THE PROCESS OF TEACHING NATIONAL HISTORY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN UKRAINE: FORMING NEW CONTENT

Abstract

Every political authority, even a historical one, puts forward its “own” demands on history and historians. It was, and probably always will be. This was no exception during the restoration of the Ukrainian state in the 1990s. From ideological monism, Ukrainian science has shifted to reforming social and humanitarian education in the country, including historical education. The beginning was in 1988, when the existing Soviet power, realizing that it was impossible to stop the process of change, brought it under its control, setting up a coordinating committee to develop a program for the development of historical research, to improve the study and propaganda of the history of the Ukrainian SSR. The Commission proposed to separate a course of history of the Ukrainian SSR in secondary and higher education into an independent educational discipline, to expand the number of schools with advanced study of history, and to organize training in leading universities of specialists in the history of Ukraine. But to proclaim does not always mean to do. The cardinal changes will begin later and will be discussed in this article. Until the 1990s, Ukraine had no national concept of historical education. Until 1989, the history of the CPSU was the only basic historical discipline in all higher education institutions of the USSR, as well as in the entire Soviet Union, regardless of profile of study or region. The main educational programs were approved centrally in Moscow by the General Directorate Teaching of Social Sciences of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education of the USSR. In 1989, the course of the history of the CPSU was withdrawn from the educational program of higher education institutions and was replaced by the obligatory historical discipline - “Social and political history of the XX century”. In 1990, universities were granted more rights in defining the content of training. This facilitated the deployment of a grassroots initiative to improve the content of historical teaching. The first such initiative was made by teachers and students of higher educational establishments of Lviv region, where since 1990 most courses of history of Ukraine were taught in most universities, although the official status of this course has not been determined yet by the goverment. In 1992, universities of Ukraine are moving to an in-depth study of national history, re-profiling the departments of USSR history into the departments of Ukrainian history, increasing the number of hours of studying the history of Ukraine for students of historical specialties. But a major drawback in teaching the history of Ukraine was the lack of science-based course programs. In 1993, the Scientific and Methodological Commission on the History of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine began the development of a typical program for the course of history of Ukraine as a kind of reference for the departments of history of Ukraine of higher educational institutions. The development and approval in 1993 of the program of the normative course of history of Ukraine for students of history faculties of higher educational establishments, as well as the drawing up in 1994-1996 a typical program of the basic course of history of Ukraine for other higher educational institutions contributed the development of scientific approaches to teaching Ukrainian history, and clarification of teachers’ positions on discussion issues in history. At one time with the development of the educational programs, the national concept of historical education in Ukraine was created and improved. Key words: history education, history program, national history, course of the History of Ukraine, higher education institutions