Ukrainian education law backed by Soros’s local foundation
September 16th, 2017A conservative commentator finds it surprising that the Ukrainian subsidiary of a network of foundations financed by American-Hungarian financier and philanthropist George Soros agrees with the new Ukrainian law which bars state owned schools from teaching minority students in their mother tongues.
The new Ukrainian Public Education Act allows teaching in minority mother tongues in preschool and during the first four years of elementary school. The law is widely seen as mainly directed against the Russian-speaking population which numbers at least 8 million, but is also strongly opposed by representatives of the 100,000 strong Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian minorities.
On Válasz, Szilárd Szőnyi writes that Mr Soros’s people have missed a rare opportunity to defuse the anti-Soros campaign in Hungary by failing to protest against the new Ukrainian legislation. Szőnyi asked the International Renaissance Foundation, whether it objected to the new law, and the director of European initiatives told him that he fully agrees with it. If Hungary wanted to open and fund schools where geography and mathematics would be taught in Hungarian, it would be free to do so. But the Ukrainian state cannot be compelled to educate future emigrés, he said. Szőnyi remarks that the Ukrainian legislation has also been condemned by the chairman of the Council of the Ukrainian minority in Hungary.