A report of February 1901 says that in Rankovci three pupils came to
the teacher's house; in April of the same year the attendance has been
reduced to one pupil, who after coming regularly for a month decided
to keep away. In 1906 the peasants of that locality prevented a school
from being opened. At Kriva Palanka until the Balkan War the teachers
came from Kustendil--but how far they were patronized I do not know.
The three teachers from Serbia who appeared in 1909 seem to have spent
their time in promenading the village. Not until after the Balkan War
did pupils resort to them. In 1916 the same school taught Bulgarian.
In 1918 the Serbian language was resumed. These changes were
unfortunate for the child and still more so for the teachers, who were
continually being chased away or hanged. And now at last one finds the
Serbs so much in advance of what they and the Bulgars used to
practise. Their ex-Bulgarian schoolmasters are mostly of Macedonian
origin, so that it is not difficult for these gentlemen to give their
instruction in the kindred Serbian language, using, of course, the
local dialect. And we can look back with a smile to the not very
distant days when a zealous Serbian schoolmaster in Macedonia was
wont, instead of prayers, to make the children repeat after him three
times, every morning and every afternoon, "Ja sam pravo Serbin" ("I am
a true Serb"). Likewise the Bulgar was so certain of the superiority
of his religion that he deprived the Pomaks of their Moslem names,
giving them for Abdulla such a name as Anastasius. The Pomak, unable
to remember his new name, was handed a sheet of paper with a record of
the matter; but very few of these people can read.