School Life

The Genocide of Learning

A somber start to the school year began in Ukraine on September 1st.  In a genocide of culture and learning, over 2000 educational institutions and 500 cultural sites have been damaged or destroyed by Russian shelling according to the Defense Ministry. Now the curriculum includes instructions on emergency measures and all buildings are required to have bomb shelters.

Ordnance lay in empty hallways amid shrapnel-riddled walls, scorched books and melted teaching tools. The absence of children’s laughter leaves a surreal silence. A portrait of President Zelensky hangs untouched on a wall of a shattered classroom in a metaphor of resilience. Libraries are decimated. Sports trophies litter floors. A ghostly mural of a basketball player watches over a gym turned to ash. At one vocational school canisters of film negatives lie soaked in the water firefighters used to douse flames.  Ironically, they hold images of Russian leaders being studied in that class.

The principal of Kharkiv Specialized School #62 wipes away dirt from a mural created by student dancers that form the word ‘Peace’ in Russian. His elementary school serves as a shelter for elderly babushkas. Svetlana Kremenskaya, 75, declared, ‘Putin is the second Hitler.’

In their new normal, residents play volleyball amid the ruins as life returns while bombs still fall. 

When children would usually run gleefully through halls on the last day before summer vacation, a mortar attack obliterated a school in Kharkiv.