A few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian laypeople, scholars and politicians launched a discussion about a complete ban of literature of the aggressor state, first of all, in schools. In June 2022 the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Education and Science, Andriy Vitrenko, outlined changes in the educational curriculum for the upcoming academic year, stating that all works by Russian writers would be excluded from the Foreign Literature syllabus and would not be studied in Ukraine any longer. The research studies the changes to the Foreign Literature syllabus, which is taught in all Ukrainian secondary schools to students aged between 11 and 16 years, examines the options for replacing works of Russian literature with world literature, and provides the detailed list of official documents, laws, acts and orders that the Ukrainian government issued after February 2022 to regulate the implementation of these changes. Overall, the paper claims that literature is able to form national self-awareness and linguistic selfidentification of a nation and to shape a global context for national cultural achievements and as Ukrainian case proves it, it is essential to allocate enough time to literature in school curriculum.

Author: Iryna Kovalchuk

Published in: World Congress on Education (2024)

• Date of Conference: 26-28 August, 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/WCE.2024.0034
• Electronic ISBN: 978-1-913572-71-6
• Conference Location: Churchill College, Cambridge, UK