Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

CRISTINA PETRESCUIn this way, the number of primary schools dramatically increased ina decade, 45 but this effort had a rather limited effect among the Bessarabianpeasants. The rate of illiteracy decreased as compared with the Tsarist period,but, according to the 1930 census, from all the historical regions ofGreater Romania, Bessarabia still had the lowest percentage of literate population:38.1%, while the country average was 57%, the same as that of Spainor Greece. 46 In spite of the intense propaganda for education, the peasantsremained unenthusiastic about schools, just as they were under the Tsaristregime. 47 Most of the peasants still thought that they would not be able tofinish all the necessary agricultural work on time without the help of theirchildren. In the case of families with little land, parents preferred to sendtheir children to work for others to supplement the household income. Eventhose children whose parents were less narrow-minded were able to attendschool only after the harvest, so that their accumulation of knowledge wasrather inconsistent and unsystematic. 48 The fear of losing a precious workforce by sending the children to school was even higher than before, sincethose who were diligent had more opportunities to become clerks or teachers,leaving the native village and their parents. 49 In short, most of theBessarabian peasants did not understand the importance of education and,with few exceptions, did not encourage their children to attend classes. 50The problem was not only that the peasants were unable to understandthe benefits of schooling, but also that, as the National Peasantists’criticism underlined, the Liberals’ educational program developed unilaterally.Besides its chaotic management, which did not support the constructionof new schools with adequate funding and qualified teachers, theLiberal plan for education was conceived without taking into account thegeneral rural poverty. Therefore, in the end, it proved to be less effectivethan expected. As Dimitrie Gusti, Minister of Education in severalNational Peasant Party governments and the leading sociologist of interwarRomania, put it, education could not be only limited to the spread ofliteracy. According to him, the cultural process in rural areas had to be civilizing,not purely intellectual; peasants needed to learn to read and towrite just as much as they needed to understand the main sanitary requirementsfor a healthy life, or some of the basic rules of the market economyin order to increase their earnings. 51In this respect, besides encouraging the construction of new schools inorder to have the necessary infrastructure for implementing the standardeducational system, interwar Romanian governments did little to improvethe way of life of the Bessarabian peasants. As shown above, the regionremained overwhelmingly agricultural, so that people continued to live thelife they have been living for centuries. For most of these people, the worldwas not larger than the neighboring villages. The very poor road system also160