Belarus

Synopsis: English education in Belarus is marginalized under the larger

cultural/ideological conflict between Belarusian nationality and Soviet-style Russian
domination as played out in the countrys larger language conflict. There is evidence
of limited English education in the university and secondary school systems.
Nevertheless and despite this, in the interest of economic development, Belarus is
entertaining the idea of English investors who want to build and English-style
business complex as a suburb of Minsk, the capital, which would include the
teaching of business English to Belarusian companies.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-210525.html

School of 'Partisans' Goes Underground in

Belarus; Opposition Says Closure by Government
Reflects Slow Strangulation of Civil Society
Article from:
The Washington Post
Article date:
October 17, 2004
Author:
Peter Finn

At 9 in the morning, Maxim Rust and Yevgeny Volk, two 16-year- olds, knocked quietly
on the door of an apartment in a nondescript building and quickly slipped inside.

Off the narrow hallway, where ordinarily the sitting room might be, Alexander Syadyaka
was teaching physics to a group of 11th- graders squeezed along two walls. Farther along,
opposite the kitchen, Tatyana Maguchava was teaching English.

"We are an underground school," Rust said. "Our government sees a threat from educated
people. They are typical Soviets. Anything that doesn't fit the system, they want to
destroy it."

"We're partisans!" Volk said.

This modest apartment and three others that have been converted are all that is left of the
Yakub Kolas National Humanities Lyceum, a private high school that taught an
international curriculum in the Belarusian language. Stocked with university professors
who wanted to champion the Belarusian language while teaching a curriculum free from
state interference, the school had established a reputation for academic excellence.
But in Belarus, where education is increasingly seen as the servant of a state ideology
centered on perpetuating the rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, an independent,
Western-oriented institution working in a language other than Russian amounted to three
strikes.

"Education," the president said last year, "is the sphere that gives intellectual and
spiritual life to a person. That's why it's no space for the opposition to make their nests."
In Belarus, voters go to the polls Sunday to decide whether to change their constitution
and allow Lukashenko to run for a third term and to elect lawmakers to the country's 110-
seat legislature.

In July 2003, 12 years after it was founded by a group of intellectuals, the high school,
which had close to 200 students, was shuttered by the government. After first attempting
to install a principal who didn't speak Belarusian, officials closed the school because they
said its physical plant was unsafe and needed renovation.

"This school . . . fell out of the existing system of secondary education, and there were
constant problems with coordination," Aleksey Vronov, head of the city of Minsk's
Committee on Education, said in an interview with a local publication. "For example, it
was difficult to organize training courses for teachers or to carry out audits."

The school was named after Yakub Kolas, one of the country's great poets and a leader in
a 20th-century revival of Belarusian language and culture. Lukashenko, however, seems
determined to Russify the country and has, at various times, proposed a union with
Russia.

"The Russian language will be in Belarus as long as I am president," he said this year.
"The lack of the Russian language will be the death of the state."

Students, parents and teachers took to the streets to protest the lyceum's closure and
initially held classes on benches outside. Local city workers ran lawnmowers around
them to drown out the ad-hoc lessons. Appeals to the courts failed. And the school, now
reduced to 90 students, is essentially an illegal operation hiding out in apartments.

"It's still a great education," said Katya Tolkockachikova, 17, a student in her final year.

For the democratic opposition, which includes the school's teachers and student body, the
closure is emblematic of the slow strangulation of civil society in Belarus where
hundreds of nongovernmental organizations have been threatened or closed in the last 18
months.

"Our students were encouraged to speak their mind," said Uladzimir Kolas, a co-founder
of the school, noting that the school had wide- ranging discussions about democracy and
economic reform in Eastern Europe. "We wanted to release education from ideological
dogmas."
Nor is the lyceum the only educational institution to cross the government. This summer,
the private European Humanities University, which received financial support from the
U.S. government, was closed. And Lukashenko, in a speech at a state college in Brest,
made his disdain for the university plain. He charged that the university was designed to
train "the new Belarusian elite aimed at leading Belarus to the West when the time is
appropriate."

"And what about other Belarusian universities," he asked. "Who are they training?
Servants and slaves for this new elite."

"We can only say 'thank you' for this estimation of our abilities," said Vladimir Dunayev,
acting rector of the university, which is currently trying to resurrect itself as a distant
learning center from a base in Lithuania. "But what this is actually about is the restoration
of a Soviet system of higher education with total ideological control of content and total
control over the behavior of students."

The high school has been able to survive because Belarusian law allows home-schooling
and students can take university entrance exams at a school they have not attended. "If
they remove that, I don't know how we survive," said Lavon Barsceuski, a German
teacher and author, who has translated the works of Kafka, Goethe and others from
German into Belarusian.

The school continues to turn out graduates prized by universities. All 30 students in this
summer's graduating class, the first since the closure, went on to a university, including
17 who received places in Estonia, Germany, Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.

For now, teachers continue to scurry between apartments. "The streets have become the
hallways of our school," Kolas said.
http://elf.georgetown.edu/projects/ay07-08projects/Europe_Eurasia/Full_Belarus
%20Grodno%20State%20University.html

AY 2007-2008 Projects - Europe/Eurasia

Country Belarus
City Grodno
Host Institution Grodno State University

Project Description
The EL Fellow will be affiliated with the Department of Theory and Practice of English
at the Grodno State University (GrSU). For the last three academic years GrSU has had a
highly successful experience hosting three EL Fellows. Their ELT work, involving
teaching English to undergraduate students as well as versatile outreach and community
service with a special focus on teaching English, has been much appreciated by the host
institution as well as the local community. The new EL Fellow will be in charge of
teaching English language courses to undergraduate students as well as facilitating
faculty development. English courses requested by the host institution to be taught during
academic year 2007-2008 include: English Conversation, TESOL Methodology, and
Cultural Awareness in Teaching English.

