News

On 3 June this year, heads of Vilnius Lithuanian, Russian, Polish and bilingual kindergartens, nurseries/kindergartens and schools visited Sejny and Puńsk, where they took interest in educational matters, Lithuania’s assistance to Lithuanians living in Poland to foster their mother tongue, culture and traditions and to solve educational problems.

At the Lithuanian Žiburys gymnasium and at a bilingual kindergarten in Puńsk, the guests showed interest in education and training programmes, in teaching of the state language and the Lithuanian language, also in educational and methodical literature.

Heads of Vilnius schools and preschool education institutions were amazed that pupils at the Lithuanian Žiburys gymnasium learnt not only geography and history in Polish, but also prepared for the classes of mathematics, physics, chemistry and other lessons from Polish textbooks.  There are no Lithuanian textbooks and the ones that were brought from Lithuania can only be used as teaching aids.

According to the Lithuanian Consul in Sejny Liudvikas Milašius, in addition to the problems with textbooks, now there is also another major problem - the lack of state funding to Lithuanian schools in Poland - which is a threat to the schools because they might be closed down.

The delegation from Vilnius also visited the Consulate of Lithuania, the Basilica and the Theological Seminary in Sejny, also a monument to Bishop Antanas Baranauskas and the farmstead of the Yotvingians and old Prussians built by Petras Lukoševičius near Puńsk.

According to the teachers who travelled to Poland, such events help to gain a better insight into conditions of ethnic minority children education and to see how it works in reality, also to exchange experience and establish necessary contacts.