High school students from Strumica are organizing to boycott classes in protest against plans by Education Minister Mila Carovska to switch to electronic school books.

The students are repeating their old request for in-person schooling and insist that e-books will just solidify the Ministry’s insistence on holding online classes in perpetuity. Local news sites report that the students are supported by their parents in the call for boycott, which is starting today.

Carovska’s plan caused a controversy because Macedonia is under serious pressure from Bulgaria and Greece to rewrite its history books. Her first initiative was to abolish a number of classes and roll them into broader classes – a process which would have automatically meant rewriting of all school books. The current idea – to stop routinely printing books and to issue them electronically would serve a similar purpose – it would make future changes to the books driven by political considerations much easier to do.