“You are currently forming those who will change the country in 10-20 years,” – the well-known dissident, adviser to the rector of the Ukrainian National University Myroslav Marynovych addressed the teachers. The discussion on the education of the future took place at the Ukrainian Catholic University within the framework of the innovative Ukrainian-Taiwanese project Leave no one behind partnership
33 informatics teachers from 20 schools of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Poltava regions received diplomas on completion of the innovative program of professional development at UCU. For half a year, teachers studied the latest methods of teaching STEM, Python and robotics, and passed exams. Schools participating in the project will be provided with sets of modern equipment for computer science classrooms. The teachers have already received certificates for the equipment. The project is implemented by the NGO “All-Ukrainian Democratic Forum” with the support of Taiwan and with the assistance of People’s Deputy Mykola Kniazhytskyi.
“In this project, you were given not only professional knowledge, but also supplemented with what can be called value formation. And this is extremely important. We at UCU in such cases say that the correct education must be based on two wings – faith and reason, that is, professional education must be supplemented by value education. In today’s Ukraine, this is not self-evident,” Myroslav Marynovych emphasized. In his opinion, parents are the first educators of a child, but not the only and exclusive ones. It is teachers who supplement professional education with ethical training of pupils or students.
“We dare not continue to be the way we were before February 24, 2022. We need the tablets of a new law of our lives – a new social contract, and it must be set by a “critical mass” of those who, in memory of the innocently murdered, will renounce the recent dishonor. These changes must also affect the school, which must be a place where you testify to your values, without imposing them by force. Your actions should show who you are. When you testify by your own behavior, you become a role model,” explained Myroslav Marynovych.
According to him, Ukraine should be renewed on the basis of a qualitatively different concept of state management and on the basis of a new “social contract”. And these changes should grow from new ideas and eternal spiritual values. That is why today we have to rethink them anew.
“We are all witnesses of how before our eyes trust was established between the volunteers and soldiers of our army. They were the ones who pulled the “string” that untangles the whole knot: love for one’s neighbor, based on the truth, generates interpersonal trust, which, in turn, enables interpersonal solidarity, which becomes the nourishing energy of solidary social action. For this, it is not necessary to go to Kyiv with an army or to destroy palaces of officials, instead, one only needs to look into one’s own soul and restore the correct value matrix.”
In his speech, Myroslav Marynovych called on Ukrainians to always defend what we consider valuable. He quoted His Beatitude Lubomir Husar: “Let people grow into freedom.”
“Form schoolchildren in such a way that they grow up in freedom. So that they grow up in dignity, without which freedom is unthinkable,” emphasized the dissident. But he cautioned, it is important to teach young people to distinguish between freedom and permissiveness, which is not freedom. After all, freedom is also impossible without responsibility,” he emphasized.
