Reduction of Tatar language lessons in Tatarstan schools. School director: The Tatar language is needed in Tatarstan, just like a math lesson. “this is the agony of the ministry”

The debate about teaching the Tatar language in Tatarstan schools does not subside. The day before, on October 25, the Kazan mayor's office held a rally in support of the language; before that, teaching programs at a special meeting of the top officials of the republic. Almost every day, Russian-speaking and Tatar-speaking activists hold protests in defense of their own positions. Against this background, “Idel.Realii” discussed language problems with those whom they directly affect and who can be affected - with Tatar teachers. On October 24, these people sent a “letter of pain and anxiety” to the deputies of the State Council of Tatarstan. What do teachers think about the further teaching of the Tatar language and literature in schools, what are they told by the administrations of educational institutions, what do they expect and what do they count on?

At the request of the speakers, their names have been changed.

Liliya, work experience - five years:

I no longer have any emotions. For two months there is no certainty: when can we leave school, are we going to be fired, or should we look for a new job? I am currently looking for a new job, since I know for sure that the hours of the Tatar language will be reduced. For example, they will leave one literature and language lesson in the lower grades, and in the 10th and 11th grades, perhaps, they will completely remove it.

There is no direct pressure from the administration yet. Now we are working as usual. But it is known for certain that changes will occur either after the first quarter or after the new year.

What we are waiting for and afraid of is cuts. First of all, they said, pensioners and young people will be “thrown out” - these are unmarried girls, without children, or whose children are already in school. Those with children under three years old will not be touched. The rest should all be laid off. We don’t know how our republic can allow an outcome in which so many teachers will be fired even without compensation.

Renata, work experience - three years:

Usually, until the fourth grade, children love Tatar and study it with interest.

We have a gymnasium, and I believe that the children studying here are slightly different. They show consistently good results and have interested parents. Up to the fourth grade, the Tatar language is taught using the Litvinov method. It allows for a minimum number of lessons, as children receive maximum knowledge for this age. The technique is good, but it is not on the federal list. The question is why? Also, for the second year now, as an experiment, we have been teaching our lessons using the methodology of V.N. Meshcheryakova. You just need to get involved in the process and work, which is what we did and subsequently got a good result.

Usually, until the fourth grade, children love Tatar and study it with interest. This is precisely the period when the child does not yet think about anything else, does not reason: he needs to study Tatar or not. He is here and now, at this very moment he is interested and he listens and teaches. In grades five to eight, the transitional age begins, and teaching methods also change. Training is based on textbooks by R.R. Nigmatullina. and here the specificity is lost. In addition, the children are no longer the same, there is no enthusiasm, questions begin about why they need Tatar, calls from dissatisfied parents. What is the omission here? We always discussed this with our teachers. Where are our interested children?

I decided for myself that my health and the health of my family is important to me. I don't know what will happen next.

In grades 10-11, the Tatar language is taught and studied for show. It all depends on the teacher. Keeping an exhausted 11th grader occupied requires teaching talent and experience.

Speaking about the current situation around the language recently, I think it’s terrible. Everything is being decided somewhere by someone. There remains a feeling of ignorance, but it must be overcome. I decided for myself that my health and the health of my family is important to me. I don't know what will happen next. I can’t even imagine the experiences of teachers who have dedicated their entire lives to teaching the Tatar language.

Rashida, work experience - 20 years:

There is very little time left until retirement. I don’t know what to say here. This whole situation just threw me off balance. I have been working in Kazan all my life and teaching children the Tatar language, mainly in middle and high schools. All my life I have been explaining to them that our language is a great wealth, knowing it, understanding and speaking it is necessary and important for preserving culture and traditions. Our young people don’t think about their roots, they don’t think about who their ancestors were. It comes with age. Neither current students nor their parents even want to hear about it. It is clear that for many of them the Tatar language is an obligation, and now there is a chance to get rid of it. So they took active civic positions.

