STATE LANGUAGE POLICY OF INDEPENDENT UKRAINE IN THE CONTEXT OF SCHOOL EDUCATION: FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE PRESENT

Abstract

The content of the article summarizes the policy of the state in the field of secondary school and the aspect of the approval and spread of the functioning of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine (since the middle of 1980s till now). Particular attention is paid to the preconditions (mid-1980s - early 1990s) that led to the recognition of the Ukrainian language as the state language and as the main language of school education. Based on the discourse analysis of the complex of legislative and documentary sources, it has been proved that changes in the content and main goals of school education have become one of the leading factors in the development of Ukrainian state-building.
The article’s purpose is a historical and retrospective analysis of the first steps of the state educational policy of independent Ukraine in the field of ukrainization of the secondary schools in the context of the new language policy of the period of sovereignty.
Methodology. So as the research is historical and pedagogical, the main tool was the historiographic analysis of the selected documentary, archival, scientific, sociological sources on the topic, reflected on the basis of the historical and genetic approach, which was supplemented by such methods as system analysis, which allows the study of educational politics in its entirety, as well as an interdisciplinary approach. Clarification of the strategy of the state and the tactics of its implementation by the Ministry of Education of Ukraine in a certain period of historical time is subject to the principle of causality and provides grounds for determining stable and rapidly changing strategic and tactical goals and programs.
Scientific novelty. For the first time the chronotop of the deployment of the language policy of Ukraine on the eve of gaining independence and in its early years through the prism of conceptual shifts in reforming the secondary school is revealed, and some aspects of the contemporary language situation are highlighted.
Conclusions. The strategic ideas laid down at the turn of the last decades of the 20th century related to the educational policy of independent Ukraine in the field of secondary school not only played an important role in raising the functioning of the native language, in establishing the mass formation of Ukrainian self-identification among children and young people, but also thus contributed implementation of the key idea - the idea of building the Ukrainian state.
Based on the coverage of practical tasks to implement the strategy of the Ukrainian state, it is argued that the Ministry of Education of Ukraine, in cooperation with the Ukrainian writers' community, the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, took important and tactically verified steps (the introduction of the Ukrainian language as the state language and the language of school education, the beginning of the creation of Ukrainian textbooks, the development of a new the content of school education with the dominance of national priorities of knowledge and national values, a change in the paradigm of the school of learning to a personality-oriented paradigm of education), which made it possible to Ukrainize the education system, and in particular the secondary school.
The development of Ukraine as a state is impossible without the dominating of native language. So the nationally oriented education of the younger generation is the vital need, also it should be modernized according to the new challenges of the globalization time. School education in combination with preschool have acquired the significant factor in creating a nation.