20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Romanian schools in the Balkan Peninsula during the 20 th century 771many regions nowadays from Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, where toponymystill has Romanian character.The actual number and spreading of the Balkan Romanians may not beaccurately determined. According to the researcher Max Demeter Peyfuss, "itdoes not seem wrong at all to accept that nowadays, 400,000 Aromanians livein the South East of Europe". 11The Balkan Romanians, a minority population living in the core of themajority Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian populations, have fought forobtaining certain desiderates of national nature.The national battle of the Balkan Romanians was fought on three distinctlevels: education in the national language, their own church organizationuntil the acknowledgement of a Romanian bishop and, eventually, aproportional representation, on ethnic grounds, in various local systems.The action of awakening the national conscience has started at the end of the18 th century, and it culminated, in the second half of the following century,with the founding of schools and churches in the Romanian language 12 ,with the Romanian state aid.The national aspirations of the Romanians aimed neither the joiningto Romania nor the creation of a state of their own in the Balkans. Theywanted equal citizens rights to those of the other nations of the OttomanEmpire and cultural autonomy.The Romanian education in the Balkan PeninsulaThe founding of schools in the second half of the nineteenth centuryat South-Danube Romanians was prepared by the emergence of historicallinguisticreference works 13 .The idea of founding schools in the Romanian language for the BalkanRomanians is encountered at the leaders of the Romanian revolution of1848: Nicolae Bălcescu, Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Ion Ghica, Ion Ionescude la Brad, and others, who, upon noticing the massive presence of the11Ibidem, 13.12Th. Burada 1890, Researches on the schools in Turkey, Bucharest, 53.13Constantin Ucuta, born in Moscopole and arch-priest in Posen (Poznan) wasthe author of the first Romanian primer, published in Vienna in the typography of theAromanian brothers Markides Paulian (Marcu Puiu) in the second half of the eighteenthcentury. In 1808 Doctor Gh. Constantin Roja originating from the village Monastirpublished the work: Researches on Aromanians across the Danube (in German languagewith parallel Greek text). In 1809 he published another: The Magnificence of Romaniangrammar (literature) with Latin letters which are the old letters of Romanians. In 1813,was published in Vienna the first grammar of the Aromanian dialect edited by ProfessorMichael G. Boiagi.