SYMFEROPIL — The Crimean parliament and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea are requesting the Ministry of Education of Ukraine to allow graduates of Crimean schools to take independent external tests in Russian. Speaker of the Crimean Parliament Anatolii Hrytsenko told journalists that, in his opinion, the Ministry of Education of Ukraine made a “hasty decision about the language of testing,” and that “it is impossible to make such decisions in the middle of the school year, even more so in regard to the Crimea and its rural schools, which are not computerized, as this will create a great deal of problems and unequal opportunities [for students] enrolling in higher educational establishments.” Hrytsenko added, “I have forwarded a letter to Minister of Education and Science Ivan Vakarchuk, [requesting that] such tests be conducted in Russian in the Crimea.” He believes that compulsory external testing in Ukrainian for enrollment in higher schools should be introduced by stages: “I believe they must be instituted, but not this year and not in the Crimea.” He added that 95.6 percent of schoolchildren in the Crimea are taught in Russian; 6.3 percent in Crimean Tatar, and only 3.2 percent in Ukrainian.
STALEMATE: WHO IS TO BLAME?
In previous years the Crimean education ministry has asked Kyiv to allow Crimean school-leavers to write their final exams in Russian, not Ukrainian, and the Ministry of Education granted every request. This year Crimean MP Leonid Hrach forwarded a similar request to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. The Ministry of Education and Science believes that the Crimean parliament should have stood up for the possibility to conduct external testing in Russian.
“The special parliamentary commission was supposed to defend this request and apply the powers vested in our parliamentarians. Our ministry does not conduct testing and we do not have the authority. These tests are held by the Ukrainian Center for Independent Evaluation and Quality of Education. Our work is purely organizational,” Volodymyr Kavraisky, Deputy Minister of Education of the Crimea, told journalists.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and more than 500 Russian schools in the Crimea are now caught in a stalemate. Despite the fact that for many years activists of various Ukrainian civic organizations in the Crimea have pointed out that graduates of Crimean schools who do not know the state language are not competitive on the labor and higher education market and are actually “second-rate graduates,” neither the Supreme Council nor the Ministry of Education of the Crimea are doing anything to resolve the problem of studying the state language in Crimean schools. Volodymyr Prytula, chairman of the Crimean Committee on Monitoring Freedom of the Press, said: “One must understand that the current situation with Russian schools in the Crimea attests to the Crimean ministry’s professional inability to organize the teaching process on the proper level, particularly in regard to the state language, as well as Ukrainian literature and history. They are to blame for the thousands of Crimean children who finish school every year and find themselves unable to organize their life normally because they do not know the state language. Because of this, they either have to remain in the Crimea, enroll in Crimean branches of Russian higher schools, or go to Russia. Clearly, measures to expand studies of the Ukrainian language, literature, history, and instruction of the exact sciences in Ukrainian are being sabotaged from year to year in the Crimea, because their active opponents are pro-Russian organizations that are foreign-inspired. Lately they have been demanding the closure of the few Ukrainian schools that exist in the Crimea and a ban on Ukrainian studies.
The Ukrainian language became a formal study subject in 1955, when the first Ukrainian school was built. Over the past 53 years, neither the directorate of education (later reorganized as the Ministry of Education of the Crimea) nor schools have been able to organize the teaching process on the proper level. Formally, the period of transition, during which it was necessary to reorganize the teaching process, has been underway since 1990. In the past 17 years the Ministry of Education and Science of the Crimea has been unable to solve this problem. What other transition period does the Crimea need to stop wrecking the lives of its school-leavers?
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
The situation is aggravated by the fact that Crimean schools do not know how to react to the demand to switch to Ukrainian-language testing. These compulsory tests must embrace three subjects: Ukrainian language and literature, Ukrainian history, and a third one, which is determined by a given faculty in an institution of higher learning. How are eleventh-graders supposed to solve problems in mathematics, biology, physics, or chemistry in Ukrainian? This is a mystery to both teachers and schoolchildren. Furthermore, future entrants are informed at certain schools of higher education that they will have to take additional tests relating to the same subjects on which they will be tested in school.
According to Ukrainian legislation, testing is also compulsory for everyone who plans to enroll in higher educational establishments in Ukraine in 2008, regardless of their ownership. Depending on the test results, a graduate is issued a certificate that must be submitted to a school of higher education along with other required documents. These test results must be considered during the entrance examinations. An application for external testing must be submitted before Feb. 20, 2008. According to Symferopil’s regional center for the evaluation of education, 60,000 school-leavers will have to take these tests, but under the circumstances most of them do not stand a chance of passing them in Ukrainian.
The Ministry of Education and Science of the Crimea is racking its brains to avoid accusations of having wrecked the entire teaching process. First Deputy Minister of Education and Science Volodymyr Kavraisky explained to journalists that the tests will be in Ukrainian, and each test will be accompanied by a concise glossary of terms. But he doubts that this will help the situation.
17 YEARS OF INACTIVITY
In Kavraisky’s opinion, “the tests must be in the language of instruction, of course. I don’t think that issuing these tests is a big problem, but we cannot defend our position. One of the clauses makes it imperative that we secure fulfillment of this directive. How can we do so without restricting the right of young people to enroll in an institution of higher learning?”
Meanwhile, over 90 percent of Crimean schoolchildren are receiving a secondary education in Russian. According to the Ministry of Education of the Crimea, there are 555 schools with Russian as the language of instruction on the peninsula, along with 6 and 15 schools where instruction is in Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar, respectively. Including specialized classes, only 3.5 percent of all schoolchildren study a Ukrainian curriculum. Hrach believes that “external independent testing in Ukrainian is a blatant violation of the Crimean people’s constitutional rights; this deeply affects the pupils’ ethnic feelings and essentially is not objective because pupils receive instruction in Russian; furthermore, this directive was issued in the middle of the academic year.”
“This is absolutely incorrect,” objects Volodymyr Prytula. “Leonid Hrach would be right if the point in question were not the state language. In reality, it is the other way around. The compulsory instilment of the Russian language of instruction exclusively and the long-standing disregard of the Crimean people’s need to teach their children the state language are a gross violation of the constitutional rights of the Crimean people, as a result of which they are unable to realize themselves in their own state. And whereas in previous years Ukraine’s Ministry of Education unlawfully responded to constant Crimean requests, including those of Leonid Hrach, by allowing all Crimean school-leavers to write assignments in Russian — even those who wanted to write them in Ukrainian — this year such a situation cannot be permitted. Over the past 17 years of the transition period the Ministry of Education of the Crimea should have carried out the required reforms. It never did. This is the ministry’s complete fiasco, as it hasn’t been able to organize school instruction in the state language. In my opinion, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Education of Ukraine, instead of allowing people to write their final exams in Russian for the 17th time, should resolve to completely disband the ministry in connection with its obvious professional inadequacy and conscious disregard for the need of hundreds of thousands of Crimean schoolchildren to learn the state language and the history and culture of their state.”