It is clear that for many the Tatar language is an obligation, and now there is a chance to get rid of it. So they took active civic positions

The fact that they are now planning to remove Tatar will lead to an increase in the hours of the Russian language. They will schedule two lessons every day. Then they will complain that there is too much Russian in their lives. In this case, two or three people will attend the optional Tatar sixth lesson.

My school hasn’t directly told me to pack my things yet, but they are already talking behind my back. Of course, they will lay off me first, then little by little others. They will pay for a month - that’s already good.

Venus, seven years of work experience:

Of course, they will lay off me first, then little by little others. They will pay for a month - that’s already good.

I don’t even want to say anything about it. So far everything is quiet, lessons are going on as before. Nobody cancels anything, but also promises nothing. The mood among teachers is bad; everyone understands that there will be layoffs. The children also know that from the second quarter there will be fewer Tatar lessons, but they are not particularly concerned about this.

We have a school where parents don’t throw tantrums. In this regard, they, like their children, react quite calmly. They know that they can choose the curriculum themselves, change the program, so they do it.

Nobody seems to be thinking about what will happen to teachers who will be left without work: neither the school administration, nor the state.

The controversy surrounding the compulsory teaching of the Tatar language in Tatarstan schools flared up with renewed vigor after the president Putin that forcing a person to learn a language that is not his native language is unacceptable. Inspired by this statement, the “Committee of Russian-speaking Parents of Tatarstan” is now canceling compulsory Tatar lessons, and Tatar activists, on the contrary from Putin, are preserving the study of Tatar as the state language.

October 18 "Idel.Realities" for commentary on the President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov and tried to find out his position regarding the situation with the Tatar language, but he refused to comment. His press secretary Eduard Khairullin When asked when it would be possible to hear the position of the head of the republic, he succinctly answered: “We’ll let you know right away.”

Calls to refuse to study the Tatar language are contrary to the law, the ministry believes

The Ministry of Education and Science of Tatarstan called calls by parents of students to refuse to study the Tatar language contrary to current legislation and “misleading.” The wave of parental discontent was partly provoked by the opening speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Yoshkar-Ola, where the head of state spoke about the inadmissibility of “forcing a person to learn” a non-native language.

State and native?

In Tatarstan, every parent of a schoolchild knows that studying the Tatar language in local schools is mandatory. Some moms and dads, however, try to resist this.

Kazan lawyer Sergei Khapugin went the furthest in his intention to have his schoolboy son study this subject cancelled. At the beginning of the 2000s, he initiated legal proceedings against the republican Ministry of Education and Science. However, both processes - the first in the Vakhitovsky District Court, and then in the Constitutional Court - the man lost.

After Khapugin, Victoria Mozharova, a resident of Nizhnekamsk, defended the right of her children not to learn the Tatar language. The woman allowed her sons, seventh-graders of Lyceum No. 14, to skip this subject. However, the local prosecutor's office recognized Mozharova's actions as illegal and filed a lawsuit against her.

Until now, there have been no other striking examples in the republic. And everything would have been the same if not for the July speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Yoshkar-Ola at an off-site meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations.

“The Russian language for us is the natural spiritual framework of our entire multinational country. Everyone should know it...Forcing a person to learn a language that is not his native language is just as unacceptable as reducing the level and time of teaching Russian...,” Putin said then in his opening remarks.

Partly because of this, parents of Tatarstan schoolchildren began to unite in various committees and bombard the Russian Ministry of Education and Science with letters. Today, the “Committee of Russian-Speaking Parents of Tatarstan” group on VKontakte already includes 2.8 thousand people. Similar groups exist in Zelenodolsk, Bugulma, Elabuga...

By the way, samples of statements (group and individual) about refusal to study the Tatar language are posted in the committee group.

The Ministry of Education and Science explains...

It seems that the regional Ministry of Education and Science could no longer ignore or ignore the discontent of citizens. This is evidenced by the “clarification on the issue of teaching the Tatar language in educational institutions of the Republic of Tatarstan” published on September 7.

