(RE)LEARNING UKRAINIAN: Language Myths and Cultural Corrections in Literacy Primers of Post-Soviet Ukraine

Abstract

Particular understandings of the “nation” are increasingly unlikely to be produced and sustained without a state educational system institutionalizing the nation’s central narratives, delineating its boundaries, and acculturating individuals to its attendant values and notions of collective identity (Apple, 1990; Gellner, 2006; Wanner, 1998). School textbooks, since they are both perceived as and are designed to constitute “official knowledge,” are vessels ripe for the embodiment and transmission of such state-envisioned histories, memories, and discourses of nation(hood) (Apple, 1992; Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; Schissler & Soysal, 2005).