The Saturday conference resolutions

The current year is extremely hard for Polish education in Lithuania. Pickets, protests and appeals organized to withdraw the Act of Education or at least to mitigate it seem to never end. The participants of the XVI conference “Polish child – at Polish school” were also debating over this situation. In the conference’s summary are included three resolutions, their full text we enclose below. 

Appeal of  the XVI conference of Vilnius Regional Office ZLP “Polish child at Polish school” to the Polish parents

Summing up the XVI conference “Polish child at polish school” we state with content that the number of first-formers at regional Polish schools is constant. It should be noted that the sixteen years of hard work in this direction is now bearing fruit of success. Its basic and main factor has become work for the teachers, parents, regional civil servants and the whole regional Polish community.

In the present year to these regional council schools attended 9008 children from which 5096 was learning in Polish classes, this is 56,57% of children. 1432 children attended district schools (according to the data on the Internet). At regional schools there were learning 10440 children in total, at Polish schools 5096 what makes up 48,8% of a total and what makes up 80% of all Polish children in the region (in the region Poles made up 61% of all residents according to the census conducted in 2001). It means that out of 5 children of Polish families, 4 of them were attending Polish school.

Polish education in Lithuania have over 5-century tradition. It had some flowering moments, but also some hard times of prohibitions, restrictions and persecutions. After Second World War there were some attempts at abolishing the system of education in Polish language in Lithuania again. However, determined and active parents managed to make the Polish system of education lasting and to make it the fixed part of the system of education of the Republic.

In the late 80’s with the National Revival in Lithuania, Polish education caught a breath of fresh air. The myth of the lack of the perspectives for graduates of Polish schools finally collapsed, the number of Polish classes has significantly increased as well as their geography. Matura graduates of Polish schools attained an additional offer to study abroad. Alongside positive phenomena, there also occurred an increasing threat to the Polish education. The myth of supremacy and advantages for Poles learning at Russian schools was exchanged with a new one of the predominant assets of Lithuanian school. Such claim is insistently promoted in media, offices and national institutions.

The conference “Polish child – at Polish school” exhorts parents not to bow to the false and groundless agitation of the supporters of lithuanization of education of national minorities. Their arguments not only depart from facts and realities but also, they threaten the healthy intellectual development of a child.

1. Polish child who gets to the foreign language and culture environment is deprived of the possibility to form a logic, national conscience and as a result of it, the child is often stressed out. The practice shows that in the adult life the child often has complexes and is unable to  find itself in the environment and culture of any national group – neither the one to which the child belongs to from the day of birth, nor the other in which language the child was learning.

2. Polish child who is not sufficiently familiar with Lithuanian language, loses the main part of its power and time in the first years of education to get to know and master the language. In this way the child is negligent in other subjects, and it is not possible to catch up with them in the future. There are even some situations where the teachers, who teach Polish children in Lithuanian classes, do not teach in accordance with the appropriate programme.

3. There are no grounds for claiming that only in the Lithuanian school students are able to master Lithuanian language. When the education of Lithuanian language begins in the first grade, the number of hours is augmented to 4-5 per week and the compulsory exams in 10-12 grades were introduced. While all institutions, government offices, shops, cultural and service places are speaking national language and while many radio stations as well as TV stations emit in national language there should be no doubt that even an average child would be able to master Lithuanian language easily – no matter to which school it attends.

The Matura graduates who started their education in Polish classes after 1990, sit their national language exams in the previous years. It was then, when the meaning and prestige of Lithuanian language was legally elevated to the national rank. Matura exams taken in Lithuanian language proved that the students of Polish schools mastered this language sufficiently. What is more, they did that even better than the students of Lithuanian schools in the Vilnius and Solecznicki district. In this way one of the myths that a child at Polish school is not able to master Lithuanian language was refuted in the end.

4. Now the Matura graduate from Polish school has even richer offer of a start in life than the Matura graduate from Lithuanian school. Not randomly, for several years in a row, the percentage of the Matura graduates from Polish schools who go to university is high and stable. i.e. last year among 1283 of Matura graduates of Polish schools, 921 what is 71,8% became students.

All universities in the Republic open the door to graduates from Polish schools. Simultaneously, those graduates from Polish schools, who mastered Polish language, are granted a chance to get to the prestige university in Poland. Those studying at Lithuanian universities are eligible for grants from the Semper Polonia Foundation. The number of such grants in 2010 has r