It is curious that such conclusions in the ministerial “clarification” are made on the basis of the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of November 16, 2004 No. 16-P. “The study of Russian and Tatar languages ​​in general educational institutions as state languages ​​in the Republic of Tatarstan is recognized as not contradicting the Constitution of the Russian Federation.”

At the same time, the ministry reports that it is taking “measures to improve methods and technologies for teaching the Tatar language.”

No less interesting information is contained in the last paragraph of the “clarification”, where it is stated that the Tatarstan Prime Minister “made a decision to bring, from January 1, 2018, the volume of studying the Russian language to the volume recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.” Whether the regional Ministry of Education and Science thereby recognizes the fact that there is a preponderance in favor of studying the Tatar language remains unsaid. MK-Povolzhye had not yet received a response to its request to the ministerial press service on this matter by the time of publication.

"This is the agony of the ministry"

Clarification is the agony of the Ministry of Education and Science of Tatarstan! This is an attempt by a drowning man to grab at a straw,” said Mikhail Shcheglov, chairman of the Society of Russian Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, in a conversation with a MK-Volga Region correspondent.

According to the interlocutor, the “clarification” is an attempt to stop the “tide” of statements from active parents. And a possible relaxation in the form of transferring the subject to the category of electives would instantly reduce the attendance of Tatar lessons by 80%.

Vladimir Putin, as we remember, instructed the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation and Rosobrnadzor to conduct an inspection on the issue of compliance with the right of citizens to voluntarily study languages. And earlier he stated that it was inadmissible to reduce the hours of studying the Russian language. Now heads can roll, because there is a flood of letters from parents of schoolchildren from Tatarstan. This folder with letters was received by Vasilyeva (Olga Vasilyeva, Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation - ed.),- says Shcheglov.

According to Shcheglov, the Committee of Russian-Speaking Parents of Tatarstan and the Society of Russian Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan are preparing a similar folder for the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation.

Chairman of the All-Tatar Public Center (VTOC) Farit Zakiev believes that the problem with teaching the Tatar language would not have arisen if the Tatar language had initially been recognized as the state language in the Republic of Tatarstan.

If we declared it (Tatar language - edit.) the state language exactly 25 years ago, there would have been no problems. This is the task of the same Ministry of Education, the Cabinet of Ministers and the President, the task of the State Council. De jure it is, de facto it is not. The issue will go away on its own and parents themselves will ask for it to be taught well,” says Zakiev.

At the same time, the head of the VTOC recognizes the obvious existence of problems with the quality and methods of teaching this subject in schools in Tatarstan.

Completely random people with a diploma in economics, etc. become Tatar language teachers. In Naberezhnye Chelny I met Tatar language teachers who themselves do not know the language well. Naturally, parents of students have questions in such situations, he adds.

When asked whether there is an advantage in Tatarstan in favor of learning the Tatar language, Zakiev answered vaguely.

I always give a clear example: in Khabarovsk, parents demand that their children be taught Chinese in kindergartens. This absolutely applies to our situation: we can also ensure that parents demand that Tatar be taught.

Whether the Tatarstan Prosecutor's Office will find violations in the matter of voluntary learning of the Tatar language will become clear by November 30. According to the press service of the department, the corresponding “assignment” from the Prosecutor General’s Office “will arrive next week.”

Let us remind you that until the end of November, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation and Rosobrnadzor will conduct an inspection on the issue of compliance with the right of citizens to voluntarily study languages ​​from among the languages ​​of the peoples of Russia, as stated in the list of instructions of the President of the Russian Federation following the July meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations.

