“AUR’s new brand law: students must study Romanian dishes, proverbs and recipes.

/…/ This week, the AUR also submitted a legislative project aimed at amending the Law on National Education to introduce a mandatory lesson on “Romanian Culture and Traditions” in schools. The project was initiated by 35 deputies and senators from the AUR, who claim that the aim is to eliminate the so-called EU attempt to erase the national identity of member states. If the project is voted in the parliament, students will study folk songs, duenas and ballads. They will also listen to fairy tales and legends, study proverbs and sayings or poems, learn needlework. The latter involves studying the processing of ceramics, wood products, fabrics, and embroidery. /…/ “Given that certain directions of the European Union have the effect of suppressing and losing the identity of each state, it is necessary that the competent authorities take all the necessary measures in such a way that tradition and culture continue regardless of the changes that the Romanian people are facing”

(press release, October 2022)

As a professor of literary history (and someone who teaches about the nature of tradition), I’ve never seen more nerds packed into a smaller space.

1) traditions they are those that are transmitted live, from parents to children, from master to student. One is written culture, the one transmitted through school, the other is culture transmitted informally, orally. Teaching in the school itself destroys tradition: tradition means what is NOT taught in an organized environment, with curriculum, teachers, scales, grades.

2) In what language should these “fairytales, ballads, fairy tales, legends” be taught? The stories I know firsthand are in Banătănieșci. If someone dared to teach me stories in literary Romanian, I would set the school on fire. It would be a terrible falsification of folklore to teach in Banat, God forbid, stories from Moldova, or Argesh, or Oltenia, or any other area, and vice versa. It is necessary to find teachers who know the local dialect (there are none) and to select texts in the local dialect. As for the national dress, it also varies from region to region. There are several ethnographers, maybe two in the district, to whom you can show some folk costume, and they say: Codrenime. Hall. Cuttlefish mussel. Chiojd, a married woman. Repentance, the girl is married. What will the students study, popular costumes from each area or from their area?

3) The modern urban man has no idea about anything. The vernacular is completely foreign to him.

It is a complex language with dozens of bird names and dozens of plant names, as well as the names of tools and chariot parts. Here is an example (Carul cu flori, Tudor Gheorghe):

Then Oskean / With Odole’s Chariot,

Heads of a cracked tree, To give the rays of the earth,

With lard from bushes / With knitting needles from small ones,

Loter cinnamon / with ivory spices,

Kalomfir wheels / Chilimir roses

How many nails are in the chariot / All of mother-of-pearl,

And weeping willows from vine leaves / Polino from the vine.

Chants of Avrames/ Potting Christensei,

Crows cawing / The yoke is pulled by two crows.

I challenge anyone to define my stubbornness, inactivity, carpets, sijlets, ganjas. The names of these parts of the van are so obscure that all (all) transcriptions of this song have numerous errors. (see text above for errors). Even Tudor Gheorghe doesn’t know the meaning of all of them: “ivory” does not exist in any dictionary. Odolean, tufenele, michsonele, calomfir, razachie – plants that are completely foreign to a city child.

4) The parts of the cart have names that differ from language to language and from district to district.

Children from the city can learn about life in the village at any time by going to the village to visit their grandparents. Oh, I forgot to name the parts of the plow, otîng, bîrsa, cormana, otic, brazdar, plaz, pogonici. Students will never teach them. Because now it’s not plows, but John Deere tractors.

Tradition means, of course, wood carving (give the children a cutter in their hands, wait for the chips to fly); tradition means melted hemp and flax (in the fall, in the river, with water up to your knees, with rotten hemp that smells terrible) worsted wool, hemp hemp (dust from puddles – ask George Simeon what puddles are, what are puddles and what is kiss, he proposed the law, he will figure it out).

Oh, and tanning hides is a traditional occupation, but five blocks away it smells like rotting wagons and the kids come home smelling terrible and wearing greasy clothes.

5) There is nothing particularly Romanian in rope weaving, basket weaving and dozens of other ancient occupations, hollowing out wooden spoons, hollowing out pots and pans, weaving, embroidery, sewing. It’s, um, pre-industrial. This was done throughout Europe in the 18th century.

6) It exists in almost all large cities Museums of the village. Students can go there and learn crafts. (I’m a potter myself, and I can tell you it’s very difficult). There is no room in schools for potter’s wheels, wool, linen, forks, looms, needles, scissors, looms. At night the school has to buy wood, chisels, wool, raw hides, hemp, vines, wax, hell knows what else, egg dyes and pens. Craft is best taught in popular art schools.

What is “tradition”? Peasants get up at five o’clock to milk cows and sheep, go plowing, digging, digging, harvesting, threshing or mowing hay. The small ones are sent with the flock, the big ones with the sheep. I can’t wait to see the big flocks of sheep crossing Bucharest and the second-grade kids coming out of the blocks at five in the morning to milk the cows and milk the marves and help the sows farrow and take the cows to calve and the stallions to calve, and, merrily merrily, put jujeu and belciug to the cousins.

The European Union did not destroy traditions. Europe developed slowly. People moved from the village to the city. A much smaller percentage of the population is enough for all the agricultural and livestock products we need. The tradition cannot be preserved by a ministerial order, a government decision, an emergency order, a law, a resolution, rules, or through budget allocations. People keep it themselves if they want, if they know, if they can. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro