Historians and civil society seek to exclude integrated history from education

Several hundreds of persons, along with scientists, teachers, parents, pupils, representatives of democratic political parties and nongovernmental organizations, cultural and scientific associations, blamed Thursday November 9, during a protest meeting, the actions of the communist government aimed to resovietize the education by introducing the integrated History textbooks. Head of the Historians’ Association in Moldova (AIM), Gheorghe Paladi, stated that by introducing the Stalinist falsehoods in education the national conscience is endangered, national values are besmirched, and the future generations are condemned to spiritual poverty. “We do not want the future generations to study a false history that promotes spiritual separatism, a fallacious history imposed by the communist government”, Paladi said. Writer and publicist Nicolae Dabija asserts that those who issued the integrated history textbooks must be held criminally answerable, because they spent the people’s money in order to render it stupid, to annihilate the national values and national history. Dabija says that, though the issuing of this textbook costs about 1.6 mln lei, they must be annihilated as being noxious for children. Only 2-3 copies can be kept for “a future museum of nonsense”. University professor Pavel Parasca suggested the governors to transport these textbooks to the cardboard factory to make toilet paper out of them. “Do not let communists to kill our conscience”, says the appeal of Doina Moldovan, a pupil of “Vasile Alecsandri” Lyceum, while one of her colleagues, Natalia Pantea, asked herself why the minister of Education and Youth Victor Tvircun, who stated at the “shameful” meeting, held on November 7, that “he is always close to the people”, does not attend this particular meeting. Over 2,000 members of AIM assert that the integrated History textbooks, worked out at governors’ order, reflect an anti-Romanian doctrine that is anti-scientific, anti-democratic and anti-European. Moreover, the textbooks, especially of IX form, suffer deficiencies generated by the state’s official ideology, imposed by the ruling party and contain praise to the soviet period and its leaders, the Moldova’s declaration of independence being completely forgotten and ignored. The participants in the meeting assert they will fight further for the integrated History’s exclusion from education. The reduced number of participants, about 500 people, was explained by the speakers through an order of the Ministry of Education and Youth, by which the teachers and pupils are not allowed to participate in this protest meeting.