• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

DAY OF KNOWLEDGE IN A TIME MACHINE

7 September, 1999 - 00:00

It was September 1 in the early 1980s. I proudly wore my school uniform with a snow-white apron and two matching ribbons tied in huge bows in my hair. I sported a pair of shoes bought yesterday and new argyle socks stubbornly slipping down, and my favorite knapsack with fairy tale Little Know-Nothing riding a fly. In the pocket of my apron I had 50 kopecks, a very handsome sum (worth three ice creams and a glass of soda pop). I took the coin out and held it tight, for all the girls to see that I would not part with it, not even if I had to chip in to buy a bouquet of asters (the prices had jumped on the eve of September 1, the day of Knowledge) for our first teacher. I was going to school for the first time in my life. Walking around me were some 150 other children my age, all dressed in new clothes and equally radiant, and far more older schoolchildren. We walked all the way, of course, and there was not a single foreign car parked by the school. The first thing I saw on page 2 of my primer was Granddaddy Brezhnev.

September 1 in the early 1990s. I was on my way to medical college in a streetcar packed with a good-natured crowd. For the first time I found myself thinking that the first day of fall is an important day not only for schoolchildren. Through the window I saw more rebellious groups of upperclassmen (and women) headed for school, wearing faded jeans and miniskirts. I was issued a student card free of charge but had to buy a medical gown (compulsory for every student) with my own money. The teaching staff is very impressive: associate professors and doctors of medicine, many still practicing, but reading lectures in what we know as secondary medical institutions [my college being one of them], moonlighting, and the pay was said to be good. I got a stipend, along with coupon sheets. Some of the first-year students are driven to classes in their parents' Zhigulis. Others, fewer, arrived in foreign cars. The first signs of post- Soviet stratification of the youth. Yet no one discussed politics, Hippocrats being uppermost on everybody's mind. In fact, I heard about independence and the President only on public transport.

Mid-1990s or thereabouts, after September 1. I was on my way to Kyiv University, onboard a trolley. It was a long ride and I watched schoolchildren in the street, noticing that some of the first-graders no longer wore brand-new uniforms but old everyday clothes with thin elbows and old knapsacks hanging from their shoulder. At the university the teaching staff was more than impressive, as was the multitude of foreign cars parked in front. Some, not many, were driven by students. Stratification was quickly gaining momentum, at times becoming grotesque. I have to pay for my student's card and academic record book. Needless to say, no one could live on their stipend, even if one stopped buying food. Everybody discussed the newly elected President and the subject is boring. I wished I could meet with friends by the Independence Square fountain, but they had cut off the water and electricity (new economic policy!). Several months later I would find out that the same applied to central heating, so the whole class had to wear gloves while taking notes during lectures.

September 1 in the late 1990s. About seven million children are going to school in Ukraine, including over 600,000 first-graders. The Day's Oleksandr MIKHELSON is told at the press center of the Ministry of Education, referring to the Minister's recent televised interview, that the schools are fully stocked with textbooks. The only problem, they add, is that part of the textbooks is outdated, so that «the service life of many books had to be prolonged for another year.» Nevertheless, the 20 million hryvnias promised by the presidential edict for the replenishment of the book stock will make it possible to correct the situation in the nearest future — provided, of course, the amount is received in full, they assure.

By early August, back wages at the budget-sustained enterprises and organizations (mostly affecting all those schoolchildren's parents) totaled over UAH 7 billion. Statistics at the Central Committee of the Educational and Scientific Workers' Union of Ukraine read that as of August 6 the debt to the teachers was UAH 327 million (in terms of wages only). The State Statistics Committee says the average July pay was UAH 180.76, compared to the UAH 350 cost of a school student's gear (e.g., uniform, shoes, knapsack, and stationery).

Rubric: