Area Handbook for Albania Part 10

According to the article, the most dangerous antisocial phenomenon in the social life of the country was patriarchalism. This phenomenon was particularly strong in the mountainous north where it was firmly entrenched and involved people from rank-and-file villagers to Party members.

The basic difficulty derived from the fact that the local Communist leaders entertained patriarchal notions about the Party; they considered the Party organization as one in which they found a reincarnation of the clan. There was a tendency therefore for the Communists to admit to the Party organization people from their own _bajrak_, or clan, in order to have a dominant position in, and exercise command over, such socialist organizations as agricultural collectives. In a Party organization the head of one _bajrak_ was put in command so that he could rule over the other, just as if he were the head of the clan. As in the old clan society, quarrels often occurred in basic Party Organizations when one _bajraktar_ attempted to wrest control of the organization from another.

Entrance into the Party was considered by the patriarchal-minded highlanders as penetration into places where they could enjoy privileges and prestige. A similar situation prevailed in the agricultural collectives, in which the presidents of the collectives, imbued with the traditional idea of chieftains.h.i.+p, behaved toward the property of the collectives as if it were their own. The problems of the collectives were not submitted to either the basic Party organizations or to the general a.s.sembly of the collective. According to official criticism, everything was settled in the "clan style, in the spirit of family interest, of the clan, of the ent.i.ty, precisely because they formed a family within which defense and support of their interests, right or wrong, had become the rule."

Enver Hoxha stated in a speech in 1968 that the position of the secretary of the Party organization or of an agricultural collective was considered in many areas as inheritable, just as the chieftains.h.i.+p in the tribal society has been inherited. The difficulties faced by the regime's attempts to eradicate the persistent patriarchal notions were succinctly phrased by Hoxha in his address to the Democratic Front Congress in September 1967. Declaring that the social problems in the country were complex in the towns and more so in the countryside, he lamented the fact that the rural areas:

have their own written and especially unwritten laws, which are often expressed in various regressive and harmful customs, in norms that are alien to our Communist morals.

These are very dangerous and obstinate; they insistently resist the new and are liquidated with difficulty. These customs and norms have their own economic, ideological, religious, and ethical basis; they have their own cla.s.s roots from capitalism to feudalism, indeed from the _bajrak_ and the tribe.

In an obvious effort to root out some of the old prevailing customs and traditions, the Party inaugurated in 1967 a movement aimed at revolutionizing the family and, in Party jargon, liberating it from the remnants of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. The targets have been directed toward the youth, both boys and girls. In resolutions adopted by the Party's Central Committee it was charged that in some families, because of the conservative and patriarchal mentality of the parents, the children were still not allowed to partic.i.p.ate in parental conversations, especially the girls, on the pretext that they were too young and immature.

Discussions on morals, such as relations between boys and girls, love, and the creation of a socialist family, were particularly limited. It was the parents' view that they should not discuss such things with their children since this would undermine the traditional respect and authority of the parents. As stated in the January 30, 1970, issue of _Zeri i Popullit_, the need to strengthen the struggle against alien concepts that still plagued families became clearer when one considered some negative concepts that were evident in young people. Families of intellectuals were particularly singled out for criticism because, according to the Party journal, they manifested liberal att.i.tudes in their attempts to satisfy every petty bourgeois craving and desire of their children; they instilled in them their own intellectual tendencies and fed and dressed them beyond their means.

Evidence of the Party's failure to detach the people completely from their traditional habits and customs was forcefully presented by the Party in a book published in 1968 under the t.i.tle _Party Basic Organizations for Further Revolutionizing the Life of the Country_. It was freely admitted that much remained to be done in the struggle to emanc.i.p.ate the women and to draw boys and girls from the tutelage of their parents.

