This text reached us via our school email. It has traveled a long road and gone through many editorial offices, but without success, except for the human rights journalism website marginalia.bg.
Its author is Marta Radeva, a teacher of Bulgarian language and literature, as well as a contributor to the newspapers Sega, Azbuki, Uchitelsko Delo, Kultura (now also in Portal Kultura), Literaturen Vestnik, Dnevnik, and to specialized publications in Bulgarian language and literature. “The Man from the Last Wagon” is her first published book.
Marta recently attended our 4th forum “Education of the Future.” She crossed the threshold of our school with reservations, but in the end she left determined to write about the “cosmopolitanism of Cosmos School” and why she believes it should exist, and how “even if it challenges some of our routine notions of ‘normal’ education, it expands and enriches our public consciousness. This school is one of our windows to the wider world, where not everything is perfect either.”
We publish the text without editorial intervention.
@ Marta, we sincerely thank you for your objective perspective!
ON THE COSMOPOLITANISM OF COSMOS SCHOOL
Recently, I visited Cosmos School in the village of Osoitsa for the first time. I took advantage of the open day organized for the 4th educational forum “School of the Future,” as a child close to me studies there. I must admit I was puzzled by the parents’ decision to move him mid-year, in the fourth grade, from a well-known and highly praised Sofia school. However, the child had no friends in his class, left for school unwillingly in the mornings (sometimes even in tears), lacked confidence, and became discouraged when doing homework—signs that quite naturally led the family to seek help from a psychologist.
I was told that in the first days he eagerly attended the new school and enjoyed the lessons, which alternated between classroom learning and educational outings in nature. But after the widely discussed “Petrohan” case and the subsequent inspections that questioned the legitimacy of Cosmos, not only he but also we adults became concerned. That is why, on March 15, together with him, his mother, and his two younger brothers, we set off for Osoitsa to experience the atmosphere firsthand, without the mediation of often contradictory interpretations by media and politicians.
After nearly a 50-minute journey from the center of Sofia, we found ourselves in a different world. It may sound cliché, but one could say that the village at the foot of the Balkan Mountains lives because it has a school. Next to the restored old church “Ascension of Christ” rises… a stone castle. This is today’s Cosmos School, built more than a hundred years ago by Italian architects and left to decay—overgrown with grass, shrubs, and even trees growing through classroom floors—at the end of the last century. In 2022, two dedicated, intelligent, and determined young women—Tatyana Zaharova and Elena Kaneva—helped not only the building but also the cause it was built for to come back to life. The local residents, who longed for the former school and wanted the village to awaken again, became their most important support. Everyone, even the mayor, joined in cleaning and painting so that the first school bell could ring again. At the opening of the school year, the 90-year-old last surviving teacher from the former state school attended, along with former students.
Step by step, starting with only fifteen children, enthusiastic teachers, and donors, the two current principals have been building their dream—and the dream of many families—for a school where children gain knowledge and embrace values free from the restrictive constraints of outdated rules and prejudices; where they live and learn close to nature; and where they improve the world around them with their own hands. And something more—the education they receive in their homeland is integrated with internationally recognized and established trends. In its very first year, besides receiving a license from the Ministry of Education, the school also obtained an international Cambridge license. In four years, the number of students has grown to 150. The school includes children from 25 different nationalities, who simultaneously meet Bulgarian educational standards and Cambridge requirements. This, in brief, is the history of Cosmos, which I read in an online report from September 15, 2025.
Now, about my one-day impressions. We arrived during a celebration: a virtuoso violin performance by a student, a musical fairytale performed by first graders in the yard, several stalls offering local natural foods, and a picnic for participants and guests. The pre-distributed program highlighted open lessons and discussions as the most interesting events. At different times, classrooms opened for engaging lessons in chemistry (including setting water on fire and ending—not beginning—with the Big Bang), physics (“A Universe of Elementary Particles”), mathematics (challenges for high school students), Cambridge math (“Learning through play about prime and composite numbers”), English (“Fun and Glorious Verbs in Past, Present, and Future”), Bulgarian history (“Tsar Simeon—the great general of the Magnaura School”), and Bulgarian language for both younger and older students. Since there were also many interesting workshops—“Wool Creatures,” “Musical Fairytale,” pottery wheel, ceramic painting, judo, yoga (for parents and children), and more—I managed to attend only one lesson and three discussions: on rural school development, on trends in our social life, and on freedom of speech, censorship, and self-censorship following the screening of the inspiring film “Morality Is Good,” as well as a talk on artificial intelligence in the classroom, led by the young teacher Kristian Marinov.
