ALEXANDER SUPAN’S “GERMAN SECONDARY SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY” IN UKRAINIAN PRESENT-DAY PRACTICALITIES

Abstract

Professor Alexander Supan’s “German Secondary School Geography” (“Deutsche Schulgeographie”) (1895), the scientist’s major work containing three components prepared for the “lower”, “middle” and “upper” (“Unterstufe”, “Mittelstufe”, “Oberststufe”) levels of education in secondary school was considered. A. Supan’s manual and Ukrainian educational programs in geography for 6th-9th and 10th-11th grade secondary school students were subjected to contrastive comparative analysis. It was found that the former German state’s 12-years old gymnasiasts and their age mates in present-day Ukraine were receiving nearly the same knowledge and learning/practical skills in general geography. It is accentuated that educational programs and their content in A. Supan’s manual were also found to be similar and comparable to their Ukrainian analogues on the second, “middle degree/level of education” (“Mittelstufe”). In both the first and the second cases it was a study of continents, a deepened cognition of Motherland, Europe, and the world on the whole. It is noted that A. Supan’s “German Secondary School Geography” finds its projection on the third, “the highest level” of education, in the form of Ukrainian educational programs in geography for 10-grade students (“Geography: Regions and Countries”), and 11-grade students (“Geographical Space of the Earth”). Both Supan’s and Ukrainian programs consider general geographical regularities: “Earth’s Surface as an Entirety”, and “General Consistent Patterns in Geographical Environment”; “Political Representation of Single Countries”, and “Regions and Countries of the World”; “Germany and German Distinct Identity”, and “Social Geography of Ukraine”. Further improvement of the present-day structure and content of Ukrainian educational programs in geography would probably require implementation of Prof. Supan’s systemic concentrative approach to “student’s geographical works” as the final and essentially important summation of learning geography in secondary school.