Recent reforms have often created a linguistic, not a mental, shift. Documents talk about “competences,” “critical thinking,” “lifelong learning,” but in classrooms, practice remains unchanged. Curricula are often overloaded, poorly translated, conceptually unclear. Textbooks serve as sources of information, not as tools that encourage questioning and research. Assessment continues to measure reproduction, not thinking. Teachers’ professional development is formal and disconnected from real classroom practice.
We often talk about education: we draft strategies, approve documents, change terminology, and announce reforms. However, the feeling that remains is that the essential is not changing – the way the student learns and the way the school understands and cultivates learning.
Evidence from everyday classroom practice, national assessments and international studies shows a persistent gap between the goals of educational policies and the real-life experience of students, who lack the necessary skills to apply knowledge, reason independently, analyse information and express structured ideas.
Schools do not exist solely to transmit content. In a society facing rapid change, the ability to think critically and independently is as important as factual knowledge. They are able to provide answers, but they struggle when asked to explain reasoning, integrate and apply knowledge to new situations.
MANIFESTO, NOT STRATEGY
Albanian education has experienced a series of changes or reforms – often hasty, unclear and lacking coherence. Many of them have created the illusion of change, while the daily reality of the classroom has remained almost unchanged.
Education does not suffer from a lack of reforms, but from a lack of thinking that gives them meaning and direction. The problem is not fragmentary, but systemic. We must dismantle the wrong pedagogical paradigm according to which school continues to function on the traditional model where learning is simply the accumulation of information. Today's education requires that learning be built on understanding, reasoning and the transfer of knowledge.
The result of this outdated paradigm is students who "know" but don't think; who reproduce but don't solve problems; who get answers but don't understand the question. This also explains why they fail tests that measure creativity and logical reasoning.
Strategic policies are documents without memory and without accountability. The cycle of drafting successive strategies prevails, usually every four years – in line with political mandates – which remain documents that rarely reach the ground.
Strategies are long, overloaded with technical jargon, and of little public interest. They are not based on honest assessments of the implementation of previous strategies. Strategies lack a balance sheet of achievements and failures, and as such remain lifeless documents.
Education needs long-term, understandable and implementable action plans, across political and electoral boundaries. Real reforms are not measured by the number of documents, but by the depth of change that occurs in the classroom, in the way students learn and the way teachers think.
CURRENT SITUATION: WHERE IS ALBANIAN EDUCATION TODAY?
Any serious analysis of education begins with the recognition of achievements. In recent years, some tangible progress has been made: the regular participation of our students in international assessments; the State Matura; improvements in school infrastructure; computer labs in schools and digital equipment in some educational institutions, etc.
These steps are positive and should be recognized. They are insufficient to constitute a sustainable basis for deep reforms. In many areas of the country, especially rural ones, infrastructure remains weak, learning conditions are minimal and the gap between schools is visible, inequalities are large.
Despite these advances, data from international testing and national analyses reveal structural weaknesses: difficulty in solving unfamiliar problems, superficial and short-term learning, a predominance of teacher-led instruction, and students’ limited ability to argue in writing and orally. These are symptoms of a system that often prioritizes program delivery over understanding.
In today's digital society, school cannot compete with the internet in terms of information. Its role is different: to help students understand, reason, interpret, and apply knowledge in new situations – to cultivate a culture of thinking.
Information as a starting point, not an outcome. In Albanian school practice, information is still treated as the ultimate goal. The student is rewarded for the amount of knowledge he reproduces, not for the way he understands or uses it. Questions require correct answers, not explanations. Error is seen as failure, not as part of learning.
There is little room in the classroom for independent thought, reflection, or creative inquiry. This is not due to a lack of commitment on the part of teachers, but rather to an inherited teaching culture that sees learning as the controlled reproduction of knowledge, not as an active process of construction.
