A. S. Makarenko

In our country today the name of Anton Makarenko is widely known. As a writer of novels, articles and stories he is known to millions, especially for his serious works devoted to the problems of the upbringing of the child and of home and family relationships. At the same time, his name is well-known in educational circles and his lifelong devotion to the causes of Ukrainian education has gained him the respect of many contemporary educators.

Anton Semenovych Makarenko — the Ukrainian educational theorist was born on March 13, 1888 in a small Ukrainian railway town Belopolje. His father was a painter in the railway workshops. He worked from morning till night, butthefamily could not make ends meet.

The parents helped Anton in his wish to study. They had sent him to the local village school by the time he was twelve. Throughout his school years he was a good pupil and always stood at the head of the class. By the end of 1904 he had finished the programme of the six-year school in Kremenchug.

Then he took a one-year course in pedagogics and in 1905 was a teacher of the lowest grade in the railway school in Krukov, theplace where he had received his own initial education. He stayed in this post for the next six years. In 1911 he entered the Poltava Teachers' Institute, where he was to continue his teacher education. He had graduated from it with the Institute's gold medal by the middle of 1917.

Later Makarenko started to search new forms and methodsof education.He studied works written by prominent educators, which helped him to find out new forms of education and upbringing of children.

By the autumn of 1920 Makarenko had organized a colony for homeless children near Poltava. It was later named the Maxim Gorky Labour Colony.

In 1927 Makarenko was the head of the Dzerzhinsky Labour Commune for homeless children on the outskirts of Kharkiv.

A. S. Makarenko reared 3, 000 fine citizens and devoted patriots of our country during sixteen years of his educational work in the Gorky Colony and Dzerzhinsky Commune. A profound theoretician made a major contribution to Ukrainian pedagogics. He worked out a new understanding of discipline and a system of methods in character building and devoted great attention to the problem of upbringing in the family.

By the 1936 he had been able to devote himself to full-time writing. He is the author of books dealing with education and upbringing of children.

In one of his works he wrote: " Our children must grow into fine citizens, good fathers and mothers. But all our children are our old age. A correct upbringing will mean a happy old age for us, a poor upbringing will mean our grief, our tears, our fault towards other people, towards the whole country".

His greatest work and educational books are widely read as literature. This is the remarkable trilogy " The Road to Life", which has got great popularity, certainly far beyond that of any book in the West. Indeed, the story is really a great study of education.

Dealing with Makarenko's own problems with the education of utterly abandoned children, it recorded very simply and movingly the joys and sorrows, the failures and the successes, the loves and the hates of the members of the school. And through the pages the central figure of Makarenko himself is as a tenderhearted sympathetic man whose life is devoted to the task of making better the life of some children.

A. S. Makarenko had developed the method that has become alive in the minds of Soviet educators. Many of his ideas are systematically used and further developed. His contribution to educational thought and practice is great. His books have got worldwide recognition.

Find the Ukrainian equivalents in the right-hand column for the words in the bold type:

1. Education in Ukraine is compulsory. 1. визначні

2. All the citizens of our country have the right to study. 2. громадяни

3. The education and upbringing of the Ukrainian 3. визнання

youth is the main task of our state.

4. The teachers have made a great contribution 4. обов'язкове

to the scientific and engineering progress of the country.

5. Many profound scientists devoted their lives 5. виховання

to the development of education and upbringing of the

young people in our country.

6. A.Makarenko worked in the field of this science 6.вклад