Expatriates living in Ukraine opt to put their kids in local schools.
Nine-year-old Takun Chakraborty speaks Bengali at home, but easily switches to Russian when he hangs out with his Russian-speaking friends, and he uses English for socializing with his international peers. Then, when at school, Takun communicates and does his homework in Ukrainian, his language of study.
“I know five languages in total, including Hindi, which is my country’s [India’s] official language,” says this son of a Kyiv-based Indian businessman, a serious look on his face.
When spoken to in Ukrainian, Tukan replies in Ukrainian with the softness and fluency of the language that is typically only met in western Ukraine and is a rarity in prevailingly Russian-speaking Kyiv.
Tukan’s astonishing knowledge of Ukrainian is just one of the results of the educational “experiment” put forth by his father, who five years ago sent his children to a Ukrainian school, refusing to follow local expatriate traditions.
Non-traditional choice
Takun’s father, Suvra Chakraborty of Calcutta, India, owns a chemical company in Kyiv and says a search for quality education for his children was what had made him look beyond the capital’s foreign-run schools. A handful of these schools in Kyiv offer an English-speaking curriculum and are traditionally the most popular option among foreigners who bring their families to Ukraine.
“When my first-born son reached three years old, I, like all respectable expatriates, gave him to one of Kyiv’s international schools,” recalls Chakraborty. “But what I found very soon is that it’s not enough for a teacher to speak English in order to rear all the faculties of a child.”
“I found that international schools are very important as a transit point for those who come to Ukraine for two or three years, because it helps them to keep up with international standards and preserve the English medium,” Chakraborty says, “but I don’t think they are ideal for a child to go from kindergarten to a final grade,” he says.
Chakraborty added that, after visiting a number of Ukrainian schools, he was impressed to find high standards of education and strong English classes there.
But even for Chakraborty, who’s lived in Ukraine for 12 years now and has no immediate plans to leave, the decision to opt for a Ukrainian school did not come easily.
When his first-born son’s primary education was decided, the senior Chakraborty spoke only a moderate amount of Russian, and neither he nor his wife knew a word of Ukrainian.
“We understood that our child would have a deficiency in that his parents do not know the language in which the instruction is held,” says Chakraborty, reasoning that it’s “a tragedy if parents cannot help their children with their homework.”
He recalls how the director of the institution that he’d finally chosen was hesitant to take his 4-year old son in due to the language concern.
It turned out their worries were groundless.
Chakraborty says his younger son Dodo got admitted into the same school soon after the older one and proudly mentions the fact that his boys can read and write in three languages – Ukrainian, Russian, and English – and speak five, including their native Hindi and Bengali.
The school
Lubov Timoshko, director of the semi-private school Raiduha in Kyiv’s Nyvky region, where both of Chakraborty’s sons go, said she doubted that completely foreign children would catch up with a tough curriculum where all classes are taught in Ukrainian.
“We are a Ukrainian school, and we do not have any special classes or privileges for the foreigners who do not speak the language,” said Timoshko.
She said she accepted Chakraborty’s first son and then a second one only because the father stressed he wanted a Ukrainian environment.
“But you know, three and four-year-olds learn languages so quickly; now Tukan and his younger brother do not feel like foreigners here at all,” said Timoshko, adding that Indian boys are two of only three foreign students among more than a hundred Ukrainian children who attend her school.
Timoshko’s institution, which is officially registered as state-owned, accepts children from three to ten years of age and offers a state educational curriculum plus services not found in regular state kindergartens and primary schools, such as additional hours of English, logic, choreography classes, aikido, musical literature, and excursions every week.
Positive outlook
Takun says he has more Ukrainian friends than international ones, mostly due to the fact he spends 12 hours a day in the school – 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“We have classes till 2 p.m., then we do our homework, and then play games,” explains the boy in Ukrainian, adding that he really likes it in the school.
His father, too, does not regret his choice of a school at all.
“The rules are a bit too strict, but I think it is good to have discipline at this age,” says Chakraborty.
His immediate plans are to stay in Ukraine to let the kids finish their secondary education. As for his boys’ higher education, he tends to think differently from common ways, as well.
“I am not a traditional thinker, so I am not going to tell you that my boys will go to universities in the UK or USA,” said Chakraborty. “But I know that I will give them enough languages, enough cultural exposure, and enough freedom to choose where they want to go.”