Troops from Moscow arrive to extinguish the interethnic fire, and in the Republic of Tatarstan they hint that it has already been decided to reduce the number of Tatar language lessons, but keep it compulsory

Photo: Oleg Tikhonov (at the rally “For the Native Russian Language!”, April 2017)

The conflict around the Tatar language in schools is nearing its end. On October 27, the inspection of the Prosecutor General's Office and Rosobrnadzor ends; the official bodies do not comment on anything until its completion, but hints have already been given that the Tatar language will remain in schools, although the number of lessons may be reduced. The Ministry of Education of Tatarstan gathers the heads of the Russian Academy of Sciences for an unscheduled meeting, and experts on interethnic relations from the Russian Academy of Sciences were brought to the Kazan Kremlin, before the conflict between opponents and supporters of compulsory Tatar in schools went beyond online discussions. Read about whether tomorrow will be the “X” day for Tatar in the material of Realnoe Vremya.

Experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences were invited to extinguish the language fire in Tatarstan

Tomorrow may become the “X” day, which will put an end to discussions about whether or not the Tatar language should be voluntary in schools. There are many events planned for the day dedicated to this topic.

The State Council of Tatarstan is holding a regular session at which the topic of teaching the Tatar language will be raised. This issue is not on the agenda yet, but changes may be made to the agenda at the beginning of the session, and, most likely, deputies will raise this issue. At least, the speaker of the republican legislative assembly Farid Mukhametshin has already hinted about this.

Tomorrow, a specialist in “fighting fires” in the field of interethnic conflicts, the head of the center for the study of interethnic relations at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leokadia Drobizheva, is coming to Kazan. It should be noted that Drobizheva is invited to Kazan in emergency cases. The last time this was the report of sociologists of the Center for the Study of National Conflicts Sergei Starovoitov and Ivan Zhukov, in which Tatarstan was presented in an unflattering light - in the map of the report the republic was designated red as one of the regions of Russia with the most tense situation in interethnic relations. At the end of 2014, at the request of the Tatarstan authorities, the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences held a conference in Kazan, where it tried to convince the public of the opposite.

As Leokadia Drobizheva told Realnoe Vremya, she was invited to Kazan from the administration of the President of Tatarstan. On October 26, Drobizheva will hold a seminar there “for those who were invited there.”

Drobizheva is invited to Kazan in emergency cases. Photo fadn.gov.ru

Tomorrow, the Ministry of Education of Tatarstan is holding an unscheduled meeting via videoconference with the heads of district and city education departments on “topical issues of education.” The meeting will be held behind closed doors; local management will probably be given instructions on what to tell parents and what to do with the curriculum.

Part of the Moscow landing party arrived in Kazan today. Svetlana Ermakova, head of the department for support of ethnocultural specifics and special forms of education of the Department of State Policy in the Sphere of General Education of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, met with colleagues from Rosobrnadzor, who are currently on an inspection in Tatarstan. She was also taken on an excursion to one of the schools.

“We are retreating”: hours for studying Tatar can be reduced, but not canceled

Tatarstan Education Minister Engel Fattakhov met with Russian Education Minister Olga Vasilyeva on Monday. What proposal Fattakhov made to the Moscow boss and what they agreed on remains a mystery. Journalists hang up the phone of the Ministry of Education with questions about when there will be a briefing on the results of the trip, but the press service of the department remains silent.

The veil of secrecy was lifted today by an event at the House of Friendship of Peoples, where representatives of the Ministry of Education of Tatarstan, authorities and the public adopted a resolution in which they recognized the validity of the discontent of part of the Russian-speaking public of the republic.

“The Tatar language is studied as a native language, although it is not one; The volumes of studying the Russian language do not correspond to the volumes recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation since 2015. In addition, there are complaints about the quality of teaching the Tatar language, the overload of programs with theoretical material, as well as the insufficient level of use of effective techniques aimed at communication skills. These circumstances became the subject of negative assessments during the inspection of Rosobrnadzor and the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation in educational institutions of the republic,” the resolution says.

What proposal Fattakhov made to the Moscow boss and what they agreed on remains a mystery. Photo by Maxim Platonov

From the text of the resolution it follows that the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Tajikistan proposed measures to resolve this conflict and the meeting participants decided to support them. “From January 1, 2018, the volume of studying the Russian language will be brought to the level established by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for all types of educational institutions. In grades 10-11, the study of the Tatar language should be transferred to a voluntary basis - according to the appropriate profile of training. To ensure the study of the Tatar language as a compulsory subject - the state language of the Republic of Tatarstan at the levels of primary general and basic general education.”

