Sociologists forecast that 10 years from now up to 30% of all schoolchildren in Russia will be the children of guest workers and migrants. Yet the level of fluency in Russian, demonstrated by kids form such families, is generally low and it is further deteriorating. What can we do about it? Should we submerse these kids in a free language environment mixing them up with the boys and girls of Russian origin, or open special courses and classes for them? And who must pay for their education?
This year almost half of all who graduated for Moscow School #942 were the children of migrants, mainly Azerbaijani. Almost all of them have been enrolled at the paid departments of colleges and universities. The school teachers point out that the children of migrants are very serious about their studies. And even if their parents speak only their native language and have completed only a primary school, they make their children study to the best of their ability. Their kids never play truant and always do their home assignments.
Roughly for 10-15% students of the school Russian is not a native language. Teachers think this is an optimal ratio. When there are more non-Russians in the class, this may weaken the influence of Russian language environment or even provoke conflicts. In every class there are 4-5 students whose parents came to Russia from the former Soviet republics.
“We try not to take those who do not speak Russian,” says an assistant principal, “though I have only one such boy in the primary school. I study with him after classes. The experience shows that one year or 18 months is enough even for underachievers to learn spoken Russian.”
Larisa Arkhipova teaches history and social science at this school. At her classes you must speak and reason no matter what. Not everyone is adequate. Larisa believes that the children of migrants need to be taught Russian in preparatory rather than regular classes and the school must have the right to recruit them.
“These preparatory classes can be paid, why not? If you are going to work or study in a foreign country, be sure to learn the language. If we are going to live and work in Europe or the USA, we learn English, don’t we? Nobody will study with you there free of charge, while here it turns out that everything is covered by the budget,” laments Arkhipova.
Nobody will tell you the price. There’s no exact data on the number of children of migrants in schools. Different figures are mentioned: from 4% to 10% in Moscow schools to 12% in Moscow region’s schools; official statistics for Saint Petersburg is 3%.
Another proposal from teachers is mandatory testing or interviewing for the children of migrants before they are enrolled.
In addition to regular schools, the children of migrants may learn the language at schools of Russian language, functioning at regular educational institutions. One such school has opened in Moscow South; the course lasts one year. Overall there are 12 such Russian language schools in each administrative district.
Moscow school #157 in the north of the capital, with special classes of Russian, is one example. This year the school has trained 46 students of different age – from preschoolers to teenagers aged 13-14. Director Aida Kulieva is positive that schools of Russian must function at many educational institutions, since the number of migrants keeps growing with each passing year and their fluency in Russian gets worse and worse.
“There are Azerbaijani, the Tajik and Kirgiz as well as Uzbeks in our classes. All of them are delighted to learn Russian, since they understand that they will need it,” the director says. “Parents are also interested and in some families they even speak Russian with their kids.”
In the opinion of Ms Kulieva, one year is not enough for high school students to learn Russian. The program for them must be comprised of two stages: Russian during the first year and subject studies during the second year. And Vlada Bogdanova, Assistant Professor on the Chair of Human Sciences at Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg), asserts that Russian is best mastered by those kids who came to Russia, when they were younger than 2. If they are 7 the first half year of learning Russian is most difficult, but later they get adapted. Those who start learning the language at age 14 have a very hard time. They can master the spoken language, but learning subjects in Russian overwhelms them.
It seems obvious that there must be more Russian language schools and special classes for children of migrants, and tuition should last two years.
Everything is not so simple, warns Oleg Khukhlaev, Ethnic Psychology Professor of MGPPU. “From 80% to 90% of migrants choose for their children a school closest to their place of residence. If they are lucky to have a Russian language school near their place their kids will go there; if not, they won’t take them to a remote place. Another behavioral pattern is that those who complete the Russian language school usually continue to go to the same educational institution and this is not so good.
Pedagogues say special classes and schools for migrants are needed, but psychologists do not agree, saying that this is a dangerous path. Migrants coming to Russia are ready to get assimilated in our society and we should help them instead of shutting them off. How? We should teach them in regular schools and in usual classes, but treat them as children with special educational needs and actively develop inclusive education.
“In this country only children with disabilities get special treatment while abroad thee think children of migrants call for an individual approach,” says Mr Khukhlaev. “Classes should be differently planned and conducted, using special teaching methods, group tuition with disputes, roundtables and collective assignments so that students might communicate with each other.
Now MGPPU academics try to build an assimilation-conducive educational model Metropolitan Education. “This is not a set of measures, class hours and events; these are new teaching methods that will proceed from the fact that kids of various ethnic origin sit in the class,” explains Khukhlaev.
The first results will become known towards the year-end.
It’s not quite clear how the teachers’ work will be paid under this arrangement. The current standards do not take into account the challenge of teaching the children of migrants. The budget treats them all as equal, although teachers invest more time and efforts. Many teach extra classes free of charge.
Despite numerous problems that inevitably await the school because of the ongoing influx of migrants, there is one advantage: many families consider education not as a way to enter an institution of tertiary education or to find a good job, but as the great benefit for their kid.
What’s the practice abroad?
In France, in order to be enrolled by a state-run school, a migrant needs only a residence permit. Special classes or assimilation courses are not envisaged for newcomers. The French believe that the best assimilation is full submersion into the language environment in the country of one’s stay. In Sweden where more than a million migrants currently reside language courses are opened in every district; newcomers may freely learn not only Swedish, but also English.
In Germany all kids study together; most children of migrants perform very well at school and enter universities afterwards. In Hamburg 35% of such teenagers who left schools in 2010-2011 entered institutions of higher learning. In former years this percentage did not exceed 30%. The natives of Russia, Poland and Iran are most perseverant of all. For all that, from 10% to 15% of migrants openly refuse to be integrated into the German society.
The “mosaic class” method has been used at US schools since the 1950s and 1960s: the team is divided into 4-5 groups and an expert is chosen in each. A teacher gives various assignments to groups and experts, so that groups and experts work together. Under this approach you’ll be compelled to communicate for the sake of final result. The descendants of those who administered the Lynch law and those whose ancestors suffered from that law can land in the same class, so for the United States integration is a matter of survival and it is the school that helped solving this problem.
Irina Ivoilova
Source: Rossiyskaya Gazeta
