Social Lives
Author: Matthew McKenna, PhD Researcher at Maynooth University’s Assisting Living and Learning Institute (ALL Institute), Research Funded through the Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT)
The 24th of January 2023 was the UN International Day of Education, whilst today, the 24th of February, represents the first anniversary of the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that began a year ago as of this morning. This blogpost will address the unfathomable human rights crisis and tragedy that has befallen the Ukrainian people and the subsequent denial of access to education in wartime.
“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war” – Dr Maria Montessori.
Montessori, was an Italian medical doctor who pioneered the philosophy of education through her work with children with disabilities, starting in 1896. She delivered the above quote in the late 1930s while working on the ‘Education for Peace’ movement during her exile from Italy due to the anti-fascist ethos of her humanitarian work. Montessori believed that a lasting unity between nations and peoples could be achieved when the education of children was underpinned with the values of international peace and humanitarianism. Moreover, her work has had a profound impact on the gradual educational reforms that have slowly enabled persons with disabilities to enter education and has helped, albeit over time, to reduce the traditionally punitive and penal institutional approach to children experiencing learning difficulties. And as we marked the UN International Day of Education a month ago on 24th January 2023, her words sound just as relevant in today’s context as they were in the agitated pre-war climate of the late 1930s.
“The first casualty of war is innocence” – (Oliver Stone, 1986, American Film Director and Vietnam War veteran).
February 24th 2023 is exactly twelve months since the incumbent Russian leader launched a large-scale and unprovoked ‘war of choice’ upon Ukraine. Of course, this conflict had been simmering since the initial Russian armed aggression that began on 20th February 2014; but few believed that this was a precursor to a wider and arguably genocidal war aimed at extinguishing the Ukrainian State that would begin on February 24th 2022. Statistics are difficult to come by, but already by 30th March 2022, only a month after the start of the full-scale war, UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell, declared that “The situation inside Ukraine is spiralling,” with over two million Ukrainian children having been forced to flee the country and a further two-and-a-half million being internally displaced, equating to roughly sixty percent of Ukrainian children. As of December 2022, it is estimated that around twenty percent of the pre-war Ukrainian population had been forced to flee the country, equating to roughly eight million people. This figure doesn’t even take into consideration the further millions who have become internally displaced. Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science indicates that 3051 education institutions, including schools and universities, have been attacked, with 420 being destroyed. This war has regularly disrupted, and sometimes even ended, the education, development and lives of approximately seven million Ukrainian children.
On November 18th 2022, Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke to university students in Ireland through live video-link regarding his country’s current situation. Although the main event took place at DCU, Maynooth University hosted a satellite event, which featured President Zelensky’s live-streamed address followed by an in-person discussion with an EU ambassador and other experts. President Zelensky detailed the systematic destruction of Ukrainian universities and schools, and outlined the disastrous humanitarian crises caused through the subsequent disruption of learning and development in Ukraine. He thanked the Irish people for welcoming over sixty thousand Ukrainian refugees into the country, but emphasised the dire crises of trauma, profound loss and uncertainty that his compatriots face in each host country.
Approximately fourteen thousand Ukrainian children and teenagers have been enrolled in Irish schools since February. Many are faced with the constant fear and anxiety of being regularly moved around between temporary, and often wholly substandard, refugee accommodation measures implemented in the Irish state in the midst of a domestic housing crisis. In November 2022, the Irish Times reported on the challenges faced by a group of two hundred Ukrainian refugees, including Oksana Kopernyk and her two sons, Milan and Yehor, aged three and ten respectively. Yehor, who is autistic, joined a local school as he and his family were residing in temporary accommodation in Clondalkin. Despite enormous challenges posed by fleeing an armed conflict and language difficulties, Yehor was able to settle in well, thanks to the skill and dedication of the staff in encouraging him to engage in mainstream classes, which also enabled him to develop friendships with his classmates.
However, Oksana and her compatriots subsequently received letters from Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Inclusion and Young People informing them that they would be moved that same week to further accommodation arrangements in Cork, Donegal and Limerick. Naturally, Oksana recounted her distress and worry for her son who had made excellent progress in school, and she feared that the breakthrough in his learning development and adaption to resettlement in a new schooling environment would be completely undone by the trauma and uncertainty caused by another spontaneous relocation. Furthermore, such a move would likely violate, for a second time, Yehor’s right to access education under UNCRPD Article 24 on ‘Education’ which enshrines equal access to education for persons with disabilities under international law. Yehor’s story represents one of countless stories of Ukrainian children whose childhoods, education, development and nurturement, have been cruelly cut short by the trauma and devastation of war and the uncertainty and upheaval of life as a refugee.
2023 is off to an inauspicious start in Europe, where the Russian war against Ukraine looks set to continue and escalate further. In Ukraine, many teachers, educators and professionals are now in the military, which further impacts access to education for children. In addition, for millions of Ukrainian children who are displaced refugees abroad, the prospects of gaining access to education in a stable environment without disruption, or the fear of unexpected upheaval and relocation within their host-country, is tenuous at best. This often only adds to the trauma, upheaval and vulnerability that is often intrinsic to life as a refugee seeking to pursue education, growth and sanctuary, away from the dangers afflicting their war-torn homeland. The words of Montessori resonate in modern Europe with as much relevance and purpose now as they did in the late 1930s and they must become a guiding principle for future European generations to achieve a lasting peace on the continent and a stable Europe for all persons.