When the wife of a Party member decided to join the Party, for example, her husband addressed a note to the secretary of the basic Party organization saying that should the secretary enroll his wife in the Party, he would be destroying a family because he could not possibly live with his wife on an equal basis. Similarly, when a woman in a village was proposed as a member of the council of the agricultural collective, her brother-in-law objected strenuously, saying that her candidacy should be rejected since it was advanced without obtaining his permission as the head of the family and that in any case the "men of that family were not yet dead."

In a village in Kruje the first woman to become a Party candidate was asked to leave the Party because she did not belong to the same clan to which the Party secretary belonged. In another case, when a candidate was proposed for Party members.h.i.+p, someone reportedly stated that "we must enlist one from our clan also" in order to maintain the clan equilibrium in the Party.

The problem of social and family relations was still a major concern for the regime at the end of 1969. For example, in a major speech on family and social relations in November 1969, Hysni Kapo, the third-ranking man in the Party hierarchy, blamed the cla.s.s enemy for the slow progress the Party had registered in creating a new social structure. The cla.s.s enemy, Kapo admitted, was found everywhere, in and outside the Party, and it was striving hard to obstruct the path of socializing the family and emanc.i.p.ating the women.

Kapo bemoaned the fact that the men of the socialist society had not shaken off the vestiges of the past and that there were yet a large number of people who, with their behavior and actions at work, in society, and at home, were in contradiction to the requirements of the personality of the new man in the socialist society. Villages, agricultural collectives, artisan and trade cooperatives, and work centers daily faced such social problems as betrothals and marriages that did not follow guidelines set by the Party, conservative att.i.tudes toward women and youth, and widespread tendencies toward clannishness.

According to Kapo, there were a large number of Communists who made little effort to implement the Party social line because the customs inherited from the old society still existed in the minds and hearts of the people and because the Party had been unable to divest people of all that was "hostile and reactionary and clothe them with the Party ideology." Kapo considered the most disturbing feature of this state of affairs to be the religious and patriarchal aspects that prevented the youth from creating a new socialist society and that continued to exist even among Communist cadres.

Western correspondents reporting from Tirana, in commenting on Kapo's speech, stated that what actually disturbed the Party most was the persistent opposition of the parents to new social standards set by the Party to regulate and control family life in general and the life of the youth in particular. Standards for dating, mixed Muslim-Christian marriages, engagement of boys and girls within socially accepted cla.s.ses (the aim being to isolate the children of the former upper cla.s.ses), and working and living together in various so-called volunteer construction projects were objectionable to parents.

EDUCATION

Pre-Communist Era

As late as the 1940s over 80 percent of the people were illiterate. The princ.i.p.al reason for this was that schools in the native language were practically nonexistent in the country before it became an independent state in 1912. Until about the middle of the nineteenth century the Ottoman rulers prohibited the use of the Albanian language in schools.

The Turkish language was used in the few schools that existed, mainly in cities and large towns, for the Muslim population. The schools for Orthodox Christian children were under the supervision of the Istanbul Ec.u.menical Patriarchate. The teachers for these schools were usually recruited from the Orthodox clergy, and the language of instruction, as well as that used in textbooks, was Greek. The first known school to use the native tongue in modern history was in a Franciscan seminary that was opened in 1861 in Shkoder, where the Jesuits in 1877 founded a seminary in which the native tongue also was used.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, a number of patriots who were striving to create a national consciousness founded several elementary schools in a few cities and towns, mostly in the south, but they were closed by the Turkish authorities. The advent of the Young Turks movement in 1908 encouraged the Albanian patriots to intensify their national efforts, and in the same year a group of intellectuals met in Monastir (Bitolj), Yugoslavia, to formulate an Albanian alphabet. Books written in Albanian before that date used a mixture of alphabets, consisting mostly of a combination of Latin, Greek, and Turkish-Arabic letters.

The Monastir meeting developed a unified alphabet based on Latin letters. As a result, a number of textbooks were written in the new alphabet, and elementary schools were soon opened in various parts of the country. In 1909, to meet the demands for teachers able to teach in the native tongue, a normal school was inaugurated in Elbasan. But in 1910 the Young Turks, fearing the emergence of Albanian nationalism, closed all schools that used Albanian as the language of instruction.

