The activity of elementary schools at the end of WW II in Dalmatia

Abstract

During the people's revolution in Yugoslavia, an educational and cultural revolution took place as its integral element. Antifascist organizations, under the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party which led the struggle for national liberation, sponsored the endeavours in education and culture. The first Partisan schools on the liberated territory in Dalmatia during 1942-1944 worked in difficult conditions. Normal school activity was hampered by frequent enemy attacks carried out both by the occupater and by domestic traitors. Most school buildings were burned down, plundered and destroyed. In some places classes were held in the open air or in private residences. Reading was taught using proclamations and leaflets, but by the end of 1944 first and second grade pupils received an »Abecedarian« and »Primer« which faciliated the process of learning to read and write. Elementary school activity became more organized and systematic with the establishment of the National Liberation Administrative Committee for Dalmatia (January 1943) and its Department of Education, which took upon itself the task of organizing schools. There was a lack of teaching staff so that young people were instructed in teaching courses for work in elementary schools. These courses gave them the most essential professional, pedagogical and political knowhow which was of aid to them in organized classroom activity and in the education of adults. After the liberation of Dalmatia, the schools for teachers in Šibenik and Dubrovnik were reopened, while a third one was established in Split. Their self-sacrificing work with children in the classroom and amongst adults earned the teachers the respect of the populace so that the interest of the people for schooling was great. Schools and education were a conszituent part of the national liberation struggle.
The system of schooling and of the education of children and adolescents during the renewal of Yugoslavia and its buildup of a socialist society, developed on the foundations from which sprang the elementary schools and adult education.