Lost Generations on Both Sides of Classrooms

Marek started to get interested in nationalism when he was just eleven. He was in fifth grade of elementary school, only few years after he learnt to read and count.

"What is wrong with people wanting to protect their own race," asks me nine years later when we discuss if he is a neo-Nazi. “No white man should want their race to go extinct,” he adds on defense of the white supremacy posts and Nazi symbolism scattered around his Facebook Wall.

For him the current Slovak president and prime ministers are traitors. The only political leader he admires is Jozef Tiso, the former president of wartime Slovak republic, a fascist puppet state of Nazi Germany. He was executed for crimes against humanity shortly after the end of World War II. Marek does not deny the fact that six million Jews died in holocaust but refuse to admit any share of the blame on Tiso.

Our conversation is happening a little over a year ago after Slovak parliamentary elections brought surprise not forecasted by any polls. First time in the history, far right party ĽSNS led by former neo-nazi Marián Kotleba crossed the electability threshold and entered the parliament. The second surprise was that the party was overwhelmingly supported by first-time voters from the age group of 18 to 21.

In Marek´s county Kotleba performed even better than on the national level so it does not come as third surprise that he proudly puts him on his selective list of admirable Slovak politicians. Since then approval ratings for Kotleba are rising between young people and almost third of them is supporting the party that put in their program a promise to “end the problem of parasites from the Roma minority.” The results of simulated students’ election also showed that pupils, that will be voting in next general election picked undemocratic parties with Kotleba on the first spot.

Sit down, write, read and repeat

Government is now trying to stop the extremist wave with school reform that adds an hour a week to history class time. “The main goal is make space for teachers to provide more space to explain to students the historical context of extremism and encourage their critical thinking,” explains spokesperson for the ministry of education Eva Koprena. Although seen as a positive initiative, experts and educators from the field agree that this cosmetic solution will not erase the extremist thinking from classrooms.

"The problem is not the number of hours but the their quality," says Peter Farárik, who teaches history in Banská Štiavnica. He doesn't think that we can expect that current teachers can handle a new, creative and interesting way of learning. "Most of them do not know, and even the few who know it just do not have time," the teacher said.

Particularly, because the critical thinking is almost completely absent from the lectures as most of the time is spent on writing down notes from the blackboard. Impacts of this are already showing. In the most recent PISA testing that compares skills from students all around the world, the performance of Slovak pupils in analytical reading was below the OECD average. Their average performance even went down compared to last testing four years years ago.

Then there is a common practice that rather kids reach to the internet and other sources for knowledge where they are getting distorted information. The result is that in the next lesson teacher is facing holocaust deniers. “Some of them are defending Tiso, others are totally condemning him," says Nikoleta Baanová, who has been teaching history for for eight years in the capital. She tries to explain to the pupils the essence of the matter, that no problem is black or white. However children in elementary school often see only a radical solution to the situation.

Students are attracted to extremist thoughts because they don't trust the existing political parties and desire a new leader, says expert on extremism Daniel Milo from GLOBSEC Policy Institute. He adds that another factor is the eagerness for a speedy resolution of their situation. Young people want change right now, which according to Milo are often unable to be critical about and look at the reality of the promised measures

Radical spokesperson

Therefore rebellious youth is the most fragile sample facing radicalized ideology as it gets easily excited by its populist solutions. Kotleba as now the most prominent face of Slovak far right is one of the masters of it. Anti-Roma racist sentiments are still strongly present in common mainstream opinion. For example just quick search listings on advertisement website bazar.sk, shows people refusing to sell their cars or motorbikes to Roma or do not want to give them their puppies. “If people publish this so boldly and publicly in advertisements we should want to know how the general situation looks,” says Irena Biháriová of People Against Racism NGO “Things which Neo-Nazis were too afraid to do in the 90s are becoming normal standard because no one is dealing with them.”

Marek comes from Dobšiná, small town in the East of Slovakia. Centuries ago the mining industry there was so profitable that citizens were exempt from taxes. In current contrast, the region carrying the unflattering label of “hungry valley” as it is facing huge unemployed rates and rising sentiments against the Roma. Those are the regions that far right is harvesting most of their rising support.

Kotleba plays these sentiments as big part of his agenda. He established perverted volunteering in trains, where sympathisers of his ĽSNS party were patrolling train stations to increase the safety of passengers. They introduced the patrols after April last year when a girl was robbed on a train. The party claimed that the perpetrator was a Roma. It has to be pointed out that the crime rate in Slovakia has been dropping steadily for years and that incidents on trains and at stations are minimal. While in 2012 a total of 896 crimes were committed at train stations, in 2015 the number dropped by 191 cases. It became a common practice that Kotleba and his party deliberately choose cases in which the Roma minority is involved.

Masters of populism

History teacher Martin Kríž thinks that hate against Roma is mental equipment of more than half of the population of Slovakia as he is saying what people wanna say, but can't, he is gaining supporters. “When he adds to the mix Jews, muslims, refugees and says that Tiso was a cool guy they are gonna believe him that too,” says Kríž who thinks that Slovaks operates in the polarised apartheid categories and they were waiting for a politician who would be able to say it for them.

Kotleba who was growing up as neo-Nazi supporter knows how to sneakily implement hidden radical ideology into his mainstream politics. As a private citizen with his brother owned a department store with skinhead clothing that was offering free gifts on sales bigger than 8818 or 1488 Slovak crowns - numbers of nazi symbolism. Current politician Kotleba as governor of a Banská Bystrica donated 1488 euros to three families with disabled children in a publicity stunt. Police is currently investigating this action as a possible illegal promotion of nazism.