The resolution also proposed to contact the Russian Ministry of Education with a request to consider the issue of including the subject “state language of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation” in the Federal State Educational Standards and to develop curriculum options that provide for the study of the state language of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation.

The adoption of the resolution took place closed to the press. As a result, State Council Speaker Rimma Ratnikova called the decision a “compromise.”

Of course, this is a compromise, of course, we are retreating, but this is probably necessary today,” Ratnikova told reporters.

At parent meetings they started talking about reducing the mandatory Tatar hours from the second quarter

It must be taken into account that a resolution is just a proposal and not a final verdict. In any case, the end of the language conflict in schools is close - employees of the departments of Yuri Chaika and Sergei Kravtsov finish work on October 27. Official bodies do not comment on the progress of inspections, and such silence gives rise to many rumors. Conflicting information is being spread through social media groups and school parent chats.

Some say that the number of Tatar language lessons will remain at 3-4 per week: “The Ministry of Education of the Republic of Tatarstan has submitted to Russia an option with an increase in Russian and a decrease in Tatar to 3-4 hours, depending on the focus of schools and classes,” writes a source who visited the meeting at the Ministry of Education and Science of Tatarstan.

The decisions of individual school leaders to reduce the Tatar language can so far be explained only by the consequences of prosecutorial inspections in these institutions. Photo mariuver.com

Others say that at a parent meeting they were told that from the second quarter the number of hours of the Tatar language would be reduced to two per week: “Instead of Tatar, hours in Russian and foreign languages ​​will be added, there will be a lesson on speech culture and rhetoric for Russians in Russian, for Tatars - in the Tatar language,” the reader reported the results of his parent meeting to Realnoe Vremya. Local crypto channels are also actively disseminating information about leaving the Tatar language as a compulsory language, but in an abbreviated form.

The Ministry of Education of Tatarstan states that no decisions have been made yet and cannot be made until the end of the inspection. The decisions of individual school leaders to reduce the Tatar language can only be explained by the consequences of prosecutorial inspections in these institutions, which discovered violations of the Law on Education of the Russian Federation - starting with the fact that parents did not give consent to study the Tatar language, ending with the fact that the Russian language is taught in volumes that do not correspond to the recommended Ministry of Education of Russia.

Instructions from Russian speakers and propaganda leaflets from Tatar speakers: how parents react to conflict

Most schools have taken a break and are in no hurry to make decisions on changing the curriculum. This week, parent meetings began, where moms and dads are given standard application forms and asked to decide on the language that is their native language: “I give my consent to teaching in the subject “Native Language and Literary Reading in the Native Language” ... - further parents they write either “Russian” or “Tatar language”. At the same time, the form states that the subject “native language” is compulsory, but taking into account the opinion of the students’ parents.

Activists advocating the voluntary nature of learning the Tatar language believe that they are trying to mislead parents with such statements. “The concept of “native Russian” does not exist at all in the law on education. The Russian language is a separate subject, and the native language is one of the languages ​​of the peoples of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Native Russian will be replaced with something else if you sign this application,” says the mailing instructions on how to behave at a meeting in schools, distributed in WhatsApp chats.

On October 24, an administrative lawsuit was filed in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in defense of the compulsory study of the Tatar language from one of the schools in Naberezhnye Chelny to the Russian Ministry of Education. Photo by Maxim Platonov

Daria Turtseva

In recent months, Tatarstan has been losing what little it had that distinguished it from other Russian regions. In 2017, Moscow did not renew the agreement on the division of powers with Kazan, which gave Tatarstan a certain autonomy. In local schools, at the height of the school year, compulsory teaching of the Tatar language was canceled. Previously, it was taught on the same basis as Russian, but now only two optional hours per week are left. Pavel Shmakov, director of the SolNTse boarding school for intellectually enthusiastic children from Kazan, was outraged by the speed of this decision and the violations with which, in his opinion, it was made and went to court. DW spoke with Shmakov about why he advocates reducing the number of Tatar language lessons, but is against making it optional.