Project Objectives
To model and demonstrate best classroom practices; to enhance teachers' and students'
communication skills; to provide updated information related to U.S. values, democracy,
free enterprise, and the rule of law; to contribute to teachers' professional development;
and to demonstrate new methodologies of teaching English to undergraduates.

About the Host Institution

GrSU was originally founded as a regional teacher training institute. In 1978, it acquired
the status of a university and, since then, it has been one of the largest and leading
institutions of higher education in western Belarus. The University's 11 schools, including
the renowned School of Philology, provide academic and professional training to more
than 10,000 undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. students. GrSU cooperates with
educational and research centers in Russia, the U.S., Poland, Sweden, France, Germany,
Lithuania, Latvia, and other countries. The university works to develop joint projects that
are supported by international foundations like TEMPUS, TACIS, and the Eurasia
Foundation. The Department of Theory and Practice of English hosted the first EL Fellow
in the 2003-2004 academic year. The department that the EL Fellow will be affiliated
with is in charge of training English teachers for local schools. The Department has an
extensive American Studies collection provided to GrSU by the U.S. Embassy. Highly
enthusiastic and dedicated faculty and students would make a Fellows stay in Grodno
professionally stimulating and memorable. This year, Post would like to focus its ELF
activities outside of Minsk given that other U.S. visitors and scholars are more frequently
based in Minsk. Post highly recommends GrSU as the most appropriate institution to host
an EL Fellow outside of Minsk.
http://elf.georgetown.edu/projects/ay08-
09projects/Europe_Eurasia/full_description.html

Belarus
Country Belarus
City Grodno
Host Institution Grodno State University
Type of Project Fellow
Project Dates September 2008 June 2009

Project Focus
English for Speaking, American Studies

Project Description
The EL Fellow will be affiliated with the Department of Theory and Practice of English
at the Grodno State University (GrSU). For the last four academic years GrSU has had a
highly successful experience hosting four English Language Fellows. Their ELT work,
involving teaching English to undergraduate students as well as versatile outreach and
community service with a special focus on teaching English, has been much appreciated
by the host institution as well as the local community. The US Embassy believes it is
essential to bring a new EL Fellow to GrSU in AY 2008-2009, as s/he will have an
opportunity to build up on the existing program as well as introduce new innovative ELT
approaches to both the student body and faculty. The new EL Fellow will be in charge of
teaching English language courses to undergraduate students as well as facilitating
faculty development. English courses requested by the host institution to be taught during
academic year 2008-2009 include: English Conversation, American Studies, and Cultural
Awareness in Teaching English. The host institution is genuinely interested in utilizing
the EL Fellows knowledge and expertise for professional advancement of its faculty
through faculty development workshops, guest presentations, collaboration with the local
teaching community, etc. In addition, the American Corner at Grodno Regional Library
is an excellent venue for EL Fellow activity. The community outreach component of the
EL Fellow Program in Grodno will be achieved via informal interaction with
representatives of different social, age and professional groups geared around American
Corner programs. The projected events to be facilitated by an EL Fellow include but are
not limited to discussion club meetings, movie nights and follow-up discussions, ESP
English classes, etc.

Project Objectives
The EL Fellow Program is a key component of public diplomacy and outreach for the US
Embassy in Minsk and contributes importantly to goals promoting democracy (greater
knowledge of the US system and Americans), encouraging free flow of information as
well as enhancing mutual understanding. The work of an EL Fellow directly with
students, teachers and professors as well as the community at large also helps the
Embassy reach target audiences of youth and educators and underscores the important
role that English languages learning is playing in Belarus as a vehicle for promoting
greater international contact and potential future economic change as well as increasing
understanding of more democratic systems. The Embassy believes it is particularly
important to continue cultivating contacts outside of Minsk in regional centers such as
Grodno which is why the Embassy is requesting EL Fellow placement at the major
university in this city. The EL Fellow's class instruction, faculty development activities
and facilitation of AC programs all will help develop needed English language skills and
promote a more realistic and positive image of the U.S. within this important regional
population.

About the Host Institution

GrSU was originally founded as a regional teacher training institute. In 1978, it acquired
the status of a university and, since then, it has been one of the largest and leading
institutions of higher education in western Belarus. The University's 11 schools, including
the renowned School of Philology, provide academic and professional training to more
than 10,000 undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. students. GrSU cooperates with
educational and research centers in Russia, the U.S., Poland, Sweden, France, Germany,
Lithuania, Latvia, and other countries. The university works to develop joint projects that
are supported by international foundations like TEMPUS, TACIS, and the Eurasia
Foundation. The Department of Theory and Practice of English hosted the first EL Fellow
in the 2003-2004 academic year. The department that the EL Fellow will be affiliated
with is in charge of training English teachers for local schools. The Department has an
extensive American Studies collection provided to GrSU by the U.S. Embassy. Highly
enthusiastic and dedicated faculty and students will make an EL Fellows stay in Grodno
professionally stimulating and memorable.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-21188785.html

City expertise could reshape Minsk

scheme ; 'New Nottingham' team makes
impression
Article from:
Nottingham Evening Post
Article date:
January 29, 2010
Author:
RICHARD BAKER

DEVELOPERS behind a "new Nottingham" planned for the capital city of Belarus may
rethink their approach to the project following advice from experts at city firms.

Residential Complex Nottingham could see a new suburb built on land just outside the
Belarus capital which was once an army camp.

Developer Univest wants to build the suburb in the style of an established, upmarket
English town and it would feature homes for more than 20,000 people.

There would also be shops, hotels and education facilities, with an emphasis on students
learning English. Nottingham architect David Leonard was among the city business
people on the trade mission.