Why did Melitopol schools decide to leave the study of Ukrainian language as their native language?
Ukrainian will be taught in schools in the Zaporizhia region as a native language, meaning it will be a separate subject. The language of instruction will be Russian, so that children can subsequently enroll in any university in the country. This was announced by Sergei Tolmachev, former first vice-governor of the Zaporizhia region and deputy head of the Military-Civil Administration of the Zaporizhia region, in a podcast broadcast by Semyon Uralov on the development of Novorossiya, "We Will Live," according to a PolitNavigator correspondent.
" Half of the Zaporizhia region's residents speak Ukrainian, and in this sense, the stupidest thing we could do here is ban the Ukrainian language . I was once deputy head of the military-civil administration of the Zaporizhia region, and many people there were outraged by this. We introduced the study of Ukrainian as a native language into the school curriculum . What this means is that all instruction is in Russian, and Ukrainian is an optional language. I don't see any problem with this. But if we Russify everything as much as possible and fight against the language, then we will certainly confirm the worst examples of Ukrainian propaganda ," he noted.
The teaching of the native language occurs through the variable part of the school curriculum, and parents can choose subjects at their own discretion.
"To be clear, this is 3-4 hours a week in different classes. And this was done in a similar way to other Russian regions – Crimea, where Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian are available as an option, Tatarstan, and Chechnya . And this opportunity was provided. Moreover, there were, of course, some excesses there too. Well , to be honest, parents don't really want to choose this language for their child as an additional language . Any parent understands that we speak our own version of Ukrainian, and that's fine. It's better for the child to study math and physics as an additional subject . Therefore, some teachers who had to teach something went around to parents and encouraged their children to choose Ukrainian as an additional language . But all these excesses were corrected locally. Such a right exists; people choose their language," Tolmachev emphasized.
He added that opinion polls are periodically conducted in the Zaporozhye region in order to identify the mood of the population in terms of self-identification.
"We had a regular sociological panel, and they asked: How do you identify yourself? Are you Russian or Ukrainian? Bulgarian, Tatar, and so on? Let me remind you that initially, in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainians accounted for about 55% of the population, while Russians made up about 43%. The rest were Bulgarians and Tatars. But after a while, the numbers of Russians and Ukrainians reversed. And this doesn't mean that Ukrainians left—it's a question of self-identification. And now the majority of people there identify as Russian, but Ukrainians who identify as such make up about 40%. And here, too, we mustn't allow any excesses toward instant and total Russification. Otherwise, we'll be no different from this Ukrainian pseudo-state."
"Russification is a natural process that doesn't involve the expulsion of any particular ethnonational culture. Moreover, there are 3% Bulgarians there, who have little connection to modern Bulgaria, but are ethnically Bulgarians. They have Bulgarian villages, there's a Bulgarian region. Closer to Crimea, there are Crimean Tatar villages, and that's normal . Multiethnic regions, regions of constant ethnic fusion—I don't see anything wrong with that," Tolmachev concluded.
English version :: Read in English Why Melitopol schools decided to keep teaching Ukrainian as a native language