1. The prerequisites *
A. Changes in the legislature
The academic system, which educates the students in three degrees – bachelor’s, master’s and doctor’s – is relatively new in Bulgaria. Until the change of the political system in 1989, and even several years after that, the students (I have in mind the students from the humanitarian specialties) underwent an incessant five-years-long education and graduated with a diploma for completed higher education and with the allowance to work as teachers (or exercise other profession). Receiving the diploma they acquired a professional qualification – say, philologist (or historian, or lawyer and so on). After that the diploma-bearer-specialist could apply in a competition for a governmental scholarship, then called aspirantska, and to become an aspirant, which means doctoral student. Several years later, if (s)he has managed to write and defend the Doctoral thesis, (s)he received a degree, called “candidate of science”. Later this degree was equalized to the present day “doctor”. Subsequently (s)he could write a second dissertation, this time without supervision and to acquire a higher scientific degree, called “doctor of sciences”, which was a necessary but not sufficient condition for becoming a “professor”. So, the then system had three degrees as well, but the difference was that the researcher needed much more years for work and had to pass two difficult procedures, in order to be named “doctor”.
This system, which was the result of the harmonization of the Bulgarian educational legislature with the Soviet one, is almost untouched today. In 1999 the changes in the Higher education act introduced the degrees bachelor and master, which haven’t existed before; the degree “candidate” has been converted into doctoral one, and “doctor of sciences” still exists today. Probably this degree will survive another 10 or 15 years – until the colleagues, who had troubled themselves with this procedure, remain influential in the academic, and in the political spheres as well. However, now it seems like a mechanical repetition of the first doctoral degree, it does not change the salary considerably, and it will be evaded more and more by the candidates for this title, because the changes in the Act allow them to become professors without it. Eventually it might disappear.
So, in 1999 the initially monolith five-years-long education has been divided into two degrees (bachelor’s and master’s) with special amendments in the Act. These engendered the requirement the specialties to provide new curricula, and they did so. Thus, the specialty classical philology, in which we are interested in, began to offer masters’ programmes, addressed mainly to students enrolled in the University after 1996. The programmes became accessible in 1999, which means one year before the graduation of these students. But in this year the programmes did not start, because there weren’t candidates. This was not strange, because at this time all the graduates in Bulgaria hold a degree, equal to the master’s. This was the more important reason for the lack of candidates; but it seems to me, that other reasons were there as well. I am going to discuss them further.
B. The situation in the specialty Classical philology
Actually, the shift from the one-degree to the two-degrees-system of the graduate education was not so sharp, as I have sketched it so far. Since this change was anticipated even in the beginning of the 90-ties, at least some of the universities reacted earlier, and some specialties, among which our specialty as well, started offering a basic division of the education in the beginning of the five-years period. So, the students studied three years according to the former curriculum and after that they entered a two-years specialization, chosen in conformity with their interest. In Classical philology the specializations were three: Greek studies (Grecistika), Latin studies (Latinistika) and History and Archeology, for which most probably some of the departments in the faculty of history has contributed. It was assumed, that every student has greater interest for one of the two antiquities – the Greek and the Latin, including their medieval corollaries. At the other hand, some of them are maybe exhausted by the preoccupation with language and literature, and are eager to learn more about the political history and the material culture. Hence, let’s give them an opportunity to specialize within the five-years course itself.
The educational conviction, founding this strategy was the following. The university is a place for the pursuit of elitist knowledge and for the creation of elitist professional scholars. “Elitist”, however means “highly specialized”, which in the realm of the ancient researches means: handling perfectly the classical languages (or better, language), but reading much more interpretations and commentaries, than original ancient sources, because a specialist is a person, who is familiar with everything, written by his/her colleagues all over the world on a certain topic. Consequently, the students, graduating from a secondary school, in which they have already followed five-years systematic learning of Greek and Latin, but in which they have studied other matters as well, were meant to undergo a basic three-years long university course in classical philology, and then to begin their specialization. The best were expected to continue as doctoral students, and some of them could hope to become regular academic staff in the specialty. There was an opportunity for them to find jobs as teachers in the classical lyceum, from which they have graduated, but it was not esteemed as so good, for the same reason. Because a teacher in a gymnasium is preoccupied with teaching and moreover (s)he has to stick to the manuals, in which the content of his discipline is treated in a general and simplified manner. That’s why (s)he could hardly become an elitist scholar.
All this strategy, however, had little to do with the reality, at least in Bulgaria, because it could not answer to the frequently posed question: what happens with the majority of the students, who graduate the specialty?
(follows in Monday, June 11)
* this is the full version of a lecture, held at the First Contact Session of the three-year "Contextualizing Classics" project of the Sofia University and the HESP Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching (Open Society Institute, Budapest).
For further information see: http://www.proclassics.org/
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