The authorities in Ukraine are willing to amend the rules governing the use of languages of national minorities in schools to remove obstacles to initiating negotiations for European Union membership. This statement was made by Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Olha Stefanyshyna, in an interview with the Financial Times.
According to her, Ukraine is ready to make “additional changes” to the rules for secondary education in the languages of national minorities, provided that a balance with instruction in Ukrainian is maintained.
It is reported that bilateral negotiations with Hungary and Romania to reach an agreement on the ratio of instruction in Ukrainian and the languages of national minorities in schools will begin in the near future.
As previously reported, Hungary has long been blocking any decisions regarding Ukraine’s prospects for EU and NATO membership due to the Ukrainian education law, which does not provide for the operation of schools and universities with Hungarian-language instruction in areas with a significant Hungarian population.
(C)OSTROV 2023
Here we go again. If these were threatened languages by any means Romania and Hungaria would have a point, but there is absolutely no reason why schools should be in any other language than Ukrainian and maybe English.
Yes, fair, why not offer Hungarian or Romanian in schools as a second languages in these border areas? But I think the main language should always be Ukrainian as that’s the language of higher education.
“there is absolutely no reason why schools should be in any other language than Ukrainian and maybe English.”
Sure there is. If there are students who don’t speak those languages, you’re denying them an education.
“offer Hungarian or Romanian in schools as a second language”
You’re talking about teaching the Hungarian language; the article is talking about teaching school lessons in Hungarian, for the benefit of children who don’t speak Ukrainian. That makes sense to me – they can be learning Ukrainian in parallel, but they still need to learn other things in the meantime.