School bells rang for the last time this year last Tuesday also for nine graduates of the Grand Educational Corporation, Ukraine’s most prestigious private institution. Their teachers believe these young people have learned to think adequately in current chronically changing realities and the amount of knowledge they have acquired is a guarantee that they will eventually find themselves in a position to make positive changes in this society. Grand is one of those educational establishments commonly known as elite. Specialists prefer a more correct appellation: “new-type schools,” embracing private and government-run schools with additional paid classes. There are 21,500 “general educational secondary schools” and the number of elite institutions — high schools (gymnasiums), lyceums, and colleges (collegia) — reaches 300. According to the State Directorate for Middle and Preschool Education, every oblast has an average of 10-12 such institutions and rural high schools are being set up. Their number grows with each passing year, as does that of the applicants.
It is generally believed that all elite institutions, ranging from daycare centers to graduate (and special postgraduate) courses, are meant to foster the elite of any given society, people that will exert more active and effective efforts to develop it. Children passing entrance exams at such schools will, 20-30 years later, determine the country’s image. Thus it is very important to assess the positive and negative aspects of private tuition, proceeding from the experience of the first elite school turnouts.
At private schools, one of the positive aspects is considered the students’ awareness of their parents’ financial exertions, which is supposed to stimulate their progress in class. Second, such schools are better equipped and staffed (due to the parents’ charitable or contractual contributions), which, of course, allows expanding and diversifying the educational process, using progressive technologies. Third, at elite schools the curriculum is not determined by party or ministerial directives. Moreover, teaching conditions depend not on the professional and intellectual level of the teaching staff, but exclusively on the parents’ enthusiasm and financial status.
Polls show that parents are most concerned (and this determines how much they are prepared to pay as school contributions) about how well their children will be looked after at school, how much attention will paid to the development of their potential, how comfortable they will feel in class and among classmates, and how well they will be taught. In fact, all elite school advantages beget their problems; at least three considered the most pressing (judging by numerous interviews with teachers and students).
First, as anywhere else, experimental programs can be developed and practiced at elite schools for several years, but only as an addition to the uniform and compulsory curriculum approved by the Ministry of Education. Not a single truly new-type school has appeared over the past several years, offering alternative teaching methods, even if at the primary level. Actually, there is a definite trend to reduce all things alternative to a minimum. Rather, they want a “new standard” that can be relied upon in figuring out who receives an education and for what purpose in this society.
Second, elite schools must train their students to work as miniature closed teams, feel at home at various beau monde gatherings, maintaining comfortable conditions of biological coexistence; children are taught to appreciate fashionable lifestyles, complemented by a philosophy of constant competition. This is precisely what makes elite schools different from other specialized educational institutions: formation of a very special, competitive, optimal, flexible attitude toward life and social interaction. Is this always the case with elite schools in Ukraine?
Third, by investing heavily to give their children a good head start, their parents expect that after finishing school their children will be able to make a breakthrough, even if thanks to good connections, an opportunity to receive a well paying prestigious job, maintain a quality lifestyle, etc. In the meantime, psychologists are alarmed by the “problem of indices,” as parental ambitions do not always tally with children’s capabilities, increasing the incidence of juvenile neurosis, suicidal impulses, or rebellious spirit.
Exemplary progress is the watchword with elite school, meaning that the schooling conditions are even more demanding. In other words, here is a problem of how to reconcile what is wanted with that what is actually possible through effort.
