Lessons of thought and morality: Vasyl Sukhomlynsky
Exhibit dedicated to renowned Ukrainian educator opens at Teachers’ Building
Utilizing his decades-long pedagogical experience, the Ukrainian educator Vasyl Sukhomlynsky (1918-1970) wrote 35 books, more than 600 articles, and 1,500 tales, stories, and novellas for children. His works are still popular among educators in Ukraine and abroad.
What makes Sukhomlynsky’s views interesting for today’s educators? This question is the subject of an interview that Sukhomlynsky’s daughter Olha Sukhomlynska, the head of the Department of Educational History and Theory at Ukraine’s Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, gave to The Day.
“In Vasyl Sukhomlynsky’s view, all children without exception are talented and gifted. The much-vaunted schools and classes for gifted children do not fit into his system of teaching. According to his view, no two children are alike as to their way of thinking, world perception, intellectual traits, willpower, and character. You can only understand a child if you observe the way s/he interacts with the surrounding world. Teachers and parents are gravely mistaken if they think they should force a problem pupil to soak up reams of printed wisdom to do better at school.
“One should spend more time and effort on helping children to develop and teaching them to think, rather than forcing them to crouch over a book. The development of curiosity should be the beginning of children’s intellectual upbringing.
‘I am worried,’ Sukhomlynsky wrote, ‘about children whose teachers try to keep their pupils tense and busy with active mental work during every minute of a lesson. A child’s brain is not an electronic memorization device but living, thinking, and delicate matter. Excessive intellectual strain, beyond a child’s capacities, is not conducive to the activation of its mental activity.”
The essence of Sukhomlynsky’s lessons on thinking lies in developing children’s ability to wonder, helping them to perceive new and unfamiliar things in the known, and understand cause-and-effect relations.”
A new Russian-language anthology entitled Caution: a Child! V. A. Sukhomlynsky on Problem Children, was published recently. This is a collection of materials on approaches to educating problem children. In addition to previously published materials (letters, articles, and chapters of books), the collection includes a previously unpublished work entitled How to Heal the Brain: With Thinking, Work, and Creativity, or Drugs? in which Sukhomlynsky sums up his 35 years of research. What does this advice consist of?
“What always tormented Sukhomlynsky was the question concerning children who are incapable of mastering knowledge in a normal way. How can one improve their brainwork and make sure that this improvement will be handed down and enrooted in future generations? Sukhomlynsky’s advice is to help such children develop intellectually and emotionally in ordinary schools by stimulating memory and thought, so that childish joy and wonder come to them as to discoverers of truth. However, he suggests a cautious approach to loading a weak memory. In his view, grades should be given when children achieve success. He drew up a special thought-developing course for such pupils.”
What does the quality of teaching depend on, according to Sukhomlynsky?
“He believed that the quality of teaching is directly linked to the amount of spare time required for free choice reading and mulling it over. This is especially important in the upper grades, where children have to choose their life path. As a historian of education, I can say that the question of overloading children was always being discussed, but when the time came to relieve children’s educational burden, as a rule there was never any result because there was no desire to discard something.
“The same situation exists today. Older schoolchildren are soon going to be taught on a profession-oriented basis. Given the shortening of the academic year in the graduating grades, older pupils will only face a heavier workload. Children have no time to look at themselves, let alone prepare for anything. Overtaxing schoolchildren has a negative effect not only on their health but also on their developmental level and conscious selection of a path in life.”
Which of Sukhomlynsky’s educational criteria are especially important today?
“Sukhomlynsky always taught that pupils and teachers must pay attention to the inner spiritual state of the people who surround you and to support people in times of need. In addition, he always acted humanely: he disliked extreme individualism, where a person secures his or her own interests by restricting somebody else’s. Today Sukhomlynsky’s ideas are largely being heeded in preschool and elementary education, and during the planning of ethics lessons for schools. Our children are choosing their values by themselves, and their choices depend on what we have instilled in them in childhood. Even if they make mistakes, we must remember that we should bring them up only with love. This is the outlook of Sukhomlynsky the humanist and pedagogue.”
