Poland’s German minority launches campaign against language teaching cuts

Poland’s ethnic German minority has launched a new campaign calling for the government to restore German-language teaching after cuts were made last year. Education minister Przemysław Czarnek has responded by suggesting that, in fact, it is Germany that is discriminating against its ethnic Polish population.

In February last year, Czarnek cut the number of hours German is taught to children from the German minority in Polish schools from three hours a week to just one. The decision was criticised by a German government official as well as by other ethnic minority groups in Poland.

However, Poland’s government’s pointed to the fact that German federal authorities do not fund Polish language teaching at all. That is because education is funded by regional authorities, noted the German ambassador to Warsaw. But in November the Bundestag added Polish teaching to the federal budget for the first time.

Rafał Bartek, one of the leaders of Poland’s German minority, says that, during a meeting in January this year, Czarnek promised to restore the previous amount of German-language teaching. However, that has still not happened.

As a result, the German minority has now launched a campaign under the title “Give the language back to the children” featuring billboards (like the one pictured at the top of this article) and a set of five questions for the education minister.

They note that, according to government data, over 56,000 children in Polish schools are taught German as a minority language. “Taking away hours of German [teaching] is a blow not only to the children themselves, but also to local communities,” says Ryszard Galla, a member of parliament representing the German minority.

Yesterday, Czarnek issued a response to the five questions put to him in the campaign.

Asked about “ending discrimination against children”, the minister argued that 120 million zloty (€27 million) is still spent annually by the government on teaching German to the Polish minority compared to nothing by the German government for teaching Polish to Poles in Germany.

Regarding why he has not fulfilled his promise from January, Czarnek said that it would be implemented when Germany stops discriminating against Poles.

Main image credit: TSKN

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.