School and formation of the nation

There are professions without which the world cannot exist. Teachers and doctors are people without whom our past, present, and future would be impossible. A teacher is a person giving knowledge, possessing authority, a teacher can be a friend and a parent to a child. Everybody wants their child to attend a good school. Everyone cares where their daughter or son will study, who their tutor will be, and who they will listen to every day. What is a good school? Ask the parents, they will answer: “It is a school with good teachers.” What is a good and prestigious kindergarten? It is a kindergarten with a good kindergarten teacher. “Good” automatically means professional, knowing the subject and selfless, loving and understanding children. Parents say: “All schools are the same, everything depends on the educators.” It is really so.

However, the world changes, information is now omnipresent, and people have changed their attitude to teachers. The profession of a teacher and instructor lost the allure it had a hundred years ago, when literate and illiterate people were clearly distinguished. There was even some respect and recognition some twenty years ago, during the Soviet times. At present, every third Ukrainian says that the profession of a teacher is not prestigious (33.1 percent, according to the Horshenin Institute, Kyiv). What is prestige? Perhaps the respondents confuse prestige and money. The consumer society dictates these conditions to us. And we can’t help accepting them because we live among other people and compare ourselves to them. However, every fifth Ukrainian considers the profession of a teacher as prestigious. Perhaps the respondents who answered this way thought of the role of a teacher in their own life, or the importance of a teacher in children’s lives. According to the survey, 42.2 percent of Ukrainian citizens called the profession of a teacher “ordinary.”

On the first Sunday of October teachers celebrate their professional holiday, accept greetings from children and parents. According to sociologists, Ukrainians prefer to congratulate teachers on the professional holiday with flowers (40.2 percent), money (36.7 percent), and sweets (28.4 percent). Every fifth respondent prefers giving perfumes or cosmetics, 4.2 percent — alcohol, 3.8 percent — small household devices. Every sixth Ukrainian (15.1 percent) chose the option “other,” and 11.2 percent of the respondents said they had no intention to congratulate teachers. Just over four percent of the respondents were undefined.

Sociologists also asked about the opinion of Ukrainians on the quality of Ukrainian education. According to the collected data, almost half of Ukrainians (45.2 percent) assess the education provided by the modern high school as satisfactory. A quarter assessed it as good, every fifth (19.4 percent) eva­luated it as bad, and only 5.8 percent of the respondents assessed the quality of high education in Ukraine as excellent. 4.7 percent of respondents could not answer the question.

The majority of respondents (65.5 percent) believe that Ukraine needs to reform school education. At this, almost a half of the respondents (45.4 percent) believe that this reform is rather necessary, and every fourth (20.1 percent) thinks that it is definitely necessary. Over a quarter of our compatriots (27.9 percent) do not see a necessity to reform high school education. Out of them, 22.1 percent answered the question with “rather no,” and 5.8 percent – “definitely no.”

The organizers of this survey did not explain what exactly Ukrainians mean when speaking about the reform of high school education. However, in previous research conducted by the Horshenin Institute of Management, most respondents said that it was necessary to update equipment and increase teachers’ salary.

In any case, we are all dependent on teachers, their skill, professionalism, on how they treat their work and how the state treats them. It is obvious that on the state level there is an understanding that it is the teachers that form the intellectual potential of the nation. If only an adequate treatment of our educators supplemented this understanding.

COMMENTARY

Maksym STRIKHA, former deputy minister of education and science, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical sciences:

“The abrupt decrease of teachers’ prestige is confirmed by many things. Often it is not the best children that enter teachers’ training institutes, graduates try to work anywhere but schools. It is also demonstrated by teachers’ salaries and their social status, when a person has to fulfill any directions of administration, assist in everything — up to election campaigns. We see a situation when teachers can protest against what the Mi­nistry of Education and Science does only offstage. We have an unprecedented situation when the ministry works without programs, when curricula are remade, when what was done for the previous two decades is reversed. But a teacher always remains powerless. The drop of prestige in the profession of a teacher happened not twenty years ago, but much earlier. Let us remember the cult Soviet movie The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! where two characters, a teacher and a doctor meet. They say that we have the most wonderful and important professions, but judging from their salaries it is hard to see this. In other words, this turning point happened during Soviet times. We just fixed the situation, but we did not improve it, therefore it became even worse. Of course, traditionally the status of a teacher was high in Ukraine in the past. After all, a hundred years ago a teacher was called professor in Galicia. My late great grandmother, who lived in Dnipro Ukraine, had the title of the people’s teacher and was the most respected person in the village. At present, children, I do not mean spoiled children of moneybags but pragmatic children, know what is what. Unfortunately, very few of them respect teachers, knowing how much they earn and their problems. Conversations about raising the prestige of the profession seem idealistic and remote from real life. The government will never do anything for teachers to take a decent place in society. We must survive under this govern­ment and later talk about improving the situation. Parents have a vital interest in influencing teaching, as in democratic states. But for this our society must become civic and learn to invest in the future.”