In our last issue we told you about the team of AUSIT members who won one of the prestigious prizes awarded at this year’s FIT World Congress 2025. Another member was nominated for the FIT Aurora Borealis Prize for Outstanding Translation of Non-Fiction Literature, and received an Honourable Mention from the judges.
… in order to secure publication, Sukhomlynsky had to compromise by cutting passages …
The extent of [the] revisions became evident via a detailed analysis of the original manuscript …
Alan Cockerill was awarded a PhD for his study of the eminent Ukrainian educator Vasyl Sukhomlynsky (1918‒1970), and has made it a personal mission to bring Sukhomlynsky’s legacy to an English-speaking audience. His own book about Sukhomlynsky, Each One Must Shine, was published in New York in 1999 and republished in Brisbane in 2016, while a Korean translation was published in Seoul in 2019. The English language edition contains translations of many extracts from both Sukhomlynsky’s works and his correspondence.
Alan has written numerous articles and book chapters about Sukhomlynsky; translated three of his major works; translated and published a short collection of his stories, A World of Beauty: Tales from Pavlysh, which was illustrated by children from Ukraine and has since also been published in Ukrainian, Russian, Japanese and Chinese; and co-translated a Ukrainian-language publication of a large collection of Sukhomlynsky’s stories. For the purposes of our submission, we focused mainly on Alan’s translations of Sukhomlynsky’s two major non-fiction works, as well as Sukhomlinsky News, a four-page monthly bulletin that Alan has published continuously since 2015, and his translation of a significant article on Sukhomlynsky by the Russian educational journalist Simon Soloveichik, which he published in the bulletin.
Sukhomlynsky wrote dozens of books about his experience as a schoolteacher and principal, and Alan has translated two of the most significant of these.
My Heart I Give to Children describes Sukhomlynsky’s work with a class of children over the five-year period of their pre- and primary schooling, from 1951 to 1956.
Sukhomlynsky completed the manuscript of this work in 1966, but had difficulty getting it published, as it didn’t fit comfortably within the framework of Soviet ideology. The work first appeared in a German translation published in Leipzig in 1968, then a Russian language edition was published in Ukraine in 1969, and an English language edition in Moscow in 1981.
However, in order to secure publication, Sukhomlynsky had to compromise – by cutting passages that were deemed unacceptable, and including additional material of an ideological nature. The extent of these revisions became evident via a detailed analysis of the original manuscript carried out by Sukhomlynsky’s daughter, Professor Olga Sukhomlynska. In 2012 she published a new edition of the work, incorporating the material that Sukhomlynsky had been forced to cut, and identifying the material that had been added. This new edition provided the impetus for producing a new English language translation, and Alan Cockerill was the obvious choice as translator.
The new translation was received well, and Alan appeared on the ABC Radio National program Conversations, in a 50-minute interview with presenter Richard Fidler.
The first Russian language edition of Sukhomlynsky’s Our School in Pavlysh: A Holistic Approach to Education was published in Moscow in 1969, towards the end of Sukhomlynsky’s life. While My Heart I Give to Children focuses on Sukhomlynsky’s work as a teacher and describes his interactions with a specific group of children, Our School … focuses on his work as a principal and describes how his staff worked collegially to provide a holistic education to all the school’s students. The two works together give a comprehensive picture of Sukhomlynsky’s educational philosophy, and of his work as a teacher and school principal.
Both books have been well reviewed. The eminent Australian educator and researcher Emeritus Professor Terry Lovat wrote in his review published in the October 2022 edition of Independence (the journal of the Association of Heads of the Independent Schools of Australia):
Dr Cockerill’s work in translating these two books has provided a rare opportunity for English-speaking educators to benefit from the pedagogical breadth of Vasily Sukhomlinsky’s vision. As suggested, it fits well with some of the greatest truths about learnability to be found in our history as well as the most evidentially affirmed truths rendered by the updated brain sciences.
Alan has also co-translated a significant number of Sukhomlynsky’s stories for children, publishing a major collection in 2024.
Congratulations Alan on your Honourable Mention!