Even after the country became independent, schools were scarce. The unsettled political conditions caused by the Balkan wars and World War I hindered the development of a unified educational system. The foreign occupying powers, however, opened some schools in their respective areas of occupation, each using its own language. A few of these schools, especially the Italian and French, continued after the end of World War I and played a significant role in introducing Western educational methods and principles. Of particular importance was the French Lycee in Korce, founded by the French army in 1817.

Soon after the establishment of a national government in 1920, which included a Ministry of Education, the foundations were laid for a national educational system. Elementary schools were opened in the cities and some of the larger towns, and the Italian and French schools opened during the war were strengthened. In the meantime, two important American schools were founded--the American Technical School in Tirana, established by the American Junior Red Cross in 1921, and the American Agricultural School in Kavaje, sponsored by the Near East Foundation. An important girls' school was also founded by Kristo Dako, an Albanian-American, whose teaching language was English. The two top leaders of the Country in 1970, Party First Secretary Enver Hoxha and Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, were educated in these foreign schools; Hoxha graduated from the French Lycee in 1930, and Shehu from the American Technical School in 1932.

In the 1920s, the period when the real foundations of the modern Albanian state were laid, education made considerable progress. In 1933 the Albanian Royal Const.i.tution was amended, making the teaching and educating of citizens an exclusive right of the state. Education was thus nationalized, and all foreign-language schools, except the American Agricultural School, were either closed or nationalized. The reason for this move was to stop the rapid spread of schools sponsored directly by the Italian government, especially among the Catholic element in the north.

The nationalization of schools was followed in 1934 by a far-reaching reorganization of the whole school system. The new system provided for obligatory elementary education from the ages of four to fourteen; the expansion of secondary schools of various kinds; the establishment of new technical, vocational, and commercial secondary schools; and the acceleration and expansion of teacher training. The obligatory provisions of the 1934 reorganization law, however, were never enforced in the rural areas because of the economic conditions of the peasants who needed their children to work in the fields and because of the lack of schoolhouses, teachers, and means of transportation.

The only minority schools operating in the country before World War II were those for the Greek minority of about 35,000 living in the prefecture of Gjirokaster. These schools too were closed by the const.i.tutional amendment of 1933, but Greece referred the case to the International Permanent Court of Justice, which forced Albania to reopen the schools.

There was no university-level education in prewar Albania. All advanced studies were pursued abroad. Every year the state granted a number of scholars.h.i.+ps to deserving high school graduates who were economically unable to continue their education. But the largest number of students were from well-to-do families and thus privately financed. For instance, in the 1936/37 academic year, only 65 of the 428 students attending universities abroad had state scholars.h.i.+ps. The great majority of the students attended Italian universities because of geographic proximity and because of the special relations.h.i.+p between the Rome and Tirana governments. The Italian government itself, following its policy of political, economic, military, and cultural penetration of the country, granted a number of scholars.h.i.+ps to Albanian students recommended by its legation in Tirana.

There are no reliable prewar statistics on school population. The 1967-68 Albanian official statistical yearbook placed the total 1938/39 school enrollment at 56,283. Other sources placed it at over 60,000.

Soon after the Italian occupation in April 1939 the educational system came under complete Italian control. The Italian language was made compulsory in all secondary schools, and fascist ideology and orientation were inserted into the school curricula. After 1941, however, when guerrilla bands began to operate against the Italian forces, the whole educational system was paralyzed. In fact, secondary schools became centers of resistance and of guerrilla recruitment, and many teachers and students went to the mountains and became members or leaders of resistance bands. By September 1943, when Italy capitulated and German troops occupied the country, education came to a complete standstill.

