Ep.2: Education System In Serbia

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Hello everyone! Oh, I'm a bit too close.

Welcome. Hello everyone.

Good evening. I'm the translator.

Hello everyone.

Hello everyone. How are you?

How are you, Maki?

Good. You? Super.

I'm going to sleep.

Oh, great. Guys, we're not doing this in the morning, so it's like after

our work.

So it is what it is.

We're not drinking coffee, but...

Yeah, I had two cups of coffee today.

oh wow that's intense yeah that was yeah i found this tasty coffee and

i like the taste so i think no it's a filtered coffee okay okay

a bio coffee so it was i hope it's not that unhealthy

it's just uh it's just coffee you'll be fine like students who

you know who work who study a lot right were you a coffee drinker

when you were a student no never no never it's actually quite

funny because a lot of my friends after their study days they were they

like regular like

religiously drank coffee and I don't know my flatmate just and I didn't as

far as I remember

we never needed to it's not that we never did.

Sometimes, sure. I don't even think we had Jesva in our apartment, actually.

But we were having less coffee when we were in high schools.

That is true.

That I don't remember buying them.

It was kind of like survival mode.

Like, I just need food.

I didn't have money for all these coffees.

I did when I went to my master studies in Austria.

For a while, I did.

Like a while.

Like a month or two.

not a lot because they have these like um machine um what are they

called what machine sorry coffee

machines coffee machines yeah so instant ones they were like just like coffee and

it's the coffee sugar maybe a bit of milk so that was quite cheap sugar like

so i did that for a while but then

i was like well i don't need coffee so just had that but it's

different exam period

it's a different thing yes then we did but only like one yeah it's

not because you love it but

you need it because you need to stay awake we had a specific way

like we would make coffee and we

heard that if you uh you know how we do like we put water

and then boil it and take it off and

then we put coffee and then put it back on and then and then

if you want it to be stronger to have more coffee that you would

do that several times like so like the more you kind of like put

it back on the stove apparently at least that's what we heard that would

like give you even more

like you wouldn't be able to sleep because we had sometimes we pulled all

all-nighters right

so uh so yeah so but that was only during exams it was like

hardcore okay exams because today we're going to talk about education, right?

Yeah, we answered the topic with coffee.

First coffee part of education, done.

Exactly.

And now the system.

We're not going to talk about the university.

I think we should save that for another time because this will be a

long episode.

But we are going to talk about education up to the

university, which is called obrazovanie.

oh brazovanie yes i heard that too yeah and there are lots of uh

parts you know different levels of

schooling and one thing that i learned recently i didn't know that um like

preschool is compulsory

here yeah i think it is actually yeah which i i think that's great

that's great yeah in turkey I don't know if the rules changed, but I

wish it was compulsory.

Well, I don't really know what you would do without preschool because for us,

like it's very common that both parents work.

But grandparents are always there.

They are, but now the age of retiring is much more pushed,

right? So lifted.

So it's very difficult.

it would be very difficult not to have preschool and i mean i mean

i don't really know if it's

obligatory but but i i mean that's i think that's great and also because

for many reasons i think

it's amazing for them to be in social situation and so on exactly exactly

so preschool how do we

say nursery nursery and i went to nursery as well um i remember it

vividly because i hit one guy Like one little boy, he was pulling my

ponytail and I just hit him.

So it's called jaslitze yes let's say is it plural yes yes

um i don't know why don't ask me don't worry don't worry it's just

yeah because i hear it we have a lot of actually like plural uh

nouns that don't have a singular i

mean they are derived from a usually from a feminine singular so that's why

a right but you can't say jaslice as far as I know.

I see.

That's from six months

to three years, something like that.

And then you get to zabavishte, which is kindergarten.

I'm going to be honest.

