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ing standards and diminishing the knowledge acquired by students. The bright children are the victims of this system, for they become discouraged and frequently lost. For a long time the leading Lviv scholars have wor ried about the fate of Ukrainian scholarship, culture, language, about their further development, as well as about the influx of capable Ukrainian youth into higher education, into all spheres of our social structure. It was important for competent students to begin preparations for their future professions in school, to choose these professions with care and because they liked them, for only such professionals are most creative and productive. The Small Academy of Arts and Sciences of Lviv is an institution which is geared to help talented youth realize their potential. The initiator of this idea and the first president of the Academy was noted physicist Ihor Yuchnovsky. He heads the Lviv branch of the Institute of Theoretic Physics at the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his works have been translated into English. Also, he is also known as a social activist, as president of the Lviv organization “Memorial,” and as an elected representative to the Supreme Council of Ukraine from the democratic bloc. His co-organizers of the Small Academy are professor of physics Ivan Vakarchuk (cur rently a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR), chemist and scholar Roman Kucher, and histo rian Jaroslav Isaievych. These individuals were part of the initial Ukrainian rebirth movement and in leadership positions in the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv. The Small Academy was founded in 1978 as an arts and science organization for students. The name was taken from the actual Academy of Arts and Sciences which in Ukraine unites sixty scholarly and research institutes in all fields of study and development. Through the name association we wanted to put forth the Small Academy’s serious intent and to encourage students to enroll. To participate in the organization and to initiate daily activities at the Small Academy our president Juchnovsky invited six women who had experience in the educational field Lesia Bartish, Iryna Danylovych, Ivanna Borodchuk, Daria Kulchycky, Tania Popil and myself. The beginnings were difficult. We not only had to find gifted students in schools, but we had to create interesting learning programs for them, and entice scho lars to work with these students. At every turn we had to defend the right of the Academy’s existence, because it is a known fact that everything that is not officially sanc tioned in our world is looked upon with suspicion. The most difficult part was to develop a functional system of work, to achi;eve the authority through initiative and conscientious effort, and to negate suspicion and pacivity. As in the grand Academy, ours also is divided into branches according to fields of study. We have fifteen branches. In addition to those commonly known to stu dents in school there is astro-physics, archeology, the science of teaching, geology and others. All these branches conduct their activities in auditoriums, univer sity laboratories, in the polytechnic, in forestry schools, in agricultural and medical institutions, in archives or museums of Lviv — all arranged during the students’ free time outside of regular school hours. Through the preceding years we have developed a basic work program. First there are classes which are held once a week in every branch of study. We make sure that the agenda is interesting and pertinent to cur rent issues in each particular field. The class curriculum is adjusted every year to insure the attention of the stu dents from the time they enter the Small Academy, to the time they graduate. Lectures are open to all stu dents, but research, work which is most popular, is conducted under the direction of instructors and is open only to the most gifted students. It should be pointed out that students always work on projects which have both a scholarly and research approach, most often within the realm of expertise of their supervisors. Initially there was a questions as to whether stu dents should be burdened with this kind of work in addi tion to their regular school obligations, and whether they would take such projects seriously. However, our scholars have known from experience that the more responsibility a person has, the more gets done with lit tle wasted time. Our academician Roman Kucher says that the only person who does not have time, is the one who does not want to have it. Psychological findings state that an individual’s best time for learning is up to the age of 16 or 17 and our experience in the Small Academy confirms that finding. The gifted students familiarize themselves with compli cated mathematical problems, those of physics, chemis try or in scholarly research and arrive at promising solu tions which their instructors may include in publica tions. Many times the scholars are so impressed with the work of their students, they embrace them as co authors of their research efforts. At the end of the school year each department holds a conference where students who work on re search report on the progress of their work. The reports themselves are demanding. Each student must justify the premise of his work, write an analysis of his re search, provide supporting illustrative material and give conclusions. A short presentation, given in layman’s language and underlined with drawings, slides or pho tographs is required. This, however, cannot be achieved immediately — students are taught that progressively. Usually, these tasks are best performed by very dedicated students. We are lucky that there are many of them, the trick is to find them. At the beginning of each year our enrollment schedule registers about 1500 stu dents. Toward the middle of the year about 500-600
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