/ world today news/ The scandalous minister of education, whose resignation was requested today by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, already in his first month caused the indignation not only of the scientific community, but also of the Bulgarian intelligentsia.
Since he took office in November 2014, for all this time – 1 year and several months, we remembered the scandalous professor Todor Tanev with his catchphrases, which are the object of ridicule and unfortunately humiliated our compatriots.
The education minister’s pearls started with his first television interview. In this interview, Tanev vows: “I want to calm down the education system so that it starts working at all. Education is not a sector of the cake, but the icing? It is a strategic object, because it produces the future and the national identity,” he adds.
Two months later came the scandalous statements of the professor about Mikhail Lomonosov, Asen Zlatarov and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Tanev questioned their achievements in front of students in Vratsa during a visit to Hristo Botev Secondary School. Tanev then summarized the achievements of Lomonosov, Zlatarov and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, calling them “nothing special” and “complete zero”.
According to Tanev, Lomonosov did not do anything special, Zlatarov simply went to the Soviet Union at a time when fascism was here, and said that it was a very nice and interesting place to work.
Frédéric Joliot-Curie took the surname of his wife – the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, with a hyphen to show off, otherwise he was a complete zero as a scientist.
“For political reasons, even a subway stop was opened for him. And Pierre, who is the great scientist and Nobel laureate, is nowhere to be found. Know that the truth is not always written correctly”, were the words of Prof. Tanev to the children at the time. Of course, after these statements of his, there were apologies on his Facebook profile.
Another of his pearls: “The only thing I am sure about our army is that there is no competition in forging the Bulgarian nation in the most difficult times. There is no other instance, no other institution closer to this incredible task of keeping the flame of Bulgarian national identity alive. Without an army, there is nothing.” Tanev said this in January 2015, during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first school year at the G.S. Rakovski Military Academy.
In Razgrad, there was a statement that “the demographic problem is not only in Bulgaria, it has been coming from the north for a long time, and flexible forms have been created to solve it in the field of education, such as the voucher system.” The Minister of Education also declared for an individualized special approach to students, according to him, the system is now standardized and stimulates the poor, and thinking children should be sought out and their skills developed.
February 2015 also came, when Tanev praised the education in Turkey. “We need a structured approach to information technologies, because they enter the school through the back door. On the other hand, in neighboring Turkey, they are champions in the introduction of information technologies in the education system,” Tanev said when presenting the current issues that arose during the discussion of the amendment of the Law on preschool and school education.
This was followed by Tanev’s proposal to create a university for the third age and to develop gerontology. “This is an old idea of mine when it is now activated,” Tanev admitted. He explained that it is about something that did not exist in Bulgaria and the surrounding countries. “It exists in the world on a very small scale, above all in the Anglo-Saxon world. We have the ambition to develop it more progressively than in the Anglo-Saxon world,” threatened Tanev.
He also addressed aggression in schools, commenting that not only parents and students should be involved in the education of students, but also other types of authorities – football stars, actors from TV series, etc., and the Ministry of Education to be a catalyst for this process.
In the month of May 2015, there was also a scandal with the matriculation exam in BEL and geography. Then the correct answers to the Bulgarian language and geography matriculation examinations expired in advance. The Ministry of Education and Culture has notified the Ministry of the Interior about the leaked information. According to Tanev, the report on one of the televisions, which shows how you can buy the answers from the matriculation exam, could have been rigged. “Creating disbelief in state institutions in this way is not good at all, it is even criminal if it is not proven. What we know so far is that the time was after 9.00 in the morning. After 9.00 the children can leave the classrooms , they go to the toilet. I spoke with the DANS and the Ministry of the Interior on the subject. 10,000 quaestors cannot be controlled,” Tanev said at the time.
Shortly after the scandal, the Minister of Education admitted that probably as many as several hundred quaestors were involved in delivering information about the matriculation exams. According to him, this is the simplest practice, not a scheme. “Some pickpocket grabbing a purse on the bus is a scheme? This has been done by the quaestors for years. As it is written in a book – there has always been theft at the station and it will be stolen again. There would be no MIA in the world if there was no theft” , said the Minister of Education.
In June 2015, Todor Tanev attended the military exercise “Kabile” in Novo Selo. At that time, part of the high school building collapsed in Kazanlak. Visibly annoyed by the BGNES reporter’s question, why is he in Novo Selo and not in Kazanlak, where the high school collapsed, Tanev said the following: For many reasons, for example, that I had a relationship, i.e. meeting with the Israeli ambassador. I think my schedule is pretty tight, but I think I’ve sent the one I should have out there. According to him, “there is a very serious connection between what the military does and what teachers do.” “Statehood to some extent rests on these two interlayers,” Tanev also said.
After all the minister’s blunders, the question of his resignation is always addressed to him, to which Tanev is categorical: “Whether I will remain in the Council of Ministers, only the prime minister will say that. He is my employer.”