With the favorite of all the children in the school, the very young history teacher Kristian, was also the history lesson that I was able to attend. I learned that, as in most private schools, at “Cosmos” teachers are selected not simply through the submission of a CV, a motivation letter, and an interview with a committee, but necessarily also through a lesson delivered to students in the presence of that committee. And this provides the advantage of certainty that the candidate truly possesses what they claim—that they not only have a strong command of the subject matter, but can also communicate with students; that behind the words, numbers, and documents there are real abilities. I was told that before the committee, the slender, fair-haired young man with his hair tied back in a ponytail had declared that he wanted to make Bulgarian children love Tsar Simeon the way they love Tsar Leo. I do not know what he demonstrated then at the trial lesson, but at the open lesson I witnessed not only the solid knowledge underpinning his narrative, but also the inspiring way in which he “ignited” the children’s interest, drawing them into a discussion that they took entirely seriously, as if it were not about events and figures from twelve centuries ago. The attending adults also asked him questions. And the students who knew him gladly interjected from time to time, argued with him, and put forward their own hypotheses about what had happened in the past and its connection to our present. The young man accepted their remarks quite calmly, with a sense of humor, and, in a Socratic manner, extracting what was rational in them, managed to refute the utopian assumptions of the little philosophers.
On that day, as I walked through the three floors of the castle-school, including the tall clock tower converted into a classroom, it seemed to me that—on a personal level—I had found myself in a time machine. For many years I have worked as a teacher, and what gave meaning to my work was above all the effort to convey personal messages, to try to reach the mind and heart of each individual child in such a way as to win them over to knowledge and to the values upon which Good in our world rests. But my aspirations were often undermined by the need to follow standardized curricula and by the large number of students in a class. I thought how much closer one could be to one’s dream if one were a teacher at “Kosmos”: to work with a small number of children and to have the freedom to choose exactly what and how to teach, of course in accordance with the criteria the children must “cover” in both systems—the national and the international. And as a parent, to feel satisfaction that your child is acquiring knowledge and skills aligned with international standards as well; that they are developing not only their mind, but also their emotional intelligence and their body—through the regular hikes and the active physical activities in which they take part.
And yes, we all know (because of the events of the past few months) that some rules have been violated at this school, that in the effort to give freedom to the families who have chosen it, greater leniency has been allowed with regard to attendance, and so on. These are facts that cannot be denied; there are probably other mistakes that have been made over these four years as well. But I am convinced that in freedom one can learn much more than in compulsion. And from personal experience I know that even the most strictly attendance-monitoring public schools have problems with unexcused absences and often come into conflict even with conscientious and intelligent parents who, for their part, are convinced that they have the right to protect their children from “burnout” by occasionally giving them a break. It seems to me that the leaders of the school in the village of Osoitsa have chosen as their principle not confrontation with families (whose undeniable right it is to choose where, how, and when their children study), but cooperation and mutual trust. And I think that to a large extent they are right. But even if that is not so, I saw the sunlight in the eyes of the children at Cosmos, seated on soft beanbag chairs, directly on the floor, or at desks arranged in a circle or in the shape of the letter “U”; I heard the joy in their voices, I felt the courage with which they communicate with their teachers and with other adults.
I realize that everything is hardly as perfect as I saw it during the celebration; every school, and all of us, have our own trials, our victories and our setbacks. I do not know, however, whether our society realizes that what happened about a month and a half ago to a student at this school is прежде всичко a tragedy for everyone who works and studies there, and only afterwards a matter of blame…
I know that it is uncertain to form a fully objective opinion from just a few hours of interaction. But are not the shadows that objects cast upon the ground due to the sunlight?
I was anxious and hesitant before going to Osoitsa. And now I think that Cosmos should exist, because even if it puts to the test some of our routine notions of “normal” education, it expands and enriches our social consciousness. This school is one of our windows to the wider world, where not everything is perfect either.
Marta Radeva