Ministry of Education closes down a subdivision which supported mother tongue education

The Ministry of Education and Science has closed down a subdivision responsible for the education in one’s native language, reports Radio Liberty. The former leaders of the ministry, dismissed by the new regime, perceive it as an assault upon not only Ukrainian, but also other national languages, and some experts consider this step a provocation.

The sector supporting native language ­education has hitherto been a major part of the Ministry of Education and Science, and for some time was even directly subordinate to the Cabinet of Ministers. However, yesterday the Minister of Education and Science Dmytro Tabachnyk issued a special order declaring it redundant.

The closed sector provided opportunities for pre-school and schoolchildren to have access to education in their mother tongue: not only Ukrainian, but also Crimean Tatar and seven other national languages. Thus we can speak of infringement upon the rights of­ ­se­veral nationalities living in Ukraine, says the former deputy minister of education and science Maksym Strikha.

“The main function of that sector was not so much to promote education in Ukrai­nian as in the languages of national minorities. What is going on in the Ministry now is generally clear. I can predict a reduction of the number of children in Ukrainian-spea­king classes en masse this year. It might seem that Tabachnyk ought to have suppor­ted this sector, but one must look deeper: the entire Ministry will become a homogeneous entity supporting Russian- and Hun­garian-spea­king education before long,” assumes the former ministry official.

However, the liquidation of this sector could be caused by purely technical reasons, according to the ex-minister for education and science Stanislav Nikolaienko: “After the ‘detachment’ of science from the Ministry, a number of departments were reduced. Its structure was broken, which caused the restructuring. Speaking of the support for native languages, it is hard to say if there has been an assault upon them. On the contrary, the Party of Regions supports the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It was not quite reasonable to cancel this sector though, as even the school graduation tests have to be translated into eight languages.”

The destruction of the sector supporting mother tongue education has not been the first attempt at disturbing the position of Ukrainian in education. We would like to remind that a cabinet order of July 28 canceled the required tests in the Ukrainian language for post-graduate students.