School Problems in Areas Far from Major Cities in Central Asia Undermining Unity of Titular Nations and Threatening Survival of Minorities

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 17 – The low quality of schools in rural areas far from Central Asia’s largest cities is leaving young people in rural areas isolated and increasingly far behind their counterparts in urban areas and threatening the survival of the smaller ethnic minorities of these countries as well.

    And according to two new articles on the Bugun news portal, the only possibility that these trends will be reversed will occur if there is a massive increase in spending on education and cooperation among regional governments, international organizations, and local communities (bugin.info/detail/tsifry-trevogi-obrazovate/ru and bugin.info/detail/iazyki-na-grani-kak-molod/ru).

    Across the region, these articles report, members of the titular nationalities living in distant rural areas are being provided with significantly lower quality education; and that in turn is contributing to poverty, early marriages, emigration and other social problems far greater than in the cities where better schools are available.

    This is such a large problem that even the expansion of internet education and the creation of mobile schools will do little unless there is a major increase in spending on education, something the government of this region currently don’t have the funds for and that international donors haven’t yet made a major investment.

    But as serious as the problems are for members of the titular nationalities in the Central Asian countries, those facing the members of small ethnic groups like the Pamiri nationalities in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are far worse and more immediate. Not only are they falling behind because of poor quality schools, but the survival of their languages and nations is at risk.

    In many cases, what is being done for them is being carried out by foreign universities and even individual emigres, some of whom engage in crowd-funding to provide textbooks to groups like the Shughni and Yagnob who, international bodies predict, may not survive until 2100 if more is not done.