Ukrainian Education

After the obliteration of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian education system stood to accrue many positive changes. This paper will focus on both the historical and contemporary information regarding the Ukrainian education. Forms of property and other affiliations are some of the sectors also affected by these deviations. Throughout the Soviet era, there existed no institutions with devout associations, but only ones that had state-braced institutions. The situation triggered the Ukrainian government to initiate reform strategies in the education sector which embraced restated primacies, thereby ensuring improved service provision charter for the whole education system from preschool to tertiary level of education. All this is reflected in the 21^st century in the Ukrainian National Doctrine for Development of Education.

Communist ideology affected the education system from all aspects. The whole Ukrainian society, students and teachers were corrupt (Irina 66). It is attributed to the seventy years of soviet schooling, where the Ukrainian nationalistic slogans had so much effect on the whole society that replacing them with communist slogans proved to be a hard task. Simple eradication of the old ideologies was not enough.  Initially, the Soviet Union held the idea of communism. All the nations assimilated in the union were shaped to have the mind of communists. The education sector helped to achieve most of the goals. Soviet schools were supposed to nurture and bring out the “new soviet man” through the spirit of communism.

Soviet education greatly relied on local ideologies. It advocated for sameness since the Soviet leaders aimed at altering different individuals to become soviet citizens, in the process forming an identical society. The Soviet Union was formed in 1921 (Juliane 73). In 1934, a decree was passed by Stalin that all schools across different republics would use similar textbooks. Stalin advocated for an incorporated curricula (Juliane 73). It simply meant that there would be little inconvenience for an individual moving from one country to the other during an academic year.

Since the Soviet Union believed in uniformity, all the students wore the same uniform. The boys had a jacket and blue or brown pants while the girls had aprons. The classroom setups was similar across all countries, as the students sat in neatly formed rows anterior of the teacher’s table (Pauly 90). The pupils sat in twos. In early 1930, strict disciplinary measures were acquaint with the learners. The tenets would be publicly displayed on the walls of each classroom. The rubrics were later slightly changed in the year 1980. The students had to conform to rules such as; to have a seat only after the teacher has given the pupil permission to sit (Irina, 105). The schoolchildren were expected to adhere to the directives of the teachers and administrator categorically. The educator had the power to allow the students to either vacate or enter a classroom. Whenever a teacher walked or left a classroom, the learners were expected to rise.

The learners in the Soviet tutelage suffered from bias. This is because the schools put so much focus on the remarkable apprentices leaving out the typical ones. The grading system of the Soviet schools ranged from five to two (Juliane 122). It was a geometric scale. Each pupil was anticipated to perform well in school and obtain excellent grades. “5” represented incredible, “4” well, “3” pleasing and “2” fail or unsatisfactory (Juliane 122). Those who failed would be overtly disparaged and a brilliant student would be assigned to them so that they would adopt virtues along educative lines.

Each learner had the same schedule. They had six school days. Sunday was considered as a day of rest. In the 1980s the courses offered were all compulsory (Pauly 136). Unfortunately, the instructors cared less about the development of the learners in terms of how they think and their perspective on issues. The students had little chance to have personal development. The school system was so arduous. The system focused on the accretion of acquaintance. The learners had a difficult time when having literature classes since they had to adopt “stereotyped jingoistic views”. Literature instructors were bitter about the situation since they had a difficult time persuading students (Irina 145).

From first to tenth grade, students were prudently selected to be exposed to innumerable procedures of Leninist hoopla. At school, the ABC book was the first book all the students would read. The first page had the portrait of Lenin as a pintsized lad. A poem was written just below the photograph stating, “A seed becomes a loaf of bread, a ray of light becomes a star, and Lenin also once began his glorious career from an ABC book” (Juliane157). It marked the commencement of Stalinist propaganda among the first six pages in the books the students had in their curriculum. Everybody in the scholastic coordination grew weary of the philosophical indoctrination by the time of perestroika. Instructors would avoid such parts in the primers.

Marxist theory, Leninist theory, biographies of soviet political leaders and proceedings of party sessions were some of the “consecrated” dogmatic texts swamped in the school curriculum. During weekly political briefings, the students would be indirectly turned into communists by their teachers. If an individual was in school, he or she automatically belonged to the communist organization (Pauly 176). The Soviet Children of October Revolution consisted of children aged between seven and ten. They wore a badge that depicted young Lenin. Youngsters whobore red kerchiefs round their necklines were considered as Pioneers at the age of eleven. The Soviet League of Young Communists comprised of juveniles in their last two years of secondary education. They had a dissimilar badge to dress altogether (Irina 184).

According to Doctor John Round the high levels of informality causes emerging issues as corruption and cash in handiwork. This in turns gives rise to a number of challenges from the universities to the society at large. However the state tries to control the challenge. He also focuses on the entrepreneurial opportunities, challenges accrued, and tactics of the soviet unions that disavow entrepreneurs. Corruption is deep rooted among the students in the university since it started when they were young (Juliane 199). The Soviet Union are the main contributors to this vice that makes it hard to make necessary changes to individuals later in their lives. In 1991, Ukraine faced an unembellished deterioration in societal services, the student-age populace declining resulting in inefficiency, minimal aptitude exploitation. Schools become overly expensive to sustain essential schooling (Pauly 202). This results in a few individuals enrolling to school at the primary level. Some students lost their identity along the way not knowing who they are, where they are headed and their future plans. Considering the low payment that professors and teachers obtain, they are left with no choice but to ask for bribes (Irina 234). 

Conclusion

To sum up, the Soviet Union  brought about many effects that gave rise to the growth of a corrupt nation. The students had minimal chances of developing their own personalities making them lose their identity as they were growing to become young adults. The eradication of communism was clearly not easy. However, the necessary steps taken in changing the education system after the eradication of the Soviet Union has brought about many changes (Juliane 275).        

Works Cited

Besters-Dilger, Juliane. Language Policy and Language Situation in Ukraine: Analysis and Recommendations. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009. Print.

Pauly, Matthew D. Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934. , 2014. Print

Yuryeva, Irina. Internationalisation of Higher Education in Ukraine. Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2011. Print.