Educational Reform in Ukraine's Election Discourse

Abstract

Ukraine is in the process of reforming almost all major social institutions. The reform of education in 2017 turned out to be especially controversial and provoking international resonance, among other things. In this article we consider the aspects of the pre-election discourse related to the educational system to characterize the discourse based on the assessment of the place and role of educational problems in modern Ukraine. The biggest interest in this work is the problem of the language of instruction due to its debatability and large-scale representation in the media discourse, as well as due to the fact that it caused international resonance. Accordingly, we suggested that the problem of the language of instruction in the pre-election discourse will also be one of the main (and therefore informative for us) topics. To test the hypothesis in the framework of the ARDU project “Accommodation of regional diversity in Ukraine”, the research group conducted a discourse analysis. The materials published during the period from June 24 to July 28, 2019 (the pre-election period) were analyzed. As a result of the analysis, we found that the educational aspect in the pre-election discourse is practically not mentioned - it is not on the agenda of the main political forces, as well as state political institutions. The problem of the language of instruction and language issues in the educational system as a whole is deliberately or unintentionally ignored in education.