Pedagogical Discourse on the Reform of General Secondary Education in Soviet Ukraine through the Prism of Child Protection in the 1920s: the Struggle against Unification

Abstract

The article reveals the leading ideas of Ukrainian teachers and civil leaders (V. Arnautov, Ya. Chepiha, T. Harbuz, H. Ivanytsia, Ya. Riappo, M. Skrypnyk, O. Zaluzhnyi, etc.) on reforming school education for the sake of development and protection of a child in the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (USSR) in the 1920s. It has been proven that after the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution (1917–1921) and the capture of the territory of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks, the pedagogical discourse focused on the idea of creating a new labour school. It should be based on the following principles: labour, active, social education to protect the child, communist, the principle of Ukrainization and at the same time the imposition of Russification, etc. Ukrainian educators, looking for active methods of teaching children in a labour school, turned mainly to European and world pedagogical science (A. Binet, J. Dewey, F. Freeman, G. Kerschensteiner, E. Meumann, P. Natorp, F. Seidel, Ch. Spearman, W. Stern, L. Terman, E. Thorndike etc.). Pedagogical discourse was aimed at opposing the unification of school education according to the Russian model. The policy of Ukrainization was effective, so the all-Union authorities intensified ideological pressure, seeking to curtail this process. The struggle for the Ukrainian school ended tragically for Ukrainian teachers. This eloquently testifies to how the Soviet ideology during the reform used the ideas of social protection of the child, Ukrainization of the educational process to establish its own ideological and socio-political goals of the totalitarian society.