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.
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.