UKIE SCHOOL PRESERVING OUR ROOTS

By Borys Prokopovych

The sixth day of the week for many Ukrainian children is not a day of rest. While their non-Ukrainian friends are planning excursions or sporting events, the average Ukrainian child is filling up that old Saturday school bag for the trip to UKRAYINOZNAVSTVO - Ukrainian school, irreverently referred to as "Ukie School".

Together with the Church and youth organizations, Ukie School is one of the triads of Ukrainian education. It has been a vital key in preserving our language, history, culture, literature and traditions for generations of Ukrainian children. Even the worst critic admits that Ukie schools have done their job amazingly well to the point that today the skills learned there are being exported to Ukraine which is rediscovering its heritage after 300 years of suppression by Russia. Visitors from Ukraine are quite shocked to find third and fourth generation Ukrainians speaking and writing Ukrainian after being consistently told over the past 70 years that Ukrainians in the Diaspora have totally forgotten their heritage and have assimilated into the countries they settled in. Ukrainian-Americans visiting Ukraine provide quite a shock to the natives, especially in Eastern Ukraine in cities like Kharkiv and Poltava.

But despite the obvious benefits, perhaps no other form of learning has been so severely lamented by unhappy children and parents alike since the first Ukie school opened in the United States. As I listen sympathetically when my children complain about going to school on Saturday, I know they will one day realize the importance of all of this, although I share some of their complaints - not in what is being taught, but in how.

As a Ukie school drop-out some forty years ago, I look back on my own Saturdays and see how valuable they were although like most children of Ukrainian descent, I complained at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, l now realize that all that connects me to Ukrainian life was nurtured through Ukie school. My sense of ethnic belonging, my knowledge of the history, geography, literature, culture and traditions, gave me an outlook on my heritage that most American children simply did not have.

Many teachers then, as now, were not professional educators but dedicated people who gave their time and effort to a noble cause - preserving our roots. Many of my teachers had only recently arrived in the United States following World War II and did not even speak English. They brought with them the familiarity of how they had been taught in the "Old Country" and they did their best to recreate this knowledge for children who were growing up in a brand new age. I remember several teachers in the '50's who had their own peculiarities, and being well into senior age, their memories were not as sharp as they once might have been. Children being children, we took advantage of this lack of focus. One older cross-eyed teacher seemed to look everywhere except at the child he was addressing which left no end of amusement. Another, rather well rounded lady, had a habit of walking between rows of students as she taught. Her broad posterior was an irresistible magnet for handwritten signs that found themselves magically taped there to the delight of all the children she passed. Then, of course, there was the mystery extra student that the rest of the class gleefully created and did extra work for. This imaginary class member turned in homework but never seemed to show up for class. This student even took tests and passed them. Today, I'm sure our teachers knew we thought we were fooling them, but they let us continue because it was a learning experience for all of us. They used logic and common sense instead of rules, regulations and following procedures. I'm not quite certain, however, if the mystery student ever graduated.

But despite the games, we did learn about Ukraine and equally important, we had a social life built into the Saturday schedule that has lasted through the years. In fact, when I stumbled upon the discovery that girls were perhaps not too bad even if they couldn't throw a baseball, going to Ukie school became less of a torture and something to look forward to from week to week. Even schoolwork was not too bad although I envied those kids whose grandmothers lived with them and did all their homework.

There were two types of teachers then, those who admittedly were not real teachers but were dedicated to helping us through all of this, and those who had a self-inflated vision of being the only authority on any subject. Yet they seemed more genuinely interested in preserving the social interaction among their students than today's teachers whose thrust seems to be rigid scholastic standards. We were always somewhat afraid and properly respectful of our teachers, however we did come up with creative pranks to annoy them. Today's children don't seem to have the incentive for creative stunts and they don't seem to be concerned with the concept of respect. They seem basically too bored to do anything.

Even today's parents seem less supportive of teachers than in my day. Children are confidently aware of the fact that teachers can do very little in the way of discipline and that their parents will take their side in any dispute. Many teachers today, do not seem to be as dedicated to teaching as they are to a paycheck or a title and it shows. Yet, they complain about the children's lack of respect. It would seem that if teachers respected their students, they would earn the respect of the students. Teachers should be more creative in their presentations and not be slaves to a rigorous lesson plan developed by others outside the classroom. Today's teachers are also facing a brand new age - the computer age - as different from my childhood as moving to America must have been for my teachers. But most of these teachers are oblivious to these technological and pedagogical realities and this creates a great part of the problem with keeping their students interested and involved.

Little seems to have changed in forty years. Now as my children attend Ukie school, I find some of the complaints I had about Ukrainian school are the same. Today, as in the days when I was a student, we seem to be teaching about Ukraine in a vacuum. The lessons cover separate subjects with unnecessary memorization of dates and names, which can be easily looked up when, needed. We are not teaching why thing happened, only what happened. What should be taught is a timeline approach to show children what was happening in the rest of the world, or the rest of Ukraine for that matter, to cause the, changes, which are now historical events. It is not necessary to memorize styles of architecture, just to know them, but it is important to learn how and why the different styles appeared in Ukraine. We should be teaching all subjects together, rather than separately because they are intertwined. Children should be taught how to research and where to find information than be bored with useless exercises in memorization.

Yet, there are some that think that just attending school on Saturdays is not painful enough so they devise ways to make it an even more miserable experience by demanding things that even colleges do not require. The basic function of Ukie school is to pass on language, culture, and, history so that each generation can understand its roots and pass it on to the next. It is not going to make Doctoral candidates in one-day-a-week instruction - and neither should it.

The dreaded Matura, the cumulative examination of everything a student should know, is the prime offender of this concept. Matura should be viewed as an extra added value rather than the primary goal of Ukie and it should be voluntary. The argument by some that if they had to go through it, their children should too, is as progressive as the Matura itself. Any child, who spends twelve years of Saturdays to attain a non-recognizable degree, should not have to face a grueling tribunal of inquisitors in order to receive a momento of attendance. Mid-year and Final exams, as in any modern school system, should be enough to determine satisfactory completion of each grade, including the final year.

What is needed today is a modern approach with an old fashioned touch. We need to get into the 21st century without losing the student in favor of the studies. New textbooks are sadly needed. Computerized lessons and videotapes should be used more. Rather than dwelling too long on the brief fame of the Kozaks, we need to give our children information on World II to counter charges by those who continue to falsely condemn Ukraine's activities. We need to stress what happened in the 60's and 70's which led to the dramatic social changes in the 80's and finally to the independence of Ukraine in 1991.

It is not strange to me at all that those of us who didn't think Ukie school was worthwhile when we attended, are now insuring that our children attend. Ukie school, for all the perceived misery and pain, gives our children the necessary background and instills that which only Ukie schools can do - a love of our heritage and a vision of our future on the world stage. We need to modernize what is already working well and adapt to the social demands of today. As Ukraine is finding out, being dragged hastily into a new world is full of problems but it must be done in order to survive. Ukie schools should also be dragged into the realities of today in order to continue to do what only they can - preserve our roots.