In this article, we raise topics that are associated with the younger generation - its education, upbringing, socialization, provide an analysis of the current state and try to make forecasts.
But the main thing for us is the roots of what is happening, since most of the negative factors affecting the growing up generation are not spontaneous, but are associated with the creeping disintegration of the once triune and integral domestic system of upbringing, education and science, encouraged from abroad for a long time. In this area, everything depends on the older generation, if it is able to carry out its will. But in the last quarter of a century, the older generation as a whole has shown lack of will and spinelessness. Accordingly, the overarching task of the coming era is to understand what we would be able to change if we accepted a clear model of the desired future.
Where are we developing?
Now our country has come to the next point of bifurcation. On the one hand, reformism in the education system and the upbringing system (or rather the non-upbringing system, because until recently it was indecent to mention it at the official level) has already become a grave, oppressive legacy that has left indelible marks on those of our fellow citizens who entered adulthood in the 2000s and 10s. On the other hand, timid movements towards overcoming this interdimensional state are noticeable, the sprouts of a new one, ripening in the depths of the existing plutocratic order, have appeared. These include individual “points of growth” associated with the activities of Minister Olga Vasilyeva. This has been especially vividly manifested in the most recent time - these are, for example, the scientific and educational centers that are being created, or the schools of the Russian Academy of Sciences planned to open (they, as Vasilieva recently stated,want to create more than a hundred schools in 32 regions of Russia). May God grant that something out of these plans would come true, and not turn into regular reformist simulacra. One way or another, these individual fads are taking place against the background of the continuation of the trends laid down in the supervision of Russian education by the Higher School of Economics (HSE) and its partner structures, behind which are transnational customers.
In education and upbringing, as in many other areas of our life, the contradictory, hybrid nature of the Russian elite is reflected. Unfortunately, this inconsistency was still clearly visible in the activities of the Ministry of Education and Science and in the last year - after its separation in May 2018 - of the two resulting ministries.
Not so long ago, the passports of the national projects "Education" and "Science" were published, in which officials tried to define in the sphere of their departments those figures of "investment in people" that President Putin spoke about and to which he dedicated his "new May decrees" [2] … Already in the very preamble of the passport "Education" there is a contradiction, a conflict between upbringing and education: "upbringing of a harmoniously developed and socially responsible person" is proposed to be carried out "on the basis of spiritual and moral values of the peoples of the Russian Federation, historical and national-cultural traditions"; education, on the contrary, will be based on the principles of “ensuring global competitiveness” and “joining the Russian Federation among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of the quality of general education”. Despite the seeming euphony of these goals,we are dealing with two opposite vectors of development - education based on traditions is directed in one direction, and entering the top ten "intellectually strong" - in the opposite direction. Here one can see the depravity of the very philosophy of the matter, which guides the officials. Either by inertia, or deliberately, they continue to use the deceitful quantitative and rating approach to qualitative things, which was previously incorporated into the entire system of public administration. After all, the main thing in development, especially when it comes to human potential, is not the growth rate, but the direction of growth. In the top ten, we are recognized as equal only if we meet their criteria. If we begin to develop our own criteria, then we will definitely not get into their top ten.and entering the top ten "intellectually strong" - in the opposite. Here one can see the depravity of the very philosophy of the matter, which guides the officials. Either by inertia, or deliberately, they continue to use the deceitful quantitative and rating approach to qualitative things, which was previously incorporated into the entire system of public administration. After all, the main thing in development, especially when it comes to human potential, is not the growth rate, but the direction of growth. In the top ten, we are recognized as equal only if we meet their criteria. If we begin to develop our own criteria, then we will definitely not get into their top ten.and entering the top ten "intellectually strong" - in the opposite. Here one can see the depravity of the very philosophy of the matter, which guides the officials. Either by inertia, or deliberately, they continue to use the deceitful quantitative and rating approach to qualitative things, which was previously incorporated into the entire system of public administration. After all, the main thing in development, especially when it comes to human potential, is not the growth rate, but the direction of growth. In the top ten, we are recognized as equal only if we meet their criteria. If we begin to develop our own criteria, then we will definitely not get into their top ten.or deliberately, they continue to use the deceitful quantitative and rating approach to qualitative things, previously embedded in the entire system of public administration. After all, the main thing in development, especially when it comes to human potential, is not the growth rate, but the direction of growth. In the top ten, we are recognized as equal only if we meet their criteria. If we begin to develop our own criteria, then we will definitely not get into their top ten.or deliberately, they continue to use the deceitful quantitative and rating approach to qualitative things, previously embedded in the entire system of public administration. After all, the main thing in development, especially when it comes to human potential, is not the growth rate, but the direction of growth. In the top ten, we are recognized as equal only if we meet their criteria. If we begin to develop our own criteria, then we will definitely not get into their top ten.then we will definitely not get into their top ten.then we will definitely not get into their top ten.
But how to implement traditions in education, if you do not develop your own criteria? It is also impossible to build a sovereign education system for a sovereign country - if the criteria are alien.
Promotional video:
In the passport of the national project "Science", ministerial bosses declare an even more ambitious goal, even more impracticable under the current conditions of administration - to enter the top five best in the world by 2024, forgetting that Russia today is not even included in the leading ratings and tables of ranks. the first hundred. Other countries have spent centuries on solving such a super task, and only a few, like the United States, Japan, and now China, have been governed in a record 25-30 years.
