Bosnia has fallen into ethnocracy trap with regard to education

Preliminary results of GATED project related to the first phase of the project which was focused on textbook analysis show that Bosnia has fallen into ethnicity trap with regard to education. The field of education, the curriculum in particular, is guided by complicated ethnically driven textbook politics where inconsistencies in reporting of historical events, omissions and in some cases extreme acts of ‘othering’ are common place. Parallel to this political complexity are student protests against segregation. The protests were initiated by students of secondary vocational school in Jajce in 2016 when they peacefully marched again segregation and were supported by OSCE Ambassador Jonathan Moore.  They continued through 2016 and 2017. On June 20^th 2017 150 supporters from several towns (Travnik, Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica) joined students from Jajce in front of government building in Central Bosnian Canton. The banners used stated ‘Segregation is a bad investment!’ and ‘We are here to create the future not to repeat the past!’. In addition they have launched new initiative Nova Skola (New School) in order to further fight against segregation.