Key Insights:
The Estonian social media and web-based media actors during the reporting month predominantly were focused primarily on the war in Ukraine, America’s role, as well as the international security situation in general. They also focused on Estonian and Ukrainian relations, and President Zelensky’s call to draft more Ukrainians for the war. This month the attention turned more toward the Estonian government budget, and how it will affect the low-income families and people of Estonia. Attention was also given to the Russian schools and Estonia’s language policy surrounding the change in language of instruction. Accordingly, the main narratives that were spread over the social media were the following:
- The 2024 Estonian budget will cause greater poverty levels and economic decline
- The Estonian government is sending out debt reminders disguised as Christmas cards to the thousands who owe money. The Estonian government is using the holidays as a reminder to people to pay their debts.
- The government under Kai Kallas is causing more economic downturn and taxes are being raised for the poor instead of the wealthy being taxed more.
- The aid that the Estonian government is giving to Ukraine makes it more difficult for the Estonian public to survive because of the economic downturn.
- Zelensky’s request that other European countries send Ukraine refugees back to Ukraine for mobilization shows that the country is having problems with its military and mobilization.
Overview of findings:
- A total of 517 social media posts were monitored over Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, and Telegram channels using Awario media monitoring tool. In addition, 20 Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and Twitter (X) personal and group accounts as well as 10 websites were monitored weekly.
- Language policy: The Estonian government is at fault for not teaching the youth of Estonia the Estonian language and then expecting them to be fluent enough for it to be used as the language of instruction in all schools.
- Economy: The budget that the Estonian government is currently detailing, will bring greater economic downturn and hurt the Estonian citizens. The government also used the holidays to remind the people of their debt.
- Ukraine: The Estonian government is willing to sign an agreement with the Ukrainian government to help find Ukrainian refugees living in Estonia and send them back to Ukraine to fight in the war. This shows the weakness of Ukraine as they are forced to turn toward the west to find refugees who left when the war began.
Story of the month: Alexander Chaplygin on the Estonian government changing the language of instructions in all schools to Estonian
In his opinion article posted on this website, Alexander Chaplygin makes the claim that the youth of Estonia are not ready for all of the schools to switch the language of instruction to Estonian, and blames the government for their inaction in integrating Estonian and teaching the Russian speaking children Estonian. He claims that the education system is not ready and if the Estonian government wants to establish a language of instruction, they will need to hire teachers with less experience because the speak Estonian fluently. Because of this, he claims, there will be a lot of lost jobs and society is torn in its opinion on this while the education system has become unstable.
Chaplygin in his article tells, that recently in the Riigikogu he met with students from one of the senior classes of the “still Russian gymnasium” in Tallinn. When asked whether they were ready to study entirely in Estonian, the answer was no, they are not ready. The maximum level at which children know Estonian is B1, and this is clearly not enough for a complete transition to Estonian as the language of instruction. Furthermore, Chaplygin argues, that “for 30 years the state has failed to organize the educational process in such a way as to teach children sufficiently the Estonian language in schools”, which implies, that the current policy is a failure, as “nobody can be con convinced that in a year these children will be able to study completely in a non-native language”. Not knowing the fact, that Estonian society for more that 30 years are striving to integrate Russian speaking community, the claim, that unfortunate pupils are forced to learn Estonian language in less that a one year would be rather convincing.
Chaplygin is backing up his statement by the argument, that “the children are not ready. The entire education system is not ready”, primarily because (…) “we have a catastrophic shortage of the necessary teachers. Schools were faced with a choice: either give up or hire people without sufficient experience and education, as long as they are fluent in Estonian”. And again, complete ignorance of the whole picture is being left out in this statement – a lengthy process of building inclusive system for Estonian society, where many compromises took place in order to harmonize different interests and needs within society. There are different reasons why the current policy is facing the certain challenges, which should be proactively communicated by the policy makers to the wider society.
Chaplygin suggests, that there is no general idea of how the educational process will be organized and that there is complete confusion with the transition to the Estonian language. He claims, that “Society is split, the education system is failing, hundreds of teachers could find themselves on the street in a year”. Finally, it leads to the conclusion, that “all this is for the sake of the political ambitions of several parties”, which “makes the entire society look with fear into the future, which is impossible without quality education, all participants of which are ready and willing to improve the educational process”.
Overall, the ideas expressed in this article are backing up general Kremlins narratives about policy of education of Estonian governments, pulling out of the context several aspects of the policy implementation process, the same time speculating on his own conclusions, “selling” these sentiments as the facts but not individual opinion.
On the other hand, this article is providing a set of questions for the strategic communicators within Estonian government, that needs to be communicated properly and extensively within Estonian society.
