According to agronomist Vasyl Lishchuk from Starokostiantyniv, he “taught one of his daughters to read at three years of age, his younger son at two, and his granddaughter Karina could read many words before she turned one.”
And this is the absolute truth. An avid autodidact, Lishchuk applied his experience in the Zironka (Starlet) kindergarten that Karina attends. Nursery group instructor Halyna Dashchuk who tutors children from a year and a half to three assured us that all twenty-six of her pupils can read “with different degrees of proficiency — there are children who can read faster than the others, you know. As for Karina, no one can match her — she reads the fastest of all.”
NOT A THEORY BUT AT LEAST AN IDEA
At three years of age, Halyna Dashchuk’s children are later enrolled in the 3 to 4-year age group taught by Halyna Sokirchenko. She says all she has to do is to give some final polish to the reading skills taught by her colleague.
Indeed, those in both age groups have shown clearly that they can really read like first or second graders. In fact, Karina grandfather’s educational concept is very effective, as evidenced by the progress made by the kindergarten kids. Both Halynas, Dashchuk and Sokirchenko, credit Vasyl Lishchuk’s concept. Still, in the course of their teaching they had to turn to books written by other enthusiasts and scholars. “In fact, I’d say Vasyl Lishchuk’s teaching method is individual, family-oriented. We have been lucky to find materials written by Ukrainian and American teachers and psychologists. It turned out that such methods have been widely used to train preschool children. And we absolutely agree with the idea that it is too late [to teach kids to read] after three,” Halyna Sokirchenko says, obviously with full support from Halyna Dashchuk.
Scholars have long proved that an early start in developing childhood intellect has definite advantages. “Children should be exposed to the joy of learning the world from an early age,” Mr. Lishchuk says convincingly, citing a Roman philosopher, Fabius Quintilian, who “when proposing to teach younger than 7-year-old children, stressed that the benefits of early schooling should not be ignored. Quintilian suggested that small children, instead of toys, be given letters or something else they would enjoy playing with.”
Lishchuk told us about his hard- won theory of early age schooling and upbringing. Vasyl Lishchuk provided the basic points of his theory in the two booklets he wrote, With Mother’s Milk and Reading Before Speaking. The booklets also include references given by the country’s respected scholars and educators. The latter are unanimous is saying Lishchuk’s theory is worthy of all possible attention and should be disseminated.
Vasyl Lishchuk seems to have the understanding and backing of the local authorities. Head of the district state administration department of education Felix Slobodian agrees, “It’s a good and needed project. Children should be prepared for school starting from ages earlier than five. We set up a meeting of village schools principals with Lishchuk but, unfortunately, they don’t seem to have got his message. Lishchuk has not based his theory on any scientific concept. You get the feeling he lacks knowledge of child education and psychology. He has no curriculum showing what to start with and what to do next. There needs to be some system in learning.”
YOU CAN’T STOP THE RIVER FROM FLOWING TO THE OCEAN
As the head of the education department says, cooperation of Lishchuk with scholars has yielded positive results, but there is hardly a scholar to be found in a district town like Starokostiantyniv. There are only practicing teachers and self-made enthusiasts, like Lishchuk. The avid teachers at the Zironka kindergarten have made use of his teaching methods and, most importantly, his concept. “We are happy that our pupils are so inquisitive and bright. At this age, they have an enviable visual memory,” Halyna Sokirchenko says, sharing her experience.
She is convinced that you cannot stop the river from flowing to the ocean. And she is doing her bit, despite salary arrears for March and April. Both Halynas are rare enthusiasts whose number, sadly, is very low. But preschoolers in villages often do not have any teachers at all. With 96 villages in the district, only every third runs a kindergarten. Eight of the kindergartens have locked doors, because there is no funding to keep them operating. On Vasyl Savovych Lishchuk’s persistent demand, the local authorities agreed to contribute to the upbringing of village children. District Council Chairman Volodymyr Tovstyha called a meeting of village heads in Starokostiantyniv reminding them in Soviet-day slogans that “the best of everything must be given to children,” and “children are our future.”
As meeting participants stressed, in some remote villages like Penky, Cherniatyn or Orikhivka the children are left to themselves. With their parents often away earning daily bread for their families, children are left alone. To describe the situation in preschool education, Vasyl Lishchuk, an agronomist by profession, uses a simile, comparing it to the barren land under an old haystack. This land must be plowed again and again to make it fertile.
