The issue of language – the use of Ukrainian versus Russian – has plagued Ukraine for years. But now other tongues have been added to the hubbub.
After Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a new law on education on Sept. 25, there was an outcry from neighboring countries, who claimed that minorities speaking their national languages in Ukraine were being discriminated against.
The law, which is to be implemented gradually from September 2018 until September 2020, envisages that all secondary education in public schools will be taught in Ukrainian. Elementary public schools will be still allowed to conduct classes in the languages of the country’s minority populations – Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Moldovan among others.
Hungary was the first and the loudest one to step up pressure on Ukraine over what they said was Kyiv’s “limiting the rights” of the 150,000 ethnic Hungarians that live in the country.
“Hungary and Ukraine see the Ukrainian education law completely differently,” said Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto during a press conference on Oct. 12. He was speaking after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Pavlo Klimkin, who assured Szijjarto that the law “was not directed against any people.”
Although the new language law is not scheduled to go into effect until 2020, Hungary’s government has already threatened to block any Ukrainian attempts to draw closer to the European Union.
While some 7,000 Ukrainians live in Hungary, there are no state-funded schools where they can study Ukrainian, according to the Central Body of National Self-Government of Ukrainians and the Ukrainian Culture Society in Hungary. The reason is that the Ukrainians in Hungary are not concentrated in communities in a particular region of Hungary, but are spread around the country.
A couple of Sunday and regular secondary schools in Hungary offer Ukrainian language classes as an extracurricular activity.
EU outcry
Hungary was not the only neighbor to react. Criticism came from Russia, Romania, Poland, Moldova, and Greece, with governments, journalists, and analysts calling on the United Nations and the Council of Europe to put pressure on Ukraine to amend the law.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Sept. 21 canceled an official visit to Ukraine that had been scheduled for early October because of the law. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) also voiced concerns on Oct. 12 over the articles in the education law on teaching in minority languages.
PACE concluded that the law did not appear to strike “an appropriate balance between the official language and languages of national minorities.”
The assembly also listed steps it though Ukraine should take to rectify the situation: reconsider the issue of education in the language of minorities, based on a flexible model of bilingual education for all persons belonging to “indigenous nations of Ukraine” and “national minorities,” with no discrimination; introduce flexibility regarding the length of the transition process, and allow for arrangements tailored to specific circumstances.
While noting that Ukraine had submitted the text to the European Commission for Democracy through Law, known as the Venice Commission, for an opinion, PACE expressed dissatisfaction that “this step had not been taken before the adoption of the Education Act.”
The Venice Commission will offer its conclusions on the law during its December session.
Ukrainian Education Minister Liliya Hrynevych has been attempting to dampen down criticism of the law.
“We understand that children from the Hungarian and Romanian minorities, who belong to other language groups, can’t master all subjects in Ukrainian in the 5th grade,” she said on Oct. 15.
“So certain subjects will be taught in Ukrainian, and (some) in Romanian, Hungarian or other languages of the national minorities of the countries of the European Union. This is the law.”
The ministry wants to follow the model introduced by the Baltic countries, where children start to study in the official language little by little, gradually increasing the number of subjects taught in the state language.
Yegor Stadny, an analyst at CEDOS, a think tank that analyzes government education policy, told the Kyiv Post that the ministry should define more closely which languages fall within the scope of the law.
“If they state that subjects will be taught in the languages of the national minorities of the countries of the EU, they discriminate against oriental languages,” Stadny said. “But in general, the article on languages doesn’t need to be changed.”
Reforming schools
Beyond the language issue, Ukraine’s new education law aims to bring Ukrainian education closer to European standards.
Schools will be allowed to form their own curricula, develop syllabi for school subjects in accordance with secondary education standards, and select their own textbooks and teaching methods. The bill will also enable school students to choose the subjects they study more freely.
The legislation introduces a 12-year school system to replace Ukraine’s current 11-year school program, and envisages increasing teachers’ salaries. Financial contributions from parents to schools will become legal and will be officially accounted for.
Experts say that the law doesn’t solve all of the problems of Ukrainian education, but creates a solid legislative basis for tackling them. Neither does it limit the rights of national minorities, according to Mykola Skyba, an education expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future.
Instead, he says, it gives speakers of minority languages in Ukraine a better chance of passing external independent tests in Ukrainian, which would mean they could apply for places in universities.
