Textbook Shortage Serious Matter for Uzbek Minority

In schools where Uzbek, rather than Kyrgyz or Russian, is used as the teaching medium, textbooks are few and far between. As reporter Janar Akaev discovered, parents have to pay high prices for the rarer editions, or get their children to photocopy a schoolmate’s copy if they are lucky.



Some of the books on historical and cultural matters are completely out of date because they were printed in Soviet times, while more modern ones deal exclusively with Uzbekistan, so that pupils are left with little impression of their own country.



Teachers have welcomed one recent publication, a history of Kyrgyzstan in the Uzbek language. Other attempts to fill the gap have been less successful as some of the translations into Uzbek are clunky.