The peculiarity of Russia is not, of course, to ignore the path traveled by other countries, but to turn our education and our science into the world's best examples of national content and universal in form, to return them to their former glory and world recognition in the modern context. …
Can the measures proposed in these bloated and unsuitable for practical use passports remove the accumulated contradictions and improve the current depressing situation in our education and science? No, they won't! The current supervisory authorities monitor the situation in 32 analytical indicators in the field of education and 68 in the field of science and innovation. There are many times more of them in new passports. The question is why, if control over the current much narrower range of indicators is not ensured? Why produce new projects and programs if the old ones are ignored and not implemented? And should people who have failed previous projects be trusted to develop new projects? Moreover, many of them, such as Ms. Golikova, are specialists of other profiles, who have only an indirect relationship to education and science.
Total demotivation of children
A person who comes to school today as a teacher (if he has not worked at school for a long time) is shocked. It is associated with a radical decrease in children's motivation to learn - as if in the new generation there was an insurmountable barrier to the perception of the new. There is practically no collection of knowledge. A typical student's reaction to topics unknown to him is: "Why should I know what the Olympic Games are?" (Anything can be put in place of the Olympic Games.)
On leaving the tour of the Tretyakov Gallery, teenagers exclaim: "Wow, how much old stuff!"
- What do you need? - the teacher reacts to this.
- Well, not that!.. - the children answer, and turn on the gadgets …
But what will they find in their gadgets instead of the classic "junk"?
A similar situation in universities - with the difference that grown-up children come there motivated by their parents to receive a diploma. Therefore, they treat education as a series of tests, but not as an accumulation of useful knowledge. Many people see higher education (or rather a bachelor's degree - without a master's degree) solely as a means of making it easier for themselves to start their own business. While the education they receive, in its content, seems to them unnecessary, redundant.
In high school, a new mood dominates, which did not exist a few years ago. Children do not want to voluntarily enter universities. Even excellent students are more willing to go to colleges than to high school [3]. The principle that determines their assessment of their prospects sounds depressing: “I know what I don't want. But I don't know what I want. " This is a kind of apathy, lack of will, a delay in growing up.
Those who nevertheless went to universities in recent years are characterized by a serious shift in the cognitive paradigm, which almost all teachers are worried about, namely: a drop in the level of abstract thinking, visualization - young people are able to perceive knowledge mainly in the genre of "funny pictures". What radically distinguishes today's student from the late Soviet and early post-Soviet is a very weak humanitarian component. The student cannot retell the studied material in his own words. According to the testimony of the professors, they are even offended if asked about it:
- How so?! After all, I brought the abstract! (This implies: I found it on the Internet and downloaded it.) What else do you need from me?
Corrosive plagiarism in education, with regard to the so-called "independent" and domestic work, has become the norm. And really - who will spend time and effort on researching this or that issue, if you can bring the finished downloaded work? When this is legalized, no one will even try! It does not occur to a modern student that in the generation of their parents it was customary to write abstracts, and not to copy, and often these abstracts formed the basis of both term papers and theses. The main thing - then the skill of independent search, development of a topic, construction of a logical chain of meanings was acquired.
Today's graduate student, as a rule, does not know what a synopsis is. It runs on a computer and compiles texts from various sources. At the same time, his systemic ideas and horizons are in a critically low state. The skills of methodological thinking are almost completely lacking. There are times when even understanding the word "problem" is problematic for a graduate student.
The overwhelming majority of students do not have young courage. Instead of healthy ambitions and optimism - skepticism and cynicism. The consciousness of young people is poisoned by materialistic and hedonistic attitudes, revolves around the horizon of goals described by the formula "to snatch your piece in this world …"
In short, this is the real picture of educational motivation among the younger generation (and behind educational motivation, meaningful motivation is already looming, otherwise it does not happen!).
Against this background, many statements by President Putin in his last Address to the Federal Assembly (February 20, 2019) look like illusions. Particular attention is paid to the plans for the development of the system of additional education. The President said: “Over the next three years, due to the expansion of the network of children's technoparks, quantoriums, centers of digital, natural science, humanitarian development, about a million new places will be created in the system of additional education. It should be available to all children. Sochi's "Sirius" is becoming a real constellation. It was planned that support centers for gifted children based on its model will appear in all regions of the country by 2024. But colleagues say they are ready to do it earlier, in two years. This kind of proactive work is welcome. "Further, in the same spirit and in some detail, Putin spoke about projects of early profiling, industrial practice and career guidance. At the same time, when it comes to the plans, dreams, and daring of young people in his Address, the president's tone is as if he recalls his own pioneer and Komsomol youth, naively not imagining what is really happening to our children now.
Yes, in the same Sochi "Sirius" we really see special guys - enthusiastic about their vocation, prodigies with burning eyes. This is not surprising - on a separate site, you can always create something exceptional, exemplary and … necessary for the report, with the investment of resources, talents and love of teachers for children. (We always knew how to do this - they were especially fond of it in the era of the USSR.) However, the mass of today's education system is stuck in a completely different plane.
The viciousness of this - demonstrative, or, as the people say, "ostentatious" - direction is associated with the fact that almost all these projects (such as Sirius, Quantorium, "Ticket to the Future", competitions for personal growth, etc.) are at best networked and sporadic-campaignan character. But networks and campaigns always act selectively, do not lead to a comprehensive improvement in education and a turning point in the quality of youth motivation. Thus, today, large-scale systemic nationwide decisions are largely replaced by individual projects.
A little about competencies and capitalization
One of the main conceptual innovations of the conductors of the Bologna system in Russia is the so-called competence-based approach, according to which competence (skills) instead of the ability to think should become the primary criterion of its work in domestic education. What is the rationale behind this approach? An educated person must be “capitalized”. In essence, this is the logic of slavery and the slave trade, adjusted for the realities of the 21st century. After all, thinking as such cannot be sold, but competencies can. Who needs a thinking slave? And a competent workforce has a definite value in the market.
