Academic literature on the topic 'Simion Mehedinţi'

Simion Mehedinți was Minister of Education and Cults in the government of Alexandru Marghiloman (March – October 1918), when the great politician from Buzău was called by King Ferdinand I to form a new government and sign the Peace Treaty with the Central Powers. Simion Mehedinţi studied in Bucharest, Paris, Berlin and Leipzig, where he obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy (geography specialty), with the qualification “Summa cum laude”. In 1900, he taught the first university geography course in Bucharest, which constitutes the act of birth of this science in our country, Simion Mehedinţi being considered the founder of Romanian geography, recognized as one of the greatest theorists of this science worldwide. In 1905 he was elected a member of the Romanian Geographical Society, in 1908 he became, at only 40 years old, a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, and in 1915, at 47 years old, a full member of it. As the Minister of Education and Religion, Simion Mehedinţi promoted two education laws, through which he pursued the reform of rural education. Between 1919–1939 he was a teacher at the Superior War School in Bucharest, where he taught General Geography. He died on December 14, 1962, in Bucharest, in total anonymity, at the age of 96.

During the First World War, and later, geographers from East Central and South-Eastern Europe formulated several argumentative strategies to support territorial demands. Initially, the predominating idea was the one of ethnic borders, which were an expression of the right to self-determination as well as the most significant correction for strategic and economic justifications. Soon, however, the experts present at the peace conference became convinced that arguments other than ethnic arguments should be used. These arguments contained, among other motifs, culture and civilization. The most active among the experts in this respect were eminent scholars from Poland (e.g. Eugeniusz Romer), Czechoslovakia (e.g. Jan Kapras), Ukraine (Stepan Rudnytsky), Yugoslavia (Jovan Cvijić), Romania (Simion Mehedinţi) and Germany (Albrecht Penck, Wilhelm Volz). Most of them continued this line of thinking in the inter-war period, contributing to the creation of their respective national varieties of geopolitics.

In this article, our aim is to redrawn the connections between the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne, the one that was claimed to have had an academic life worthy of an adventure novel, and the Romanian Academy, the representative institution of the Romanian intelligentsia. Formed in the French academic environment, this geographer devoted a considerable part of his scientific activity, beginning with the end of the 19th century, to the Romanian geography. In this process, if we were to analyze statistically these points in his scientific work, we mention two doctoral theses and between 60-70 studies and articles. These works are really astonishing, and the Romanian geography has not had such a personality. However, the academic recognition of these merits came relatively late in 1912, being the result of a process of promotion involving the geographers S. Mehedinti and Stefan C. Hepites. After the first discussions, the election was unanimous, Em. de Martonne becoming from this moment a corresponding member of the academic institution. Later, in 1919, after the First World War, in the context of the visit of the French university mission, the teachers: Em. by Martonne, L. Poincaré, C. Diehl, Gustave Fougères, Victor Balthaz, Daniel Berthelot, Paul Janet, Joseph Bédier and Eugène Meynal were declared honorary members of the Romanian Academy as a recognition of their efforts to promote abroad the Romanian environment, ideas and ideals. These two moments are significant for the connections between the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne and the Romanian Academy, and in the following period there is a strengthening of the geographic collaboration between the Romanian and the French geographic school.

"Starting the study from the theory of the Heartland, drawn up by Halford John Mackinder, according to which who rules Eastern Europe rules the world, we identify the geopolitical importance of the Ponto-Baltic isthmus. The region imaginarily bordered to the North by the Baltic Sea and to the South by the Black Sea has been a hotspot throughout history. Thus, the strategic importance of the Ponto-Baltic isthmus and the conflicting interests in the region are the current reasons for the confrontation between the Russian Federation and the West. The illegal aggression of the Russian state in Kyiv confirms the hypothesis that Moscow is the main threat to the security and territorial integrity of the states of the Ponto-Baltic region. In this respect, to become aware of the regional geopolitical realities, in the first part of the research both the geographical coordinates of the Ponto-Baltic isthmus and the historical coordinates stated at the national level will be outlined, in keeping with the writings of scholars such as Simion Mehedinți and Nicolae Iorga. Afterwards, the strategy of the Russian Federation in the region will be analysed, in relation to the permanent fuelling of conflicts on the territory of states that pursue their Euro-Atlantic vision. Romania’s role in the Ponto-Baltic region will also be identified, through its status of a regional pivot and a relevant actor in the process of consolidating NATO’s eastern flank. The research will be the result of the cross-use of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, for an in-depth approach to the subject under study."

