Kyrgyz education: one Russian schoolbook for two

“Kyrgyz schools are supplied with textbooks by 57 percent,” Damira Kudaibergenova, chief of the school and preschool education department has told in an interview with the news agency 24.kg. One simple calculation shows that school children have one textbook for two. The books are old and out of date. “Kyrgyzstan is in urgent need of new school books,” the official said.

Where did our patriotism go?

In 2009 Kyrgyz government reportedly issued 100 million soms for new school books’ purchase. But this was not enough to provide all schools with required literature. “Besides, schools desperately need new computers, while Internet remains unprecedented luxury,” Kudaibergenova said.

Usually schoolbooks are brought from Russia introducing beautiful Russian state symbols into the children’s lives. But what about Kyrgyz symbols? Where did our patriotism go?

“Quality of Kyrgyz-made schoolbooks is rather poor. We have to use Russian books, which are much better. Kyrgyzstan is full of modern authors and everyone writes in his/her own way. It especially concerns books for Kyrgyz language schools. We should filter out school books before including them into the education process,” said Gulmira Ibraeva, the vice-principle of Bishkek school № 49.

Soviet times were known for great quality and knowledgeable content of books. But those times are long gone, together with education tendencies. One can learn history from several books and receive absolutely contradictory facts.

Kyrgyzstan outranks Lichtenstein in…

Damira Kudaibergenova points that today Kyrgyzstan counts about 1 million and 50 thousand school students, which is 90 percent from the total number of school-age children of the country. However, 10 percent are left without education. According to official statistics up to 116 thousand children of Kyrgyzstan do not go to schools, which is four times more than population of Lichtenstein.

Today Kyrgyzstan takes critical measures to correct the situation and eradicate illiteracy. “We open evening courses for workers, while handicaps are officially allowed to study at home,” Kudaibergenova said.

In the world the number of illiterate adults has hit 774 millions, while number of uneducated children in the world reaches 72 million. As a matter of fact, Kyrgyzstan actively contributes to this amount.

Postscript

Therewith there is no guarantee that those 90 percent of children attending schools will grow into educated and literate adults, as school gives only basic education. In our case it is either Russian-interesting and qualitative, but not ours, or Kyrgyz – patriotic, but not qualitative.

In the meantime, in 1996 UNESCO established the International Literacy Day to be marked on September 8. Few know about this date in Kyrgyzstan…