Untitled

saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi:
problemebi da gamowvevebi
Issues of State Language Teaching;
Problems and Challenges
course of the discussion about the unified national examination for entering university in Georgia in 2005 and
2006, this difficulty became evident. While in a first step in 2005 there was the possibility for high school
graduates from non-Georgian schools to take an adapted Georgian language test, this benefit was cancelled in
2006. As we have seen, monolingual education in the mother tongue does not give minority language speakers
the opportunity to acquire the State language on the needed level, making it impossible for numerous young
people from national minorities to enter a Georgian higher education institution.
Apart from the purely linguistic drawbacks for minority language students, there is another problem with
the system of separate minority and majority language schools: It divides children from a very early age according
to their ethnic, linguistic and cultural background, and teaches them separately, even in regions and
towns where they live next to each other. In their everyday life the children experience that they are seemingly
fundamentally different from each other. This situation is counter-productive with regard to the State's obligation
to what is stated in Article 29 1.d) "to ensure an education that is directed to �...� the preparation of the
child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes and
friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin." The
current system therefore not only provides the children with unequal possibilities in life, but also creates a divided
society with a high potential for conflict.
Additionally, with this limited competence in the Georgian language, there is both little motivation as
well as little possibility for minority language speakers to orient their professional life towards Georgian
speaking parts of the country, wherefore they might rather search their opportunities in the neighbouring countries,
where their mother tongue is the State language. This tendency is a potential threat to the development of
a unified state based on citizenship.
Education for minority language speakers with the State language as language of instruction:
Understanding the growing importance of a good command of the Georgian language, as well as the
minimum standards for command of the State language as laid down by the State, more and more parents of
linguistic minorities send their children to Georgian language schools. This development was increasingly
observed in an unpublished survey done by CIMERA in 2005 in the Kvemo Kartli region, where the notion
prevails that it is the task of the family to "teach" children their mother tongue. However, in this setting the
importance of education in the mother tongue for both the linguistic and cognitive development of a child is
neglected.
Teaching children exclusively in a language, which is not their mother tongue, is called submersion or total
immersion. It is important to note that this model can lead to bilingualism only in very specific linguistic
settings, where the children's mother tongue has very high prestige and is widely used outside of the school 4 .
Usually - and in most situations in Georgia - this does not lead to bilingualism. On the contrary, it can be dangerous
for the overall linguistic and intellectual development of the child.
If non-Georgian speaking children attend a Georgian school together with Georgian speaking children,
they undergo the whole education process in a language unknown to them and experience a so-called "full
immersion shock". This shock slows down the children’s ability to perceive information and to learn. These
children are expected to adopt the second language on native speakers' level and learn the content of the
school subjects at the same pace as native speakers. The pupils are constantly in a situation in which they do
not understand what is being asked of them, and can conclude that the problem lies in them themselves: they
feel stupid and think that they are not able to learn at all. In this situation the child can close in and the Georgian
language, although in time does start to develop, never reaches the required level. This shock slows down
the children's ability to perceive information and to learn and it puts in danger their cognitive development. 5
Throughout the world, this problem is one of the roots for high drop-out rates in primary education. In this
setting the requirements of the CRC Articles 29 1.a) "...education of the child shall be directed to the devel-
4 Baker (1993) and Wode (1997).
5
Crawford (1989) and (1997), Cummins (1980), Sweetnam Evans (2001)
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