Creator of the Sakhnivka miracle

Oleksandr Zakharenko died four years before his 70th jubilee. A good way to begin familiarizing oneself with this great educator is by exploring the exhibit organized at the Teacher’s House in Kyiv. The most interesting items on display are photographs. One of them shows a small rocket being launched by Zakharenko’s pupil, who shares his teacher’s obsession with everything that can be made to fly. Excited onlookers are keeping their distance — it looks as though the whole village is in attendance.

The exhibit also features a small working model of a balloon mounted onto the ceiling. Photographs show the school’s outdoor and indoor swimming pools, a park with 2,000 trees, a computer classroom organized in the early 1960s, and a knowledge-evaluation device called Romashka (1965) that looks like a prototype of the current testing concept — a homemade Foucault’s pendulum. There is also a Colossus fountain that starts working at the sound of clapping hands. This fountain, along with other gadgets, was designed to help psychologically prepare children living in Sakhnivka, a village in Cherkasy oblast, to perceive technology as a matter of course, as something necessary in daily life.

Zakharenko tried to create a school in the village, where children would grow up to become thinking, hardworking, and appreciative individuals in love with their land, who would be keenly aware of goodness and beauty.

This dedicated pedagogue worked at the school that he founded in Sakhnivka for nearly 40 years. Nurtured in his dreams, the school was built with the assistance of the whole village, and soon became a unique training and educational complex aimed at helping children develop in all ways. This complex became the village’s cultural center and over the decades has not lost its importance.

Everyone in Cherkasy oblast — agronomists, engineers, ordinary villagers, and, above all, teachers — knows about Zakharenko because this dedicated teacher instilled a firm civic stand in people, and he did so in a friendly way. Almost every week Cherkasy oblast radio broadcasts “Oleksandr Zakharenko’s Advice to Teachers, Colleagues, and Other People.”

The ceremony launching the exhibit gathered a number of people, including teachers, school principals, and scientists. Among them were guests from Sakhnivka, Zakharenko’s widow and his son as well as the principal of the Sakhnivka school and members of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.

Principal Ivan Rybalko says: “Oleksandr Zakharenko dreamed of turning the school into the village’s cultural center. He did it. Even the fact that marriages are registered in the school is proof of this. Every ceremony is attended by all the schoolchildren. They form a live corridor in the yard down which the newlyweds march and give them riddles to figure out, and ask various questions concerning daily life. But mainly they ask whether they love each other. When a baby is born, the young parents come to the school to plant an oak tree (for a boy) or a birch (for a girl). As their children grow, they start looking after their trees.

School leavers also plant trees. There are about 2,000 trees and bushes representing some 50 varieties growing on the school grounds occupying over five hectares. Here you find 456 thujas, 125 ordinary evergreens, and 55 blue firs. The flowerbeds occupy about 50 sotkas [100 m?]. There is a fitness and sports center that includes a park, gym, sports grounds, and stadium. The school, with a student body of 183, teaching staff of 18, and auxiliary personnel of 13, tends the five hectares of territory. There is no need to talk about raising children to work hard because the children are kept busy doing socially useful jobs. Interestingly, the village only has a village council and a medical facility in addition to the school. There are also three farmers in the area and a brickyard that was recently purchased by a businessman.

The school foyer displays photos of all school leavers. All of them remember that for a misdeed a cross was supposed to appear on their photograph in the school gallery. Fortunately, there are no crosses and the school is proud of every graduate.

Ivan Ziaziun, director of the Pedagogical Academy’s Institute of Vocational Training Pedagogics and Psychology, told The Dayabout his meetings with Oleksandr Zakharenko: “He was a romantic and a realist at the same time. He behaved like a Don Quixote, who had learned Sancho Panza’s philosophy. He generated ideas and then implemented them himself. Oleksandr Antonovych was keenly aware of man’s need for freedom; he realized that children have to evolve in an atmosphere of freedom. It is wonderful that he was able to create such an environment in the school, where every child could feel that he was needed by his father and mother, his family, school, his village, and his people.”

Ziaziun recalls that he one summer he made an impromptu visit to Sakhnivka. When he drove up to the school, he found himself in a greenhouse; the number of blooming flowers was overwhelming. Three children ran up to say the principal wasn’t on the school grounds and that they were in charge of meeting all the guests and showing them the school, the museum, and the health complex. The children turned out to be efficient guides. Their comments were surprisingly adult-like. They seemed to know how things should be done in life and the way to live. “I saw children prepared to live independently,” notes Ziaziun.

The noted pedagogue’s experience is being carefully studied by scholars and teachers at many Ukrainian schools. The most valuable aspect of his pedagogical legacy, experts point out, is that he did not focus exclusively on educating children. Rather, he created an environment that constantly and unobtrusively influenced every pupil’s individuality.