Actualization Factors of Young People’s Vocational Training in the Ukrainian Diaspora on the American Continent in the 1900s - 1930s.

Abstract

We have outlined the reasons for the actualization of young people’s vocational training in the conditions of emigration on the American continent of the late XIX – early XX century. We have analyzed the formation and development of the Ukrainian school education as a basis for the vocational training of Ukrainians in the USA, Canada, Brazil and Argentina in the 1900s - 1930s. It has been emphasized that vocational training was an integral part of the cultural process in the immigrant community, which sought to resist the denationalization and assimilation of the younger generations of Ukrainians. It was found that the motive force in the creation of mother-tongue schooling outside Ukraine was the Ukrainian clergy and teachers, who made considerable efforts to form private elementary (primary) schools and secondary education as a basis for further professional formation of Ukrainians outside their native land. The efforts of the Ukrainian community were directed, first of all, to the establishment of private elementary schools, aimed at giving children the skills of writing and reading in their native language and involving them in native religious and folk traditions, customs and rituals. They were maintained mainly by secular and religious organizations. There appeared schools similar to the local state ones, usually bilingual. It was due to the fact that the governments of the countries where immigrants settled took care of the problems of Ukrainian education. Secondary schooling developed mainly on the initiative of the clergy, and Ukrainian higher education institutions were not established on the American continent until the Second World War. It has been revealed that the actualization of Ukrainian vocational training in Western countries in the 1900s - 1930s was a complex and multifaceted process closely linked to the socio-economic and educational policies of the states that became a new homeland for Ukrainians, the geography and density of their resettlement, employment in various economy sectors, the presence of professionals and intellectuals in the diaspora, its national consciousness, religious life, etc. It has been concluded that people’s awareness of their length of stay outside the Ukrainian space and the creation of a network of mother-tongue schools became the foundation for the development of Ukrainian professional institutions or the inclusion of Ukrainians of the next emigration wave to professional institutions in the countries of their mass settlement.