The Birth of a Citizen

The recent events in Ukraine are forcing us to consider the stand that schools and parents have taken. Lately accusations have been flying thick and fast about children and students being led out on the street and used for political purposes. The Day asked Dr. Olha SUKHOMLYNSKA, the daughter of a prominent Soviet-era pedagogue, to share her views on the situation.

When do you think children can be taught to take a civic stand?

O.S.: At the very moment when they become aware that they are citizens. Children (according to the universally recognized definition, minors are individuals aged under 18) go through certain phases in their physical evolution. My father’s book The Birth of a Citizen, which was written in the 1960s, deals with this subject. He considers the complexities of an individual’s maturation during adolescence, because at this stage man is born as a citizen. Just as a child at two or three years of age begins to differentiate between himself and his environment, a teenager aged 13-15 suddenly becomes aware of himself as a member of a community. This is when he is born as a citizen and his civic consciousness awakens. It’s a very complicated and largely controversial process. At this stage children try to distance themselves from their parents and adopt their own stand in life. A teenager seems to size up the situation, and what we call an official, or formal, education plays an extremely important role here. I mean the content of this education, when children familiarize themselves with certain values through their teachers’ views.

Even under the Soviets school was never divorced from politics; in those days ten-year-olds were ceremoniously made members of the Young Pioneers and thus involved in political life. Another thing is that there was no alternative at the time, not in a country with a single dominant ideology. This was a matter of course. In the early years of Ukrainian independence it was made perfectly clear that schools had to be above politics, meaning that, unlike the Soviet period, political and ideological propaganda was forbidden in school. However, whether we like it or not, the birth of a citizen occurs at school, and schools simply cannot remain aloof from this process. I’m talking about legal education, familiarizing the children with their rights and obligations. Studying national history, literature, and language is also of great importance; children must know their nation’s past and contemplate their future.

How should parents and teachers explain what’s happening in Ukraine?

O.S.: I think that various views should be given play, so that our children can know who’s taking what stand. Take my 13-year- old grandson, for example. He’s totally politicized, not by school but by his parents who have their views on what’s going on. If we want to guide the process of forming our children’s individuality, at least if we want to monitor the impact of influences on them, we must discuss the legal, moral, and ethical aspects of what various groups and parties are doing. I think that political debates should be organized at school; there are many interactive methods of instruction that would suit such projects very well. I also think that adults should not choose the easy way out and say ‘you’re too young to discuss politics,’ because citizens are born during adolescence, and they’re very eager to learn things. We have no right to bring them up in a vacuum; otherwise, when they reach eighteen years of age, they will be totally unprepared for living as independent members of the community.

I believe that we must offer our children not just a variety of viewpoints, but also teach them to analyze different opinions, even if they do not tally with ours. By the way, it’s essential to teach them to formulate their own views and defend them. A growing citizen must know what he is talking about and realize that he is responsible for what he says; he must know how to formulate his concepts clearly. If we are headed for a democratic, pluralistic, and tolerant society, our children must also have a right to voice their opinions and defend their persuasions.

How would you explain the current remarkable political activity of our young people?

O.S.: I think that what we are seeing today, this explosion of youth activity is in a way the result of modern schooling and upbringing. Over the past decade problems of civic education and upbringing have been the focal point of Ukrainian pedagogy. Various textbooks and reference works on civic education and practical law have been developed, and schools have a right to include citizenship studies in the curriculum, if they so decide. There are a number of extracurricular materials dealing with history and a special course on jurisprudence. I consider this course a little too theoretical; it resembles an academic text and lacks a connection to real life. We need textbooks on practical law with rules that address daily life. Even young children should know how to defend their rights in a shopping center, at a post office, in various institutions and organizations. The nonprofit organization Doba, which unites history teachers, has accumulated some interesting experience in this respect. This organization holds an annual competition of civic projects in which children implement their civic stands. Contest participants try to make life in the twenty-first century better by combining their efforts and using local state administrative resources. In this way they learn to communicate and cooperate with the authorities. There are also various youth debating clubs.

How reliable is the mechanism that protects civil rights in Ukraine?

O.S.: There is a certain discrepancy between what we are forming — on the one hand, civic awareness and responsibility, and on the other, the current situation. If everything were normal, i.e., transparent and democratic, then there wouldn’t have occurred that explosion of feelings in people who in the years of independence managed to learn to play by the rules and act within the framework of the law. Our young people are Europeans, open to the world, and free of complexes and biases. They’re communicating with the rest of the world on equal terms, on the Internet, and on their trips abroad. What we have now is a confrontation of two world outlooks: the surviving principles of a semitotalitarian society in which we are still living, and young people who are trying to break out of this framework.