Make war in Ukraine a teaching moment

Students need to study the Russian invasion of Ukraine in real time, but it won’t happen unless higher education replaces Winston Churchill’s First World War “business as usual” approach with his Second World War “Never let a good crisis go to waste” approach.

During the First World War, Churchill stated, “The maxim of the British people is ‘business as usual,’ ” meaning Britain’s social, economic, and political stability could be preserved so long as society took a “business as usual” approach to the war.

It may have been an initial war strategy then, but this is now and a “business as usual” approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not an option for anyone, especially not for colleges and universities charged with educating tomorrow’s problem-solvers.

While post-secondary institutions have stepped up in necessary but typical ways — colleges and universities have publicly condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin and have offered students academic, mental health, financial and visa supports — more needs to be done. That more must be something that will allow students to apply what they are learning in lecture halls to what they are witnessing in Ukraine.

One way to achieve this is to give students the option to replace one final exam with a take-home assignment that reads, “Apply what you have learned in this course to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” It’s a fitting assignment, considering how difficult it is for students to focus on anything but the invasion.

If the aim of higher education is to create future problemsolvers, then students should be challenged to interpret the events unfolding in Ukraine through their academic disciplines, whether that be the humanities or social, natural, formal or applied sciences.

Sure, some will argue that students studying political science, history, economics, business, sociology, or philosophy will find it easier to write about the invasion of Ukraine than those studying mathematics, for example.

But, if you’re a student of infinitesimal calculus — the study of continuous change — and you’re reading this, then you’ll know that it is possible to apply what you’re learning in calculus to what is occurring in Ukraine, in part because differential and integral calculi are woven into physics, engineering, medicine, economics, statistics, and computer science.

For those who remain unconvinced, perhaps it will help to turn to Russia’s very own Leo Tolstoy, one of the greatest writers and pacifists of all time whose literary works and ideas on nonviolent resistance influenced giants like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In his literary monument “War and Peace,” Tolstoy tells the story of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, oftentimes through the lens of calculus.

This is a decisive moment for Canadian higher education. By allowing students to choose between writing a final exam and writing a paper on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, educators will be building multidisciplinary minds and taking advantage of a global crisis.