The narrative. On the 8th of November, Svoboda Radio published a serious article on its website entitled as ‘Ukrainian language and splitting moral hairs in ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’. If the article is serious enough and focuses on the burning issues of our life, it must rely on indisputable facts, has reliable case study, call a spade a spade, etc. The authors, obviously, must be a role model of behavior, ethics and morals. If they are not, you should fling a stone at them..
However, let’s return to the charge. Once I forgot to invite an old friend, whose name is Igor, to a party. Well, I do not have such a friend now. By an odd coincidence, the authors also forgot about Igor, but the other one – with well-known surname Sikorsky.
I suppose, before they had sat down in front of a computer, they should have found out that the official short title of the university is ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’. Apart from this, on technicalities, an article entitled as ‘Ukrainian language and splitting moral hairs in ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’ is not a single issue of any university in the country. But I will venture to forgive the authors of such a fault and speak to the point from now forth.
Even though the publication does not necessarily reflect the position of Svoboda Radio, a university’s contradiction was addressed to its Kyiv Office since certain charges have been made in the article. The authors took it into consideration and updated the material somehow. As a result, a serious article turned into extreme one, amusing even, as it raised not only amazement, but a smile.
Such an update did not turn the article into a masterpiece, as in the case with the eminent picture ‘Morning in the Pine Forest’ after filling in bears. On the contrary, that modified article began to dredge up images of another canvas – ‘Low Marks Again’.
Let me remind: ‘two’ is a Soviet performance grade equivalent to 60 contemporary marks. The one who had such assessments was called "non-achiever". These exist for the time being. This is a special caste of students, especially insolent ones, of those who do not know anything and do not want to know, but by hook or by crook, the desired 61 points are wormed out. There is a shining example to distinguish: they cannot even recall the exact name of the subject on the examinations. Evolution requires them to obtain employment, but the natural selection does its part – almost no one of them ‘doesn’t survive’ within our walls.
And now I have two copies of the article.
The first looks much better than the second one. It used to have logical consistency. The authors had a certain purpose and tried to achieve it, and the end justifies the means…
Thinking over this purpose, one has to consider the visual guides, which the authors used to ‘decorate’ their article - photos of fresco depicting Lenin. However, this fresco on the wall of the first building of the university in recent years has been hidden under a screen that looks like a big blanket. But nothing had deterred them: they creeped under this ‘blanket’ and took a photo. All who did not know or forgot how the ‘thought leader’ looked like, do know or remember his appearance now. Perhaps this is a special type of advertising, or a typical tactical ploy of the non-achiever: bring the discussion around to the weather, prices, currency rate… or Lenin.
Only a few days after the letter from the ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’ article undergone a significant metamorphosis. For example, the key phrase ‘So in extracurricular life of the NTUU ‘KPI’ country, state language is completely absent’ in the second variant turned into a ‘So in extracurricular life of the NTUU ‘KPI’ country, state language is rarely present." Find the differences yourself.
72 comments have already been added to the article. Most of them are absolutely correct to the content, but these people do not know that the authors of the article deceived them by misinformation. So the question arises: were these comments written before or after the updating?
But let's get back to our non-achiever. Someone usually suggests the answer to him. But instead of the correct answer, without seeing a point, he uses such assistance crosswise. As a result, the answer is not only incorrect, but also becomes worse due to the various "slips", which further illustrate his incompetence.
Slips. The authors threw out of the article the main link which consisted the storyline on ‘the teaching provided in Ukrainian comprises more than half lectures in the KPI’. I will try to elucidate this mysterious phrase to myself. Well, more than half may be 100%. So what is the charge against the Polytechnics? Typical behavior of a non-achiever: to give a confused answer that makes it impossible to get into it. Either in the first article, where the definition is ambiguous, or in the updated version, where this phrase is deleted, the entanglement of the article disappears. And the authors don’t even need a stone for soup. So as the non-achiever: there is no knowledge, but he goes on speaking. There is no result, but there is an action. There are no grounds, but there is the article.
In the first version, the authors are trying to communicate with the Head of the Guidance Department, but for some reason do not actually do this. Supposedly they do not have an interpreter, because the notified Head "Does not speak the state language at all (!)". In accordance with the purpose - a logical and consistent scenario. In the updated – the Head of the Guidance Department has already spoken the state language, but not fluently, and therefore ask him about something won’t work out. Here we trace a problem in cause-and-effect relationship, and the morality of the authors seems to be higher than the Lavra bell-tower, so it is beneath their dignity to communicate with a person who speaks language poorly.
The non-achiever should have an excellent sense of hearing to filter out the weak sounds within the audiences’ noise of exactly the one prompt that is flying to him! And due to the authors’ experience, in out-of-class life it happens in another way: you can choose any information you want, whatever answers the purpose. Thus wise, they have the same situation: they do not want to notice the audio record proclaiming there are no Russian-language programs for first-year foreign students as of this year! I repeat ‘for first-year’ because those who are right out of undergrad should be learned up. It is in the programs of senior students with hidden percentage of Russian-language programs, which are mentioned in the article.
However, to prove their right, the authors provide an example of the content of the Russian-language (!) version of the site of the Department of Language Training for foreigners. Readers should be truly grateful that the authors only gave this rather large excerpt - and they could have provided all Russian-language information from the university's site (I will put you in remembrance, it is supported in three languages - in Ukrainian, English and Russian). How not to remember the non-achiever: when he has some related material, he uses it completely despite the relevance and volume. Therefore, some "copy-paste" papers occur from under his pen.
Even though there are a lot of slips left, I am tired of denoting them. One should measure them. I cannot do this on my own, because, to a certain extent, I am among the concerned parties. So do your own conclusions!
The only issue I want to dwell on is the title. There is no double morals. Bottom can be double as well as standards.. Morality is either there or it is not.
Sergey Pylny, employee of ‘Igor Sikorsky KPI’