Deputies Back Bill Asking for More Extensive Rights for Private Schools in Roumania: Ould Give Wider

A bill for the amendment of the existing Education Law in respect to private schools under which they would be given more extensive rights, abolishing, in particular, the present restriction against the pupils taking examinations in their mother tongue, has been introduced into the Chamber by Deputy Landau, on behalf of the Club of Jewish Deputies. The bill, which bears the signatures of thirty Deputies backing it (the Jewish Club consists of only three Deputies and one Senator) provides also for the establishment of Teachers’ Seminaries out of funds supplied by the State. or at least by the special initiative of the State. The bill aimed in general to improve the status of the private schools, which would give a much wider scope to the Jewish private schools, in which Yiddish or Hebrew is used as the language of instruction.

With regard to the educational work of the Jews, Professor months back in reply to a motion on the question put by Deputy Landau, there are many points to which we shall give effect, according to … financial possibilities. But at present we haven’t the money demand a teachers’ Seminary, but if you think, you will find that there are no trained teachers for it, that there is no proper building easy to make promises, but we cannot carry them into effect. I assure you that we have the best intentions, because, after all, it is in the interests also of the State that the minority schools should be provided with good teachers, and that proper instruction should be given there. But we cannot do these things now. We shall do what we can as far as our finances will permit. I have already said that we ought to establish a Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in Kishineff, which will supply teachers to those schools in which Yiddish is the language of instruction.

With regard to Article 7 which Deputy Landau has mentioned several times, we want to give effect to it ourselves, not only because we are told to do so in Paragraph 10 of the Peace Treaty of Paris, but because we consider it a question of justice in respect to the minorities. But we are encountering many difficulties – not from … Jews, it is true – in establishing in which district there are compact masses of minorities. But we are gradually giving effect to this clause, and I want to assure the minorities that by degrees we shall attain to the correct proportion and numbers of the schools duo to them.

Then there is the question of authorisations. I want to prevent the schools being converted into commercial enterprises trading in certificates. That would do harm to the cause of derogation. I am therefore granting authorisations only to such schools where I am assured that the schools will not be turned into a certificate factory. The existing Education Law was enacted in 1925, under the Liberal Government, when Professor Anghelescu was Minister of Education Jewish representatives urged at the time that the language of instruction in the Jewish schools should be Hebrew or Yiddish. Professor Angheloscu replied to one deputation that he did not regard the Jews as a minority, but as Roumanians of the Jewish Faith. Notwithstanding this, however, he would agree to Jewish subjects being taught in Jewish schools in Hebrew, on condition that Roumanian was the principal language of instruction. He also declared in Parliament that some of the Jewish Secondary schools were issuing matriculation certificates after only a few month’s tuition, thus enabling half-educated people to enter universities abroad, where they were responsible for causing injury to Roumania’s reputation in regard to the standard of teaching.