they have money.” Ultimately, what distinguished teachers’ perspectives from those of EU and World Bank policy makers is the teachers’ contentions that education is important simply for becoming human and cultured.
Toward Humanistic Development
Serbian teachers drew from diverse global discourses to explain their
practices and visions of education. Their awareness of progressive education
might indicate that contemporary reform efforts, driven by the transition to
the EU, have succeeded in spreading what Iveta Silova (2004) calls “newly
‘borrowed’ ideas” and “Western” discourses in the former Communist bloc
(75). Perhaps teachers made sure to mention these theories to position themselves as cutting-edge to me, an American professor of education. Progressive
education was not, however, viewed as a Western imposition by the teachers
I met, and it has become “balkanized” in Serbia through the work of local
scholars, national policies, and teacher training, as well as internationally
funded projects.
Our conversations alluded not to a form of intellectual colonization but,
rather, to a transnational “field” of ideas (Shiotani 2010) that are historically
familiar to Serbian teachers and are understood in the context of these
educators’ work and identities. Serbian teachers developed a “plotline” that
put traditional education in conflict with progressive education, usually framing traditional education negatively.14 Teachers’ use of the traditional-versusprogressive binary to explain their pedagogical ambitions, as well as their
frustrations with testing and state curricula, attests to the “internationality of
the progressive education reform movement” (Schriewer and Martinez 2004,
14
“Every interview contains within it a guide to the plotlines and symbolic structures of the interviewee’s most important communities” (Cándida Smith 2002, 717).
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45) and its appeal as an agent of modernization. But Dewey’s pedagogies do
not make sense unless they are connected to active and critical civic participation—a connection that was rare in the interviews and in national reform
policies.
The teachers who viewed education as leading to human development,
as opposed to a narrower notion of worker or economic development, articulated purposes for schooling that counter goals underlying the policies
of the EU and the World Bank. Their perspectives may reflect the reality that
for many in Serbia individual mobility often depends more on who you know
than on your academic skills and achievements (Lazić and Cvejić 2006). It
is likely that some teachers had experience with this tendency, as many hoped
to work in their fields of study but could not find jobs, so they turned to
teaching. In fact, teachers’ deep immersion in their fields likely engendered
a strong disciplinary orientation within their classrooms.15 In addition, the
teachers had received all or most of their precollege education during Yugoslavian times, in which educating the whole person, for a cultured life as well
as for work, was a priority (Ljubomir 1966; Bertsch and Persons 1980).
One of the “social tensions” (Cándida Smith 2002, 717) expressed in
teachers’ narratives was a sense of shame that Serbia has fallen behind other
nations that are believed to have modern facilities that support student-centered learning. In describing what they would change in their work, 10 teachers spoke about their desire to use computers, films, and maps to facilitate
“visual learning.” One teacher blamed socialism for Serbia’s underdevelopment in relation to Western Europeans: “When I was in university, that [Marxism] was the theory we studied, but I’m against that because it’s, it cannot
be done. . . . Every country that tried to implement that [Marxism] finished
like we did.” Participants also expressed concern about cultural underdevelopment: after their community survey, the civics students concluded that
Vranjanci (citizens of Vranje) are “uncultured,” that is, lacking broad knowledge of the arts and humanities. A history teacher wished for more support
of cultural institutions, but said this was unlikely because “we don’t appreciate
our past.”
While teachers did not explicitly state that they taught in order to make
their country wealthier, progressive pedagogies and humanist ideals are symbolic of the economic and cultural development toward which teachers aspire.
In 1920, a Yugoslav education official admired Czechoslovakia as “the most
advanced of all the Slavic countries” (quoted in Sobe 2008, 11), and teachers
traveled there to view its “new” pedagogies. Alongside this longing for modernity, these people’s travels affirmed a “vernacular cosmopolitanism” that
15
University applicants must choose the field they wish to study in order to take the appropriate
exams for admission to that particular program. That is, they must decide upon their specialization
before they can begin university-level work. Courses are concentrated in that field of study, and students
take few electives outside their discipline. Of the 20 interviewees, 13 had unsuccessfully pursued work
in their chosen fields (e.g., in law or science) before pursuing certification as teachers.
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valued education and hospitality as representing the Slavic spirit or soul (Sobe
2008, 37–38, 60). Today, Serbian people look to “Europe” (and the United
States) for models of advanced schools and practices.16 At the same time, a
unique identity is nurtured by contemporary exchanges with foreign students
and teachers: one of the math teachers noted that German teachers who
came to his school were struck by the close friendship among Serbian students—something that “cold” (hladni) Germans allegedly do not have. By
making students into complete humans, the Serbian teachers tried to sustain
a Slavic humanism that could shield Serbs from the alienation associated
with more advanced countries.
EU reformers urge Serbian policy makers to orient education toward the
needs of the labor market. However, with rapid changes in technology and
the constant striving of corporations for cheaper labor, it seems impossible
to predict these needs—a point Dewey (1914) made in critiquing specialized
vocational training. In addition, the focus on aligning education with the
demands of industry disregards the importance of workers in continually
transforming society and workplaces (Dewey 1913; [1916b] 2008). In the
past, socialist reformers also tried to bring the Yugoslavian education system
“into closer accord with the needs” of a rapidly industrializing economy (Ljubomir 1966, 185). These reforms were done with the understanding that
“man [sic] is not only a producer but also a manager” (Ljubomir 1966, 181).
While flawed in its implementation (Allcock 2000, 241, 426; Zabić 2010),
socialist self-management at least acknowledged workers as “an integral part
of a self-managing society” (Dewey [1916b] 2008, 141).
Teachers’ humanist perspectives illustrate the limits of EU and World
Bank efforts to push reforms linked to certain economic and political benefits
viewed as unlikely to occur or as very difficult to achieve. Many Serbian people
want to live in an economically advanced and democratic society (Spasić
2008), but perhaps they recognize that developing their country requires
more substantive changes, such as decreasing the corruption and nepotism
that stifles the dreams of many (see, e.g., B92 News 2011; see also Sobe 2009,
130). Noting that it is not surprising that public policies “end up reproducing
structural and personal forms of domination,” Byrnes (2006) asks how can
we create policies that do “not intentionally manipulate and dominate citizens
through large-scale social fantasy” (71, 76). The (mis)uses of progressive
educational discourses in neoliberal policy initiatives are potential points of
entry for examining the constructions of this fantasy. This contradictory space
is one in which enfolded and hybridized notions of economic, progressive,
and humanistic aims might be explored in order to advocate for policy mak16
In 2007, I served on a panel to interview Serbian candidates for a year of study at US universities.
Almost every student cited access to instruction and facilities that encourage “practical application”—
e.g., the opportunitiy to work in labs and solve problems in groups—when asked why they wanted to
study in the United States.
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ing that allows for “awareness of the persistent emergence of counter hegemonic discourses and practices” (Byrnes 2006, 77). Educational reform in
Serbia that includes the visions of diverse stakeholders, not just those seeking
new markets, would represent educators’ aspirations for humanistic development and Dewey’s goals for democracy: to raise good humans, to train
skilled workers for dignified and transformative labor, and to cultivate citizens
who guard against the inequalities and injustices that constantly threaten
democracy.
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