Witness of the pre-school objects in northeast Albania

Abstract

In this study, the first of this type to such an extent, the author Prof. As. Dr. Murat Gecaj emphasizes that our people have made, through centuries, titanic efforts for survival against many fierce enemies. In this long and exhausting way, an important place is given to their efforts for education and culture, for knowledge or progress.

Ismail Qemali said: “A nation can never grow without schools and lessons …. One must be blind not to understand the need of national schools”.
Following the introduction, by dividing his study-paper into two parts, the author gives data of interest for the successive efforts, made through years for opening and functioning of schools in mother tongue in the Northeast Albania.
By surmounting obstacles and difficulties of the time, since the beginning of the XX-th century, a number of schools were opened in the ex-Region of Kosovo, thus in the districts of Tropojë and Kukës, including Has.
Since there were not appropriate buildings for these light and knowledge centers, initially, the lessons began in simple objects, in the houses of the education-loving countrymen.
Some could, for different reasons, be unoccupied, some were given by the people for the pupils to study there, estimating the light and knowledge spread by the newly opened schools. As the first educational places served also the religious institutions, churches and mosques, or mejteps.
The author of this study-paper gives also a lot of data about the beginnings of the lessons in the existing buildings, i.e. the house-schools or in the religious institutions.
In many cases, the first lessons in these schools were also taught by clerics, priests and hodjas. With the creation of respective conditions and possibilities, these schools functioned in regular buildings, which were set up specially by the sweat and sacrifices of the people, in Tropojë and Kukës. As it is known, a rich experience was collected for the houseschools in Kosovo too, especially after the years ’1990, when the Serbian regime closed the existing Albanian schools.
In general, the author of this study-paper gives his opinion that this experience should be known by our generations, since it testifies about the most titanic efforts were that the Albanian schools in mother tongue made to survive, by surmounting numerous difficulties and obstacles of both economic backwardness and of the carelessness of the time regimes.