100 years of Romanian Education: Failures and Achievements
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100 years of Romanian Education: Failures and Achievements
Romanians tend to define themselves as a nation of “education lovers”. Despite this positive self-perception, it is no secret that the educational system is incapable of improving the potential of the Romanian society. Recently, in December 2018, the Presidential Administration of Romania launched a public debate regarding the way in which education should develop in the next 20 to 50 years. Entitled “România Educată”, the initiative hasn’t succeeded in generating a national debate regarding this issue. In other words, the Romanian society and political class are not convinced and aware of the fact that education can indeed be a mechanism of social change and of economic development. Nevertheless, in order to “contextualize” and to emphasize an apocalyptical image upon the current system of education in Romania, critics usually tend to uncritically praise previous systems of education from Greater Romania or from the communist regime. The result is a sort of antithetic discourse that offers little incentives for the present debate. For this reason, the main challenge of this study is to find out if the Romanian system of education of the last century was, indeed, conceived as a true investment in the human capital. No matter how vast the subject may sound, the authors would focus on the evolution of the educational ideal in the last century, while contextualizing the performance of the educational systems with statistical and comparative data.
Keywords: Romania, 20th century, education, human capital
Bibliografie
Archives
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