wfn.org | FEATURE: Building bridges between cultures

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

US Lutherans teach high-school students in Slovak Republic

BRATISLAVA/GENEVA, March 10, 1998 (lwi) - "We didn't have any desks or
chairs yet, and the first students were arriving in 12 hours!" L'uba
Slabonov, vice-principal of the Protestant high school in Bratislava,
laughs now about initial difficulties when the school was inaugurated in
September 1991. At the time, she was probably closer to tears. "But we did
have everything ready in time," she says.

Lack of school materials, few textbooks and little basic equipment, but
highly motivated teachers with a common goal marked the beginnings of this
Protestant Anglo-Slovak school.

The risk was well worthwhile. Seven years after the school's inauguration,
Slabonov can show positive results: about 900 students, male and female,
attend the four elementary classes, the classic eight-year secondary school
with extended language instruction, or the bilingual five-year secondary
school. According to the school's statutes, 90 percent of students must be
Lutheran.

The school draws many pupils. Slabonov is currently preparing entrance
examinations. The prospect of acquiring an official certificate in English,
together with a high-school diploma, certainly is an incentive to parents
and students that does not go unseen by the vice-principal. She accepts it
only in part: "Our aim, first and foremost, is religious instruction, only
then comes the foreign language," she stresses.

In higher classes, religious instruction and English literature are taught
totally in English. Mathematics, biology, geography, history, chemistry and
computer sciences are taught 50 percent in English. But Slovak literature,
physics, sports, the arts and social sciences are taught in the mother
tongue.

Bilingual teaching is possible thanks to the presence of 18 US teachers
among the 25-member Slovak teaching staff. Most are volunteers sent by the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, such as theology professor, Andrew
J. White, of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

White is spending his first year of retirement in Bratislava. Rather than
teach future pastors, he now teaches high-school students in their final
year - a challenge he gladly accepts as does his colleague Christine
Mummert, also from Pennsylvania. This graduate in the German language and
literature, with a supplementary degree in English as a foreign language,
wanted to live in Europe for a year. Five days a week, she teaches four
classes at the Protestant high school. She earns the same salary as her
Slovak colleagues.

All the US teachers agree on one thing: They have a mission. "I was called
here to use my talents," Mummert underlines. "I'm convinced that I'm
teaching more than English. I'm also teaching my cultural and personal
values."

White also considers his task to be "building a bridge between two
spiritual cultures". Paul Hanson has the same outlook. As pastor of the
English-speaking Lutheran congregation in Bratislava he teaches a few hours
of religious instruction at the high school. "We need people who know both
sides of the bridge, to translate Slovak culture for the world and to
translate the world into Slovak culture," Hanson says. "What we do not want
to do is make Americans out of the students." After five years of bilingual
teaching, the students in Hanson's class, 5B2, give talks in English with
little or no effort, and conduct lively discussions.

Fifteen-year-old Diana, though, is just at the beginning. She attends the
English preparatory class, taking 20 hours of English per week. Every day,
one hour of conversation, one hour of grammar, one hour of geography and
history and one hour of writing and reading. "And sometimes two tests per
day," she moans. But Diana intends to stick it out. After all, later on she
wants to study management in the United States.

The students of class 5B2 have long forgotten the agony of beginning.
Religious instruction in English is fun. "But we continue to pray in
Slovak, even though we discuss religion in English", a female student said.

BOX

The Protestant high school in Bratislava has a more than 350-year history.
It was founded in 1606 by David Kilge originally from the Palatinate, a
former division of Bavaria in Germany. Since then, the school has lived
through an eventful history: From 1672 to 1682, the building belonged to
the Jesuits. Since 1895, it has been subsidized by the state and, in 1923,
it was nationalized. The closing down of the remaining German-speaking
branch in 1944 marked a temporary ending of the school. Today, the
330,000-member Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in the Slovak
Republic runs five high schools, two elementary schools and a specialized
school.

A few weeks ago Slovak and Austrian Protestant church leaders discussed
possibilities of cooperation in relation to a bilingual Germano-Slovak
school which is to be inaugurated in the Bratislava borough of Petrizalka
next September.

BOX

(Editor's note: Karin Achtelstetter, German LWI assistant editor, who wrote
this article, visited the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in
the Slovak Republic during the course of a meeting with LWI correspondents
from the Lutheran minority churches in Europe which took place in Svaty
Jur, Slovak Republic, Feb. 24-March 1.)

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Lutheran World Information
Editorial Assistant: Janet Bond-Nash
E-mail: jbn@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/