Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 19 – Last week,
scholars, experts and activists from Tatarstan met in Kazan to discuss the sad
state of Tatar-language instruction at present and the threats to it that will
arise if Vladimir Putin’s proposal to make the study of all non-Russian languages
voluntary while keeping instruction in Tatar mandatory.
(For discussions of that meeting,
see azatliq.org/a/29356655.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/07/putins-proposed-language-law-has.html).
The
meeting, called by its organizers the Inter-Regional Scientific-Practical
Conference on Principles of Teaching Native Languages and State Languages of
the Republics of the Russian Federation, has now distributed its resolution to other
non-Russians, Moscow officials, and to interested experts abroad.
Its
key provisions are as follows:
“At the
present time, the training of pedagogical staff who speak their native language
has been stopped even in Tatarstan itself, and only 7% of Tatar children study their mother tongue at schools in other regions of the Russian
Federation, where more than two-thirds of the Tatars of Russia live.
“Training of pedagogical
staff for the ethnic schools and teachers of the Tatar language in the regions
of Russia was ended in 2000. Under these conditions, the actions of the federal
authorities … deprives the peoples of Russia … of the opportunity to receive
higher education in their native languages, and the absence of training of
pedagogical personnel who speak their native language leads to the elimination
of education in the local native languages.
“Participants
of the Interregional Scientific-Practical Conference condemn attempts to
introduce unconstitutional principles in the spheres of education in the native
languages and teaching of native languages based on the ranking of languages
and peoples.”
To prevent the situation from deteriorating
further, they call on the Duma to amend the draft law on languages so that all
legal documents will be published in the non-Russian languages as well as in
Russian, that all children who want to do so can study in it through the
secondary level, and to require residents in the republics to learn the language
of the titular nation.
The participants at the meeting urge the
Russian education ministry to restore the Department of Regional Education in
the ministry, to develop programs and prefer textbooks for instruction in
non-Russian languages, to support the training of teachers who know these languages
and can carry out instruction of and in them, and to abolish rules requiring
final examinations in secondary schools be conducted only in Russian.
The meeting also called on the Tatarstan
government to establish a Tatar National University, to restore the Institute
of Regional Education, and to resume the training of Tatar-language teachers
for all levels of the educational system.
Update July 20 -- The Duma has signaled that it will not take into consideration the appeal of the Tatar experts -- idelreal.org/a/29377714.html
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