We have several ways of saying

zabavishte, and I'm not

quite sure if there is a clear difference, but

they call it zabavishte, obdanihte, and vrtic.

hmm yes completely different roots different words but it usually means the same thing

i don't think that we have like different levels um so it still means because

kindergarten but uh quite

recently i talked to my sister and she said she was like i think

there's a difference between and i'm and she's like i'm not quite sure like

one of them is like a structured kind of like

more like a school system i think and one of them is like more

just like a social whatever but for this purpose i think if you say

it means the same thing everybody will understand

everybody will understand i don't think anyone will see so from three years old

to six years old

kids six seven depends where when you're born right and so on um important

there the teacher

is called a male

and female

yeah i learned that in the course serbian course actually yeah the teacher for

kindergarten and primary school are not teachers like they're different names

called different yeah because they're they're they're not really teaching you a lot they're

like like being there like making sure that everyone's okay and like guiding you

just

maybe through some songs.

Does it mean like somebody carer or take care?

Someone who's like a, it's like a babysitter in essence.

And sure, we do sing over there

and play some games sometimes,

but you're not really learning anything.

And I mean, you are learning many things,

but like in a structured way, right?

And you can do extracurricular kind of things.

You can learn how to play,

you can learn English, but it's not obligatory.

Yeah. And what I realized here in Khrushchev, there is this public kindergarten and

it doesn't have walls like it's inside the park.

And, you know, the other one in the center, which is not in the

park, it has like the door and everything.

You can't just go in.

But where I run most of the time, I see the kids, I can

see the classrooms inside.

and you know the playground is open to the park and the park is

open to the public so that was like

quite eye-opening for me because you know safety issues and stuff were crazy

in turkey about that

here it's just open public the parents come whenever they want you know yeah

i found it

like this is a secure place yeah because i don't think we have a

lot of like instances of like crazy things happening.

At least I don't really remember stories of that.

Maybe now, but I don't know.

But before when I was, we have a fence, like we had a fence

when I was younger.

But for example, we had three kindergartens in the same, on the same plot.

And they were not physically separated.

each had their own like little playground playground yeah but yeah we were like

mingling so and now now they started locking the kindergarten you know it's

all

quite weird but I want

at least in my city this happened like druggies would hang out in kindergartens

after like in the night during the night and I think this is because

we don't have like a lot of parks or like

benches that are like complete benches but they're like half taken like the wood

like the

this has been taken or stolen or whatever or sometimes they steal benches from

the the ground

so yeah so I think this is just like they all you always have

somewhere to sit over there and like you know you're secluded no one's going

to the kindergarten sometimes they're like a shady shady people yeah completely different venue

for yeah during the day and during the night the same for the one

that i'm mentioning because it's in the park park is open so obviously people

go there to smoke or you know yeah well smoking as well it doesn't

have to be drug smoke weed i I mean, or.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, but I think when, you know,

it can be also just like teenagers

that are like trying smoking for the first time.

And they're like, aha.

Yeah, we also also used to hang out over there

when i was in my uh like when i was like 14 or something

and then we would like uh hang out with

friends and then we would go there as well so it's not just druggies

of course but it's like a because it's such a such a convenient place

right it has everything in the trenches it has like all these playgrounds nice

view yeah beautiful place exactly good and then we come

to elementary

yes which i think i didn't quite know how to call it because for

us this is like eight years last for eight years i think elementary or

primary in in the uk is i think it's like four or five years

i'm not really sure or maybe six yeah but there are some four plus

four plus fours or five

plus threes like different uh strategies we have but here it is eight

together or eight all together these years will like differ a bit but it's

one school that you're going to so it's one one

building one institution you're not changing it right so you're still going to the

same school and uh we call it osnovna skola which is osnovna

osnova is like a base so it's like a

element it's basically like elementary primary like i see yeah so the the the

interesting thing

starts that from the first till the till the fourth grade um it's

you are with one teacher

and that is and he is or yeah okay

so you have only one teacher

that comes from uchiti so that's like teacher exactly that's

teacher right exactly then from the fifth till the eighth or to the eighth

how do you say till

the eighth today from the fifth to the eighth grade you have um one

teacher per

topic like per subject yeah yeah did you have that too definitely but

in my time it was from

one to five five to eight now it's also in tzachy one to four

okay and four to eight but you mean

you wrote nostalmik so that nostalmik means um even if you are an english

teacher or math teacher

or biology teacher you are nostalmik or is it like two like one class

has one teacher still like Maybe some class has a main teacher, like the

head teacher or something.

