[lg policy] Georgia puts up Russian language barriers in schools

[r.amirejibi-mullen at QMUL.AC.UK]

Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili launches the country's English  
language teaching programme at the start of the new school year.  
Photograph: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters With Alexander Pushkin's  
framed visage on the wall and creased editions of fellow Russian  
literary giants on dusty shelves, Natela Chokhonelidze's office  
recalls a very different era at Georgia's state university.

"We once had a staff of 50, and now there are five, because there  
aren't many students," said the 70-year-old professor emeritus at the  
university's institute of Russian studies. "Russian language is fading  
out," she quipped, "with me!"

Chokhonelidze is on the losing side of a deliberate shift in the  
former Soviet republic as its pro-western leadership tries to supplant  
Russian with English as the default second language of 21st-century  
Georgia.

Last month hundreds of native English speakers joined the first day of  
school as teaching assistants under an ambitious programme to have  
every child aged five to 16 speak English. English is now compulsory  
and Russian optional.

The aim appears pragmatic in a globalised world where English  
dominates and Georgia's investment-driven economy is seeking partners  
in Turkey and the European Union.

It fits neatly too, however, with President Mikheil Saakashvili's  
policy of dragging the Caucasus country of 4.5 million people out from  
Russia's orbit, two years after war shattered already fragile ties  
between the neighbours.

"We're a free and independent country and our people are free and  
independent. It's their choice which language to learn," said  
education minister Dmitry Shashkin, an ethnic Russian, in English.

The government plans to recruit 1,000 native-English speakers by the  
end of the year on $272 per month, eventually building up to one per  
school.

English "opens many doors", said Shashkin. "Georgia doesn't have oil,  
Georgia doesn't have natural gas. The resource we have is our people,  
the intellectual potential of our country."

On the streets of Georgia's capital Tbilisi, where blue European Union  
flags flutter outside the parliament building, all Georgians over the  
age of 40 speak Russian fluently. Shopkeepers are happy to converse in  
Russian. The younger, educated generation, however, prefer English,  
and can even bridle if you attempt to talk to them in the language of  
Georgia's powerful northern neighbour and adversary.

Much of this is generational. Students entering university now were  
born after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The influence of  
western pop culture and the internet is strong.

So too is the fallout from the deterioration in political relations  
with Russia since Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution swept aside the  
ex-Soviet old guard and brought Saakashvili and his team of  
English-speaking ministers to power.

He set Georgian sights on joining Nato, to the anger of Russia.  
Political ties collapsed with the 2008 war, when Russia crushed an  
assault by Georgia's US-trained military on the rebel pro-Russian  
region of South Ossetia.

Trade links are minimal. Visa requirements and torturous travel routes  
have strained ties between family and friends.

"Taken in the wider context ... it seems there is a political element  
behind this," said Shorena Shaverdashvili, editor of Georgian weekly  
Liberali.

English should be taught, she said, but "Why replace one [language]  
with the other? This is our neighbourhood and the common language with  
our neighbours is Russian."

Georgia is now leading the retreat of Russian language in the  
post-Soviet Union. But Russian remains the lingua franca across much  
of the former Soviet empire. It is still understood and spoken from  
Moldova in the west to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in what was once  
Soviet central Asia. In the cafes and bars of Dushanbe, Tajikistan's  
pleasant capital, middle-class Tajiks are more likely to talk to each  
other in Russian than in Tajik.

In communist times, Russian was taught in Soviet schools as the  
"language of communication between nationalities". For any ambitious  
student, especially in more far-flung parts of the Soviet Union,  
Russian was an essential springboard to a good university education  
and professional career.

Critics question the wisdom of relegating Russian to a third tier,  
pointing out that the quality of English teaching in Georgia and other  
independent post-Soviet countries is often very poor.

At the university, Chokhonelidze laments the passing of an era, and  
the generations brought up on reading Pushkin, Tolstoy and  
Dostoyevsky. "I fear in a few years when those grandfathers and  
grandmothers aren't around, nobody will bother."

The answer, said 20-year-old mathematics student Nugzar Barbakadze, is  
simple: "I can read Russian books in Georgian."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/12/georgia-teaches-english-over-russian

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