Books and education

It seems appropriate to talk about children's education on the day that the international criminal court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children,  and also for his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, whose title now seems a contradiction in terms.

One of the rights of children (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) is the right to an education and Putin, amongst his many war crimes, has tried to suppress this right. There is evidence that educational institutions have been targeted for bombing and we have been to many areas where schools have been destroyed.

Next week we're travelling to the Chernihiv region again and we'll return to a school there. It's student population has grown significantly as it now takes children from a number of surrounding villages where schools have been bombed. On our last visit we found that the school appeared to be under-resourced and had very few books in all subjects. Teachers told us that the Russian soldiers who occupied the village stole the Russian books and used the Ukrainian books as toilet paper.

One of the reasons we're going back to the school is that we had a really generous donation, made on behalf of a 5-year-old girl called Harper, who loves school and loves books. Her grandfather said that if she was old enough to understand the impact of the war on Ukrainian children, he knows she would want those children to have what she takes for granted. 

It's taken some time to purchase the books, partly due to COVID and partly because we weren't quite sure which books to buy and where to buy them. We decided to start with English language teaching books as we have got to know the English teacher in the school.

Bob had the inspired idea of visiting our nearest school and asking the English teacher which books they use. Although there are challenges with children's education in Lviv due to the war, their schools are intact, they are well resourced and the routine of teaching continues, including, of course, regular interruptions for air raid sirens when they have to go down to the basement.

We weren't quite sure what our reception would be like - two strangers walking into a school with a request to see the English teacher on the translation App on their phone! But it was as ever - warm and welcoming. We spent about half an hour with the English teacher, who showed us the text books they use. She invited Bob to observe one of her English lessons and said that the children would enjoy having a native English speaker (even with a Yorkshire accent!).

The English teacher also told us about a nearby academic book shop called the Welcome Bookstore. She telephoned the shop owner and arranged for us to meet her later. It was a lovely little basement shop, which the owner said she had managed to keep going throughout the war with the help of a generator. She spent time with us, recommended English text books for all ages and even offered to donate some Ukrainian books for us to take to the school.

Before we left she presented us with a Ukrainian flag and suggested we ask people to sign it on our travels, which we thought was an excellent idea. We asked her to sign it first.

We hope to be able to purchase more books for this school, in all subjects. If you would like to support with a donation however small, please:

1. Open PayPal and, when asked for name of payee or email, enter trawden4ukraine@hotmail.com. 

Or, if you live in/near Trawden:

2. Use the collection box in Trawden community shop.