Vasily Sukhomlinsky
A Ukrainian Dedicated to Holistic Education and
Resisting Blockheadism
Outstanding educators see individual students, not just a class, not just a job. Around the world people can find and learn from educators who value the young people in their care; some teachers even love their students. Hours of a young person’s life have been entrusted to that teacher, and no one knows how many hours any student may have. Around the world parents, teachers, schools, and countries provide education that supports varied philosophies, and not all of these consider building life skills like spirit, empathy, relationships, and joy.
It should seem obvious that to teach children, a person should like them, but that is not the apparent belief or philosophy of every educator or of every educational system. Through his difficult life, Vasily Sukhomlinsky, held the belief that a teacher needed to find the way to the heart of every student, to encourage them to love their families, people in their communities, and their land.
Sukhomlinsky was a child when the Soviets annexed Ukraine. This injustice was obvious to educated Ukrainians. They knew their land and the great city of Kyiv had been established in the fifth century long before Moscow was the capital of Russia (Yekelchyk, 2020). For centuries empires battled to control the rich land that made Ukraine so valuable. In the 17th century, Ukraine signed a treaty with Russia pledging allegiance to Russia for help against the Poles (Wilson, 2015).
Vasily Sukhomlinsky was born in 1918 in Vasilievka, Ukraine, during a time of civil war. When the war ended, famine grew. Vasily survived the civil war and years of famine and saw the growth of Soviet extensive exercised control. Ukrainian Nationalism had grown since the oppressive years of the Tsar and continued on through the tumult of the 20th century. In Sukhomlinsky’s lifetime, he saw the rise and fall of nations trying to dominate Ukraine, the dominance and control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but the Ukrainian cultural life continued. Khruschev, who had been born in the Donbas region, showed his Soviet loyalty by trying to wipe out any elements of Polish or Ukrainian nationalism. Since the Bolshevik revolution, Soviet powers had forced collective and communist rules on the countries they took showing no empathy for the poor farmers (Yekelchyk, 2020).
Vasily married. He and his wife Vera were settled in Pavlysh, Ukraine before the fascist Nazis invaded Soviet land intent on capturing Moscow. Vasily joined the army at age 23. He was called up to fight against the Nazis as they were marching toward Moscow.
His young wife, Vera, stayed in Pavlysh aiding partisans who fought against the Nazi occupiers. She was arrested by the Gestapo. They took her to prison. Vera Sukhomlinksy was tortured to try to make her give the names of the Ukrainian partisans. She refused to give names and they killed her infant son in front of her. Then the Nazis hung her. Cockerill (2016) observed that the news of Vera and the baby’s death could have created a person of anger and despair. Instead, Vasily decided he would be an educator that would work to cultivate empathy in even his youngest students. People needed to care for other people.
Vasily was far away fighting against the Nazis and was severely wounded by shell fragments; he was carried from the battlefield. Fragments of the shrapnel stayed in his body and some people attribute that fact to his death at the age of 52 in 1970. The town he and Vera had chosen to live in, Pavlysh, was a poor rural area. Like other embattled and trampled areas of Ukraine, it still had scars that affected the land and people when Vasily returned to it and began working as a teacher. Sukhomilinksy worked as if he had regained full health devoting himself to promoting education of the heart as well as the mind and body (Publisher Gupta, n.d.). He eventually married again and had two more children, and he continued to invest most of the hours of his life in educating children and those who taught them with awareness of the joy that comes through helping others.
Concern for fellow human beings was never the dominant goal of the Soviet government. One of Vasily’s goals would find him leading other educators and students away from the stupidity of not valuing life. He wanted them to find joy in learning and make wise choices. His book on education that would sell millions in dozens of languages, My Heart I Give to Children, was written during some of the most tense years of the cold war.
Sukhomlinsky wanted children to have the freedom to be children without the political battles and influences. He tried to teach his students to value every life and to live with joy in spite of oppressive actions by the government and the students in primary and secondary education, the teachers, and the community saw him model what he hoped to develop in the students. He became a respected principal, mentor, and writer. His school, like every other one, had the required Soviet version of the Boy and Girl Scout movement called the Pioneers. Stimulating childish curiosity, joy, and empathy were not part of the Soviet education goals, but Sukhomlinsky persisted in encouraging these abstract values. He hosted thousands of visitors to introduce them to his theories on education and to see his ideas in action.
He wrote about joy in learning and imbued the school with such enthusiasm for learning and kindness toward others that people came from many regions and countries to study his methods. Sukhomlinsky said he cherished the view expressed by Dostoevsky.
Let us enter the fairytale palace of childhood with a child’s
ardent heart, a heart beating with the pulse of a child’s life,
with the thought that I too was a child. Children will trust you
when they feel in their hearts that you understand this simplest
and at the same time wisest of truths. A child is a child. Not all
moral and political ideas comprehensible to a young man or
woman, or even to an adolescent, are comprehensible to a
young child…stories provide the most indispensable means for
educating the sacred feeling of love for our homeland.
