No man’s land is the mildest expression that suggests itself

The Ministry of Education and Science is not in the business of certifying and supervising printed school items, but it promises to bring out a list of publishers entitled to make them. Last week, just on the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day, at a bookstore in the center of Kyiv The Day bumped into school exercise books with portraits of Stalin, Lenin, and with a picture of an assault rifle. The caption read, “Nothing pacifies better than a Kalashnikov gun” (see “Who Are We Bringing Up,” The Day No. 47 of August 23, 2012). The staff explained to The Day that all school supplies in that bookstore had been certified and approved by the Ministry of Education.

The Day sent an official inquiry to the Ministry of Education and Science to find out if the design of those covers had indeed been agreed with the Ministry (according to the state standard specifications DSTU 4736:2007 School exercise books. General specifications, exercise books covers may carry illustrated and educational information in the official language, the contents shall be agreed with the Ministry of Education of Ukraine). The Day wanted to know what the criteria for the certification of school exercise books are, and how come such exercise books covers appeared in a country which has survived genocide.

The other day we received a response from the Ministry of Education. “The Ministry of Education, Science, Youth, and Sport did not examine school exercise books manufactured by Polisvit LLC. We would like to inform you that in 2007, the obligatory certification of school supply items was canceled, which resulted in the appearance of considerable amount of uncertified children’s goods on the consumer market,” said the official letter from the Institute for Innovative Technologies and Education Contents under the Ministry of Education, signed by its director Oleksandr Udod. The letter went on to inform that “the control of supplying school items to the stores, as well as the identification of uncertified and counterfeit products in the consumer market and informing the law enforcement authorities of natural and legal persons implicated in the manufacturing of such products, so they might be called to account for their actions under the current law, is beyond the Ministry’s competence.”

What the letter boils down to is that under the current law, the Ministry of Education and Science is not authorized to certify printed school products in Ukraine. All the products in the range of school supplies must meet educational requirements, determined by 23 industrial and one state technical specification. The manufacturers submit their products to the Ministry for the latter to determine of these standards are met, such as the quality of paper, its density and whiteness, the quality of fastening or binding, the size of checkers and lines, etc. However, we were unable to get the answer to the question concerning the contents of school exercise book cover designs. Does that, too, have to pass the approval procedures? Who does it, and what are the criteria? Is visual design taken into account whatsoever?

The Ministry informed The Day that they had proposed the relevant authorities to include school supply items (exercise books and others) in the list of the products liable to compulsory certification in Ukraine.

In general, the situation is quite revealing. Exercise book sellers say that the Ministry saw the exercise books and approved of the cover designs; the Ministry, in its turn, retorts that it has never examined those exercise books, and that it is not obliged to certify printed school products; whereas “the hasty conclusions and sensational headlines in the media include unverified information and are a far cry from reality.” Meanwhile, as the school year advances, stores and markets are full of exercise books with queer and often inappropriate cover designs.

In the letter to The Day the Ministry also wrote that “soon it will be possible to verify the information from sellers of printed school supplies at the new web resource, which will contain a list of school items, and information about the publishers entitled to print school textbooks, manuals, and exercise books.” How this is supposed to help solve the problem with the exercise books, which were printed by obscure publishers in obscure locations to the order of obscure customers, still remains unclear.