Karina Minasova. My tongue...

My tongue...
Karina Minasova

Publication date: April 5, 2002

Interethnic conflicts and the economic decline in the post-Soviet space have led to the appearance of a large number of migrants, including school-age children, in megacities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Studying in their native language in their country, children experienced significant difficulties in mastering the school curriculum in Russia, lagged behind their classmates and were often subjected to ridicule from them. The search for a way out of this situation went in two, directly opposite directions, one of which can be conditionally called the creation of “national schools.” But it is characteristic that in both directions the form of education was chosen as monolingual education. Thus, in St. Petersburg “Georgian schools” all instruction is conducted in Georgian, and in school # 138 named after. Alexander Nevsky, Dargin children (a nationality of Dagestan) are taught in Russian. Their parents think: since their children live in Russia, let them learn Russian.

But monolingual education in some cases contributes to the revival of the idea of ​​national chosenness, that is, the actual separation of people, and in others, on the contrary, it “erases” ethnic characteristics, ultimately depriving children of knowledge of their native language, and therefore the culture of their people. It happens that the organizers of such schools for immigrant children set themselves precisely this last goal - the complete assimilation of children. An example of this is an informal school at the Moscow regional public charitable organization for helping refugees and forced migrants “Civic Assistance” . The opinion here is this: children who find themselves in Russia should acquire competence in Russian, but whether they will remember their native language after many years is no longer so important.

Both monolingual and bilingual (bilingual) education have their pros and cons. The native language separates the immigrant from the society that has adopted him, but at the same time it is a link with other immigrants who speak it. This allows you not to feel lonely, to feel support and help, that is, to correspond to the concept of “one among your own.” At the same time, the feeling of the difference between the dominant culture in society and one’s own gives rise to the belief in a representative of an ethnic minority that he is a “stranger”, a “second-class” person, and therefore makes him an adherent only of his “small” culture. The heightened sense of ethnic identity that arises under the influence of socio-historical conditions and political conflicts is also expressed in the desire to pass on to children the language and traditions of their people. Hence the attraction to the “national school”, as a desire to “defend” one’s identity, which in practice sometimes gives rise to incommensurability of spiritual impulses with modern conditions. So, for example, a representative of the Azerbaijani diaspora, a graduate student in history, publicly complained that children of devout Muslims in educational institutions are not provided with conditions for performing namaz, that girls do not wear clothes that cover their bodies (except for their hands) and do not cover their heads . When I asked how he imagined the real situation of a Muslim child who performs prayers six times a day in an ordinary Russian school and the attitude of his classmates towards him, he could not answer specifically and continued to lament that the traditions and laws of Islam were being forgotten.

But when the “defense” of ethnic identity is realized in the creation of “national schools” with monolingual education, this causes even greater concern. Teaching children from ethnic minorities mainly in their native language is an isolating type of education, the purpose of which is to prevent their acculturation (that is, familiarization with the leading type of culture in the country) and full integration into society. This type of education for children (especially among labor migrants - “guest workers”) has found application in Bavaria and is carried out with the sole purpose of disintegration and speedy expulsion from the country after the need for the labor of their parents no longer exists. This type of education prepares children for re-emigration and at the same time denies them the use of the spiritual wealth and services of the dominant society. According to the Novgorod pedagogical school, with this type of education we are talking about segregation , which has both physical (residential ghettos, special schools), psychological and political components ( discrimination, racism ).

The question naturally arises: schools with an isolating type of education arise out of ignorance of their creators - or is this a completely deliberate policy aimed at “squeezing out” immigrants from Russia? I don’t want to think the last about people who, it would seem, sincerely decided to help children who have difficulties in the Russian language, and we will consider the chosen type of teaching a mistake. A mistake fatal for children. After all, mastering a second language (that is, the state language, and for immigrants, the language of their host country) makes it possible not only to integrate into another group, but also to identify with a different culture. What cannot happen with monolingual education in a “national school”.

The scientific and pedagogical community still remembers how in Soviet times, graduates who graduated from school in national republics in their native language were not able to even write an essay when entering a Russian university (they were exempted from writing). What kind of professional growth and career in Russia can graduates of the current “national school” with a monolingual education dream of? However, it is not the child who determines his future destiny. a decisive role in the choice of language, and therefore culture St. Petersburg researchers L. Balyasnikova and E. Brazhnik assign , to the family , which either practically imposes on the child its identity with one or another people, or raises a bilingual, and therefore multicultural, person. In this choice made by the family, the question of the prestige of the language arises, and if the child is not convinced that there is a state, a people where the overwhelming majority uses his native language, he may experience rejection of both the language and culture of his people as a whole. Therefore, trips to their homeland should be mandatory for children learning their native language.

In the course of my long-term communication with representatives of ethnic minorities, mainly immigrants from the Caucasus, I made one interesting observation for myself. People who have lived in Russia for decades have a poor command of Russian and a good command of their native language. Thus, the Honored Artist of Russia, who lived for 50 years in Leningrad, confuses the genders of nouns and, consequently, adjectives. She graduated from the “national school” in her homeland and never studied Russian anywhere else. At the same time, she speaks, reads and writes Armenian perfectly. Reverse example. The lawyer of the Azerbaijani national-cultural autonomy speaks excellent Russian, does not make a single mistake in writing, either in spelling or syntax, and expresses his thoughts stylistically flawlessly. It turned out that he graduated from a Russian-language school in Baku, where the program included studying Azerbaijani, which he also speaks perfectly to this day, despite the fact that he has lived in St. Petersburg for a long time. The opposite of him is a famous journalist who graduated from school in Russian and was fluent in Armenian when he was in Baku (the family spoke Armenian). Having left Baku in 1961 and currently living in Moscow, he completely forgot even spoken Armenian (he did not maintain any contacts with the diaspora in Moscow).

Here's what the famous Canadian linguistic researchers W.F. Mackey and M. Siguan say about this. In some cases, immigrants, after a more or less long transitional period of bilingualism, eventually become completely integrated into their host society and forget their native language (the example of a Moscow journalist). In other cases, immigrants remain in their host country as a closed group, preserving their customs and language, while at the same time finding formulas to integrate the group as such into the new society as a whole. Thus, if the above cases are applied to school education, it can be assumed that for people for whom the first language was their native language and who received their school education in it, competence in Russian remains extremely limited, even if they communicate in it constantly for many years. Those who studied at the “Russian school” are sufficiently competent in Russian and, provided they communicate in their ethnic environment, they retain knowledge of their native language. People whose main language of communication is Russian and who have not had practice in their native language for a long time gradually lose their native language.

That is why in international practice preference is given to bilingual education, that is, one in which both languages ​​are not languages ​​of study, but of teaching. Bilingual education has long existed as an effective form of teaching a foreign language (English, French and other gymnasiums). So why not transfer this model to the so-called “national schools”? Of course, provided that the tasks of integrating the children of immigrants into the “dominant” culture are set - while creating comfortable conditions for them to preserve their ethnic identity, the tasks of social adaptation and professional growth.