Russian School Defense Staff
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Russian School Defense Staff or Headquarters for the Protection of Russian Schools (Russian: Штаб защиты русских школ; Latvian Krievu skolu aizstāvības štābs) — movement in Latvia for protection of public secondary education in Russian. Leaders: Gennady Kotov, Yakov Pliner, for some time also Alexander Kazakov (deported out of Latvia in 2004).
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[edit] Aims of the movement[1]
Annulation of the provisisons set in the Education law of 1998, which ordered the language of instruction in public secondary schools (Forms 10-12) to be only Latvian since 2004 (so-called reform-2004 or educational reform). Providing effective learning of Latvian language in the Latvian language and literature lessons and specific preparation of teachers for Russian schools.
[edit] History
The Staff was founded[2] in April 2003 as a coalition of various organizations, most prominent being ForHRUL, and later expanded, involving lots of nonpartisan people. In 2003-2004, the Staff has organized the biggest political demonstrations in Latvia since the beginning of 1990-es (23 May and 4 September, 2003; 1 May and 1 September, 2004). As a result, the Education law was amended in February 2004, allowing to teach up to 40% in the forms 10-12 in minority languages. The parliamentary opposition started two cases before the Constitutional Court of Latvia (abjudicated in May and September, 2005) with most of its demands being refused.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- English
- Chronicle of Staff actions 2003-2005 and List of the most considerable protests in 2004
- Latvians face new wall: language (CNN, 2004)
- Excerpts from Latvian-language press, May-June 2004 and RFE/RL news on Baltic minorities, January-April 2004
- Teachers in crossfire over Latvia's school reform (Reuters, 2004)
- Thousands of Russian speakers protest new school language rules (AP, 2004)
- Latvian lessons irk Russians (BBC, 2005)
- Judgements of the Constitutional Court on the "educational reform" and on private minority schools' rights to get public funding , 2005
- Discussion in the European Parliament, 2005
- Russian and Latvian
- Staff site, mostly in Russia
- Staff's video archive;
- Staff video clips: «Black Karlis» (the most famous one, referring to then-minister for education Karlis Shadurskis) and «Reform is fact», in Russian
- Basic excerpts from Staff documents and links: Russian, Latvian
- Official position on the reform, in Latvian
- Staff site, mostly in Russia