If Russia's huge human potential does not become human capital, then why and who needs it? - such discouraging questions were asked by our reformers. In particular, one of the main proponents of this approach was the already mentioned HSE, and in particular the Institute for the Development of Education, which is part of its structure, is the main developer of many reforms in this area. The scientific director of this institute, Isaak Frumin, the leading herald of the competence-based approach in Russia, and before that for many years the coordinator of education projects at the Moscow office of the World Bank, was most famous, however, not for scientific achievements, but for the homosexual scandal at the Higher School of Economics, when it turned out that he was in regular sexual intercourse with his subordinates. However,this scandal did not result in a trial and did not affect Frumin's career. Students and wards of the "master-teacher", apparently, will never know whether he used his official position to persuade a subordinate to an intimate relationship or whether it was a voluntary romantic friendship. (Frumin's partner Petrov quit after the scandal.)
So, the Frumins and others like them actually promoted the ideology of the World Bank (of course, they did not invent it, but only voiced it!), Imposing an “investment approach” on Russia - that is, considering it as a fertile soil or a sheep that gives high-quality wool - in general, as a loan (investment in education is a type of loan). And in this they were fully supported by Russian neoliberals, the highest cohort of which includes the rector of the Higher School of Economics Kuzminov with his wife Nabiullina, and the academic advisor of the Higher School of Economics Mr. Yasin, a teacher of many reformers, and their close friend and patron Kudrin.
Under the new minister Vasilyeva, the positions of the Higher School of Economics were shaken. Recently, rumors have even spread about inspections by Rospotrebnadzor, which revealed serious financial and legal abuses [4]. Nevertheless, given the weight of Yasin and Kuzminov in the power clans, these affairs can be put on hold. Moreover, HSE's annual budget has reached very significant figures - about 22 billion rubles.
Self-fulfilling dystopia?
Our colleagues are raising the question of the underlying preconditions for the current youth apathy. They talk about the onset of the era of the precariat [5]. Obviously, young people are becoming the precarious first, and today young people already view “freelancing” or part-time employment as the norm for their future working life. This trend is global, for example, in Germany, whole dynasties of such people have developed and are subject to registration.
Political scientist and human rights activist Yekaterina Shulman, anchor of Echo of Moscow, asserts in this regard: “Lack of motivation is an extremely valuable quality for people who have to live in a society where their work is not needed. In order for them not to feel thrown out of society and not needed by anyone, they must have a different psychology, a different structure of the head”[6]. Realizing that you are superfluous in time is a sign of advancement. The thought is phenomenal and somewhere even graceful!
In 2016, G. Gref's team conducted a sociological study on generation Z (that is, those born after 1995). One of the results of the study: the planning horizons of young people and adolescents are extremely short, they live in the present - while the "distant future" seems incomprehensible and frightening to them. In the recommendatory part of the conclusions, sociologists who worked for Sberbank argue that this generation can and should be offered master classes, trainings, seminars, and comprehensive career guidance programs - such as Kidzania for adolescents and adults. And finally, a truly significant finding: “It is likely that this generation will seek alternative employment schemes. So it makes sense to think about special offers / products for freelancers / remote workers. It is worth helping young people to achieve short-term goals, for example, for a year”[7].
However, the question arises in this regard: is it the youth themselves who "invented" the future for themselves, or is they sensitively picking up the model of the future that is actually being imposed on them? This question Gref and his team delicately bypass. It was important for them to pass this information, one might even say, a hidden attitude, as an objective sociological fact: children themselves already feel themselves as a “precariat”, and are quite ready to live in a superfluous, unclaimed mode. Say, this is normal!
The question arises: has not our education system reorganized over the decades of reforms to fit this planned-predicted state? And although the ideologists of the reforms persuaded us that it was time to move from the outdated concept of “human potential” to the progressive one - “human capital”, they kept a completely different idea in their minds and meant something unacceptably indecent. Namely, the NEXT generation was viewed by reformers and their customers from the World Bank, IBRD and neighboring institutions not through the prism of “human capital”, but through the prism of “human ballast”. Only a small minority of the most talented, the most successful and brilliantly educated in the most demanded “competencies” in the global market could be counted as “human capital” - those who could go to a prosperous world and sell themselves there.
For the authors of this report, it is obvious that the growth of the youth precariat in the current regressive order, or rather in a state of being stuck between technological orders, is not so much associated with the shortcomings of parents or teachers, and not even with failures in the education system, but with the exact opposite. The existing system secretly, however, purposefully nurtured the future precariat. In such a frame of reference, the younger generation lacks the clear, encouraging paths in life that previous generations have prepared for them.
Most often, the current problems of domestic education were attributed by the liberals to chaos in the vocational guidance system, to the inability of the state and the school to calculate the changing demands of production and the service sector for specialists of a particular profile. They say that the education system has not yet integrated into the market. But this is the tactical level of the problem, and the strategic level remained outside the brackets.
What is the output? Processes that seem spontaneous and caused by the dominance of new information technologies are at a deep level associated with simpler and more banal things: the closed real prospects for the development of new generations in Russia. Children unconsciously, at the level of mass culture and media attitudes seeping into the minds, follow the course that was de facto set by the international power elites.
From this position, some of the most likely outcomes were formed in young people. One is artificial infantilization, virtualization, isolation in the inner world and unwillingness to make an adult choice. Another outcome is an “explosion of identity” through extremism, terrorism, crime, or the revolutionary overturning of the existing system (and part of the youth makes just such a choice). The third outcome is depression and self-destruction, either in a harsh form (an increase in suicidal moods), or in a sluggish form (drug addiction, alcoholism, radical techniques of "changing and expanding consciousness", occultism, withdrawal into perverted subcultures).
