PROZOR-RAMA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, October 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The education system that has been adopted in Bosnia by the peace sponsors over 10 years ago is causing more harm than benefit, with the need growing for eliminating politics and ethnic divisions from the classroom before "a practice of open segregation and apartheid" prevails.

The 1995 Dayton peace accords ended the war by splitting Bosnia into two ethnically-based regions, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, each enjoying great powers of autonomy.

The federation's education ministry coordinates the ministries of the entity's 10 cantons. There is also the neutral Brcko district, bringing the number of autonomous governments to 13, each with their own, highly independent education ministry, Reuters says.

The main dividing issue is the curriculum, especially for sensitive subjects like language, history and geography.

As a concession to post-war nationalism, teaching is now done in three "national languages": what used to be known as Serbo-Croat is now Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, or "BSC languages" for short. They still share some 95 percent of their vocabulary.

Depending on background, a child's books would copy those issued by education ministries in Belgrade or Zagreb. Some schools use the more moderate Sarajevo-published books, but not even those are seen as impartial accounts of national history.

"Too often politics is too much present in the classrooms," Davidson said. "A country with three different histories is not a country with a common view of itself."

There are no provisions for children from mixed marriages. Despite the delicate footwork, no minority is content. In the Serb Republic, Muslim children are taught history in Serbian, as perceived by Serb historians. If a group is big enough, they are allowed to bring their own teachers.

Head of the European Commission (L) and Bosnia's Prime Minister (R) announce the EC decision to recommend the start of talks. (Reuters)

The town of Prozor-Rama in central Bosnia showcases lingering nationalism from the 1992-95 war, its Muslim-Croat composite name reflecting rival claims on the land, according to Reuters.

Muslim and Croat students had separate classes in the same school building. But during the summer the local council, backed by nationalist Croat and Muslim parties, voted for a separate school for Muslims.

Croat parents protested and managed to block the plan after pulling their children out of school.

"We want one school under one name," Mijo Peran, representative of Croat parents, was quoted by Reuters as saying. He added Muslims may attend and use their own curriculum as long as the school is Croat-run and carries the name of a Croatian poet.

Now, Muslims are threatening to pull out, saying a Croat-dominated school inherently discriminates against them. They want either a unified school with no overriding ethnic character or their own fully separate school, Reuters said.

The situation is so polarized in these traditional communities that the Bosnia branch of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights is warning against a "practice of open segregation and apartheid."

Students walk along the same road to school but once there, Muslim and Croatian children use separate entrances, file into different classrooms to different teachers who use conflicting books, says Reuters.

"We don't socialize with them. We only beat them up," laughed a 13-year-old Bosnian Croat, loudly approved by other boys.

The system of "two schools under one roof" was put in place when refugees started returning to heartland areas of the Muslim-Croat federation where once multi-ethnic communities were now clearly dominated by a majority.

The plan, which led to the foundation of 54 schools, aimed to protect minorities against cultural assimilation. In practice, it brought segregation: pupils use separate doors or attend classes in shifts, sitting in rooms bearing the symbols of another nation.

Pressured by Bosnia's Western backers, local officials agreed to create multicultural schools in 2002. But political rivalries derailed the plan and some municipalities are now preparing to separate schools permanently.

"It's a shame ... education falls hostage to some larger political debates that are still unsettled from the war," Douglas Davidson, head of the Bosnian mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which oversees education reform in post-war Bosnia, told Reuters.

The European Union, on its part, has said Bosnia must reform its education system and eliminate politics from the classroom if it wants to make progress on the way to eventual membership.

Similar efforts to unify the entities' separate army and police took years of preparation and months of talks under Western pressure. With the clock ticking, many fear a new generation will become victims of political games.

"The children here have begun to hate each other," Kata Tomic, a Bosnian-Croat mother-of-three, told Reuters.

Luka Faleta, the sports teacher in the Prozor school warned that "instead of bringing the children together, we are driving them apart".

The Bosnian war ended in November 1995 after marathon US-led negotiations in Dayton, Ohio, led by US President Bill Clinton 's Bosnia envoy Richard Holbrooke.

Clinton was the key advocate of NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serbs in September 1995 that forced them to sit down at the negotiating table.