DW: On March 1 there will be another court hearing in your case in the Vakhitovsky District Court of Kazan. Why are you fighting for the Tatar language in schools?

Pavel Shmakov: The whole story began, as you know, at the end of July 2017, when Putin said in Yoshkar-Ola that people should not be forced to learn a non-native language. Then, at the beginning of October, we unexpectedly received a letter from the prosecutor’s office saying that we had been inspected and our curriculum analyzed. No checks were actually carried out. A few days later, a meeting of school directors in our district took place; such meetings were held in all districts of Kazan in the presence of district prosecutors. It was conducted by the heads of the Kazan education department. I asked how and why we received inspection papers, although there were none.

At these meetings we were ordered to begin dismissing Tatar teachers. Within two months we were obliged to fire teachers. After that, prosecutors began to come to us with real checks. They began to interrogate the children why they needed Tatar, why they were learning it.

-... And you filed a protest.

I thought the position was wrong. There were obvious violations: interrogations of children in the absence of parents, prosecutors entered the boarding school without permission, photographed personal belongings of children; such actions according to the Constitution are allowed only with court approval. I filed a lawsuit against the prosecutor's office.

I believe that such actions (reducing Tatar lessons - Ed.) cannot be done quickly. In principle, they can be done, curricula sometimes change, this is normal. But such actions are done during the big summer holidays. Several court hearings have already taken place, several judges have changed, they do not want to resolve these issues, they are postponing them to a later time. The matter is dragging on. Putin asked not to force people to learn a non-native language. But we have several hours of English a week, and they are required to be studied.

In the end, curricula and recommendations were adopted so that Tatar was taught only voluntarily and for no more than two hours a week. Putin’s phrase is contradictory, and it does not say in what time frame this must be done. And interethnic tensions are quickly escalating in our country. I have lived here since birth, my dad and my grandfather lived here. There were no particular interethnic conflicts. There was tension only in the early 1990s. And then it calmed down. And now they are dividing again: you are a Tatar, and you are a Russian. You will choose Tatar, but you will not. I remembered that when I was a schoolboy, there was a funny, but not very good situation: the Russians were playing football, and the Tatars were going to learn Tatar. But it wasn't tough yet. It just wasn't quite right. And now it started to get rough.

- Your position is to reduce the teaching of Tatar, but not in a hurry?

Do everything slowly as possible. By February, we increased the number of Russian language hours, since we had fewer of them than we should have according to the law. Another thing is that Tatar teachers are not to blame for this. And the prosecutor's office and Rosobrnadzor, who should monitor this.

I think that the issue will be postponed again until March 18, before the Russian presidential elections. The most important result of the courts is that we will be able to convince children to voluntarily learn Tatar. This took time. And in other schools this was done humiliatingly for the Tatars: they fired many Tatar teachers, set the Tatars against the Russians, and the Russians against the Tatars.

- The authorities' decision has many supporters. Tatarsky, they say, was forced to study whether the student wanted it or not. What would you answer to these people?

What I tell my parents. There are no interethnic complaints or conflicts at our school. We have changed the methodology of teaching Tatar. We don't have homework. We show a lot of films and cartoons in Tatar, children go to museums, Tatar singers and scientists are invited. The Tatar language is taught as a pleasure for children. We have reduced the amount of Tatar, but made sure that there are no statements from parents. I believe that on the land of Tatarstan - this is the only place where there is a homeland of the Tatars - everyone should study the Tatar language for a certain number of hours. Another thing is that you can discuss how many hours, and maybe less than it was. We need other methods: we used to teach grammar and letters. This is wrong: when there are a lot of Russians and Tatars nearby, you just need to talk, sing songs, dance, listen to beautiful Tatar music, and so on. Then it will be natural, pleasant and beautiful. First of all, respect each other. If this culture is not respected, then interethnic conflicts are possible. This is much worse than controversy.

