The Department of National Minorities has criticised proposals to end Russian-language education in Lithuania.
“The Department of National Minorities under the government does not support hasty proposals to close schools instructing in Russian following an incident at one of these schools,” the agency said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.
The statement comes after Education Minister Gintautas Jakštas reopened the debate on Russian-language schools last week, suggesting that Lithuania should follow the example of Estonia and Latvia in abandoning Russian-language education. He said that schools instructing in other minority languages can stay as long as these are official EU languages or those of countries “friendly to Lithuania”.
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His comments came in the wake of an incident at Russian school in Vilnius where teenagers fired a pneumatic gun at their schoolmate due to disagreements over the war in Ukraine.
The Education Ministry now plans to prepare a proposal on phasing out Russian-language education.
The Department of National Minorities, however, believes that marginalising one group would be more damaging to the country as a whole and “destroy the structure of a multi-ethnic society that has been built up over three decades”.
The Department also points out that the sudden transfer of large numbers of children of different ages from one linguistic environment to another would cause great stress for pupils, their parents, and teachers. It would be seen as an assimilationist rather than an integrationist move, according to the Department.
The institution points out that Lithuania has schools not only for Russian speakers, but also for Polish, Belarusian and Jewish communities, so the proposal to abolish the network of schools for one minority “is at least discriminatory”.
It also points out that refugees from Ukraine often enroll in Russian-language schools.
“The issue of nationality is always a very sensitive and personal one. It is part of a person’s self-identification, part of their cultural heritage. Therefore, the Department urges the discussion on changes in the Lithuanian education system to start with an analysis of the needs of ethnic communities in the education system and cooperation with representatives of ethnic minorities, as well as with the communities of schools and students,” the statement reads.
It also points out that it is wrong to link Russian language with support for Moscow’s aggressive policies.
“A person’s support for military aggression, violence, and encroachment on the sovereignty of another country is only down to their personal qualities and lack of values, and not to their nationality,” the statement noted.
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