The illusion of reform. Recent reforms have often created a linguistic, not a mental, shift. Documents talk about “competences,” “critical thinking,” “lifelong learning,” but in the classroom the practice remains unchanged. Curricula are often overloaded, poorly translated, conceptually unclear. Textbooks serve as sources of information, not as tools that encourage questioning and research. Assessment continues to measure reproduction, not thinking. Teachers’ professional development is formal and disconnected from real classroom practice. Our reforms have changed the vocabulary, but not the way of thinking in schools.
THINKERS – THE CENTRAL GOAL OF THE SCHOOL
The culture of thinking implies the student's ability to understand, analyze, connect, argue, and transfer knowledge to new situations.
It is not a specific teaching method, but a way of understanding learning as a whole – a classroom culture where the question has the same value as the answer, where the process has the same weight as the result, and where error is seen as a necessary part of learning. The culture of thinking requires that knowledge be clear and understandable, so that the student can build analytical, interpretive and creative skills.
In the age of technology and information, thinking is the ability that gives meaning to knowledge. The ability to think implies not only logical accuracy, but also a tendency to reflect, intellectual honesty, curiosity, and a commitment to truth. If we want an education system that prepares students for the real world, we must understand that a culture of thinking is the very foundation of quality education.
POSSIBLE COMMITMENTS FOR THE CULTURE OF THINKING
The Albanian education system needs to change the paradigm of learning. Education must be based on a fundamental principle: Information is the starting point - the construction, creation and use of knowledge is the goal. This national transformation requires action on five main pillars of a structural and transformative nature.
A curriculum for developing thinking that is clear, simplified, and understandable, with a focus on depth, not quantity. Reduce information overload; focus on core concepts and their application; emphasize critical, creative, and practical thinking skills.
The text as a working tool, not a source of information, should bring the student out of passivity and serve as a working tool that encourages questions, discussion and open thinking and contain: real-life situations; revealing, comparative and reflective questions; exercises that require reasoning, not just answers. The textbook should become an instrument of understanding, not a small encyclopedia.
The teacher as an architect of thinking is the heart of the reform. He brings the curriculum to life and gives life to teaching. His role is built in two phases: in the faculties of education and professional development during his career. The programs should be based on the contemporary doctrine of learning through understanding and reasoning, the training should be sustainable, linked to the reality of the classroom.
Assessment for thinking should reward the process, not just the outcome. It should measure and judge the ability to use knowledge, to argue, to explain, and to create new approaches to problems.
Accountability and institutional memory. Education needs a new culture of accountability and institutional memory. Only through transparency, reflection, and continuity can a system be built that evolves and improves with integrity.
The implementation of content reform necessarily requires a higher budget, improvements in infrastructure, teaching equipment, including digital ones, and more time for students to stay in school where they are provided with a healthy meal.
RESPONSIBILITY IS SHARED
The student and the teacher cannot bear the weight of systemic failures. The responsibility for the state of education, for its improvement and development, is collective and distributed among all actors:
Policymaking – for creating a sustainable vision, based on data and not on electoral cycles.
Educational institutions, at the center and in the field – for the responsible and transparent implementation of policies.
Curriculum designers – for building clear, applicable programs that are connected to real classroom practice.
Publishers – for producing quality texts that encourage thinking rather than reproduction.
Universities and faculties of education – for the training of future teachers based on scientific research and contemporary practice.
The Albanian teacher has carried the heaviest burden of the system for decades. He faces numerous documents, changing programs, endless tests and often contradictory expectations. Change starts in the classroom, but teachers cannot be asked to carry the reform alone.
LESSONS FROM INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
International experience clearly shows that the quality of education does not depend on the number of reforms, but on their coherence and sustainability. The systems that have achieved high and sustainable results – such as Finland, Estonia, Canada or Singapore – are not necessarily those with the most demanding curricula, but those that teach students how to use knowledge.
These systems have not reached this level through copying foreign models, but through adapting sustainable principles to their national context.
The manifesto does not aim to close the debate on education, but to open it. There is no reform without thought, there is no thought without responsibility, and responsibility is shared./Monitor.al/