With the approach of the new school year 2015/2016, the question of the quality of the content in the textbooks began to be raised again. In August 2015, Tanev proposed that 1st through 4th grade textbooks have instructions that correct errors in the aids until new ones are written.
In August 2015 in Plovdiv, Tanev explained that a problem in education is the so-called “dead souls”. “If someone in the Ministry of Defense steals parts of a tank for BGN 2,000, it is a crime. If someone in the Ministry of Education hides a missing child and thus steals BGN 2,000 from the budget, it is looting,” Minister Tanev concluded at the time.
At the end of 2015, the question of whether Tanev will resign was again on the agenda, to which he replied: They have no reason. If he /Boyko Borisov – Belarus/ considers that there is a better minister who can complete the work faster or more efficiently, then – yes. But for other reasons, and we as a team work really well, it would be a big and sad mistake to do this because of kitchen trifles.
Again in late 2015: “Absolutely not! And this resignation, which you repeat, you are ruining the children, you are ruining the mothers and fathers, you are also ruining the teachers, and no one will trust the Ministry of Education anymore.” This is how the Minister of Education Todor Tanev answered a question about whether his resignation was requested after he left a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus. “I’m terribly sorry for not creating news for you. I just feel bad for you. However, you have asked me so many times for 13 months that the stupidity seems to be somewhere else, not in me”, he expanded his reasoning in front of the cameras.
“Whatever they torment us on a spit – we will not give it, we will not do education that is necessarily and only business-oriented and we will not give in to 2, 3 merchants who want to destroy the fruit of this, for which we have gathered here. There is no one in our country who wants this outrage”. This was stated by the Minister of Education Todor Tanev in his welcome to the participants of the national conference on the topic: “The role of vocational high schools in agriculture for the modern and prosperous development of the economic sector”. I love Dobrudja, I love every inch of land, I am happy with what I saw erupting on Bulgarian land, added the minister.
In January 2016, Tanev promised that there would be textbooks for first and fifth graders. At the same time, the minister did not rule out their issuance being delayed for some reason. With such a development, a special case will arise in the teaching of history – the fifth graders will learn from the textbook for the seventh grade.
For the fifth grade, the only more special case relates to the teaching of history. “On this subject, the seventh grade textbook can be taken as a sample, which will be used in abbreviated forms – parents should not be scared. It won’t be all the content for the seventh grade, there will be separate lessons,” clarified Prof. Tanev.
The culmination of the series of scandals involving the minister came during the discussion of the draft curricula for the 2nd, 6th and 8th grades. At a special briefing, Tanev explained some changes in the curricula, which caused an uproar of dissatisfaction among Bulgarians. “Slavic-Bulgarian History” goes where it can be understood probably better. This is how the minister explained the proposal to study it in the 9th grade, and not in the 6th grade as before. “It neither falls nor disappears, but its study until now in the 6th grade is better to be later in the 9th grade, because of age psychology and because then the material that will be studied in history coincides . In the sixth grade, it’s a bit early – there it would really only be a text,” said Tanev. Dobri Chintulov with “Get up, get up, Balkan hero” will be studied in music. “Bai Gagno in the bathroom” is dropped for study. “I don’t think it’s appropriate. We are in the 21st century and Bulgaria has moved especially in this regard since then”, said the minister.
At this briefing came the scandalous statement, which heated up the passions related to our Bulgarian history even more, namely that the political system of the Ottoman Empire will have to be studied in history in the 6th grade, and as instructions in the curriculum of the Ministry of Education and Culture is recorded: “Describes changes in the way of life of the Bulgarians in the 15th-17th centuries. Gives examples of coexistence between the traditions of Christians and Muslims in everyday life: holidays and customs, housing, clothing, food.”
And here the word “coexistence” “exploded” thousands of Bulgarians, who flooded social networks with angry comments. The word “slavery” was also discussed at the briefing, which made it clear that it could be used by the students and they would not be reprimanded for using it. But the term Ottoman rule remained.
The next day, Tanev commented: “My personal attitude is that there was slavery, Education Minister Todor Tanev told the media in the National Assembly in response to a question about the scandal that broke out with the content of history textbooks. Slavery is slavery, no one has raised an uprising against coexistence, Tanev stressed. I have told you frankly about slavery. Coexistence is in another field. It is in the literature and describes some relationships with some other people who were mixed ethnic groups at the time. These are private cases that must also be looked at. But this has nothing to do with the political function, which we consider only in history – there is no coexistence there, reasoned the minister.
Continuing with the speeches on the subject of the study programs, Tanev said that he is taking manual control of the issue of textbooks.
I am not Kiryak Stefchov, I have a family, the minister of education told journalists in the parliament today. Hours later, Prime Minister Borissov demanded the resignation of Todor Tanev.
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