BOOK REVIEW: Ethnicity and education around the world (11/18/01)

BOOK REVIEW: Ethnicity and education around the world

Ethnicity, Race and Nationality in Education: A Global Perspective, N. Ken Shimihara, Iwan Z. Holowinsky, Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke, editors. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 2001.

by George Gajecky

An important conference devoted to exploring problems of ethnicity and education in the world took place in October 1999, with participants coming from England, Wales, South Africa, Israel, Japan, China, Ukraine and the United States. This was the 14th such conference sponsored by Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Now, in 2001, a collection of papers from that conference has been published in the book "Ethnicity, Race and Nationality in Education: A Global Perspective."

The work consists of 11 articles and an introduction by Prof. N. Ken Shimahara of Rutgers, who underlines that in today's world ethnicity and nationality are not interchangeable. In Ukraine, which was strongly Russified up to its independence in 1991, higher education mostly uses the Russian language. Therefore, the struggle continues for the national language, Ukrainian, to become the language of education, academic discussion and publishing - not just the language of one ethnic group, the Ukrainians.

The most interesting presentation from our perspective is "Educational Reform and Language Issue in Ukraine," which was delivered by Profs. Petro Kononenko and Iwan Z. Holowinsky. The former is professor of literature and director of the Institute of Ukrainian Studies at Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv. The latter is professor of educational psychology at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University.

Their presentation was mostly about the social, political and historical roles of the Ukrainian language. Problems in Ukraine arose from its geopolitical position between Europe and Asia. Russification of Ukraine continued from the time of the tsarist Russian Empire through the Soviet period, since language was central to the national independence of Ukrainians. And national language and national identity are two sides of one medal - they were considered threatening to the ruling powers that subjugated Ukraine.

In Ukraine in 1999, nearly 11 million students were enrolled in 26,000 schools - among them 14 classical and 45 technical universities, 700 higher educational establishments ("vuzy"), 30 academies, 72 institutes and 1,176 technical schools. The faculty consisted of 40,000 professors.

Even though Ukrainians form 75 percent of the population, only 50 percent of schools use Ukrainian as the language of instruction. At secondary and higher educational levels only 37 percent of instruction is in Ukrainian.

All of this occurs because of the government's neglect of its own laws, for the Constitution of Ukraine clearly states that the official language is Ukrainian. But the passive acceptance of the language law often has the warm support of reactionary Russophiles in some regions of Ukraine. For instance, in Crimea, where 62,000 Ukrainians live, only two high schools use Ukrainian as the language of instruction. Similarly, in Donetsk 93 percent of schools use Russian as the language of instruction, Luhansk - 90 percent, Zaporizhia - 67 percent, Odesa - 65 percent and Kharkiv - 60 percent.

In 1997 there were 3,586 foreign language schools of them, 3,470 were Russian and the rest were Romanian, Hungarian, Hungarian, Moldovan, Polish and Jewish.

The situation, therefore, is not very encouraging. The declaration of Ukrainian as the official language in the Constitution was only the first step. Implementing it as a subject of instruction in universities, high schools and elementary schools is an absolute necessity. It also has to be introduced as the language of the diplomatic corps, the military forces, internal security forces, business, commerce and transportation, the authors argue.

The same situation exist with educational publications. The authors present statistics that nothing has changed since 1960-1964 (the last period for which statistics on university presses are available). At that time the university presses of Kyiv, Lviv and Kharkiv published 2,297 titles - of which only 795, or 36 percent, were in Ukrainian. Therefore, the years of geopolitical hegemony of Russia and its absolute control accustomed two generations of educators to accept the superiority of the Russian language.

Consequently, the acceptance of Ukrainian language will require a lot of effort. Universal usage of Ukrainian will occur only when all the universities and higher institutions of education use Ukrainian as the language of instruction. Then, for purely utilitarian purposes, parents will encourage children to learn Ukrainian because it will enable them to get a higher education.

In summary, the situation is quite bleak. But the presentation of such questions in an international forum brings Ukrainian problems to the attention of specialists from the around the world.

The 1999 conference was one of many sponsored by the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University under the title "Diversity in the New Millennium: International Perspective." Such conferences need to be supported, and Ukrainians must be encouraged to take part in them.

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