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

Vasylivka. Rescuing the Ruined: Houses, School and Club

The Ukrainian hata is a sacred treasure of our people and a symbol of Ukraine. Artists and poets have dedicated their works to this unique village dwelling. The image of a little whitewashed cottage surrounded by apple and cherry trees, blooming mallows and marigolds, is inseparably linked with the roots of the Ukrainian people. Examples of folk architecture are gathered in open-air museums inPyrohiv, Lviv, Uzhhorod, Prelesne, but even now one can see genuine examples of cultural heritage in our villages. In the village of Vasylivka, Mezhova district, Dnipropetrovsk region, a house from 1888 has preserved its architectural features and the richness of folk traditions.

 

Vasylivka, Mezhova district, Dnipropetrovsk region.