On May 27–28, 2019, at the Rivne Regional Institute of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, more than 70 teachers in the Rivne region completed training on the teaching “Basics of the Family” course at the Public schools. This is the fifth region of Ukraine in which such training was held. Three employees of our education department: Arkady Sleza, Nadezhda Dolya and Ruslana Kovalchuk completed this training.
The author of this interesting and useful course for the high school students is a Christian man Adrian Bukovinsky who is Ph.D., a leading Ukrainian expert in a family and family relations issues. For more than twenty years he has been researching the family policy of the state, founded family relationships lecture courses, counselled couples who planned to set up their families. He also took part in the drafting of many draft laws related to the family institution. He himself was deeply convinced and reasonably motivated the audience in importance of introducing this “Family Basics” course into school curricula for 10-11 grades.
Since it was impossible to cover two-year training course topics for two days of even comprehensive work, and that was exactly our working schedule looked like, Adrian Bukovinsky gave the basic overview of it and highlighted the most important issues. Everything starts with the identity formation. It is important to give yourself an answer for the question: who am I? What is really matter for me?
What are the expectations for my future family?
Considering the topic of the relationships between a young man and a girl, the expert emphasized on bioethical issues like: the value of the human life, intrauterine development of a baby, attitudes towards abortion, and so on. In the format of interactive conversation, it was discussed the differences between the real love and romance, sexual, psychological and spiritual maturity of the individuals and types of marriages.
For the modern high school students, the topic of the parent-child relationships is often hot and painful. How can they become good parents for their children, having no a positive model of the family relationships with their parents, how can they make good parents for their children in the future? We need to talk more about these issues and we have to work hard on our good care of our families, only then we can expect some good results.
The course curriculum, teacher’s guides and workbooks for the students of the “Family Basics” course have already been prepared, probed, and approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine for the use at the Public schools. The only thing we need is the Goodwill of school principals, administrations and parents to introduce this course as a subject at schools. It is good news that some of this training course participants already plan to launch teaching of this course at their schools starting September 2019.
This course study guides can be used for self-study, as well as for the classes with teenagers and young adults in any format like: Sunday school, clubs, camps and so on.
Nadezhda Dolya
