An educator from Drenovac has been dedicated to students and the study of the little-known history of Serbia for decades

At the end of last year, Zoran Radovanović (64), a teacher at the eight-year-old school “Nata Jeličić” in Drenovac, near Šabac, added to his enviable collection of awards and recognitions the “Golden Badge” of the Cultural and Educational Community (KPZ) of Serbia, for his long-term contribution to the development of cultural activities, selfless, dedicated and long-term work.

He does not hide the country boy, as he likes to say about himself, that he is flattered to be one of the laureates of the traditional award, for which he was nominated by the Novi Sad publishing house “Promethej”, and that he will wear it proudly.

He playfully learned that his heart grew stronger when he climbed onto the stage of the National Theater in Belgrade to receive a red box with a gold badge and a charter in the same binding, awarded by the Serbian Penitentiary and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Directorate for Cooperation with the Diaspora and Serbs in the Region, under the auspices of Ministry of Culture and Information.

– The award is very affirmative, but it also obligates that there is still work to be done – says Radovanović, who will postpone the school diary for a year and a half, as much as he has left until retirement.

– When I received the award, I was thinking of my many honorable colleagues from the Serbian clergy, who have not received it until now, but they deserved it. I would be happy if you would recognize yourself and your actions in my work. Let my example be that there is still strength in Serbian education for those who are at the beginning or the end of their professional career, and have not yet said everything. I will tell my children that it was their grandmother who plowed.

Photo Private archive

In addition to being an eight-year-old girl in Drenovac, Radovanović, a cheerful and restless spirit, also taught at the elementary school “Ivo Andrić” in Budisava, he educated many generations and taught them life lessons and true values, and that’s why when he leaves the classroom, the children will miss him a lot. With them, he says, he feels younger, and they give him the strength to devote himself to educational and cultural creativity outside the school walls.

The list of completed works, which “Prometheus” listed in the proposal for the “Golden Badge” award, is long, and it would take a lot of newspaper space to list them all. However, the works published in the collection of poetry “Pletenica-nesanica”, the monograph of the school “Ognjište skole u Drenovac”, the Drenovac church “Prilog of the history of the church in Drenovac”, several different literary titles of military biographies and records about the fate of Serbs in Serbia, her work Swords and on the French island of Corsica, in the gloomy time of the war whirlwind of the Great War. The guardian of the Orthodox tradition also published “Zauvek vertep”, a religious-ritual and ethnological-theatrical collection.

Drenovac Spent almost his entire working life in a village eight-year-old school, Photo Đ. Milutinović

Some of them are of national and international importance, and among the people the most famous title is “Serbs in Corsica”, published in the “Serbia 1914-1918” edition of the publishing house that proposed it for the prestigious award. This book was declared a publishing venture in 2014 at the International Book Fair in Belgrade. At the initiative of France, that book was translated into French at the expense of this country. His works were also translated into Russian, and “Balalaika na Sava” was published in a Russian magazine from St. Petersburg.

SPREADING AND CULTIVATING SAINT SAUL

IN THE PROPOSAL to receive the “Golden Badge”, among other things, it was stated that the teacher Zoran Radovanović has a wide range of activities that he continuously successfully engages in:

– These are, first of all, educational work, science, literary creation and its educational promotion, spreading and nurturing of sacred knowledge with respect for roots, the family as an institution, tradition and national identity.

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