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CONTINUITY OF PRESCHOOL AND SCHOOL EDUCATION IN THE PEDAGOGICAL THOUGHT OF S.F. RUSOVA (1856-1940)
I. V. Zaychenko
Sofia F. Rusova (nee Lindfors) (1856-1940) was a teacher, writer, journalist, Doctor of Sociology at the Ukrainian Sociological Institute, Professor of Pedagogy at the M. P. Dragomanov Ukrainian High Pedagogical Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia, head of the preschool and extra-school education department in the Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-1921), head of the Ukrainian branch of the International Women's Organization, organizer of the first kindergarten in Ukraine and well-known public figure of her era. She has left a rich pedagogical heritage (more than 300 of her works have been currently introduced into scientific use) which contains many interesting ideas, notions and conclusions on topical issues of public education, pedagogy, national schooling and education.
Lindfors was born on February 18, 1856 in Oleshnya, a village in the former Gorodnyansky County of Chernigov Province (presently Repkinsky District of Chernigov Region) to a retired Russian Army officer of Swedish extraction, Fedor Lindfors, and a Frenchwoman, Anne Gervais. Sofia received primary education at home and in 1871 she graduated with honors from Fundukleyev School in Kyiv (Kiev). In the same year she organized, together with her sister, one of the first kindergartens in Ukraine. She actively participated in the Hromada (“territorial commune”) in Kyiv and then in the Ukrainian community in St. Petersburg, where she had gone to study. After marrying the ethnographer and statistician Alexander Rusov, Sofia helped him in preparing a new edition of Taras Shevchenko's “Kobzar” (originally published in 1840) in Prague, and worked as a teacher. Due to her educational activities and pro-Ukrainian views in the Tsarist Russian Empire of the time, Rusova was sent to prison a number times and was under constant police surveillance. Consequently Rusova was enthusiastic about the February Revolution in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in 1917, hoping that it would bring social and national liberation to Ukraine. On the invitation of I. Steshenko, Rusova headed the Department of Preschool and Extra-school Education of the General Secretariat for Education in the Central Rada (“parliament”) and the Central Bureau of the All-Ukrainian Union of Teachers (initiated by her as early as 1906). After 1921 as a consequence of the Russian Civil War (1917-1922) and an end to independent Ukraine in the coming Soviet Union (from 1922), Rusova was exiled in Lviv (Lvov), Ukraine (1921), Tarnow, Poland (1922), Podebrady, Czechoslovakia (1922-1923) and finally Prague (1923 until her death in 1940). In 1937, Rusova became the Honorary Chairman of the World Union of Ukrainian Women. She was buried in Prague.
The creative heritage of Rusova includes such monographs as “Theory and Practice of Preschool Education”, “Preschool Education”, “New Schooling for Social Education”, “New Methods of Preschool Education”, “Didactics”; such textbooks as “Ukrainian Primer” and “Basic French Tutorial for Self-Study and First Grades of School with a French-Ukrainian Dictionary”, and a great many articles.
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The central role in the pedagogical heritage of Rusova is played by the concept of “Ukrainian schooling”, a system of national education and national upbringing. She went down in the history of educational thought primarily as a prominent theorist of preschool education. As a teacher educated in a European way, she had good knowledge of the diverse reform movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was especially impressed by the theory and practice of free education combined with ideas of experimental pedagogy (Ovide Decroly, Addolphe Ferriere, Georg Kerschensteiner, Sebastian Faure and the preschool education ideas of F. Froebel and M. Montessori). However, Rusova viewed foreign achievements and international experience through the prism of “Ukrainian national schooling” as a system of education and upbringing. Appreciating Montessori's idea of the need for the free development of children and Froebel's idea for the need for a harmonious combination of man (child) and nature, Rusova built her own system of preschool education, emphasizing the need for educating preschoolers on a national (“ethno-ideological”) basis.
Rusova believed that the main task of kindergarten was not only to awaken the child's abilities and curiosity and to nurture feelings of love, but also to promote a love for Ukrainian national (“ethno-ideological”) culture using didactic games, drawings, sculpting and singing pertaining to the Ukrainian people. Children should grow out of this culture to subsequently enrich it. According to Rusova, both in the family and kindergarten environments, it is not only important to give children ready-to-use knowledge but also to awaken in them spiritual forces, curiosity, and to nurture their senses so that the child sees and hears everything and is able to work with pencils, scissors, clay and paper. All training and upbringing should be based on respect for the personality of a child. In this regard, the native language is the foundation of national (“ethno-ideological”) education and upbringing. These notions of Rusova have a special meaning for the modern organization of preschool education in Ukraine.
