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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

Do Not Wait for Ideal Solutions — Keep Trying to Make at Least Small Changes

30 November, 1999 - 00:00

Most people form their views about some or phenomena or other based not on a study their specifics, but under the influence of the so-called common wisdom.

Michel de Montaigne, sixteenth century

In Ukraine, the scholarly and pedagogical seminar, Reading and Writing to Develop Critical Thinking has now been at work for a year. It is obvious to anybody that the subject matter — critical thinking — is something very important to us. It is precisely what the postcommunist societies lack. For, although all we were brought up as underground complainers, we can rarely formulate our thoughts based on personal observations and analysis of social phenomena. (Which was confirmed once again by the last elections. They seem to have been just more evidence).

The seminar program trains administrators of high schools, institutions of higher education, educators, and teachers in introducing critical thinking strategies and methodologies in schools and higher education institutions. We mean by critical thinking not the inclination to criticism (which is often sweeping), but a constructive and analytical mode of thought.

The Reading and Writing to Develop Critical Thinking International Project has been developed by the Consortium For Democratic Pedagogy and the International Association of Readers (which numbers 90,000 members in 90 countries). The purpose of this project is to provide pedagogues with the training strategies encouraging the development of critical thinking for any age category of students in the process of learning various school subjects. The point is to raise in children the capabilities and skills for self-education, self- actualization and self-knowledge in the informational environment. This envisions an original training process employing an approach of maximum of the student and minimum of the teacher. All educational work is based here on partner relations between the teacher and the students, and, which is very important, between the students themselves.

According to Iryna Gudzyk, candidate of science in education, participating in the program being implemented in Ukraine, “The methods and techniques suggested are not new to our school, but they are presented in a clear- cut system, are supplemented with numerous patterns, and can provide an impetus for strengthening such important field of work as, without doubt, the development of students’ critical thinking is. Because, to cite Immanuel Kant, students should not be taught thoughts, rather, how to think.”

Currently, the project is being implemented in twenty primarily postcommunist countries. Its pedagogical technologies have been generally recognized in Russia, particularly, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, and Novosibirsk.

In Ukraine, the program was launched last year supported by the Open Society Institute in the USA and International Renaissance Foundation (both institutions were established by renowned philanthropist George Soros). Practically, the project is headed here by the Intenekt Guidance Center for the Development of Critical and Figurative Thinking, an all-Ukrainian nonprofit public organization. The Center focuses its activity on conducting onsite (Kyiv, Irpin) and extension (regional centers) seminars. Participants of the seminars are provided with methodological literature which enables them to further employ the program’s techniques on a sustainable basis. The center embraces a group of high-skilled methodology specialists who not only conduct seminars but also work on adaptation of texts for various school subjects. All of them have been adequately trained at international seminars both in Ukraine and abroad.

Seminars are organized for teachers and school administrative staff four times a year. Currently, the seminar is conducted by so-called volunteers — high-skilled educational specialists and members of the International Association of Readers: Australians John and Yevonne Pollock, Howard Mould, and Patricia Smith. Ukrainian colleagues were impressed not only with their competitiveness, but also with their extraordinary tactfulness, amicability, openness, and spiritual generosity. In order to study, test and introduce the new strategies, instructional staff from various Ukrainian regions, including Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa oblasts, and the Crimea has been recruited. They include teachers working at schools attended by representatives of ethnic minorities such as Moldovans and Crimean Tatars. Most of the participants of the seminar are elementary school, literature, foreign language, history, and biology teachers, as well as workers of teachers retraining institutes. All will eventually become trainers.

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