My grandmother, who was a professor of organic chemistry, used to say that a student must outdo his teacher so that the latter can have somebody to learn from. This philosophy requires teachers, as bearers of certain knowledge who have duly studied and reconsidered an array of source texts, to be responsible for the quality of education in an emergent nation. They should be aware of this goal: not only to ensure the successful learning of information but also to encourage their students to make a “qualitative breakthrough” in their studies.
This particular result of education is an extremely difficult task to accomplish because to this day no one has been able to define what needs to be done in order to achieve this qualitative growth, so that students will outdo their teachers and ensure continuity of knowledge. Lecturers must ensure that knowledge will remain after they are gone. Naturally, this knowledge will be reconsidered and updated, something will be contradicted and rejected, and something will be supplemented and reinforced.
Tests for university admission recently ended in Ukraine (there may be an additional round). Let us assume that the tests show a more or less true picture of modern education over the past 10 or 11 years of independence. (I am a philologist, so of course it strikes me that even the current system for testing knowledge of Ukrainian literature does not call for a dialogue between pupils and texts, nor does it ensure that the next generations of users of these texts will have first-hand knowledge of the complex system of esthetic values. Meanwhile, the president of Moscow’s Mikhail Lomonosov University is still insisting that liberal arts applicants must take the Russian national admission test as well as write an essay to show their ability to think in philological terms.) And what do we have?
HOW WE PASSED THE LANGUAGE TEST
Let’s take a look at the results of tests in at least two disciplines. The media frequently highlight the positive results of testing and report that Ukraine’s education minister met with the students who obtained the highest possible scores (about 50 high school students). It is only natural and necessary to focus on achievements, but let’s look at the scores obtained by the predominant majority of test takers because the kind of future Ukraine will have depends on these scores, which will determine who will govern our state with what kind of knowledge, and who will end up working in the fields of science, economy, politics, journalism, etc.
The external tests are based on the standard 12-point school knowledge evaluation scale. Only 0.32 percent out of a total of 461,210 test-takers earned the absolute maximum of 12 points, with almost 7 percent overcoming the 10-point barrier, the last threshold of what can be called “straight As.” This means that only about 10 percent of high achievers are going to acquire a higher education and then work in the financial, economic, industrial, and political fields.
But what about the rest? Where do most high school graduates stand? The largest number — 17.74 percent — obtained 6 points. Therefore, average achievers are preponderant: in other words, the core of the future Ukrainian society will be formed by those 2008 graduates who obtained an average grade on Ukrainian language and literature tests. Still, even this result is not the worst one because 4 to 6 points may also be considered an average grade.
So the grand total is: 12.14 percent + 14.49 percent + 17.74 percent (almost 44 percent of the total number). As you can see, most high school graduates have an average or mediocre knowledge of Ukrainian language and literature. Is a result like this possible in civilized countries, where teachers are also complaining about declining educational levels, e.g., in the UK?
The situation is even worse in Ukraine: our country is going to be ruled by those who do not know how to fill out an application correctly. Like it or not, these average achievers will also fill the ranks of journalists, who will be interested not in the quality of their reports, clarity of expression, or the stylistic wealth of linguistic resources but in who has married whom, how many murders have been committed in Ukraine in the past hour, and the like — just a lick and a promise, with an average grade.
Since schools are supposed to shape people’s characters, the results of this year’s external testing are extremely alarming. Either we will slip to mass-scale illiteracy or... Clearly, one of the global problems in the humanities today is postmodernism, which has crept into public awareness and is destroying, slowly but surely, any aspirations to reach the “summit.” Today it is not fashionable to possess knowledge, read widely, and be an intellectual or a spiritual aristocrat. You can find any answer in the Internet, so why should you overload your operational system?
But in this case, college students, if not schoolboys, can write textbooks: why not? All they have to do is surf the Internet for a few hours, perform a few dozen copy and paste operations, and voila! — a textbook without references or explanations of terms, or any methodical approach. Today the concept of responsibility for work has been almost entirely devalued. In the pursuit of profit we forget that the results of our work are not a mere trifle and that the achievements of every employee should be summed up; only then will there be a high-quality industrial and academic product. Such an approach forms an integrated strategy for producing results.
Unfortunately, we lack this kind of systematic approach. Naturally, work should also be duly rewarded. But what can we say when orthographic and prescriptive (usage) dictionaries would be the best gift for half the country, i.e., those who will hold sway in tomorrow’s Ukraine?
What about the situation with Ukrainian literature? Literature is in a state of neglect, in a noose, as are esthetic upbringing and the inculcation of empathy and sympathy in the future masters of Ukraine’s destiny. The absence of literary and liberal-arts education is by far the most terrible catastrophe that may occur: a community uneducated in esthetic and humanistic terms poses a far more terrible threat than a meteorite falling to the earth or an earthquake. Our inborn human cruelty, which is not humanized by literature, will have disastrous consequences.
A literary text — be it a poem or a novel — is a living system based on the psychological perception and artistic reproduction of a fragment of reality. But if perception of the world through a work of fiction does not take place, and if the younger generation is deaf to the Word, what can Ukraine hope for? In the Soviet era, power was held by those who were ready to serve the great bloody illusion; during perestroika and post-imperial chaos power was held by racketeers and bandits, and in the nearest “democratic” future semi-educated people will be the ones wielding power. But everything is possible in a democracy, is it not, including, unfortunately, “drowning in a sea of plebeianism?”
