English ousts Russian in ex-Soviet Georgia’s schools

Created 03/05/2010 –

At schools across ex-Soviet Georgia, English is ousting Russian as the
pro-Western authorities mount an ambitious campaign to promote the language
of Shakespeare.

Keen to build closer ties with the West and amid continued tensions with
Moscow after the 2008 Georgia-Russia war, Georgia’s government seems
determined to end Russian’s dominance as the country’s most-spoken foreign
language.

And young Georgians, anxious to learn one of the most widely spoken
languages in the world, couldn’t be happier.

"Every Georgian needs to know English. It is impossible to get a proper
education and build a successful career without knowing English," said
16-year-old Mariam Sulashvili during a break from her English classes at
high school number 47 in central Tbilisi.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a fluent English speaker himself,
has led the charge for English, saying earlier this year that Georgia needs
a "linguistic revolution."

A string of new measures are being taken to help promote English.

Earlier this year, Georgia’s education ministry launched a programme to
bring 1,000 native English teachers to schools across the country starting
in September.

>From 2011, English classes will become compulsory from the first grade in
all Georgian schools.

Tbilisi city hall is also offering free English lessons for adults aimed at
boosting their career prospects.

New rules will even forbid Georgian television from broadcasting
English-language films with Russian voiceover translation, requiring the use
of Georgian subtitles instead.

Education Minister Dimitri Shashkin said the goals of these efforts go
beyond simply teaching English and are important to the country’s
pro-Western aspirations.

"Beyond its immediate goal — to improve English language proficiency — the
programme is aimed at helping Georgian schoolchildren in adopting and
sharing Western values and culture," Shashkin told AFP.

Shashkin insisted that the programme "must not be implemented to the
detriment of the Russian language."

But some in Georgia are concerned about the diminishing knowledge of Russian
here and worry that Georgia is losing touch with the language that for
generations was the small country’s window on the outside world.

First under Tsarist and later under Soviet rule, Russian was the most widely
spoken second language in Georgia and knowledge of it was considered
essential.

Some tensions over use of Russian did exist, as for example when thousands
took to the streets in 1978 to protest plans to abolish the status of
Georgian as an official language in the then-Soviet republic.

But for the most part Georgians embraced Russian and Russian culture had a
profound influence on the country.

Zurab Abashidze, Georgia’s former ambassador to Moscow and director of the
Georgian Institute for Russian Studies, said it was unfortunate that current
tensions with Moscow were pushing Russian to the sidelines.

"The language of Pushkin and Dostoevsky has nothing to do with politics," he
said.

"One day our relations with Russia will be normalised and we may discover
that we lost the Russian language and cut centuries-old cultural ties with
our giant neighbour."

Supporters of the government’s efforts, however, say that regardless of
politics teaching English simply makes more sense in today’s world.
"It is a natural situation caused by the demands of our shrinking world…
and not by artificial government policies," said the director of high school
number 47, Irma Khutsishvili.

"Unlike English, Russian is not a universal language and cannot play the
role that the English language is playing."

AFP