Imitation machine
Apart from some exceptions, the parents of today's schoolchildren are passive, go with the flow, solve problems of survival and, like the school, have little concern with real education. The past conflict of generations, with all Turgenev's struggles and sufferings, is, as a rule, alien to them today. They orient children to high marks as the only requirement, and children accept this orientation: for passable marks they receive money, sweets, access to gadgets and the Internet. A child who begs the teacher for a higher grade has become typical.
But parents are only one side of the coin. On the other hand, administrators put pressure on teachers. Recently, the practice has been spreading when district education departments insist on not putting two's. Departments, in turn, are under pressure from above, demanding high ratings. The district should not be in the notorious "red zone", it should maintain an average mark, or to be more precise: schools are required to have at least 56% quality (that is, fives and fours). Thus, the teacher is deprived of the last levers of influence on students. He is forced to ask the director for permission to give low marks - otherwise he is called to the carpet.
A similar situation is in universities: the teacher is told about the inadmissibility of twos in the session. The blame for the deuces lies not with the student, but with the teacher, who, as it turns out, “teaches poorly” - from the point of view of the existing system.
This, let's not be afraid of this word, idiotic practice does not look idiotic at all if you look at it as a dead reporting system. And this is exactly how the reform ideologists and their proponents looked and are looking at it. A whole generation of relevant officials has already been raised, who cannot do otherwise and do not understand how it is possible to lead and act differently!
The rating-reporting system has turned, firstly, into a machine for imitating education, and secondly, into a machine for corrupting both teachers and children. Since they, too, are forced to participate in imitation, to ascribe to themselves non-existent achievements, to participate in events, circles, olympiads "for show", and not for a real educational and socially useful purpose. To compose individual "portfolios" and now fashionable video presentations as colorful examples of hypocritical self-promotion. (Fashion and stylishness serve as a camouflage for the lack of real content.) But the root here is the appeal of education to the system for the development of budgetary money, since significant budgets can be easily written off specifically for broadcasting and demonstration actions, and not for daily, professional, routine and labor-intensive work in school.
This report is not the place to once again analyze such topics as the Unified State Exam, test form for credits and exams, a huge load on teachers and teachers in connection with the excessively bloated paper and electronic reporting (according to some estimates, the workflow in the modern education system has grown by 12-14 times) [8]. Let's just say that the test form unconditionally and without any reservations impoverishes the mind, training students on cliches. Indeed, in the mathematical sciences one and the same task has different ways of solving, in which the individuality of a person is manifested [9]. The essence of the test system for checking knowledge was vividly exposed already in the Soviet, truly perspicacious film "Just Horror!" 1982 year. In it, the modern Unified State Exam was predicted in an ironic manner. There it was called "machine learning method",thanks to the implementation of which the school depicted in the film received (nota bene!) the RONO pennant. But the main character objects to the zealous teacher, the apologist of the new method:
- If Nekrasov knew that his poem would be programmed, he would write only vaudeville. And Gogol would have burned the first part of Dead Souls!
And the elderly teacher in the staff room will later remark on this:
- If Gogol had to study literature in such an office, he would not have written anything …
Invasion of gadgets
The above is also true for gadgets, which have actually replaced living authorities. The transition to gadgets in education is a landslide process, especially among students, for whom their smartphones and tablets with Internet access are already partly replacing libraries. The richness of information and the availability of any information becomes the cause of intellectual poverty and relaxation, since the creative and volitional principle, which is necessary in higher education, and even more so in science, dissolves at the beginning of the consumer one. There is also a technical barrier. For example, is a gadget or some other communicator adapted to reading serious literature? Is it convenient, for example, to read Kant's smartphone or a textbook on higher mathematics? To what extent is the way of perception itself, set and determined by gadgets, suitable for mastering fundamental knowledge?
It seems that the students themselves, if they were honest with themselves, would give exhaustive answers to these questions. But the problem is that it is not enough at some stage to switch from gadgets to reading paper literature or to serious work with a laptop. The problem is that a child's and a teenager's gadget already sets the same “clip” order of information perception, when the subject of consideration is not studied, but is swallowed, and therefore only small fragments of knowledge are absorbed. This “clip” order is not suited for high-quality higher education and makes it very difficult for the organic reception of knowledge in secondary school.
We will not mention here such a topic as the health of children, about the dangers of electronic communication for them, which is already well known. The topic of emotional disorders in children who spend a lot of time on the Internet and playing computer games is also fairly well known. (Case studies show that children who have limited gadget use are better and easier to socialize, learn to communicate and understand other people.) The role of the Internet as an outstanding socialization tool, which is loudly talked about by digital advocates, is highly distorted. After all, the Internet, displacing other significant figures and authorities from the circle of attention of a child and adolescent, has not offered them any full replacement. Rather, he filled the resulting psychological and pedagogical void with surrogates - like fashionable genres, media stars and memorials. Which,as a rule, not so much "authoritative" for young people - as, in their own words, "cool". Leaders of ratings and champions in viewing in social networks are most often represented by artificially promoted mass-culture products of a lower grade.
The question of the use of gadgets by children and adolescents is not harmless. Considering that today most adolescents spend more than 2-3 hours a day with them, this problem is rampant. The curious thing is that to become a good programmer, a modern young person does not need to spend many hours in daily computer studies. And to become an advanced user - a well-educated person (at the high school level) needs a few months of regular effort. It follows from this that the total informatization and gadgetisation of adolescents has quite a few positive and useful sides, and the affection from the advancement of children in the field of new information technologies reflects the pathological inability of the older generation to realize what they are doing with their children.letting go of business with "gadgetisation" on its own.
