SCHOOL FOR A LADY
Lady, a school for girls, established in 2000 and modeled on the pre-Revolutionary College for Noble Maidens, is located in Boiarka, a suburb of Kyiv. The school, both outside and inside, is painted in bright colors. Simple little cubes and rhombuses on the walls and the floor create a cozy atmosphere. You will not hear any racket in this school, a constant fixture of ordinary schools. The secret is that real ladies are educated here.
The boarding school comprises eight grades with a total of 140 pupils. “We have many children from Kyiv. Parents take them home in the evening. Out-of-towners board from Monday to Friday, or until the vacations,” says the principal of Lady, Iryna Demydova. There are two orphan girls whose tuition is paid by a French charitable organization.
Like in ordinary schools, the children study physics, mathematics, chemistry, and other general subjects. Teachers follow the standard curriculum approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. But the difference lies in the teaching approach. For example, foreign languages are learned not just in the classroom but also as part of extracurricular activities. One day the teacher speaks to the girls in French and another day in English. The schedule has been set up in such a way that completely different subjects follow each other: e.g., dancing comes after mathematics.
Up to four varieties of dances are taught: classical, folk, modern, as well as calisthenics and rhythmic gymnastics. Twice a week the girls learn ballroom dancing together with the cadets of the Ivan Bohun Military Lyceum. In the fall a traditional ball is held - the real thing with all the necessary outfits and manners.
The children’s artistic talents are developed by playing instruments: the piano, guitar, and drums, singing, and choral singing. If parents wish, they can pay an additional fee and their child will be taught to ride a horse. A lesson will set you back about 35 hryvnias, and attending this boarding school costs $300 a month.
A child can do the standard curriculum at an ordinary school and attend music and dancing lessons during optional classes and after- school clubs. The school’s specialty is comportment. “The girls know the rules of etiquette by heart. For example, when a lady sits down, she does not turn around and feel for the chair with her foot. You have to get out of a car (all of our ladies’ parents have a car) with both feet touching the ground,” says Liudmyla Chorna, deputy principal for teaching and discipline.
This is just a fraction of what the girls are taught. In the dining room the girls polish their table manners. If fish is being served for lunch or dinner, it should be eaten with a special fork.
The pupils develop a sense of taste from the earliest age, because appearance is the calling card of a lady. Even at school the girls are allowed to change twice a day. Before lunch, the young ladies usually wear a knitted sun-dress or pants, a white blouse, and a jacket with the school monogram. After lunch, the pupils are allowed to indulge in a more frivolous style. Jeans are banned.
The dress code includes evening attire for visits to the theater, which take place regularly. It is considered bad taste to wear boots to such places, even in the winter. The young ladies have to bring shoes for these occasions.
But does a real lady change her footwear by herself? It is up to cadets to take off their boots and put on a little shoe. Still, as far as boys are concerned, the teachers admit that when a child feels frisky, manners go out the window. “No matter how strict their upbringing may be, children will be children,” the teachers say with a sigh.
Curiously, despite the emphasis on foreign languages and economics, the girls are not pressured into becoming businesswomen. On the contrary, the school tries to raise wives, mothers, and homemakers. But it does not look as though the girls are bursting to fill the ranks of housewives. They gladly told The Day that they dream of becoming economists and lawyers and, some of them, singers and dancers.
The image of an ordinary housewife also hardly applies to these girls. Like all children, they learn to cook, and two pupils are on duty in the dining room every day. Their job is to lay the tables, clean them, adjust tablecloths, place serviettes, and sweep and mop the floor. Senior pupils help the cooks in the kitchen. When a girl graduates from this school, besides a diploma of musical and choreographic education, she will also receive a waitress’s certificate or one for the hotel and restaurant business.
PROS AND CONS
Education has always been Great Britain’s calling card. State schools in that country are all coeducational, while same-sex schools predominate in private institutions. This type of education is popular not only in Europe. Lately, Americans have been sending more of their children to same-sex schools. The number of same-sex educational institutions has increased more than 50 times since 1998. Experts claim that their number will continue to rise.
Same-sex education was once popular in our country. Elderly Ukrainians remember them well. Now there is just a handful of same-sex schools in Ukraine. For obvious reasons, the situation in military schools is much better. At the Ministry of Education and Science The Day was told that they don’t keep statistics and don’t know anything about same-sex schools, although Lady’s principal claims that there are more girls’ schools (state-run at that) in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
“A same-sex school suits me very well now because I live in a suburb and have no time to take my to the city child every day for music and dancing lessons,” says Iryna Zhelezniakova, mother of a first-grader at Lady. “Actually, my daughter’s age allows her to study separately from boys. But when she is a little older, we will probably try to move her to another school.”
So is it good or bad to study separately? Demydova is convinced of the advantages of same-sex education. “It is common knowledge that girls develop physically faster, and boys’ authority dwindles in the fifth and sixth grades. When girls begin to cast furtive glances at senior boys, their classmates become jealous and develop aggression and complexes. And then we wonder where our gentlemen have gone — we were the ones who oppressed them. Later on, boys outdo girls in development, but by then it is too late. Gloomy statistics show that for every 100 marriages there is an equal number of divorces. It was a mortal sin in the old days. I am, of course, aware that the times are different and all that, but where were morals formed? At colleges for noble maidens and cadet schools!”
