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36
UKRAINIAN WOMAN OUR ENGLISH COLUMN THE UKRAINIAN WOMAN EDUCATOR The educational role of the mother had not been uniform through the ages. In olden times a mother's influence had been spontaneous, only in the last two centuries it assumed organized forms withirn the society. It is es pecially interesting to observe this course in the Ukrainian so ciety the mother had exerted her i ndividual influence o v e r the fam ily since times immemorial. And as an educator in the organized community she revealed herself very earlv to be of potent force. In the 60’s of the last century an Ukrainian educator Christie Alchevska conducted a Sunday school in Kharkiv. She was a phy sician but was engaged as an en thusiastic worker in educating the children of the working class. She was under influence of popu list slogans and teachings, very popular in Europe at that time. She wrote a book with recom mendations for the people what to read. Alchevska set an exam,pie for many a young girl. Daughters of rich landowners took tihe lead in starting schools in the villages. Many girls went abroad to study since the universities in Russia were still- excluding the women. In Kiev two sisters opened up a kindergarten. They were rear ing the children in a large room of their apartment in accordance with modern principles of educa tion. One of the sisters, Sophia Russov'a, subsequently became a prominent Ukrainian pedagog. Another manner of education was chosen by Maria Hrinchenko. She was a teacher and worked to- p-ether with her husband. Boris Hrinchenko, also a teacher as well as an author and a distin guished philologist. They were forced to teach pupils in Russian, yet, both decided to teach Uk rainian to them, too. They edited an Ukrainian primer and other books for the children. Thereupon they were persecuted for these efforts bv the Czarist Russian go vernment and hence they were unable to continue their educa tional endeavor. Still their move had been momentous and there were many who followed their initiative. Hrinchenkos likewise engaged in educational work for adults. They contributed their labor to forming of an educational society named Enlightenment (Prosvita) whiah was gathering the youth as wrell as the older people. This ed- ucation'al cl-ub was stressing mostly the studying of history and literature of Ukraine as well as developing of national consci ousness. These clubs spread all over Ukraine and achieved a great deal in their activities in spite of persecution by the Russian gov ernment. The mentioned personages of the 19th century became the guid ing light for the furtherance of education of Ukrainian youth. The leading Ukrainians then re alized the necessity of bringing up the youth in the spirit of Uk rainian tradition. Until then there was not much chance for such advancement since the Czarist Russian government would sup press any initiative in this respect. Only during World War I an op portunity offered a trial. And the Ukrainian women in Kiev started a shelter to take care of war or phans and refugees. They organ ized special centers луЬеге thev managed to teach to sing Ukrain ian songs and at times also to read and write Ukrainian. After the revolution of 1917 there opened a great field for Uk rainian schools. Ukrainian wom en, pedagogs and progressive so cial workers, embarked on the ac tion. They first started Ukrainian schools in Kiev, including the first Ukrainian high school. The minis try of education of Ukraine in cluded many women educators. One of them was Sophia Russova, an author of many books on peda gogy- After the occupation of Uk raine by communists in 1920, the women educators dkTp<5t abandon their efforts. Even in the worst conditions of starvation they con tinued their toil. They strove to raise the level of popular enlight enment. True, they were unable to rear the youth in Ukrainian patriotic spirit, still thev managed to contribute to the efforts of li quidating the illiteracy. Such cir cumstances lasted until 1928 when the Russian bolshevik gov ernment set out to persecute mer cilessly the Ukrainian educated classes.. The teachers were the first victims. Since they enjoyed influence over the youngsters as well as over masses of the com mon people, they were considered most dangerous to the communist reeime. In the course of that pe riod manv idealists from amonig the Ukrainian teachers perished. At tihe same time the Ukrain ian schools in West Ukraine were ruthlessly curbed by the Polish government, and the- Ukrainian теоріє had to rely for the most part o>n Ukrainian private schools maintained by private sources in cluding- the donations by Ukrain ians from United States and Can ada. T he first Ukrainian hipih school for p-irls had been established at the citv of Peremishl some 50 ven.rs a^o. It was led by Maria Primivna, who although not a
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