A Kyiv school soon to be named after James Mace
It takes several years of research to earn the title
Three schools in Kyiv are soon to be named after such famous people as the Italian poet and public figure Dante Alighieri, the Ukrainian writer and civil rights champion Valerii Marchenko, and, much to The Day’s content, James Mace, a US academic and researcher of the 1932–33 Holodomor. From the early 2000s onwards, our newspaper cooperated with this researcher who was the first to call the Ukraine famine of the 1930s an act of genocide. After his death, The Day Library published a collection of his woks, Day and Eternity of James Mace, which was updated, supplemented, and republished this year under the title James Mace: Your Dead Chose Me.
The decision to name schools after well-known personalities was made by the Kyiv City Administration’s Commission for Renaming and Memorial Signs. According to the administration deputy chairman Serhii Rudyk, a draft resolution will be submitted to the Kyiv City Council in the near future. Therefore, secondary comprehensive school No. 250 in the Desniansky district, specialized foreign-languages school No. 130 in the Holosiivsky district, and secondary comprehensive school No. 175 in the Shevchenkivsky district will be named after James Mace, Dante Alighieri, and Valerii Marchenko, respectively. Officials say renaming does not require any city budget expenses.
Chief Directorate of Education, Kyiv City Administration:
“Naming schools after well-known people is a good step in patriotic upbringing, and many schools are now striving for this. There are a lot of schools in our city that bear the names of prominent figures, such as Valerii Lobanovsky, Vadym Hetman, Mykola Lysenko, and others.
“It is often the case that some of these well-known people or their children used to go to this school or a wife taught there. But this honor should be well deserved. Schools themselves submit a proposal to us after getting thoroughly prepared for this step. First of all, a general assembly of schoolteachers ought to decide that their school be named after a certain prominent personality, which requires extensive preliminary work on studying this personality’s record. Incidentally, this work should continue for at least five years: the school must have something to present — a thematic room, a museum, or something else.
“Following this, the teachers’ collective turns to us and we write a letter of reference — whether or not this school deserves to bear this name. Only then are the necessary documents submitted to the Kyiv City Administration, and we make a written request to the commission asking to consider this request and, later, pass a resolution to this effect.
“It often occurs that a school or a lyceum sends us a request too late, when the birth anniversary of a well-known personality is imminent. We have never denied an educational institution the right to be named after somebody. Yet, the school that is going to bear the name of an outstanding figure should rank high in the district and the city in all respects.
“In school No. 250 in the Desniansky district, which is to be named for James Mace, the teachers and pupils have done and are still doing all the necessary informational and educational work in close cooperation with the researcher’s widow Natalia Dziubenko-Mace.”