Few people know that in the families of the leaders of the American IT industry, such as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, children were not given free access to gadgets and the Internet. The luminaries of digitalization preferred to give their children a traditional upbringing with an emphasis on books and classic hobbies. The departure of our children to the computer world is often due to the fact that parents egoistically free up their own time in this way, and thus only aggravate the psycho-emotional gap between generations. After a few years of such segregation, there comes a time when parents and children have nothing to talk about. Children are being intercepted by other centers of influence, other generators of meanings and values - and for Russia it is also important to understand that these centers are deeply hostile to our cultural code. (Look at this in the concluding chapter of our report.)
The opposite examples are known: these are some Orthodox schools, where, according to the charter of the educational institution, a complete or partial ban on gadgets and the Internet during training has been introduced. This is the Sevastopol school "Mariampol", which shows good results in the admission of its graduates to Russian and foreign universities.
Another extremely striking example. In 2018, members of the Izborsk club visited the Svyato-Aleksievskaya desert near Pereslavl-Zalessky, within which there is a line of educational institutions (classical gymnasium, art school, cadet corps). We were surprised to find there a unique library available to students with a collection of about 400,000 volumes (the largest private library in Russia) and a complex of first-class small museums of various profiles, only 30 museums, which host up to 300 lessons per year. Truly, a worthy replacement for gadgets missing from students! The result is this: educational institutions of the Holy Aleksievskaya Hermitage ensure almost one hundred percent enrollment rate of their graduates in universities, all the more surprising given that a significant part of the boarding school's contingent is made up of orphans and so-called “difficult” children and adolescents. [10]
In our opinion, this experience requires the most serious study …
Diseases of education hit everyone
The philosophy of educational reformers has led to the fact that the teacher is officially considered not a “teacher” in the traditional sense of the word, but a “service provider”. The profanation of his status leads to the disintegration of the traditional link "Teacher - Pupil", on which from time immemorial the whole human culture was held. If the teacher turns into a service figure, then there is no student, no model for the reproduction of knowledge. In its place comes the model of manipulative use: people, information, technology, social statuses and conventions. This is the model of anomie society, and it was it that was adopted by the neoliberal ideologues of dismantling the previous education system.
The authority of a teacher at school and a teacher at a university often suffers due to the fact that the main criterion for success in life for students is the markers of material well-being: such as clothes, cars, fashion accessories, etc. In this regard, teachers and teachers are often perceived by young people as “losers”, whose intellect and education do not deserve to be respected, viewed as a high social value.
The new generation considers itself advanced and cool, not even remotely understanding what is being done to it. While poor standards of “humanization of education” are being introduced in schools more and more, when a teacher cannot exert moral pressure on a negligent student, the university is imposing an approach of “pleasing the client”, which can be briefly described by the formula “a student needs to be liked”. It is considered progressive and promising to gratify the conceit of the younger generation in every possible way, and not to open their eyes to their actual state. This is similar to one of the main principles of the Jesuits, according to which, in order for a person to voluntarily obey, he needs to be skillfully flattering.
A market paradigm is imposed on the teaching staff, when the educational process is split into elective disciplines, and the teacher is forced to win students over with the “interestingness” and “attractiveness” of his course. At the same time, individual work with students, consultations, abstracts, the further, the more they are reduced to zero.
Another fashion fad is online education, an initiative that could wither away the genre of live lectures. This idea has provoked an excited discussion, since it is about a radical revision of the centuries-old university tradition. An online lecture must be pre-recorded on video and then it can replace traditional lectures for years. This means both the absence of live contact, and the absence of improvisation by the lecturer, and in some cases it can degenerate into reading a textbook on a video camera or microphone. In addition, online lectures by recognized masters may eventually eliminate the need for lectures by other teachers, because students in other educational institutions will want to listen to the great masters. Online education threatens to lead to tectonic shifts throughout the system, including the release of a significant part of the labor force in universities.
In recent years, Russian professors have felt a new degree of pressure from the system. The entire faculty has been transferred to annual competitions, every year their qualifications require new confirmation, the teacher collects new medical certificates and certificates of no criminal record, etc., not to mention carefully regulated reports. The parasitic imitation machine requires huge paper sacrifices, and in this "paperwork" of all the subordinates, it seems to find confirmation of the meaning of its own existence.
The reporting and rating system in educational science - in graduate school and among teachers - has led to an absurd result: due to the forced paperwork and compulsory attendance of classes, the graduate student has no time to write a thesis, for similar reasons the university teacher has no time to write his doctoral or books. However, writing books is no longer encouraged: monographs are no longer accepted as a reporting format for scientific work. Instead, you need to constantly confirm your status through mandatory publications in peer-reviewed publications. At the same time, any serious scientist will notice: the level of VAK journals has decreased, the creative component is almost absent in them, for the most part they have become rather poor from a scientific point of view. It is no secret that there is a significant corruption component in the organization of the reporting publications of scientists. Money is taken for publications in peer-reviewed journals, in Scopus or Web of Science (the cost of publication depends on the impact factor of the publication), as well as for artificially organized citations. Under the control of liberal reformers in the meager field of Russian science, big business developed, built on the artificial increase in the citation index of authors. Needless to say, all this does not fully reflect the real success of scientists: the number of publications correlates weakly with the real level of scientific achievements of the published author. Again, there is imitation and "commercialization" - only this time not education, but science [11]. Under the control of liberal reformers in the meager field of Russian science, big business developed, built on the artificial increase in the citation index of authors. Needless to say, all this does not fully reflect the real success of scientists: the number of publications correlates weakly with the real level of scientific achievements of the published author. Again, there is imitation and "commercialization" - only this time not education, but science [11]. Under the control of liberal reformers in the meager field of Russian science, big business developed, built on the artificial increase in the citation index of authors. Needless to say, all this does not fully reflect the real success of scientists: the number of publications correlates weakly with the real level of scientific achievements of the published author. Again, there is imitation and "commercialization" - only this time not education, but science [11].
