When the Russians first came to the school in southeastern Ukraine where Larysa taught history, they asked for all the history and Ukrainian language textbooks. The director refused to hand them over.
“Some go to a Russian school and do their homework together with us,” explained the teacher. – We’re doing everything we can to keep it incognito. We have deleted all electronic listings, never uploaded any photos, screenshots, or written names.”
For security reasons, Larysa did not provide her last name and the name of the school. Half of her colleagues are still in occupied territory and teach online, risking imprisonment or more brutal action by the occupiers. Two of them have already been detained and later in September. run
“They hold lessons in extreme conditions,” said Larysa. – Some were saved only because someone was on duty. The wife taught the lesson and her husband watched from the window so she could hide everything before they came.”
According to the Ministry of Education, since the beginning of the Russian invasion, more than 3,000 educational institutions in Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed, ie 10 percent. of all educational institutions, Politico writes.
After extensive damage to the country’s energy infrastructure, school buildings are at risk of being bombed or left unheated. Power outages and interrupted internet connections hinder home learning.
Meanwhile, thousands of students and teachers living under occupation are under pressure to transfer to Russian schools.
Education, with its propaganda potential to influence young people, has become the new front line of war.
Ideological confrontation
Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia for more than eight years, is an example of how Russian education in the occupied territories aims to erase Ukrainian identity and militarize children.
History lessons say that Ukraine has always been part of Russia. Children as young as six start attending military cadet courses and law enforcement-sponsored classes, said Marija Sulyanina, a representative of the Crimean Human Rights Group.
“We see that these young people, who were small children at the beginning of the occupation, have been turned into Russians eight years later,” said the human rights defender.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is steadily changing its education system, abandoning the one inherited from the Soviet Union.
Russian language is assigned to foreign language teaching, Russian literature is included in world literature studies. History courses include events such as the Holodomor, a Soviet-induced famine in the 20th century. in the 1930s, killing millions of Ukrainians, which Russia still denies.
However, despite the benefits from Russia, many families stick to Ukrainian education for their children, and teachers still teach in Ukrainian.
From September in the recently occupied territories, parents are paid a one-time payment of 145 euros for sending their children to a Russian school and 40 euros for each month they remain in school.
When Russia invaded and occupied the city of Kupyansk in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, the vocational school where Viktoria Shcherbakova taught was forced to convert to the Russian system and was later damaged and looted.
The Kupjansk motor transport vocational school, where V. Ščerbakova taught, is a virtual object that does not have its own home. About 300 students aged 14 to 18 attended practical training for mechanics and drivers as well as transport logistics courses. Although V. Shcherbakova offers distance lessons, she does not know if she will ever be able to teach face-to-face at this school.
“We are not in Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Kupyansk,” she emphasized. “We’re nowhere.”
Education system front
October month. according to data, about 1,300 schools were operating in the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia. Teachers were targets of collaboration – they were detained and threatened.
The workers were sent to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea to retrain for the Russian education system or were told that if they refused to work, they would be replaced by teachers from Russia, Politico reported.
“And if you didn’t work for them, it wasn’t clear what the consequences would be,” said V. Shcherbakova. “If you openly said that you did not support them, you would end up in their prisons or cellars.”
One Kupjansk school principal, who refused to open her school after the occupation, was kept in the basement of the police station for almost a month.
According to V. Shcherbakova, out of nearly 50 teachers and administrative staff of the vocational school, only seven refused to work with the Russian occupation authorities.
“I am ashamed of my school,” said the teacher.
The college began to operate remotely in the territory controlled by Ukraine. V. Shcherbakova became acting director.
Together with a colleague, they printed diplomas for those graduates who managed to reach and prepared a program for the start of the new academic year.
But when she and her colleague started calling the students, they discovered that the teenagers were registered to start the school year at Kupyansk College – under the Russian system.
September 1 the physical and virtual college started teaching courses in parallel. Eight days later, Ukrainian forces recaptured Kupjanska.
Returning to Kupjanska after the liberation, V. Shcherbakova saw that although the college’s equipment and teaching aids had been completely looted, the library was full of untouched new Russian language textbooks.
Some of the college staff left in Kupjansk fled to Russia. Others contacted V. Shcherbakova and asked if they could work with her.
“At first I didn’t have an answer. I am not the security service of Ukraine, I cannot judge them,” said V. Shcherbakova.
Some of them are suspected of collaboration. The Ministry of Education later clarified that teachers who introduced or collaborated with the Russian education system were banned from teaching.
According to Ukrainian legislation on collaboration passed in early September, teachers who spread Russian propaganda in schools could face prison terms, writes Politico.
After returning to Kyiv, V. Shcherbakova conducts classes and half-yearly exams online. Since Russia began bombing critical infrastructure in Ukraine, there have been daily power outages.
Her students, scattered across the country by the war, also face power outages. Others who have gone abroad combine lessons with studies in Germany or England. Some stayed in Kupjansk, recently liberated from occupation, where there is no internet and the city is under Russian fire from morning to night.
“I can only call those students and ask: Are you alive?” How did the night go? This is your exam question, just tell me something that comes to your mind”, said V. Shcherbakova.
The lost generation
The physical challenges of war and the ideological struggle as Russia seeks to impose its own education system threaten the foundation of Ukrainian education: participation. Teacher V. Shcherbakova says that her students, most of whom are from low-income families, are dropping distance learning courses.
“They need to survive. They gave up everything to find a job. Many of them had to leave their homes, and they have to live on something,” said the woman.
Teachers are also leaving the profession, due to migration, retirement, low pay, war-related stress and bans. According to the Department of Education, Kharkiv region since February. almost 3,000 out of 21,500 teachers were lost.
In Kupjansk, as in many liberated towns and villages, the desire to learn is not matched by the necessary infrastructure – electricity, internet and teachers. Children can only get an education if they move.
“We don’t want to leave. This is our land, and we want to live here,” explained Iryna Procenko. She recently collected humanitarian aid with her six-year-old daughter Zlata Kupjanske. Before the war, the family had a small dairy business in the town and remained there throughout the occupation.
“But now I’m afraid we’ll have to leave because of our studies,” explained my mother.
“It is not so much the quality of education that is important as communication. They lose socialization,” emphasized teacher Larysa from Berdiansk.
Some parents compare this situation to the situation of their grandparents. They missed a year of schooling during the Second World War and after the war had to study together with much younger children. This is how they got the name “overgrown”.
V. Shcherbakova’s son, in addition to suffering an injury from running away from home, had to spend most of the last school year in extra classes in order to move to the next grade in Kyiv.
“They try hard and are very excited,” explained V. Shcherbakova. “They are lost children.”
According to Politico inf. prepared by Diana Kuklis
Tags: situation reminiscent World War
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