Education Under Communist Rule

Immediately upon seizure of power in November 1944, the Communist regime gave high priority to opening the schools and organizing the whole educational system along Communist lines. The Communist objectives for the new school system were to liquidate illiteracy in the country as soon as possible, to struggle against "bourgeois survivals" in the country's culture, to transmit to the youth the ideas and principles of the Party, and to educate the children of all cla.s.ses of society on the basis of these principles. The first Communist Const.i.tution (1946) made it clear that the intention of the regime was to bring all children under the control of the state. The state, const.i.tutionally, took special care for the education of youth, and all schools were placed under state management.

The Educational Reform Law of 1946 provided specifically that Marxist-Leninist principles would permeate all school texts. This law also made the struggle against illiteracy a princ.i.p.al goal of the new school system. A further step in this direction was taken in September 1949, when the government promulgated a law requiring all illiterates between ages twelve and forty to attend cla.s.ses in reading and writing.

Courses for illiterate peasants were established by the education sections of the people's councils. The political organs in the armed forces provided parallel courses for its illiterate military personnel.

The 1946 education law, in addition to providing for seven-year obligatory schooling and four-year secondary education, called for the establishment of a wide network of vocational, trade, and pedagogical schools to prepare personnel, technicians, and skilled workers for the various social, cultural, and economic fields. Another education law adopted in 1948 provided for the further expansion of vocational and professional courses to train skilled and semiskilled workers and to increase the theoretical and professional knowledge of the technicians.

A further step was taken in 1950 to expand technical education.

Secondary technical schools were established along Soviet lines by the various economic ministries. In 1951 three higher inst.i.tutes of learning were founded: the Higher Pedagogic Inst.i.tute, the Higher Polytechnical Inst.i.tute, and the Higher Agricultural Inst.i.tute, all patterned along Soviet models. The Council of Ministers said that their purpose in founding these inst.i.tutes was to create conditions for further development "according to the example of science, culture, and technique of the Soviet Union."

In the 1949-54 period the school system was given a thorough Soviet orientation both ideologically and structurally. Most textbooks, especially those dealing with scientific and technical matters, were Soviet translations. Soviet educators were attached to the major branches of the Ministry of Education. The Russian language was made compulsory as of the seventh grade, and Soviet methodology was applied.

Large numbers of students and teachers were sent to Soviet pedagogical schools for study and training.

Courses for teacher preparation were established in which the Russian language, Soviet methods of pedagogy and psychology, and Marxist-Leninist dialectics were taught by Soviet instructors. A law adopted in 1954 reorganized the Ministry of Education, renamed it the Ministry of Education and Culture, and, among other things, provided for the dissemination of Communist principles "supported by the school experience of the Soviet Union." In 1957, when the State University of Tirana was opened, a team of Soviet educators laid its structural, curricular, and ideological foundations.

Parallel with the Sovietization of the school system in the 1950s, the government made a concerted effort to implement the idea that education must be directly connected with daily living. A large number of white-collar and blue-collar workers were registered in evening and correspondence courses in the various trade and professional schools.

According to government statistics, in the late 1950s one out of every four workers was taking some kind of course. Importance was particularly given to improving polytechnical and related work experiences and to the dissemination of manual work in most of the schools. Attempts were made to build vocational workrooms in most elementary and secondary schools.

Emphasis was placed on technical and agricultural subjects.

By 1960 the system of elementary and secondary education had evolved into an eleven-year program made up of schools of general education and of vocational and professional schools. The schools of general education consisted of primary grades one to four, intermediate grades five to seven, and secondary grades eight to eleven. In October 1960, however, as the Soviet-Albanian conflict was reaching the breaking point, the Party adopted a resolution calling for a reorganization of the whole school system, the real aim being to purge the schools of Soviet influence and rewrite the textbooks. One more year was added to the eleven-year general education schools, and the whole school program was integrated more closely with productive work so as to prepare youths to work in industry to replace some of the Soviet specialists should the latter be withdrawn, as they actually were in January and April 1961.

Another far-reaching school reform became effective on January 1, 1970.

