Abstract
The third chapter introduces readers to the provincial town where the ethnographic fieldwork was conducted and to two schools—a Tatar-medium and a Russian-medium school—where most of ethnographic data was collected. Through ethnographic engagements with the educational strategies and trajectories of the town’s families, this chapter reveals the effects that the post-2000 Russian educational reforms had on the local population, how families responded to them, and how local schools and educators adapted to the new changes. It uncovers a terrain of local debates and concerns regarding, for example, which school to send children to or how recent educational reforms, like the Unified State Examination, have jeopardized young people’s educational and professional chances. This chapter also addresses local tensions that unfold in classrooms around Tatar language lessons, exposing the contested nature of language as an ethnic marker.
They adapted to the times, not to the nation
(Zaman öchen jäyläshkännär, millät öchen tügel, in Tatar)
—From an interview with a Tatar-language teacher in a Russian-medium school
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Notes
- 1.
She herself was a Russian-speaking Tatar who was born and grew up in the city.
- 2.
A system known as Il’minsky system (Geraci & Khodarkosvky, 2001).
- 3.
Which account for about 30% of the population.
- 4.
The end of agricultural work in spring, after the seeds were planted.
- 5.
Tatar national dish.
- 6.
The Tatar name for the holiday at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
- 7.
Probably, an echo of the history of Kazan Tatars settling on this territory after the conquest of Kazan.
- 8.
This is a frequent point of discontent among the Russian population in the whole Republic of Tatarstan.
- 9.
Most schools in Russia are comprehensive schools that provide the whole cycle of school education (elementary, secondary and complete secondary education), covering grades 1–11.
- 10.
In the Russian-medium school, around 80% of the student body were registered as Tatars. In the Tatar-medium school, it was 100%.
- 11.
While it is the only Tatar-medium school in the town, in the Tatar villages of the district most schools are Tatar-medium ones. However, not all of them provide secondary education. In small villages, the majority of schools are primary schools. I order to continue with secondary schooling children often have to attend a Russian-medium school in another location.
- 12.
Being aware that the categories “working class” and “middle class” are not universal, in this local context I regard working-class families as those who are blue-collar workers with only vocational or secondary education. Middle-class families as another category refers to families with vocational or higher education, involved in white-collar, administrative or public sector occupations.
- 13.
“Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh”—a youth competition where teams have to show their sense of humor and creativity.
- 14.
Families affected by alcoholism or single-parent families.
- 15.
For example, they would check the “lesson plans” for each lesson that teachers have to write in advance. These lesson plans must, for example, include the academic and the upbringing aims of each lesson. While officially they must be written by the teachers before each lesson as part of preparation, in fact most of the teachers with whom I spoke would write the lessons plans on the eve of these check-ups.
- 16.
A minimum of 15 children have to be enrolled in grade 1.
- 17.
This refers to the Unified Republican Examination, a form of examination introduced by the Ministry of the Education of the Republic of Tatarstan, which includes a test on Tatar language as a subject. This form of examination is however an optional one.
- 18.
Thus, students wishing to enter a Tatar philology department have to sit all of their examinations in Russian except for the Tatar language and literature exam.
- 19.
Preferably to those where staff insisted on speaking Russian with children. Some parents in the town complained that the nurses continued to speak Tatar with children, despite the fact that kindergarten was officially a Russian-speaking one.
- 20.
According to Miniakhmetova, the demand in the qualified manual work steadily rose in Tatarstan, and Russia in general, making up 74% of the total demand for labor in 2008 (Miniakhmetova, 2010, p. 282).
- 21.
Extremely popular among young people of school age, the social media platform “Vkontakte” is a Russian equivalent to Facebook. It is used to communicate with friends and display personalities, interests and activities on the web (Suleymanova, 2009).
- 22.
Isänmesez is a greeting in Tatar.
- 23.
I heard the same from some pupils who transferred from Russian-medium schools to the Tatar school. According to them, in the Russian school children were divided, informally, into classes based on family income. The best class comprised children from the highest socio-economic background and the children from less prosperous families were gathered in other classes.
- 24.
- 25.
Children of Kriashen background were also allocated to the Tatar groups.
- 26.
A program that enables recent school graduates to spend several months in the USA working in student jobs and learning English.
- 27.
Thus, according to the 2010 all-Russian census, 92.4% of Tatars reported that they speak their native language (Nizamova, 2016). This number obviously does not reflect the real situation with respect to Tatar-language competence among Tatars and obscures the degree of linguistic assimilation of Tatars.
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Suleymanova, D. (2020). Language, (Multi-)ethnicity and Local Responses to Educational Policies in a Small Tatar Town. In: Pedagogies of Culture. Anthropological Studies of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27245-6_3
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