REMEMBERING VILLAGE LIBRARIES
The meeting in Starokostiantyniv was beneficial to all participants. It ended with a resolution demanding local councils open a position for a social pedagogue in every village school. Under the original concept, Vasyl Lishchuk was to work with social pedagogues and the latter would teach 2 to 5-year-olds. The meeting declaration, widely publicized in the district, is stopped dead in Starokostiantyniv, with no new openings in schools made by the local authorities.
Velyky Cherniatyn village council accountant Larysa Melnychuk says that there is no funding in the 2001 budget for such a new position. And village school principal Anatoly Franko says there will be fourteen first graders next September when the school year begins, with the number decreasing in the future. This is quite sad, as over seven hundred families live in the village now.
“Since the year began, we have issued four birth and nineteen death certificates,” village council accountant Larysa Melnychuk says quietly, giving us the statistics throwing some gruesome light on the projected future number of pupils. In one of our villages, Orikhivka, there will be only two first graders, with just one expected the following year.”
Near the school in Velyky Cherniatyn we confronted a dilapidated building of a kindergarten, with four wrinkled faces looking at us from the windows. Zinayida Rymar, the landlady whom we saw going out with a scythe in her hand, explained the situation, “There was an emergency in the village home for senior citizens in winter and the four old residents, three old women and a man, were moved to live out the rest of their lives here.”
She is attending to them, Ms. Rymar confirmed. As to what awaits, she commented, “They would do better by giving adequate assistance to families with children. My sister has two grandsons, six and three, and they don’t get paid even the meager eight hryvnias due in subsidies. This would be enough to buy some bread.”
This is what the future holds in store for us: the education of children comes second to earning people’s daily bread. The barren land of our life is bad for sowing the seeds of intellect. And where are the sowers gone?
School principal Anatoly Franko speaks about his worries saying, “We are running a placement test for new pupils. But the test is based on preschool education.” He agrees that it’s too late to start teaching kids after three years. “After six years much is lost irrevocably.” Of the school’s last year graduates only one continued his education in a vocational college, becoming the pride of the school and a celebrity in Velyky Cherniatyn and nearby villages.
On the attitude of some villagers toward education and raising families, the principal says, “There was a pupil who did not attend school for some twelve days. He brought a message from his father, saying he did not let him go to school because the boy was helping him plant potatoes. Then will come hay-making for the cattle.”
Against the backdrop of Vasyl Lishchuk’s work in Zironka in Starokostiantyniv, things in Velyky Cherniatyn are truly terrible. A kindergarten in Pashkivtsi has been closed and used as a canteen to cook for the farmers working in the fields. We met a group of young women there, one with a baby in her hands, “There’s no one to take care of her at home, so I have to take her along with me everywhere.”
Her friend adds, “My husband has lost his job and registered with the employment bureau. So, I have my own baby-sitter.” Her agronomist husband takes his unemployment hard she says, “Unlike Lishchuk, he is not in a proper mood to teach reading and writing.” Yes, we are living through hard times when even certified specialists find themselves on the dole.
Pashkivtsi village council head Mykola Shevchuk recalled the time when the local kindergarten was funded by the state-run collective farm. With the farm gone, there is no funding left. While founders of new [commercial] farms do not care about the social sector, saying it does not bring any profits. The council’s budget is cash-strapped, a story repeated by other village councils’ officials: of 1745 children in the 3-to-6 age group in the district, 445 attend preschool educational institutions. But the latter figure might be a little exaggerated, they agree.
“Why not organize libraries in villages [like those run by the Bolsheviks in the mostly illiterate Russia where young and old could learn to read and write]?” Halyna Sokirchenko proposes. In a way, we are sorry that we joined this project of Lishchuk, now we are paying a price for this, she says. Incidentally, head of the district education department Felix Slobodian was far from enthusiastic meeting The Day’s correspondent who wanted him to comment on education standards in the area. The obvious message was that had it not been for Lishchuk with his ideas to teach kids to read before they start to speak, there would have been no awkward questions asked about the life of village children. Sadly enough, the situation in other rayons is hardly better, if not worse, perhaps because there is no Zironka and Lishchuk there. The latter is convinced that “in every adult a Mozart has been killed.”
