Lithuania's EducMin tells schools to remove inappropriate Russian textbooks

  • 2022-09-19
  • BNS/TBT Staff

VILNIUS – Lithuania's Ministry of Education, Science and Sport has written to schools, telling them to remove inappropriate Russian textbooks from the education process and to remove them from libraries altogether.

The move follows discussions on storing such textbooks for the time being.

In its letter sent to the heads of municipal education departments on Thursday, the ministry said the textbooks "V dobryj put! A2.2." cannot be used in the education process.

"Therefore, we ask municipal education departments to ensure that these textbooks are removed from the education process and are not stored in school libraries or language classrooms," the letter reads.

According to the ministry, the letter seeks to provide more clarity to establishments that considered no longer using these textbooks but still keeping them.

The ministry's decision to scrap the textbooks altogether comes in response to media reports that the textbook for grades 6-12 invites pupils to travel around Russia, visit occupied Crimea and also presents the country, which is still waging its war on Ukraine, as an attractive democracy.

The ministry also reminds that all textbooks from this series have been removed from the textbook database. The ministry recommends to schools and teachers to choose Russian language textbooks or other teaching materials from other publishers.

There are currently 21 different Russian-language textbooks in Lithuania for both mother tongue and second language learners, the ministry underlined.