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12 December 2005 18:02

Education of the Future. Persistent Integrated Human Development System

Persistent Education System

The whole human life is development. Education serves as a source of development during one’s lifetime. The level of the Ukrainians’ development, in part, spiritual, varies. Thus, everyone requires certain level of education in various stages of his/her life. Society has to provide for filling these sources not only for children and young adults. Society has to provide for filling these sources not only for children and young adults. It seems expedient to start baby’s education even before she is born, through educating future parents and persistent education up to wisdom schools for senior people. This interpretation completely meets the Millennium Development Goals adopted by Ukraine in the chapter dealing with providing high-quality education during one’s lifetime. We found successful examples of creating and filling these sources, which in the future will constitute a single lifetime education system.

Pedagogy in the Twenty-First Century Festival

The Pedagogy in the Twenty-First Century Festival is held on an annual basis near Odesa, gathering together practicing pedagogues and educational workers from many foreign countries and Ukraine’s regions to exchange their experience and educational methods.

Within the festival’s framework, a forum took place, providing an arena for dialog, research, and decision-making regarding the vectors in education’s development. The forum featured the New Education for the New Century conference, educational programs and pedagogic ideas contest, children and youth festival, the Civil Culture University’s summer school, etc. The festival elaborates educational philosophy and worldview, procedures for managing development and quality of education, and public self-government in the process of forming the Education of the Future.

The Ukraine 3000 Foundation intends to support the festival in 2006 as a new pedagogic technology, providing for its participants’ prompt breakthrough to innovational ideas and technologies of the twenty-first century.

Creating a Man Project

We support ideas and activities aimed at renewing the spirituality of the process of childbirth and educating future parents. The Kyiv Mothers Movement charitable organization has sent us a project envisaging a change of view on parenthood, introducing childbirth without fear, spiritual family education, forming a new generation of Ukrainians able to create happy families, favoring children’s development. The project provides for creating a family counseling center and maternity hospital for natural childbirth without unnecessary medical interference; children’s counseling center on physical, psychological, creative, and spiritual development, conducting educative and pedagogic activities.

Intensifying Worldview at Secondary Schools

We sustain the idea of forming integrated worldview and upbringing personality at secondary schools. The Ukraine 3000 International Foundation supported holding  the Innovative Approach to School Management System scholarly practical conference in Luhansk. The conference was initiated by public organizations for directors and deputy directors of Luhansk schools. Its major idea was preparing for the future change in the concept of school education: from training a person-worker to raising whole-hearted personality, highly developed spiritually, an active member of civil society.

Teachers from Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, and Luhansk exchanged their experience in school management, as well as forming and revealing children’s talents, creating conditions for discovering the child’s potential and forming a creative personality. Proposals were adopted to hold a pedagogical forum, create a public coordinating board at the local education department, and discuss draft concept of spiritual perfection of personality, team, and the society.

Educating Young People with Special Needs and Abilities

In 2006 the Ukraine 3000 Foundation participated in the awards ceremony for graduates of the Window to the World Computer Literacy School for People with Restricted Eyesight. After a four-months course at this school, its students obtain computer typist certificates, allowing job placement.

The Foundation supports the idea of continuing and intensifying education for people whose abilities in some respect differ from that of average people and expresses its respect for the spirit of people who teach and learn, using only there internal light and eyesight. (In the photo: The school’s graduation ceremony)

The school operates since 2002, using the audio-based system of work with the computer. During this period, around 300 students graduated from it. The school is equipped with modern computers connected to the Internet, skin readers with Ukrainian- and Russian language synthesizers accompanying the user’s actions with audio. Designing these synthesizers started as early as in the 1980s and was first introduced at the Window to the World school. At present, the skin reader technologies and methods of education for people with restricted eyesight are being perfected.

Today the Window to the World school closely cooperates with specialized boarding schools for people with restricted eyesight in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Mukacheve, and Kerch, as well as renowned Ukrainian universities (the Taras Shevchenko National University, KPI National Technological University, and Kyiv Mohyla Academy National University) and institutes at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Cybernetics Institute and Software Systems Institute).

Synergy of Science and Creativity in Education

The Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation also supports educative technologies foreseeing integrated view on the world and the processes taking place in it. This method is used by the Ukrainian branch of the Little Arts Academy headed by Volodymyr Lubenko. In part, with the Foundation’s participation an exhibition of its students’ works was on display in Kyiv from May 25 to July 3, 2006, and a round table titled The School of the Future: Education through Synthesis of the Arts and Science was held, discussing the new concept of education in Ukraine.

The uniqueness of Volodymyr Lubchenko’s pedagogical system is in upbringing a creative personality through synthesis of the arts (painting, music, eurhythmics) and sciences (philosophy, pedagogy, psychology).