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Read, Debate: Engage.
| topic: | Good Governance |
|---|---|
| located: | Russia, Ukraine |
| editor: | Igor Serebryany |
All public schools in Ukraine wiped out the Russian language from their programs this school year to implement the law passed by the country's parliament, Supreme Rada, three years ago.
The law "On Education" adopted in September 2017 envisages that all schooling, along with other public services, could be provided in the Ukrainian language only. The law gave a three-year transition period to fully implement the requirements, so the Minister of education Anna Novosad followed the deadline with the high accuracy.
In January, she proposed that the teachers who worked in Russian-language schools should undergo snap training to be capable to switch to Ukrainian as the working language.
The law "On education" retains the right of schooling in the languages other than Ukrainian only for the ethnic groups "which have no national states of their own".
"Persons belonging to national minorities of Ukraine are guaranteed the right on education in municipal educational institutions of pre-school and primary education in the language of the national minority they belong to and in the official language of the State", the law declares.
The vague wording of the law implies that only Crimean Tartars can benefit from that exception.
The other exception is made for the minorities who speak one of the languages used in the EU countries, such as Hungarian, Greek or Polish. Forty percent of the curricular is allowed to be preserved for those languages.
Russian doesn't fall into any of those categories, thus the share of subjects which could be taught in that language must shrink to 20 percent starting this September. It means, de-facto, that the only Russian-language subject allowed in Ukraine's schools is the Russian language itself and only from the 1st to the 5th grades. The teachers who fail to follow the requirements, including small talks with the students during class hours or discussions of the school matters with the parents in Russian, will be fined.
Unlike many multi-ethnic countries such as Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, to name a few, Ukrainian constitution declares that only Ukrainian language enjoys a status of the official language.
According to the 2001 census (the most recent one), Russian speakers in Ukraine account for 14 million, or 30 percent of the country's entire population. The Eastern part of the country is predominantly Russian speaking.
The language problem has been behind the conflict in Donbas, where several areas proclaimed separation from Ukraine in March 2014, following the nationalistic Supreme Rada ruling to forbid the use of the Russian language in public life.
In 2012, the country's third-largest city of Odessa gave the Russian language an official status. The decision was later overridden by the city court as it contradicted the national law. Odessa, as well as Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, is also a predominantly Russian-speaking city.
Image by klimkin
