Closed Schools. Abandoned Temples of Learning

For thousands of school leavers, after a many-year marathon of dictations and tests, the last bell has sounded as a leitmotif. Saying goodbye to their school and their teachers, yesterday's pupils have stepped, with dreams and hopes, onto the new starting stage of adult life. However each person's path in life turns out, through all the rises and falls, achievements and failures, we are all bound by an unbreakable invisible thread to our school, our teachers, our friends. The wise word of a teacher is always with us, and their blessing before the long road. At different moments in life we return in our thoughts for an instant to our own school, climb the school porch and enter the classroom where there was so much that was important and essential. Reunions of classmates and teachers are often held within the walls of the alma mater, and a wonderful immersion into the times of happy childhood and youth takes place. 

Not all former pupils have anywhere to come back to, because their schools are not only closed but destroyed by mismanagement and indifference.

 

Mykolaivka, Donetsk region. An abandoned school

Kamianka and Andronivka. A Quarry on a Regional Border

A worked-out quarry on the border of the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions lies on the right bank of the Byk river.

Mute swans. Observing, admiring, learning

By observing nature and its creations, a person can learn a great deal. Swans are known for their conjugal fidelity and their inconceivable devotion.

Kamianka. The 'Floodplain of the Byk River' Reserve

The village of Kamianka in the Dobropillia district lies in the west of the Donetsk region, where the administrative border with the Dnipropetrovsk region runs.