Historical Perspective On The Development Of School Textbooks In Romania After December 1989

Page 1 of 2

After 1989, textbooks have undergone a reforming process, which was at first little coordinated by specific policies, but conducted under the coordination of a specialized organism after 1995, an organism specially created to ease the transition to multiple (alternative) textbooks.
The evolution of Romanian school textbooks is linked to the reform process in the educational system. In summary, the stages of this process are the following ¹:

1990-1995: Preparing the reform
After four years of dialogue between the Romanian Government and the World Bank, a reform project for the primary and secondary school was put together (RO-3724), the most extensive project of this type in Central and Eastern Europe judging by the financial allocation and coverage. The project involved a 50 million USD loan (payable in 20 years at a 7% interest rate). The Romanian Government was to contribute with 23.5 million USD, while 25 million USD were to be received from the European Union through PHARE, as a non-refundable loan.

Several components linked to the major goals of the project have been designed and have functioned within the project: curriculum, teachers training, assessment and evaluation, school textbooks, occupational standards and school management

Several important changes have occurred in the system during this period:

- The possibility for high schools to choose their own educational profile; thus in January 1990, most high schools became theoretical high schools (from mainly industrial ones);
- Reducing the mandatory learning period from 10 to 8 years;
- Reducing the working week from 6 to 5 days;
- The elimination of the mandatory school uniform.

The textbooks used in this period were mainly the same that were used before, only without Ceausescu’s picture, which had been a mandatory element at the beginning of each textbook.

The great majority were still crowded, with small letters, printed in a single colour and on low quality paper.

These textbooks were unattractive and difficult to read.

There were, however, textbooks that could not remain unchanged during this period, namely the textbooks for social-humanistic subjects. Subjects such as: Economic Knowledge (9th grade), Social-Political Knowledge (10th grade) and Political Economy. The Political Economy of the Romanian Communist Party (11th grade) could not have remained in the education plans. They were replaced with Logics (9th grade), Psychology (10th grade) and Economy (11th grade). The contents of the Philosophy class, taught in the 12th grade, were changed and a special textbook was created in 1990. The Humanitas Publishing House (newly founded on the ruins of the former Political Publishing House) contributed to this effort by publishing Philosophy Lessons. Shortly after that, the first restructured philosophy textbook was written, bringing a new perspective on how the subject should be studied.

Textbooks for new subjects were also written during this period:

- Civic Culture, a secondary school subject, with a textbook published in 1994;
- Human Rights, a 9th grade optional subject, with a new textbook published in 1995.

1 For a description of the evolution of the reform process, see Mihaela Singer “Curricular reform from design to implementation. Balance at the beginning of the millenium”, in L. Vlasceanu (coordinator) The School at a Crossroad, Polirom, Iasi, 2002, pp. 130-149 and Alexandru Crisan (coordinator), Four Exercises of Education Policy, Humanitas Educational, 2000+ Publising House, Bucharest, 2006, pp.24-27.

Index of contents Previous Next