Okay, you have one teacher that's responsible for your class.

And that's called Razredni or Razredna.

I will actually write it down.

Razredni, Razredna. Razredna, yeah.

They are responsible for you, but they are a teacher for only one subject.

so that means that they're only there as a figure if there's some issue

with like our class then

people come to them but we still have one um nastavnik or nastavnica for

each subject okay when it comes to subject i was curious and i also

checked the curriculum here

i think you wrote the like the main courses but there's also

i think how to call them like uh compulsory elective courses,

right? Like courses...

compulsory courses, compulsory elective courses.

Okay, so it depends.

Well, for Osnanda Skola?

Mm-hmm, for Osnanda Skola.

You have some additional ones if you want to,

but yeah, there are some compulsory.

It's like these you have to have.

So the two main ones are Serbian.

Serbski.

So yeah, I wrote, I think I hear,

I wrote a lot of like shortened versions of everything because I think it

would just be like a lot of text but Serbsky языk right so Serbsky

we just say

um math matematica matematica there's no shortcut they'll

just say mat yeah we say matish matish that's funny it's

like making joke of it you know

yeah let me it's actually i found it i was like trying to think

like how do we say it you know

matish matish okay good then we have a combined uh lecture or like

a subject which is natural

and social sciences which we call priroda is

nature right and društvo is society

yeah okay is to hang out like hanging out then we have

i think there we still don't we don't have to know how to play

an instrument i think that's a

not a compulsory thing but we do need to actually wait i think we

need to know how to play like the simplest songs on the keyboard and

to do this like, I don't

i don't know how you'd

call it you know like to follow the rhythm the rhythm exercise and for

us it's flute oh flute

interesting yeah i don't know why i think we can i think we can

pick which one we can but i don't

remember really playing it a lot actually so anyway okay actually yes we need

we call this synthesizer which is yeah which is like the keyboard like the

like you know these like

basic ones yeah then we have painting uh which is likovna

that's interesting name i was expecting

something about boya or something yeah and actually it's like art um but i

don't know why it's likovno i i can't really figure it out does likovno

mean like art or no umetnost is art

likovno oh man i don't know but it's mostly focused on painting uh we

do we do a bit of

like sculpturing as well and so on like basic things right but uh like

with terracotta you

know like the ones that you can bake uh but it's mostly just painting

i don't know why it's like

then a leak of no i i'm guessing it's um before we continue with

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have to check the the full

name but but this is like how we by default use it um p.e.

uh physico

yeah that sounds like physics but it's actually yeah it's physical physical right and

then

physical but it's not i see physical yeah you know

what i mean i was like trying to figure it out

then uh i didn't have this but now i think they have a foreign

language and i think it's usually

english so it's angloskey i think okay and then you can have but you

so they it really just depends on the on the school and so on

if they were at like they offer

uh i don't know how it's called i don't know if it's dopunskanastava or

i don't know but it's like

someone would approach you and tell you hey this teacher like what this or

they're organizing a So do you want to audition, right?

And then you would just go there

or they say hey there's

like i went to when i was younger like uh to my like uh

up until my fourth grade i went to actually

for painting so i think i would have an additional hour hour and a

half something like that on one

day i would stay after school and i would i would paint yeah theater

plays would be another option probably i guess so i'm guessing i don't no

one offered me i mean no one offered us but i think

it just really depends on is there someone who's doing that like you know

exactly yeah on the

teacher and on the school they have time they want to do it and

so on cool good and five to eight

five to eight you have nastavnik or nastavnica and now you have subject more

subjects obviously serbia some of them stay the same like serbski serbski matematica matis

yeah these are the ones

that you have like uh that you after eight years we have like this

thing called mala matura which

is where you have to pass the exam and based on that you get

into high school um so yeah and you

have that celebration right so how is it called prom prom yeah uh and

so mala matura is both it's like doing the exam and then going out

and celebrating like the prom so and we used to do

that for srpski and matematika i think now they have more subjects so that's

why srpski matematika

they're like stay always for some reason they're like by default like two the

most important

subjects was that the same in turkey yeah turkish and math i always like

even even when you go to university still you take some Turkish literature whatever