Sukhomlinsky, 2016, p.xxi
The Soviets' criteria for education did not align with Sukhomlinsky’s view of children of values of developing spiritual and emotional growth as much as intellectual and physical abilities. Neither Khrushchev nor Brezhnev approved of Vasily’s methods. They wanted the control of education to be strictly focused on Communist ideals in centralized curriculums for reading, writing, science, math, fitness, and allegiance to the Russian Soviet Communist government. They wanted collective thought and action not individual and relational development. Repression of groups of people who did anything apart from the Party line even fell on primary school children. Sukhomlinsky lived from 1967 to his death in 1970, with attacks in the press for his ideals of abstract humanism rather than socialist humanism (IDFI, 2019).
“The life of our school developed from an idea that had
inspired me; children are by their very nature inquisitive
researchers, explorers of the world…through stories, imagination,
and play, through children’s unique creativity: that was the sure
way to a child’s heart.”
(Sukhomlinsky, 2016, p.34).
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Vasily Sukhomlinsky wrote over 30 books and over 500 articles and consistently modeled and affirmed that teachers should bring out the best in their students’ moral, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical lives. He declared teachers are guides to the natural curiosity of children. Because of long days and responsibilities, Vasily usually worked on his writing from 4 am to 8 am (Cockerill, 2016). He promoted holistic learning and inspired others to bring joy and optimism into teaching, and faced attacks from Soviets who had no appreciation for his ideas on education (Cockerill, 2016). The ideas advocated for emotions, relationships, explorations, and vocations to build values for helping humanity.
Sukhomlinsky’s advocated for time outdoors studying and enjoying nature, exploring, movement, play, experimenting, poetry, fairytales, fables, stories, creativity, and exercises that promoted empathy, He believed educating young people about empathy should start from an early age and was most important because people with empathy would not act with the harsh stupidity he had seen in so many cruel actions from his childhood onward.
The word blockhead has appeared since the 16th century. Blockheads make stupid choices, seem unfeeling or unaware of the needs of others, and have a boorish egotistical nature. The etymology of the word shows the word probably came from the wooden blocks hat makers used to shape a hat. Blockhead as an insult appears old and widespread. In Russian, жлоб has a meaning that includes a coarseness toward others, a stupidity equivalent to English words of a dimwitted cheapskate, boorish, tight-fisted, and greedy strongman (Berdy, 2021).
Surrounded by Soviet rules promoting inhumane coldness toward people and loyalty only to government rules and collectives, Sukhomlinsky said,
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How important this is to teach small children to recognize from
the eyes, movements, and speech of people around them, grief
and joy, disappointment and concern, anxiety and confusion. If
we do not carry out this work, a person may grow up to be an
insensitive blockhead. Collect 30 such blockheads together and
you will have a ‘collective,’ but what sort? It will be a blind soulless
force, prepared to trample an individual into the ground.
Vasily Sukhomlinsky's life work aimed to help his students belong to an outlook that would be wise and humane. His emphasis on empathy and joyful activities does not align with Soviet leaders past or present who seem heavily infected with blockheadism.
Currently, in April 2022, people can see that the leader in Moscow holds old-line Soviet ideas; he has the terrible power one would never want to give to a жлоб. Ukraine and so many lands grabbed and terrorized by Stalin, a greedy strongman after World War II, suffer today under another power-hungry blockhead who seems to only have an acumen for lies and aggression. Destruction, deprivation, and fear fall on Ukraine because of another жлоб who still grabs, terrorizes, and oppresses as a boorish blockhead.
References
Berdy, M. A. (2021, November 19). The Short History of a Nasty Word. The
Moscow Times: Independent News from Russia.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/11/19/the-short-history-of-a-nasty
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Cockerill, A. (2016, October 3). Vasily Sukhomlinsky: The teacher who changed
the world. Radio National Programs, ABC. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/conversations/vasily-sukhomlinsky-educating-the-heart/7878410
Gupta, A. (n.d.) From the publishers of Vasily Sukhomlinsky’s To children I give
my heart. (Smith, H. Trans.). Arvid Gupta.
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Institute for Development of Freedom of Information. (IDFI)/ (2019, October 11).
Stalinism In Soviet Schools and the Pupils’ Case.
https://idfi.ge/en/stalinism_in_soviet_schools
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Sukhomlinsky, V. (2016) My heart I give to children. (Cockerill, A., Trans.).
EJR Language Services PT Ltd.
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Sukhomlinsky, V. (2016). The school of joy. (Cockerill, A., Trans.). EJR
Language Service Pty. Ltd.
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Wilson,J. (2015, February 1). Kiev: At the center of a divided country. Geohistory.
https://geohistory.today/kiev/
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Yekelchyk, S. (2020). Ukraine, what everyone needs to know. (2nd ed.). Oxford
University Press.
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