- But from a pragmatic point of view, the authorities’ decision is logical - Tatar is not required for work or for studying at universities, right?

Context

I agree with it. Therefore, when in the fifth grade they study five hours of Tatar, then, in general, this is a lot. Normal would be three or two. A person who is going to leave for Tver or Moscow does not really need the Tatar language. ...We have many interethnic marriages. Every year we go on hiking trips to Tatar villages. Everyone who lives in these parts needs a certain minimum level of language knowledge. Does everyone need math? For a philologist or historian - to a minimal extent, but necessary. There is a certain cultural minimum. On the territory of Tatarstan it is the Tatar language.

- But two hours is allowed. Is this less than the minimum you talked about?

Two hours would be fine if they were mandatory. And they are voluntary. After all, mathematics is not voluntary for us. And English, and geography, and history too. At our school, we resolved the issue: we have two hours, by decision of the parents, they became mandatory for everyone, although formally the lessons are voluntary. In addition, we have many Tatar clubs, so we have not reduced the workload of Tatar teachers. We will reduce it a little in the summer, when we can slowly change our curriculum. Removing it completely from the mandatory grid is fundamentally wrong. Many Tatars will then stop teaching him, because pragmatically he is not very needed. The culture of the Tatar people will be destroyed.

Another small example. In Tatarstan, the Tatar language was studied more, and Russian less, than in Russia. However, out of 88 regions, Tatarstan is in third place in terms of the level of the final exam in the Russian language. Bilingualism is important. When children learned both Tatar and Russian, they knew Russian better.

- In February there was a rally against the abolition of teaching Tatar. You were also present at it. But few people came. Does this mean that the topic is not very relevant for residents of Tatarstan?

I was the only Russian there. There were about 120 people. The rally was announced many times, but this was the first time it was allowed. I was wearing a jacket, jacket, T-shirt, shirt. And within half an hour I was freezing. It was simply cold standing at the rally. When spring comes, more people will come to such rallies.

- At this rally there was a slogan calling on the Russian authorities to ratify the European Charter for Regional Languages. Do you think the current decision to reduce Tatar language lessons is somehow related to the fact that Russia has not yet done this?

I think it's related. It seems to me that Russia is trying to follow its own path of building a rigid pyramid of power. But in such a huge state, such a rigid pyramid does not work well. Saltykov-Shchedrin has this phrase: “The severity of Russian laws is softened by the optionality of their implementation.” It seems to me that Russia is trying to do something that is impossible in this situation. This decision regarding languages ​​leads to a decrease in the diversity of cultures in Russia. After a while everything will return, everything will change. But “some time” can take years and decades.

Fulfillment of Vladimir Putin’s instructions to comply with the principle of voluntary learning of national languages ​​threatens the reduction of teachers in Tatarstan schools. Teachers of the Tatar language and literature have already begun to receive notices of dismissal, the Tatarstan trade union of public education told Kommersant-Kazan. The first cuts could occur as early as the end of the year. The union does not yet know how many of its members are at risk of being fired or transferred to another position, including the janitor. The teachers themselves say that there are 2.8 thousand of them. Some schools refuse to “throw teachers out onto the street” in the middle of the school year, and the prosecutor’s office promises to protect teachers if their dismissal occurs in violation of the law.

The Tatarstan organization of the trade union of workers of public education and science of the Russian Federation published recommendations to school directors on the procedure for laying off teachers of the Tatar language and literature “in connection with bringing the curricula of Tatarstan schools into compliance with the current legislation on education.” The organization posted samples of official notices indicating the date of the proposed dismissal - December 27.