In the modern management system, universities have forgotten what university autonomy is. Rectors are actually appointed from above; attempts to somehow resist the initiatives launched by officials, as a rule, are fruitless and even dangerous for the initiators. The professors are afraid to publicly criticize the educational mafia that continues to occupy this vital area of national life.
One of the gratifying exceptions is the Lomonosov Moscow State University, where Rector Viktor Sadovnichy managed to defend his civic and professional position on the issue of the so-called “integrated magistracy” - but even he managed to do this only as a result of many years of struggle. Now graduates of Moscow University who have graduated from the bachelor's degree can continue their studies in the magistracy in the same specialty, and de facto now all students study here for 6 years. Thus, at one separate site, the Bologna process was partially “neutralized” [12]. Why not broadcast this experience as soon as possible to other universities?
Given the presence in the country of 818 universities and 4.5 million students (their record number - more than 7.1 million - was noted in 2005) of high-quality higher specialized education as such, especially engineering, economic and legal, which is the basis of the necessary and sufficient the staffing of our governing bodies, in Russia has long been gone. The number of officials in our country breaks world records (the estimated figure is about 5 million people), but today there are very few trained class specialists, competent leaders, and in many key areas of development, in particular in applied statistics or the digital economy, there are practically none.
A person who in higher education never acquired the intuitive skills to think and count quickly, was not trained in the ability to quickly, enterprisingly and effectively set tasks and find their solution in the shortest ways, will never and nowhere be able to think and act competently. There are huge masses of people with diplomas, that is, supposedly educated people, but we have practically no real experts in their field, masters, so-called "competent leaders". Science, despite its ideological mission, has not become in Russia a true forerunner and formative matrix for education. Instead, the transformational goals are determined by the bureaucratic machine.
What is a bachelor?
Let's allow ourselves a short linguistic excursion. I must say that the very old term "bachelor" in Europe has not been used for a long time. He was revived specifically for the Bologna process, wishing, apparently, to please the Anglo-Saxon tradition. In Russian conditions, a bachelor is an under-specialist who received an education that seems to be higher than in a technical school, but in no way a full-fledged higher education.
The etymology of the notion "bachelor" is confusing, but here we are dealing with an artificial invention of the term in late Latin and a hypocritical departure from its real roots. The ennobled etymology baccalaureus = bacca "berry" + lauri "laurel", that is, "laurel berry" - got into many dictionaries, but in essence it is absurd. In fact, the first root of the word bacca goes back either to vacca "cow" (the bachelors were called farmers in the early Middle Ages) or to vasallus - "vassal", a concept that was originally also associated with rural inhabitants dependent on large landowners. Hence the understanding of the bachelor as an assistant, assistant, "junior knight", etc., which was stable in the Middle Ages. There is another version - a connection with the root vaco - to be free, idle, empty, rest, sit back. It is associated with such connotations in Latin as uselessness, emptiness (vacuum), unemployment (vacancy), vacue - unmarried, lonely (woman). In ancient Rome, there was even the goddess of relaxation Vakuna of Sabine origin. This etymology is indirectly confirmed by one of the main meanings of the word "bachelor" among the Anglo-Saxons: bachelor - a bachelor, a boar. In English, stable combinations have been preserved: old bachelor - an inveterate bachelor; bachelor mother - single mother; bachelor flat - one-room apartment; bachelorship - simultaneously translated as "bachelor's degree" and "single life". Сonfirmed bachelor, lifelong bachelor and bachelor-boy are phrases with a hint of homosexuality. All of this creates a large field for English humor and banter on bachelor's degree holders.vacue - single, single (woman). In ancient Rome, there was even the goddess of relaxation Vakuna of Sabine origin. This etymology is indirectly confirmed by one of the main meanings of the word "bachelor" among the Anglo-Saxons: bachelor - a bachelor, a boar. In English, stable combinations have been preserved: old bachelor - an inveterate bachelor; bachelor mother - single mother; bachelor flat - one-room apartment; bachelorship - simultaneously translated as "bachelor's degree" and "single life". Сonfirmed bachelor, lifelong bachelor and bachelor-boy are phrases with a hint of homosexuality. All of this creates a large field for English humor and banter on bachelor's degree holders.vacue - single, single (woman). In ancient Rome, there was even the goddess of relaxation Vakuna of Sabine origin. This etymology is indirectly confirmed by one of the main meanings of the word "bachelor" among the Anglo-Saxons: bachelor - a bachelor, a boar. In English, stable combinations have been preserved: old bachelor - an inveterate bachelor; bachelor mother - single mother; bachelor flat - one-room apartment; bachelorship - simultaneously translated as "bachelor's degree" and "single life". Сonfirmed bachelor, lifelong bachelor and bachelor-boy are phrases with a hint of homosexuality. All of this creates a large field for English humor and banter on bachelor's degree holders. This etymology is indirectly confirmed by one of the main meanings of the word "bachelor" among the Anglo-Saxons: bachelor - a bachelor, a boar. In English, stable combinations have been preserved: old bachelor - an inveterate bachelor; bachelor mother - single mother; bachelor flat - one-room apartment; bachelorship - simultaneously translated as "bachelor's degree" and "single life". Сonfirmed bachelor, lifelong bachelor and bachelor-boy are phrases with a hint of homosexuality. All of this creates a large field for English humor and banter on bachelor's degree holders. This etymology is indirectly confirmed by one of the main meanings of the word "bachelor" among the Anglo-Saxons: bachelor - a bachelor, a boar. In English, stable combinations have been preserved: old bachelor - an inveterate bachelor; bachelor mother - single mother; bachelor flat - one-room apartment; bachelorship - simultaneously translated as "bachelor's degree" and "single life". Сonfirmed bachelor, lifelong bachelor and bachelor-boy are phrases with a hint of homosexuality. All of this creates a large field for English humor and banter on bachelor's degree holders. Сonfirmed bachelor, lifelong bachelor and bachelor-boy are phrases with a hint of homosexuality. All of this creates a large field for English humor and banter on bachelor's degree holders. Сonfirmed bachelor, lifelong bachelor and bachelor-boy are phrases with a hint of homosexuality. All of this creates a large field for English humor and banter on bachelor's degree holders.
