Continuing Discrimination with Judicial Means: Logical Acrobatics and Absurdities of the Second Instance Decision in the Case of “Two Schools under One Roof”
Continuing Discrimination with Judicial Means: Logical Acrobatics and Absurdities of the Second Instance Decision in the Case of “Two Schools under One Roof”

Author(s): Aleksandra Ivanković-Tamamović
Subject(s): Politics, Education, Criminal Law, Public Law, School education, State/Government and Education
Published by: Analitika – Centar za društvena istraživanja, sva prava pridržana
Keywords: BiH; discrimination; judicial means; court; education; two schools under one roof;
Summary/Abstract: The concept and practice known under the name of “two schools under one roof,” according to which in certain schools, pupils of different ethnicities attend classes formally within the same school, yet following different, national programs, using different classrooms, sometimes entering the school using different entrances or even different buildings in the process, is one of the paradoxes of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian (BiH) post-war society. Introduced as a temporary solution aimed at facilitating equal treatment for children of different ethnicities, in the regions in which it still survives, the concept has long grown out of the model for easier integration into open segregation, while at the same time, naturally, the greatest damage is suffered by the very children who go to such schools. Limited to perceiving only one, their own identity, discouraged or even prevented from knowing the other and different, that from the opposite end of the schoolyard, street or town, pupils from these schools grow up afraid of assimilation, which in the end leads to the development of individuals who are afraid of the world around them, instead of individuals who live in freedom and who prosper. Sixty years ago, in the famous judgment of Brown v. Board of Education, which abolished racially segregated education in the United States, US Chief Justice Earl Warren said: “In the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

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