One of the world’s leading computer scientists, Serbian professor Aleksandar Kavčić, who intends to invest part of the million-dollar compensation received from “Marvel” in textbooks, said in an interview with Srna that these textbooks, once approved, will be available online for Serbian primary school students, from Serbia to the Republic of Srpska, BiH and anywhere else.
– When we have textbooks written by the Ministry of Education / Serbia /, we will post them all on the website, and from there, everyone will be able to download them for free – said Kavčić.
He mentioned that for now, everything is in the process of writing textbooks, illustrating, proofreading, and after that, the textbooks will be sent to the Ministry of Education of Serbia for approval.
– We are seriously working on all this, including textbooks for foreign languages. We will finance the publication of more than a hundred titles on which, in many cases, two or three authors work. The process of writing all these textbooks will certainly take two to three years, but we expect the first textbooks much, much earlier – stated Kavčić.
Kavčić said that he hopes that, when the textbooks are completed and available for free on the site, school principals, as well as teachers, and above all parents, will support all that.
“There will be no more reason for parents to buy expensive textbook sets,” said Kavčić.
Kavčić mentioned that his goal is not to physically distribute printed paper textbooks, but that all textbooks will be available for free on the Internet, and that in that way they will be available to primary school students in Serbia and the Republic of Srpska, BiH, and the diaspora.
He pointed out that what his foundation is doing is nothing new, and reminded that free textbooks for primary school students are available in this way / via the Internet / in many countries, and not only in very rich countries, such as the United States.
– They really exist everywhere in the world from India to America. In fact, Serbia is an exception in the sense that I do not know that somewhere there is such a liberal textbook market as in Serbia and that primary education is compulsory – Kavčić emphasized.
Speaking about the motivation for such a decision to finance free textbooks, Kavčić said that he wanted to, in some way, return something to Serbia, the country he comes from.
He is a former student of the Belgrade Mathematical Gymnasium and knows how many great young people go through this school, and what kind of education is provided.
– First of all, I want to give something back to that school, but also beyond. I firmly believe that the state, society must enable every child, regardless of the financial situation of the parents, to reach their full potential. And that is why education must be free, without favoring the children of the elite – Kavčić emphasized.
He mentioned that Serbia is a small country, but that it used to get top scientists, mathematicians, doctors from small rural schools …
– And today? To be competitive among giants, our population must be educated. We must provide every child, and not only our own, with a chance, and that is possible only if schooling is quality and free, from kindergarten to college, which includes free textbooks, transportation, and even one meal at school – Kavčić pointed out.
He mentioned that today, those parents, who can afford it, send their children even to private primary schools.
– According to that, it turns out that they think that they are better than the state ones, and that must change – said Kavčić in an interview with Srna.
Aleksandar Kavčić is one of the leading computer scientists on the planet, the author of eight patents in information technology that he made at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his doctorate and where four departments, due to their merits, bear his name.
This citizen of Belgrade graduated from the Mathematical Gymnasium in Serbia in 1986, and then, as one of the best students at the school that holds the title of national importance, he continued his education in Bochum, where he graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
He defended his doctoral dissertation at Carnegie Mellon University, and in addition to it, he taught at Harvard and the University of Hawaii.
He lives on the Austin-Texas-Belgrade route, and he received part of the money with which he founded the “Alek Kavčić” Foundation on the basis of a record court compensation for the theft of intellectual property in the field of information technologies.
It is an invention, which he later developed in his doctoral dissertation at Carnegie Mellon University, which has been used since 2003 to produce all reading chips from magnetic memories on the planet.
The multinational company “Marvel Technologies” illegally used his patent in the production of chips.
After a seven-year dispute, the company was ordered to pay $ 750 million to Kavčić, then Professor Jose Moura, his mentor at Carnegie Mellon University, and the university itself.
TST
