Estonia’s large Russian-speaking minority used to be taught in Russian. The government has responded to Russia’s invasion with a reform to end this. Now, lessons will only be taught in Estonian.
Estonia’s large Russian-speaking minority used to be taught in Russian. The government has responded to Russia’s invasion with a reform to end this. Now, lessons will only be taught in Estonian.
When Russia occupied Estonia and other countries, they deported a large number of locals to Russia. That served the purposes of decimating local populations, decreasing resistance, giving the Russians hostages, and also giving them slave labor for their work camps. And then they moved in a bunch of Russian civilians to run the government in various levels, and insisted that all official business be conducted in Russian. The local Russian “elites” got special privileges, including special schools and special stores. There was some acculturation, but they generally had their own groups and didn’t spend more time accommodating the locals, expecting the locals to conform to them instead.
When the Soviet Union fell, the previously-occupied countries were left with these families who had cultural ties with the Soviet Union, but who had been living locally for like 50 years. It was generally decided that those who wanted to repatriate could and the rest could remain; most people decided to remain.
In most places, the resurgence of local language and culture also accommodated the remaining Russian elements; documents were available in both languages, schooling could be in either language, etc. The countries didn’t want to offend Russia, didn’t want to truly upset their Russian neighbors, and it was easier to ignore it and focus on developing their countries. They figured the remaining Russians would eventually fully acclimate locally.
However, the local Russians have some resentment against the locals, as they’ve mostly lost their previous privileges, they have nothing to return home to, and they’ve had stressed relations with their local neighbors. In short, they didn’t really want to acclimate, nor did their neighbors fully trust them. That left fairly insular communities of cultural Russians in previously occupied countries.
Russia has been using the existence of those communities to invade it’s neighbors.
At this point - 80+ years since occupation and 30+ years since liberation - the “local Russian” population has had plenty of time to acclimate. If they haven’t yet, that’s their problem. For these countries, standing up to Russia and reducing future pretexts for invasion is significantly more important than a disgruntled minority who has little intention of integrating and who is already disconnected.
This detailed reply provided the context I needed to understand the situation. Thank you!
And? How is that the fault of the children going to school today?
It’s not. It’s the fault of their parents who have chosen to not integrate into society and create self-imposed ghettos. There’s no segregation, they could’ve put their children into Estonian kindergarten or school. And most of the Russians actually do put their children into Estonian kindergartens or schools, because they want their children to learn Estonian because they get better education and better career options. There’s a minority of a minority who refuses to integrate and their children are now the victims of something they could easily prevented if they just bothered to do it.
Is it better for the children to go through a small period of acclimation now, or for them to spend their entire lives as outsiders in a country that no longer makes special accommodations for them?
I agree that having pure Russian schools for them (like it was before) has been a bad idea and apparently also disadvantaged them given the lower than average results in Pisa studies for these children.
But closing these schools and forcing them all into purely Estonian speaking ones is not a “small period of acclimation”, but basically guarantees that these children will fall back even further and will resent their home country for forcing them to go through this.
Why do you think going to school in a language is not a short period of acclimation?
School seems like the perfect time to learn to speak a language. And it’s not a particularly long period of life.
What’s the alternative? Them not speaking the language of their country at all?
Rather than falling back, I feel like it puts them ahead of the alternative, because they can now speak the language of their country. More opportunities follow that.
Maybe their parents can feel resentment like that, I don’t think the children would. If school is a coherent environment, you find your community there. If it enables you to participate into bigger society, that becomes your community too.
You make it sound like they will learn Estonian over night with no issues at all. And the DW video is not so clear if they even get special language classes for it.
The alternative is dual language schools that offer special support to children that do not speak the majority language. This is very common in many parts of the world.
Kids, when thrown into a new language environment, will learn it reasonably well in short order and can become perfectly fluent in a year, give or take. It really isn’t such a big deal. Mind you, these aren’t kids from halfway across the continent, they are kids born and raised in Estonia so it’s not like they’re starting from scratch.
I’m starting to think that you are Russian.
Where’s the problem with children learning the language of their country in school, if they don’t learn it at home?
This is not about having Estonian language classes for them, it is about putting them in classrooms for all subjects in a language they don’t speak.
Their families have had eighty fucking years to learn Estonian. What makes you think that “further accomodation” in Russian will give them any desire or impetus to learn the language?
Why punish children for things their parents and grandparents did?
Why punish the rest of Estonian society? Why continue to isolate children who can’t speak the local language?
How is the rest of Estonian society punished if children are not forced into classes taught in a language they don’t speak? And sure the previous isolation was also bad, but at least they were able to learn something.
Honestly… the amount of people here arguing like the children deserve any of this is very sad. Reminds me of Israelis arguing the Palestinian children deserve what is happening in Gaza. Are you even listening to yourself?
Society is punished by remaining divided.
I understand your frustration. I don’t think anyone believes that the children deserve this; only that it’s the least harmful way to solve a problem that the Russians created. There’s a big difference between the two.
If there were a better, faster, less disruptive option, we would be in favor of that.
If the children don’t adapt, you’re simply replicating the mistakes of the past into the future. And every generation of kids has to learn and adapt to things their parents and grandparents never considered. My great-great-grandparents never dealt with car traffic. My great-grandparents never dealt with the threat of nuclear weapons. My grandparents never dealt with computers. My parents never dealt with school shootings. Change - both good and bad - happens.
I think that’s a great way to learn the language though. Exposure drives learning a language.
Learning it as a foreign language is much less efficient than learning it in all areas.
They may need more support given no support at home. Still, seems like a big plus to me.
You are waaaaay too optimistic about this, and honestly given how this is ideologically driven as a knee jerk reaction I have my doubts that the teachers and school administrators will try their best to help these children.