Teachers have already started receiving similar notifications. The head of the apparatus of the Republican Trade Union Committee, Yuri Prokhorov, told Kommersant-Kazan that he received a call from a teacher “from one district” who was “crying, sobbing, saying that she was fired.” The union reassured the teacher, telling her that she had only received “notice of a possible layoff.” The organization has not yet calculated how many teachers are subject to layoffs. “This will be known when all schools approve the new curricula and it will be clear how many hours of the Tatar language remain,” explained Yuri Prokhorov. According to him, there are now more than 3 thousand teachers of the Tatar language and literature in Tatarstan.

The union explained on its website that the teacher may be transferred to another job at the school or his teaching load may be reduced. In case of disagreement or lack of vacancies in the educational institution, according to the Labor Code, the teacher must be fired two months after receiving the notice. Meanwhile, messages have already appeared on social networks that teachers are being offered a transfer to the position of janitor with a salary of 7.8 thousand rubles.

Mr. Prokhorov, in an interview with Kommersant-Kazan, emphasized that dismissed teachers are entitled to compensation: according to the Labor Code, when a worker is laid off, “he is paid severance pay in the amount of the average monthly salary” and the average monthly salary is retained for the period of employment (but not more than two months) . If a teacher is offered another job, but refuses it, he is entitled to “severance pay in the amount of two weeks’ average earnings.” “Changes in conditions in employment contracts,” according to Yuri Prokhorov, also apply to Russian language teachers. If their workload increases, they are required to provide additional payments.

Let us remind you that the curriculum of schools in Tatarstan began to change after instructions from supervisory authorities. In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “forcing a person to learn a language that is not his native language is as unacceptable as reducing the level of teaching Russian.” He instructed the Prosecutor General's Office to check schools for voluntary study of the national and state languages ​​of the republics. Supervisory authorities began to demand that local schools exclude the Tatar language from the compulsory curriculum and make it an elective. At the same time, the prosecutor's office established that the Russian language is taught to a lesser extent. In schools, they began to replace the Tatar language with the subject “native language or literature” (parents must choose which language their children will study as their native language - Russian or Tatar). In institutions where compulsory teaching remained, the volume of teaching was reduced to two to three hours a week.

Not all schools complied with the demands of the prosecutor's office. As the director of the Solntse boarding school, Pavel Shmakov, told Kommersant on Wednesday, the curriculum at his institution remained the same: “I have four Tatar language teachers, all of them continue to work.” According to Mr. Shmakov, “throwing them out into the street in the middle of the school year is illegal.” He expressed his readiness to “fight” to retain staff. The director said that he appealed in court the procedure of the prosecutor's office, which demanded changes to the curriculum without familiarizing itself with it. At the same time, according to Mr. Shmakov, at the Solntse school they are ready to reduce the hours of the Tatar language in the next academic year: “There will be not five, but three hours a week.” “But the Tatar language will remain mandatory. We have no objections from parents,” Mr. Shmakov told Kommersant-Kazan.

It should be noted that earlier an appeal from Tatar language teachers to the State Council of the Republic was circulated on social networks, which indicated that if Tatar language lessons were cut, more than 2.8 thousand teachers could be left without work. The statement was signed by 200 teachers. The State Council of Tatarstan told Kommersant-Kazan that the issue of teaching the Tatar language could be raised at a meeting at the end of this month.

Last Thursday, Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov spoke at a parliamentary session. He spoke out against supervisory authorities “terrorizing school principals” and expressed fears that “opposition structures” could take advantage of the conflict and the situation could reflect poorly “in relation to our president” on the eve of the 2018 elections, which should be “organized” by schools. And the first president of the republic, Mintimer Shaimiev, called on the prosecutor’s office “not to touch upon these issues during the academic year.” Speaker of the State Council Farid Mukhametshin told Kommersant-Kazan that the republic’s authorities, in negotiations with the federal center, intend to defend the compulsory teaching of the Tatar language. However, he considered it possible to reduce the volume of study.

The Tatarstan prosecutor's office told Kommersant-Kazan on Wednesday that they are ready to protect Tatar language teachers if they are fired in violation of the Labor Code. The supervisory authority noted that the prosecutor's office does not require schools to lay off teachers, explaining that only the employer can make such a decision.