"Starting the study from the theory of the Heartland, drawn up by Halford John Mackinder, according to which who rules Eastern Europe rules the world, we identify the geopolitical importance of the Ponto-Baltic isthmus. The region imaginarily bordered to the North by the Baltic Sea and to the South by the Black Sea has been a hotspot throughout history. Thus, the strategic importance of the Ponto-Baltic isthmus and the conflicting interests in the region are the current reasons for the confrontation between the Russian Federation and the West. The illegal aggression of the Russian state in Kyiv confirms the hypothesis that Moscow is the main threat to the security and territorial integrity of the states of the Ponto-Baltic region. In this respect, to become aware of the regional geopolitical realities, in the first part of the research both the geographical coordinates of the Ponto-Baltic isthmus and the historical coordinates stated at the national level will be outlined, in keeping with the writings of scholars such as Simion Mehedinți and Nicolae Iorga. Afterwards, the strategy of the Russian Federation in the region will be analysed, in relation to the permanent fuelling of conflicts on the territory of states that pursue their Euro-Atlantic vision. Romania’s role in the Ponto-Baltic region will also be identified, through its status of a regional pivot and a relevant actor in the process of consolidating NATO’s eastern flank. The research will be the result of the cross-use of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, for an in-depth approach to the subject under study."

Ion S. Floru, born 28 September/9 October 1864 in the village of Floru in Olt county, took his name after that of his native village. He completed his book learning in 1894 as a graduate in historical sciences-philology at the University of Bucharest. He worked as a history teacher and director of the "Sf. Sava" High School in Bucharest, school inspector in the Ministry of Instruction and Religious Affairs, and politically he sympathized with the Junimist party and after 1907, the National Liberal party. He was in the circle of the great intellectuals of Romania Titu Maiorescu, Simion Mehedinți, Dimitrie Onciul and in close collaboration with the Oltenia that dominated cultural and scientific life through the magazine "Arhivele Olteniei". Throughout his life he impressed as a historian and philosopher. His history textbooks, printed in several editions and print runs between 1897 and 1934, were the most recommended to students, always updated and stylized in relation to the progress of Romanian historiography and the transformations in all spheres of national activity. Ion S. Floru was the first in the country, as early as 1905, to comment on the books and ideas of the great historian A. D. Xenopol on the philosophy of history. His entire activity as a great personality of Romanian education, history and philosopher is reconstructed in this article so that future encyclopaedias and dictionaries will not forget him as they have done until now. Ion S. Floru is presented as a landmark of Romanian historiography in the most complex era of the establishment of history as a science, the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

