Chuluun
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990256
Name: Chuluun
Parent's name: Üülüü
Ovog: Lagnaadorj
Sex: f
Year of Birth: 1941
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: higher
Notes on education:
Work: Manager of Centre at Mongolian Senior's Academy
Belief: Buddhist
Born in: Manlai sum, Ömnögovi aimag
Lives in: Sühbaatar sum (or part of UB), Ulaanbaatar aimag
Mother's profession: herder
Father's profession: herder
Themes for this interview are:
(Please click on a theme to see more interviews on that topic)
education / cultural production
childhood
relations between men and women
family
literature
Alternative keywords suggested by readers for this interview are: (Please click on a keyword to see more interviews, if any, on that topic)
childhood
schoolchildren's life
secondary school
sports
movies
plays
student life
children's upbringing
family
To read a full interview with Chuluun please click on the Interview ID below.
Summary of Interview 090516A with Chuluun
I was born the thirteenth daughter of Haltar in Manlai sum land of Ömnögovi aimag. My dad gave me to my granny to adopt and I was raised by an old woman named Üülüü. At the age of nine I went to the school in the centre of Ömnögovi aimag and studied till the ninth grade. Since childhood I was interested in art and sports, and in 1959, after the ninth grade I was taken into the national volleyball top team as a sportsperson. I had trained there for two years and realized that a short person doesn’t have a future in a top team, and I entered the PE faculty of the teacher’s Institute and graduated from there as a volleyball teacher-coach. After that I worked for 32 years and retired. For the past several years, I have been working in a non-governmental organization.
Mongolian children, beginning from the age of three, start the work of pasturing the lambs, watering the sheep, preparing firewood and bringing water. Because I had an old mother, from the age of five I used to get up early in the morning and make tea for her, clean the household and cook. Before I went to school, I saw the neighboring children doing their homework and I taught myself to read and to solve math problems.
At school, the teacher had the only textbook and she used to teach from it. Books were rare, so we often sat in the library. The elementary teachers used to be 16-17 year old teachers who had completed seventh grade or the teacher’s school. They were just like children, playing sometimes and teaching at the same time. But the teachers’ standards were very high and they gave a lot of homework. The countryside children often began to go to school when they were quite old. There were children who graduated the fourth grade when they were eighteen.
There were no art circles or sports until I was in the fifth grade. Beginning in the fourth grade I participated in the school concerts, and from the fifth grade I was the member of the aimag art brigade and we used to visit the surrounding aimags and sums. From the time when we entered the seventh grade, a PE teacher came and he organized a group. From the seventh to the ninth grades, I began participating in volleyball and gymnastics and the national competitions.
There were no criteria for entering secondary school. The children who lagged behind academically gradually left the school to go to vocational school.
As a result of the decision of the school to excuse me from the classes due to my becoming a sportsman of the national team, I became a top team sportsman in October of 1959 and stayed there for two years. Then, in order to get the secondary education certificate I attended evening school. The evening schools were open from 6pm till 11pm with the view to prevent unemployment and stop there being uneducated people. The state took great care to strengthen the material base of education and provide the school with teaching personnel. There was a policy of essential eight-year and ten-year education. When I studied at the PE school, most of the students were like me sportsmen.
The students of that time danced a lot in the Youth Cultural Palace and the Cultural Palace of the Construction Workers. After dance parties past 11pm we walked home and there was nothing scary about and it was peaceful. At that time there were few schools, there were three large schools like the Mongolian National University, the Teacher’s Institute and the Agricultural Institute.