Two factors seemed to have accounted for the new reorganization: the apparent lack of success in completely ridding the schools of so-called revisionist Soviet influences and the decision, evidently related to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, to introduce military training in the whole school system. The reform was decreed by the Party's Central Committee in a special plenum held in June 1969. At the plenum the princ.i.p.al speakers were Party First Secretary Hoxha and Prime Minister Shehu, the latter in his capacity as chairman of a special education commission attached to the Central Committee. Hoxha charged that the old school system had left vestiges of the past in the consciousness of many intellectuals, teachers, professors, and men of science.

According to Hoxha the aim of the reform was to revolutionize the schools so that the new generation would be imbued with scientific and theoretical concepts of Marxism-Leninism and to combine these concepts with physical and military training. The new educational system was to persist in its struggle against old customs in society and in its efforts to inculcate youth with atheistic ideas. The new system, Hoxha declared, was intended in particular "to safeguard our schools from the Soviet revisionist school," which in a "demagogic way was degenerating into a bourgeois school." Accordingly, the Soviet concept in pedagogy was to be eradicated from the Albanian schools.

As reorganized on January 1, 1970, the system was divided into four general categories: preschool, general eight-year, secondary, and higher education (see fig. 5). On December 23, 1969, the government submitted to the People's a.s.sembly a draft bill on educational reform, which was approved and became effective on January 1, 1970. The preamble to the law set the ideological tone of the new system. Its aim was to make "a decisive contribution to the training and education of the new man with comprehensive Communist traits, loyal to the end to the Party's cause,"

closely linking "learning with productive work and with physical and military education, giving absolute priority to Marxism-Leninism." In presenting the bill on the school reform to the People's a.s.sembly, Minister of Education and Culture Thoma Deljana listed the three components of the reorganized school system as academic education, production, and military education.

The educational system in 1969 was divided into two general parts: one dealt with full-time pupils and students from the kindergarten to the university level, and the other with adult education for employed people. The eight-year education was obligatory, beginning at age six and ending at age thirteen; secondary education began with grade nine, or age fourteen, and ended with grade twelve.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Figure 5. Educational System in Albania, 1969_]

Before a full-time student proceeds to higher education, he must pa.s.s a probationary period of one year in production work. The eight-year system was described as the fundamental link of the entire educational system; it was intended to provide the pupils with the primary elements of ideological, political, moral, aesthetic, physical, and military education. The new eight-year system differed from the old in that it lowered the entrance age from seven to six, and there were no longer separate primary and intermediate schools; that is, there was a single eight-year school, which was, however, completely separate from the secondary school.

The secondary schools were of many kinds, consisting of four-year general education courses and four-year vocational and professional courses (industrial, agricultural, pedagogic, trade, arts, health, and others). Some of these courses lasted only two years. In his report to the Party's Central Committee in June 1969 on the reform of the school year, Prime Minister Shehu said that the secondary schools were to have a standard curriculum for the school year. Priority was to be given to academic subjects, followed by production and by physical and military education.

Shehu formulated the structure of the academic year in all secondary schools as follows: 6- months of academic study, 2- months of productive work, 1 month of military training, and 2 months of vacation.

The curriculum of the secondary schools and, with slight differences, of the higher schools was divided as follows: academic subjects, 55 to 56 percent; production work, 26 to 27 percent; and physical and military education, 17 to 19 percent. Shehu also said that terms borrowed from the Soviet school system, would be dropped, and in the future secondary schools would be known by such names as general secondary school and industrial, agricultural, construction, trade, art, and sanitation secondary schools.

The terms of study in the higher inst.i.tutes lasted from three to five years. Provision was also made to expand higher education by increasing the number of full-time students, setting up new branches in places where there were no higher inst.i.tutes, and organizing specialization courses for those who had completed higher education to train highly qualified technical and scientific cadres. All full-time graduate students had to serve a probationary period of nine months in production and three months in military training, in addition to the prescribed military training received while in school.