The papers published in this issue of Balgarski ezik are unified by the idea of presenting the peculiarities of the language varieties spoken by Bulgarian communities that live outside the state borders of present-day Bulgaria. In these new studies, one can trace the influence of the scientific ideas, theoretical views and remarkable teaching activity of an eminent Bulgarian scholar, Prof. Ivan Kochev, to whose 85th anniversary this issue is dedicated. He was the first of a generation of scholars succeeding the classics of Bulgarian linguistics such as Lyubomir Miletich, Stefan Mladenov and Benyo Tsonev to turn the study of the Bulgarian language throughout its historical territory, both within and outside the contemporary borders of Bulgaria, into his “symbol of faith”. In addition, some of the articles discuss the current state of the language spoken by the Bulgarian diaspora. The first two papers present recent lexical and phonetic data from the dialects of two Bulgarian villages in the Prizren Region that provide further evidence on the geographical position of the western boundary of the Bulgarian language continuum. The material has been collected by the authors of the articles in recent years as a result of personal field research. Luchia Antonova-Vasileva’s study On the Distinction of Dialects of Closely Related Languages at the Lexical Level explores the dialectal differences between Bulgarian and Serbian on the basis of lexical data from a recently studied Bulgarian dialect spoken in the Republic of Kosovo. Revealing the dialect-specific, common Bulgarian and common Slavic tiers of the vocabulary of the dialect of the village of Rahovets in the Prizren Region, the author undoubtedly proves its Bulgarian nature. In her paper The Reflexes of the Proto-Slavic Combinations *tj, *dj, *kt’ and Palatalisation Changes in the Plosives т, д, к and г in the Phonetic System of the Dialect of the Village of Rechane, Prizren Region – New Data, Iliyana Garavalova adduces authentic, although not very abundant, dialect material which corroborates the existence of one of the most typical diagnostic phonetic features of the Bulgarian language – the reflexes шт, жд – in the dialect of the Prizren village of Rechane. Georgi Mitrinov studies The Bulgarian Immigrants’ Dialect of the Village of Musabeyli, Edirne Region in comparison with the Rhodope dialect of the village of Vievo, Smolyan Region, where the inhabitants of Musabeyli hail from. The author discusses the linguistic data in light of historical, geographical and demographic information about the village over a period spanning more than 100 years and continuing into the present day. Based on material from the dialect of the residents of seven villages in the Tsaribrod Region collected by the author himself, Kiril Parvanov analyses the dialect’s most significant archaic features in the domain of morphology. Pointing out the symmetrical bilingualism observed in the dialect of the population of the Western Outlands, he provides linguistic data that clearly prove its Bulgarian character. An intriguing addition to the analysis are several recipes revealing unknown folk medicine practices and experience. Daniela Andrei’s paper The Bulgarian Ethnic Minorities in Oltenia, Romania. The Language of the Inhabitants of Sviniţa as an Ethnographic Group within the Bulgarian People is a contribution to the study of the language and culture of Bulgarian minorities in Romania. The author discusses archaic and recent phonetic features of the ancient dialect of the village of Sviniţa in Mehedinţi County, which shares common features with the dialect of the village of Novo Selo, Vidin Region. She goes on to make an overview of the rich bibliography on this topic, concluding that the language and culture of the Bulgarian minority in Oltenia merit further research. Ana Kocheva adds new details To the Characterisation of the Mixed Language of Second-Generation Viennese Bulgarians. As noted by the author, the language of Viennese Bulgarians preserves major features of the Bulgarian language, but bilingualism of a subordinate type is also observed. The variability between Bulgarian and German typical for the first generation of Bulgarian emigrants is gradually being replaced through the natural stabilisation of the German elements. Katerina Usheva traces the interesting Historical Development of the Old Bulgarian Etymological Vowel А (Я) in the Dialects of the Southern Part of the Э Isoglottal Zone (the regions of Razlog, Sandanski, Petrich, Gotse Delchev, Drama, Serres and Thessaloniki) and emphasises on the archaic nature of the umlaut in the Razlog and Thessaloniki Regions. Simeon Stefanov studies A Peculiarity in the Description of the Local Traditional Clothes Made by the Administration of the Shumen Region in 1888 (On Material from Archive 427 l. 68a-80a). The author analyses the lexis and style of hitherto unexplored documents from the late-19th century which provide data on the way different social and ethnic groups dressed in post-Liberation Bulgaria. The featured articles by established and younger scholars are a contribution to the study of the language of Bulgarian communities abroad that undoubtedly show that even today, whether spoken in or outside the boundaries of the Bulgarian language continuum, these language varieties preserve the most important characterristics of Bulgarian.