“We are being part of a hybrid disinformation war, where there is overflow of untruthful information that enforces radical ideology in the background,” explains Jan Benčík, an activist who is monitoring far right supporters on social media. Youngsters are not immune against this influence. As evidenced by David Kúrňava who 19 year old who was offering reward of 25 euro for each death refugee in an online listing. Or 24 year old Adriana who couple of months ago filmed herself publicly burning Quran.

Money seems to be the problem

Debunking this radical behaviour weighs on the shoulder of the teachers. But not a lot of them are up for the job. Main reasons are salaries, that are third lowest in the OECD countries. Llow, demotivating wages in connection with exhausting work are a direct disaster and perhaps the mother of many other problems. “Working only to the level of your salary means supervising the children at the most. And this attitude is starting to grow more between teachers who gave up,” says Kríž. Slovak state school inspection found that teachers are frustrated and least engaged in vocational schools were the extremist tendencies between pupils were most common.

Inspectors also found out that 48 percent of the students have encountered in school negative comments towards race or nation and behaviour praising xenophobic towards Jews and Hungarians. Almost two thirds of them have seen people wearing extremist clothing. And not everytime it comes from the youngsters. In the survey, 22 percent of pupils said that some teachers ridiculed or ironed an ethnic or ethnic minority.

Experts have been saying for a long time that there are a lot of people who picked a teaching career after all the other options failed. There are no requirements to get accepted to study education at the most prestigious university in Slovakia, as they recetnly accepted everyone for consecutive years. Pedagogy faculties have hard time attracting quality prospective students, as underpayment remains the biggest issue. Teachers receive roughly not even the half of the salaries of other university graduates. That leaves potential for creating quality educators for the future at really low level.

Conspirators at the university

Prospective educators are also not invincible against the already mentioned dangers of the internet. Just three months old study of psychologist Eva Ballová Mikušková showed that at least some part of future teachers believe in conspiracies. In her research she asked education students about the small groups of puppet masters behind world events, government conspiracies or global schemes in pharmaceutical business. Then she put their brains to test of simple rational thinking. The results showed that future teachers of Slovak kids can't think critically and evaluate the credibility of sources. There was no difference between freshmen and seniors as if the university did not have any significant effect. Ballová Mikušková blames that on lack of critical thinking courses in the curriculum.

Scientists have before proven that people who believe in one conspiracy theory tends to easily believe in others. Such a general tendency to trust unverified information is called conspiracy mentality. That is why these findings are so troubling as they are present in next role-models of thinking. “"If they are uninformed, misinformed or have irrational ideas, it can be harmful. Ballová Mikušková concludes as teacher believing in the conspiracy creates an another potential base for extremism.

Extremists behind teacher’s desks

And the small examples are already showing up as there were several cases of teachers or lecturers openly promoting racist and anti-Semitic ideas. One of these was the secondary-school teacher at the Vocational School of St. Joseph the Labourer in Žilina. Tomáš Ondrovič openly wrote on his internet profile that “the World War II was caused by Anglo-Saxon and Jewish financiers”, called Jews names, and claimed that the Nuremberg trials were “a farce in history” while questioning the Holocaust. His ideas were stated also on the same page where he posted texts for students to study. Ondrovič’s case drew the attention of both police and State School Inspectorate, but immediately the profile and the website disappeared and the teacher denied ever having said or written these things.

Štefan Surmánek of the Political Science Institute of the Prešov University spread his extremist views, besides via internet, through his publications at the university. The lecturer who ran for the extremist ĽSNS party in last year election repeatedly cited “intolerable and alarming rise in Roma population” and “low quality of Roma teenagers”. He was fired from the university last August .

Just couple of weeks ago, education student at the Comenius University in Bratislava Veronika Marcineková was declaring online on her Facebook that Hitler´s manifesto Mein Kampf is “full of good ideas” and also declared “sionist responsible for holocaust”. Even after her alma mater condemned her statements and she still stands by her views.

Professor prom Pedagogy faculty of Comenius University Erich Mistrík admits that he is getting goosebumps from seeing how many of his students tend to have xenophobic views. “Sometimes it is triggered just by seeing the word Roma,” says Mistrík who admits that it is extremely difficult and almost impossible to change the viewpoint of an adult. “We are having discussions. I am trying to explain consequences of these words,” stresses educator professor.

Schools crave talent that would bring experience

If education are is supposed to be the barrier against extremism, the teacher would have to be real intellectual and character elite. “Finances and management that are set in the current flawed system is only good for submissive types, able to withstand almost anything, with the tendency to outsource responsibility for their own bad feeling of life,” states Kríž.

In particular, the system does not count the presence of free personalities in the teaching teams. And most teachers are happy with this and are opposed to change. They do not ask for more responsibility that is linked to freedom as even evidenced in research of International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS). More than three third of the educators of Civic and Ethic studies that were surveyed thought it is important to share knowledge but only less than 17 percent sees developing effective strategy against xenophobia and racism as their responsibility. Research also showed that only 5 percent of them is politically active.

Professor Mistrík sees the ideal teacher as someone get rid of the 80 percent of the notes to couple of keywords and base all the learning as an experience. “Whole class about World War II can be about one simple puzzle,” explains, “Imagine your classmate cannot enter McDonalds or the cinema anymore because people like him are not allowed there anymore. He got resettled and you cannot see him anymore. Are you able to help him somehow?