The pedagogical heritage of Rusova clearly contains the idea that an important prerequisite for the creative development of a child is to ensure the continuity of the educational process between preschool and school education. As early as the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Rusova believed that Ukraine possessed all the necessary conditions for the development of its own national (“ethnic Ukrainian”) school system in which children could creatively develop their intellectual, moral, aesthetic and physical abilities, industriousness, citizenship and be brought up in the spirit of friendship and fraternity between the all peoples of the world. She believed that this new Ukrainian schooling must meet the following requirements: (a) it should be secular, free from any class, inter-ethnic and religious restrictions; (b) boys and girls should study together at all levels of education; and (c) systematic school education should start at the age of seven. Preschool educational institutions should be available to children under seven, and compulsory primary schooling should last for six years. Compulsory subjects should include: the native language, arithmetic, basic natural history, the geography of Ukraine, drawing, Russian language, the geography of Russia, the history of Ukraine, singing, craftwork, dramatic reading, the history of Ukrainian and Russian literature, the history of Russia, world studies, a brief history
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of culture, general information about physics, chemistry, soil science and botany, as well as information on legislation.
Rusova's ideas are being implemented in contemporary Ukraine by creative teams of educators. They are opening educational institutions for children that use her ideas about the specifically “Ukrainian kindergarten” to develop their own charters. In the modern context of the development of Ukrainian education, Rusova's notion of the critical conceptualization and creative use of achievements in European and world educational thought in preschooling, schooling and upbringing has become especially important.
References
1. Джус О.В. Творча спадщина Софи РусовоТ перюду емкрацп (1922-1940) / О.В. Джус // - 1вано-Франивськ: Плай, 2002. - 260 с.
2. Зайченко I. В. Педагопчна концеп^я С. Ф. РусовоТ: [навчальний по^бник для студенев педагопчних легальностей вузiв] / 1.В.Зайченко // Передмова М. Д. Ярмаченка. - [3-е вид., доп. i переробл.]. - Чернов, 2006. - 234 с.
3. Коваленко 6.I., Пычук I.M. Освггня дiяльнiсть i педагопчж погляди С. РусовоТ / S.I. Коваленко, I.M. Пшчук. - Ыжин, 1998. - 214 с.
4. Русова Софiя. Мемуари. Щоденник / С.Русова //. - К.: Пол^рафкнига, 2004. - 544 с.
5. Русова С. Проект новой свободной школы для Украины // Народный учитель. - 1907. -№ 9. - С. 5-9.
6. Софiя Русова: З маловщомого i неведомого. - Частина 1. “Несторка украТнськоТ педагопчноТ лггератури...” / Упорядники О.Джус, З.Нагачевська. - 1вано-Франювськ: Гостинець, 2006. - 456 с.
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ARCHITECHTONICS OF LIFELONG EDUCATION IN A VIRTUAL AGE
L. P. Tsylenko
The intensity of the innovation processes in the fields of science and technology accelerates loss of functionality of existing knowledge, generating in a specialist of any sphere a need for the latest information and its adaption for operational use. In the age of virtuality, the mainstream of information processes is not confined to the space of high-tech and knowledge-intensive industries, and it spreads its influence on the whole socio-economic system in all spheres of public life. Nowadays, the concept of “lifelong education” is determined more and more as a way of socio-economic development for creating a modern society, i.e. a society based on knowledge. The system-architectonics of “lifelong education” identifies the features of interaction of structural and functional components, compulsory vocational training for relevant skills and improving and the updating of archaic knowledge skills, teaching not only professional skills but also other vital and necessary interesting competences.
Participation in society is almost impossible without a successful professional career, as it is the foundation of personal independence, self-esteem and well-being as it determines the quality of human existence and therefore the quality of the society as a whole. In this context, the scientific community and educational community faces the task of a timely and accurate flexible reorientation of the regulatory parametric establishment, of a specialist and or technical industries as well as from the humanities. The interdependent personal and vocational development of man as a subject of activity and communication throughout life is more and more becoming the priority trend of the educational strategy. There is a need for a specialist who would have the “outrunning vision” of a rapidly changing global processes, but at the same time would be a highly competitive and erudite expert in his professional activities.
The whole integrity of the professional-pragmatist functions as a specialist of a new generation and is inherently linked to pragmatic-communicative competence - the knowledge of language is of geolinguistic importance i.e. English and globalization is a new game with new rules. That is why today like never before the importance of English is paramount. As English is of the planetary importance and is in close interaction with all spheres of human life, be it social, economic, or political. English is the language of high technology, business, the Internet, Humanities and Arts and is a measure of intelligence of modern man and his academic mobility. With knowledge of English a specialist of any profile is a free, active and full participant in the social and economic life of the society. Following this logic, in the vector of the synergetic concept, we need to naturally integrate into a program of educational institutions learning English language in a new destination, dominant in the regulatory parametric characteristics of a competitive specialist of any profile. A specialist of the next generation has a unique imperativeness to master the language of interlinguistic importance. Consequently, in the strategy of lifelong education of a specialist of a new generation, the constructive capacity is the capacity on a receptive as well as creative level in the
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