Scandal growing in Latvia over language textbook for schools.


(Why Latvian language is so polluted with Russian slang? Its kind of
funny if it wasn't so sad.
Whats next? Russian Prison lingo textbook for 9y.o. kids? In that case
they must know what really "petukh" ((rooster)) means)


Scandal growing in Latvia over language textbook for schools.
25.01.2006, 00.04

RIGA, January 24 (Itar-Tass) - A roaring scandal is gathering pace in
Latvia over a textbook of the Latvian language for Grades 8 of the
general schools where tuition is done in the Russian language.
The cause of the problem is in the highly dubious contents of the texts
the students aged 14 or 15 years old are supposed to study.
The textbook abounds in slang, and the topics it discusses overfocus on
drugs, alcohol and sex.
"I was shocked when I read attentively what the authors of that
so-called textbook had written," says Julia Pilen, 35, the mother of a
boy studying in Grade 8. "My son is supposed to learn Latvian, and he is
forced to read texts about how to smoke grass and who smokes it."
A glaring instance of it is seen in a text discussing hitchhiking fans.
Here the kids are told the story of a girl whom an elderly man offered
40 euros for massage and 200 euros for the "real thing".
Also, the students can read about a pack of kids smoking hemp and
throwing the drug out of the car's window as they see a guy by the
roadside who tries to hitch a hike. The kids just mistook him for a
policeman.
The textbook is full of strange words that apparently come from Russian
slang and non-slang but have been subjected to "latvianization".
Some ot these words are prikols (from the Russian 'prikol', a doze of
narcotic drug and the intjection 'cool' depending on the context plus
the addition of the Latvian genderic ending '-s'), buterbrods (from the
Russian 'buterbrod' literally meaning 'sandwich'), or simply the Russian
exclamation 'Davai,' which depending on the situation means "Do it" or
"Come on" or "OK" or many other things.
Buying the scandalous textbook in a bookstore in Riga is not at all a
simple thing to do now, as publication of scornful letters from parents
in the mass media prompted Education Minister Inna Druviete to demand
explanations from the textbook's authors and immediately turned it into
a bestseller.
Adults buy it out of mere curiosity. "What do you say, did the schools
begin sort of exams," an astonished assistant asked Itar-Tass
correspondent at a bookstore Tuesday morning.
In the meantime, the authors do not feel any guilt on their part. "Young
people must be warned about the risks they'll face in the world of
grownups," the Agency for the Studies of the Latvian Language said in a
statement.
This is not the first time, however, when kids at schools where tuition
is done in Russian are forced to use textbooks with scandalous
materials.
Especially problematic are history books, where the kids are offered to
read about ostensible autrocities of czarist Russia on Latvian territory
or crimes committed by the Soviet Union.
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25.01.2006, 00.04
Scandal growing in Latvia over language textbook for schools

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