The number of hours allocated to the study of the Chechen language and literature in Chechen schools has been sharply reduced.
The Chechen Minister of Education and Science, Khozh-Baudi Daaev, told Grozny-Inform that instead of five lessons per week, there will now be only one hour, which will be held as an optional extracurricular activity.
Daaev explained that the decision was linked to changes in federal regulations governing the school curriculum. According to him, under the new requirements, the overall number of hours has been redistributed across the board, which impacts Chechen language lessons.
‘In previous years, on the instructions of the Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, we had five hours of the Chechen language and literature per week. Now it is one hour’, Daaev said.
Previously, in his Telegram channel earlier, Daaev wrote that when redistributing hours in the school timetable, ‘special attention was paid to the study of the native language’.
Kadyrov has repeatedly emphasised the importance of preserving the Chechen language. In November 2022, he said that the Chechen language belonged to the group of endangered languages, describing this as a ‘great tragedy’. According to Kadyrov, Chechen should be the main language of communication in Chechen families.
In 2021, Kadyrov signed a new version of the language law, moving Russian to second place after Chechen.
Changes to the Chechen school curriculum are taking place against the background of federal decisions concerning the teaching of the languages of Russia’s peoples.
In July 2018, the Russian Parliament adopted amendments to the law on education, which provided for the study of state languages within the Russian republics on a voluntary basis.
At that time, Kadyrov spoke out sharply against giving up the study of the Chechen language, stating that a true patriot would never abandon the language of their ancestors. According to him, it is impossible to consider someone a Chechen if they submit an application to refuse to study their native language.
The Chechen language is spoken mainly in Chechnya, as well as in the Khasavyurt and Novolak districts of Daghestan, in Ingushetia, and in a number of countries abroad, including Georgia, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. According to the Russian independent media outlet Caucasian Knot, in 1994, before the start of the First Chechen War, the number of speakers was between 750,000 and 950,000 out of a total population of some 1.3 million.
According to data published by the Russian Education Ministry in 2021, Chechen is one of the most spoken among Russia’s indigenous peoples, with over two million speakers.
In August, the ministry reduced the number of school hours for studying native languages in primary school from two to one per week. According to them, the reduction in the school workload for pupils should be achieved at the expense of this subject.
OC Media