One way or another, the introduction of the Bologna system, even at the language level, again brings us back to the topic of precariat, part-time, self-employed, “human ballast”.
Build a cathedral of generations
Here we again turn to the beginning of our report in order to assert: education and upbringing (socialization) should not be multidirectional, but, on the contrary, should be linked into a single complex. As you know, it is always more difficult to raise the bar and improve than to decompose and lower. Today there is not enough educational and propaganda work, in the current conditions an active educational method is needed. Not only a teacher and educator, but the entire social system, including various institutions and the institution of the family, should be included in the process of changing the benchmarks - from the current fictitious value "neutrality" to high standards, classics, and tradition. The modern world and popular culture cannot be abolished, but the older generation can and must build a noticeable "island of salvation" in the middle of the modern world, a solid foundation for pedagogy,for human development, for the restoration of "bridges" between generations [13].
In the understanding of the Izborsk club, the first priority of national development, which concerns not only education and upbringing, but all state life, is the cultivation of the highest human potential necessary for a sovereign civilization.
This nodal point also contains a single source for the formation of the Education-Upbringing-Socialization complex. This is also the root of the dynamic advanced development of Russian science. Both education and science in a sovereign state are built not to provide services to cosmopolitans, but in the name of the good and benefit of the organic community - the civilization in which a person lives. The interests of a person and his family ultimately merge with the interests of society. Otherwise, the state, as it happened with the neoliberals, becomes a company for the "training and sale of qualified personnel", with the rejection of "human ballast" to the social margins. The split of generations also occurs here. And we do not need splitting, we need a council of generations.
Surprisingly, the key idea for correcting the upbringing system was expressed back in the 19th century by the father of the "Slavophil" trend, A. S. Khomyakov: he pointed out the danger of multidirectional education in the family and school, when: “the whole soul of a person, his thoughts, his feelings are divided; all inner wholeness, all vital wholeness disappears; the exhausted mind does not bear fruit in knowledge, the killed feeling stalls and dries up; a person breaks away, so to speak, from the soil on which he grew up, and becomes an alien on his own land”[14].
The relevance and acuteness of these thoughts has increased many times over a century and a half. Now, in the conditions of globalization and mass information, a person becomes the object of "educational" interventions not from one, not from ten, but from a thousand sources. The line between style, taste, and marketing interventions is blurred. In such conditions, the task of upbringing as an organized project aimed at the formation and formation of the personality becomes much more complicated. It is not enough to convey experience and knowledge, it is not enough to show moral models - it is necessary to lay in the personality of a young person the creative ability for self-education, for flexible and at the same time consistent and purposeful work to build up one's identity, filter out the unnecessary, sort out the alien and the obscure.
Since socialization is a multifactorial process, it is tempting to consider it spontaneous. However, spontaneity is only an appearance of the lack of personality of the external environment influences on a child or adolescent. This imaginary spontaneity, chaos and cacophony are not so much the properties of the socialization process itself, but a reflection of our inability to take into account all the constituent factors and the interaction of these factors with each other (their refraction in the human soul).
In fact, we are dealing with several main targeting beams, as well as thousands of less significant impacts, irregular or unstable. The first include influences from the family, school, local community (community, dormitory), a peer group (yard), relatives and friends, those cultural institutions and the media with which the young person has regular contact. These are several dozen favorites of upbringing-socialization. But through the mass media, and first of all, through the Internet and social networks, non-classical and at the same time very powerful beams of influence can quickly be introduced into the consciousness of a modern person.
The way out of this seemingly hopeless situation is an active educational practice, which can only be realized through purposeful communication. Obviously, the child and adolescent should have a choice with whom to communicate - but among the favorites of upbringing and socialization, he should have at least one “subject-educator” armed with the concept of “last resort” and standing on the values of national spiritual mobilization and patriotism. The process of education and socialization is very dynamic. A young person must have someone from the adult generation who investigates this process in the interests of the child himself as the heir of civilization. If there is such a person (ideally, of course, these are parents), then the main risks of spontaneous and multidirectional influences can be easily reduced. For this purpose, the educator communicates with the growing person,discusses his experiences with him. Joint reading by the educator and the educated of classical literature with its storehouse of spiritual and figurative riches, joint viewing of films, the study of hobbies and subcultures, just conversations on various topics, if this happens systematically - all this should open up to the educator a significant part of the psychological motives in the behavior of a developing personality. The goal of the educator in this communication is to correct the course of the formation of the child's “picture of the world”, to prevent the center of this “picture of the world” from shifting, perversion of the thesaurus of basic values.- all this should reveal to the educator a significant part of the psychological motives in the behavior of the becoming personality. The goal of the educator in this communication is to correct the course of the formation of the child's “picture of the world”, to prevent a shift in the center of this “picture of the world”, to distort the thesaurus of basic values.- all this should reveal to the educator a significant part of the psychological motives in the behavior of the becoming personality. The goal of the educator in this communication is to correct the course of the formation of the child's “picture of the world”, to prevent the center of this “picture of the world” from shifting, perversion of the thesaurus of basic values.
