THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411210074
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
They worry about crime and a lack of morals. Family values are important to them. They think schools should allow students to pray and teach them lessons from the Bible.
While they may sound like members of America's religious right, they actually are part of an emerging religious revolution in a place once criticized for its ``Godless communism.''
The nascent movement in Ukraine, a former republic of the collapsed Soviet Union, is finding a breeding ground in what may seem an unlikely quarter - the public school system.
And members of a church congregation and a Christian school in Norfolk are aiding the effort.
``It is very important, I think, for the future of the country,'' said Nellie Gerasina, the principal of public school No. 19, an English-specialty school in Sevastopol, a Ukrainian port city on the Black Sea.
``We need to have moral students, not only well-educated students.''
Gerasina and two of her top teachers traveled this month to America for the first time, their trip sponsored by the Tabernacle Church of Norfolk.
Two years ago, two members of the church - Averill Carlisle and Cynthia Megginson, teachers from Norfolk Christian School who are teaching in Ukraine - introduced Bible classes at the Sevastopol school.
``We are the first school, and the only one, where the Bible is taught in English,'' said Valentina Berezovsky, an English teacher at school No. 19. ``I think it's a first step.''
Since then, interest in schoolhouse religion has grown in Ukraine, fueled in part by a yearning for stability, Gerasina said.
Rapid social changes since the Soviet breakup have thrown Ukraine's economy into turmoil, sparked a crime wave and left many people feeling hopeless.
``History is moving quickly,'' Gerasina said. ``Each day brings changes in the social life.''
The country's ministry of education has endorsed teaching Christianity and morality in schools, Gerasina said.
``If a person believes in God, he believes in laws, he obeys his elders, he obeys his parents,'' Gerasina said. ``We are poor and in poverty; the life of the people is very hard. They must have strength, and what gives them strength? The belief.''
The irony of a former communist country allowing religion to be taught in the schools at a time when issues like school prayer are politically dividing America, a country founded on religious principles, is not lost on the Ukrainians' hosts.
At Tabernacle Church, many children either are schooled at home or attend Christian private schools.
``I ask the parents why and they tell me it's because the values they hold as important are either being contradicted in the public sector or are denied altogether,'' said the Rev. Rich Hardison, senior paster at Tabernacle. ``We can't teach kids in our schools that you can't lie or steal or commit adultery. You can't pray to God.
``Over there, I can ask them what Karl Marx had to teach about what happens to a man after he dies, or about the origin of man. Then I can say, `Here's what Jesus says; which do you think is right?' If you do that in our country, you have the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) screaming.''
Hardison pioneered the local spiritual link with Ukraine while attending an evangelistic crusade there in 1991, the year the Soviet system crumbled.
In a chance encounter during a religious rally, Hardison met an English-speaking student who attended a state university in Kiev, where 3,000 students study the English language.
The university was looking for people to teach English.
``I put a resume out and got a job,'' said Hardison, who has an education degree.
He took his family to Kiev in fall 1992 and taught English, public speaking and Bible studies at the university for about three months. Soon Hardison and his congregation discovered public school No. 19.
Hardison said eight members of his congregation are teaching in Ukraine.
One of them, Jim Swanson, a biology professor at Old Dominion University, is conducting research on male victims of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident for the Jones Reproductive Institute at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Another ODU professor, oceanographer George Wong, has been there to teach and to study the Black Sea.
About 60 of the church's 1,000 members have traveled to Ukraine, Hardison said.
``The congregation is real pumped about it,'' he said. ``Rather than doing church planting or missionary work, we're there as professional teachers, and some of the curriculum we offer is focused on the Bible and basic principles of Christianity. It's incredible how (the Ukrainians) have responded. They had a great interest in family and home and marriage and the practical issues of life taught in the Bible.''
While in Norfolk, Gerasina and her teachers observed classes at Norfolk Christian, visited a home school and sat in on a gifted and talented class at Blair Middle School, a city school.
``What they will take back with them will be multiplied exponentially with the kids there,'' said Curtis Byrd, director of development at Norfolk Christian.
At Norfolk Christian, kids begin the school day with prayer and scriptural readings, said Superintendent Robert M. Miller.
``We believe all of life is sacred - there's not a sacred or a secular side of life,'' Miller said. ``We believe that scriptural teachings can be brought into everyday life.''
In Ukraine, even with the loosening of religious restrictions, limits remain on what goes on at schools. Organized prayer, for example, is not allowed in the classroom. But that day may come, the visitors said.
``The children and their parents are ready,'' said No. 19 teacher Nelly Gerasina. ``It will come, I'm sure of it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA/
Nellie Gerasina, the principal of school No. 19 in Sevastopol,
Ukraine, talks to students at Blair Middle School in Norfolk on
Thursday. She will take teaching techniques back to her country.
B\W photo by Motoya Nakamura
Nellie Gerasina, a Ukrainian principal, talks to sixth-graders at
Norfolk's Blair Middle School. Religion in Ukrainian schoold has
been accepted as lefe has become less stable, she says.
KEYWORDS: UKRAINE SCHOOL by CNB