Meeting and getting to know the teachers who are investing huge efforts to preserve and develop our children’s awareness of their own national and cultural identity all over the world, while lacking relevant textbooks and basic working conditions, resulted in the creation of a handbook symbolically titled Na krilima reči (On the Wings of Words).

According to the latest census, Serbia has 6.6 million inhabitants, and 5.1 million displaced Serbian citizens live outside our country. Without knowledge of the Serbian language, the children of our emigrants will also lose their Serbian identity, which is a huge loss for Serbia.

The Ministry of Education of the Republic of Serbia recognized this problem and started opening supplementary schools for Serbian children in the diaspora. So far, such schools have been organized in 17 countries – in Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Russia, Slovenia, Malta, Greece, Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, South Africa, Australia. During the last school year, about 8,000 students of Serbian nationality attended supplementary schools.

The Ministry of Education published the Program of Primary Education Abroad with the main goal to develop awareness of own national and cultural identity (OG 66/2022). The program provides for three subjects: Serbian language, Serbia my fatherland, and Basics of culture of the Serbian people. The program divides each course into three levels: younger age (first, second and third grade), middle age (fourth, fifth and sixth grade) and older age (seventh and eighth grade).

The Society for the Serbian Language and Literature of Serbia held several seminars for teachers who teach Serbian in supplementary schools.

Colleagues Vesna Nikolić, Valentina Ilić and Rajna Dragićević took it upon themselves, as a prime patriotic and only then a professional task, to write the first lexical manual for Serbian as a native language. This endeavor was encouraged and supported by the Society for the Serbian Language and Literature of Serbia, especially by its president, Prof. Vesna Lompar. Supported by the Directorate for Cooperation with the Diaspora and Serbs in the Region of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this Society published a manual symbolically titled Na krilima reči, which was recently promoted.

The manual is a collection of lexical exercises, which, in accordance with the supplementary school program, consists of three levels, each of them containing one hundred exercises with keys. The questions are related to Serbian culture, customs, diet, lifestyle, which will help the students to become closer to the daily life and values of the Serbian people.

Source: Politika

Photo: Personal archive