EDUCATION, NATION AND RELIGIOUS CREED IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF SIMION MEHEDINȚI. Simion Mehedinți was a pioneer of Romanian science and culture in the first half of the twentieth century – when he militated for national renewal through education and culture in a Christian spirit; he was also a reformer of the Romanian educational system, but also a genuine Christian educator. As a researcher, he highlighted the educational value of science, professing himself a science out of conviction. His pedagogical conception contains two special nuances – the Christian one and its application to one’s own ethnic space – and he introduces the concept the school of work, as area and instrument of modeling the student’s character. In his ethnographic approaches we discover the recovering and pedagogical function of history and in the analysis of Romanian Christianity those valences which can be considered modern and democratic today.

In the study we try to demonstrate, as much as possible, the actuality of the moral teachings transmitted in some of the parables from the Gospel in the interpretation of the great scholar Simion Mehedinți. The exegesis and explanations given by Simion Mehedinți in his volume Parabole și învățături din Evanghelie (Parables and Teachings from the Gospel) are so natural in their presentation that they can constitute an example of decoding the Gospel: simple, in point, easy to understand. This paper addresses especially to children who study religion in school. The author is aware of the fact that on the quality of the children today depends the quality of the society tomorrow. It appears as a certain handbook: its virtues and moral efficiency are confirmed by the eight editions that have been published and the author is a guarantee of seriousness, talent and dignity.

Authors: Petre Botnariuc Institutul de ?tiin?e ale Educa?iei Stirbei Vod?, 37, 010102, Bucure?ti. Email: bpetre[at]ise.ro Simona G?bureanu Universitatea Politehnica Bucure?ti Splaiul Independen?ei Str. No 313, Bucharest 060042, Romania E-mail: simona.gabureanu[at]upb.ro This article aims to complement through an content analysis endeavour the quantitative approach adopted by a programme evaluation, research that was conducted in 2015 by a team of researchers. The evaluation has addressed the training programme ,,Google for education" which aimed to develop teachers skills in employing in ones own activity of the different Google applications (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, sheets, forms, sites, Google+). The investigation aimed to reveal the added value of the training programme. The quantitative data set was collected through a questionnaire distributed through the ,,Google for education" communities and through the iTeach platform addressed to the professional development of teachers in preuniversitary education. For the analysis 159 answers were validated as attendants to the formal training session in using the Google apps in education from the total of 161 teachers who have actually filled in the questionnaire. The content for the qualitative analysis consists in the discussions taking place in 13 counties from Romania, which could be identified online. In this paper we will explore the trainees preferences and difficulties encountered in applying the Google tools in the process of resources and learning management, with a focus on the way in which the google groups are used as a mean of communication and collaboration in the professional communities of teachers from din 13 counties (Arge?, Bistri?a-N?s?ud, Boto?ani, Bra?ov, Br?ila, Bucure?ti, Constan?a, D?mbovi?a, Giurgiu, Hunedoara, Mehedin?i, Mure?, Timi?). We have used a mixed methodology of analysis with quantitative and qualitative treatment of the collected data (questionnaire applied to the trainees of the training programme and content analysis of the online discussions forums). The focus of analysis was on the effectiveness of the training programme and on building a teachers learning community as well as to provide a set of suggestions for improving the future training activities. The quantitative results are analysed and further explained against the qualitative results taking into account different factors: type of training provider type, trainees preferences for training, opportunities, difficulties and factors of success in application in preparation activity and actual classes, areas, extent and frequency of application, participants estimated training impact on educational design and classes, teaching experiences. The analysed effects of training include: use of Google apps for management and school-family collaboration, better integration of google apps in the teaching, integration of google apps in the learning tasks, use of state of the art teaching methodologies (pupil and competence centeredness), introducing creative methods and strategies in the learning situations, relevance and practicality of the learning activities, opportunities for collaborative learning and team work, personalised and individualised learning, as well as interactive and participative learning, adequate, varied evaluation methods and tools, exploitation of received feedback for ones own improvement and professional development. In what the outcome of the training is concerned the following topics will be analysed: increased learning performance for pupils, attractiveness of learning activities, facilitation of retention, comprehension and higher order thinking skills, encouragement of both demanding students and high performing students, facilitation of creative approaches in learning, better and increased use of google apps for individual study, better communication with the students, increased individual involvement in collaborative projects, more effective resource management.