Who is preventing us from forming a European state? Is it imaginary foreign enemies or we ourselves who are slack and not prepared to act decisively and responsibly? Even if we act decisively, we do it in a demagogical, profane, and vulgar manner. When you look at the new generation, you often don’t see even a shadow of “intellectual disfigurement” on their faces. Instead, they suffer from lexical paucity and an addiction to beer.
This in turn raises another question: do we really need serious scholarship or serious journalism? The art of writing criticism and essays is also falling by the wayside. We really should not blame postmodernism for our banal laziness, idleness, and ignorance (or worse, semi-ignorance). No one is preventing anyone from being a somebody among pig herders. There have always been many of the latter in Ukraine, but they have never multiplied in such a geometric progression until now.
HOW WE PASSED MATHEMATICS
The math tests produced even less encouraging results, although since time immemorial mathematics has been the guarantee of a harmonious education. Mathematics, together with music and the classical languages, once formed an integrated and profound personality capable of understanding the world as a great system of systems. Mathematics is not just a school subject but a form for interpreting reality and attitude to situations, which enables an individual to solve problems as quickly and optimally as possible. Mathematics helps an individual form an integrated approach to a problem and the ability to tackle key problems in any situation.
But where will systematic thinking come from if 20.58 percent (46,519) of our high school graduates are scoring 5 points (C or D)? Almost 46 percent obtained an average grade in mathematics, and almost 20 percent got a poor grade (1 to 3 points). The results are staggering: in the 17th year of independence we know that nobody in Ukraine needs mathematics (and hence physics, chemistry, information science, etc.). What else can be expected from a country where astronomy is taught for a few scant hours, mechanical drawing has been withdrawn from the school curriculum, and mathematics has been scaled back to an indecent minimum in senior high school grades? Even in the Soviet empire mathematics was never taught on such a “grandiose” scale with so little class time!
As for international scholarly and informational progress, we should not be stating unequivocally that there are noticeable shifts in Ukraine towards the formation of an information society. We should not be claiming that Ukraine is prepared for European integration. Does Europe need a country of average achievers? Is Ukraine prepared to recognize its spiritual need for the European cultural space if its own cultural substance looks extremely feeble? For starters, we need to learn mathematics; otherwise we will soon be unable to multiply to a 100 without a calculator.
Yes, the destruction of mathematical education in Ukraine has reached an unprecedented scale. This is our life: such slogans as “No mathematics without grammar” and “Mathematics is the queen of the sciences” have long been empty colored bubbles in a country where only a minority knows how to use proper Ukrainian, the official language. Accordingly, in 10 years’ time very few people will be able to count to 100, to say nothing of being able to compute square and cube roots, differentials, and logarithms.
The results of independent external testing have shown that we, or to be more precise, our education and future, have fallen into a big black hole. These results are not the fault of children but a defect of the entire educational system that does not cherish innovative teachers. This is also the fault of the state, which has never cared about teachers, who are forced to struggle for survival rather than think about ways to improve the teaching system.
Blame also falls on the authors of textbooks. Some of them, especially in the humanities, are crude and lack an integral concept — you could even burn such books without too many scruples. Of course, this is also a pressing problem for mathematicians and chemists. What was once a powerful system of education 20 years ago — when Ukrainian academics, including mathematicians, would travel to the US and the countries of Latin America and become professors in a few years’ time, with the state furnishing them with apartments and funding their scholarly projects — has been destroyed. Ukraine is in decline.
I happened to read an article in the respected weekly Dzerkalo tyzhnia , in which Maksym Strikha, First Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, expressed surprise that a generation of Ukrainian Ph.D.s has never seen even one international publication in their field. That is bizarre: where has the education ministry been all this time? Could it not have subscribed to these publications earlier?
Meanwhile, Ukrainian specialized publications are in truly dire straits: above all, they need financial aid and support. Nothing will happen without innovative exchanges, and without a powerful scholarly basis no headway is possible: to say otherwise is an illusion, deceit, and demagogy.
Research is never done “for show.” It is done in offices, libraries, laboratories, and archives. The state should make an effort to increase the prestige of teachers and academics rather than the reputation of realtors, financiers, or lawyers. No wonder Verka Serdiuchka (drag queen Andrii Danylko — Ed.
) is so popular in Ukraine. One-half of the population of this country does not speak the Ukrainian language, i.e., half of all Ukrainians are intellectually on a par with Serdiuchka and her “mom.”
And no Eurovision wins will avert the terrible danger of losing the high educational level that we once had. First of all, one must care about education and science rather than brag about illusory and empty “achievements.”
It is terrible to contemplate the possibility that this trend will eventually drag us down to the language of Ellochka from Ilf and Petrov’s Twelve Chairs . A few decades from now people who can do the multiplication table without a calculator will look like dinosaurs against the backdrop of mass illiteracy and lack of culture.
I wonder if today’s graduates know what a synchrocyclotron is or who coined the simile “Synchrocyclotrons are wailing like lions?” I won’t even bother to ask about differentials and trigonometry.