If the subject of this or that influence on the forming consciousness is absent (it cannot be identified), then the process of influence itself, its fruits, consequences can be grouped by the educator, and ultimately they will form the image of the "last resort", which does not just create some information noise, but puts a certain message (or a number of messages) into its information. "The last instance" acts through many intermediaries, and its presence is guessed by one or another fruit - new hobbies and affections of a young man. Multidirectional and having different sources of influence are added to a single figure and modeled as something integral. In one of the Western animated series, one "funny" song is sung every time at the beginning of the episode:
Nowadays, all channels seem to be at the same time: violence and sex in the news and in the movies.
When many competing educators do one common work, a collective image of mass culture or its separate segment (subculture) is formed. This image actively influences the young client and can surpass in power the favorites of education-socialization. The older the teenager, the more independent he is, the more detached from the subjects of upbringing who take care of him, the stronger these “last resort” competing with parents, school and friends.
The secret of upbringing-socialization in our time, if we want to take this process into our own hands, is to timely notice the intrusion into the inner world of the little person of powerful "last resort", going against the main vector of upbringing, distorting the dynamics of the emerging "picture of the world ", React to it. Some of the goals that these authorities pursue, it is necessary to neutralize, some to debunk, highlighting in the mind of a young person, as far as possible in accordance with his age and personal characteristics, the destructiveness of these goals, acting under the guise of spontaneity and lack of direction.
But the main secret of the success of implementing the concept of “last resort” is not “fencing off” children from negative influences, but building a powerful value and moral dominant of upbringing. We propose to call this construction of the dominant “spiritual mobilization”.
Today in the society, which in the adult generation is 90 percent composed of parents and grandparents, there is a powerful demand for "consolidated education." This request consists in demands "to increase attention to the issues of education and the introduction of repressions of a different nature in relation to all social institutions without exception that do not perform or poorly perform their educational functions" (the wording of Professor L. Ye. Nikitina). By consolidating upbringing, we mean the system of activities of state and public institutions, families, social groups, in which mechanisms for mobilizing the spiritual potential of the young generation operate, feelings, consciousness and behavior are consistently formed, ensuring the maintenance of stability of society, strengthening its unity and solidarity,balanced inheritance of national and cultural traditions, cooperation of generations, transfer of historical experience.
The educator cannot act alone. He is forced to look for allies for himself, first of all, among the favorites of upbringing-socialization, regulating this environment on his own (for example, parents select a school, a tutor, block, not always successfully, connections with unwanted friends and stimulate, not always organically, connections with useful subjects communication, etc.).
The worldview foundation of consolidating education is based on the following basic postulates:
- spiritual independence of a citizen;
- preservation of civilization (Russia) and the inviolability of its sovereignty;
- officially declared union or partnership of the state and family;
- overcoming the demographic crisis;
- establishing social harmony;
- the advancement of a creative and constructive model of personality as a national benchmark.
The central subjects of consolidating education are:
- the head of the family is the father [15];
- mother;
- teacher (educator).
As follows from the basic imperatives and principles of consolidating education, only the family can act as the central subject of this process. Therefore, the family and the state become the two main partners in this field. The union and partnership of family and state should become one of the official definitions of the official policy of Russia. The first and key act of consolidation that occurs in consolidating education is the act of rallying the state and the family, rallying families into their own state. Failure to understand this, attempts to reduce education only to the activities of professionals, even if all of them are competent and sincerely patriotic, will lead to division and alienation between generations, a further increase in the family crisis.
According to the classification of the Russian philosopher I. A. Ilyin, the following are the leading means of spiritual education: nature in all its beauty, grandeur and mysterious expediency; true art, giving the opportunity to experience a sense of grace-filled joy; genuine sympathy for all suffering; effective love for neighbors; the blissful power of the act of conscience; the courage of a national hero; the creative life of a national genius with his sacrificial responsibility; direct prayer appeal to God, "Who hears, and loves, and helps."
The actualization of the listed principles not through rational mechanisms, but holistically, including complete spiritual and emotional involvement - up to catharsis and higher types of empathy - is the essence of the spiritual mobilization of the inner forces of a young person. Such mobilization turns out to be the only possible way of genuine patriotic education.
Spiritual mobilization activates the inspiration and creative forces of students, their patriotic feelings, which in the process of studying the humanities (language, history, philosophy, etc.) are realized with the conscious use of knowledge in practice and behavior. Only in the practical orientation of creativity is the moral character of patriotic emotions revealed, the consolidating nature of the artistic image. The greatest educational effect is achieved just in the process of searching and discovering evidence, significant moments, facts in the fate of people and nations; there is a whole spectrum of optimistic and tragic experiences, surprise, compassion, awareness of duty to the past generations [16]. At the same time, empathy with significant values and specific samples of spiritual life (feat, struggle,creativity) is involved not just in observing certain events of the past and cultural facts, but in anticipating a future, deep and exciting perspective and opportunities for self-realization, service and even self-sacrifice.
In this chapter of the report, we have described only one of the aspects of the doctrine of "youth building", which was developed by us and our colleagues 11 years ago [17]. Here we touched primarily on the concepts of “last resort” and “consolidating education.” Along with this, the doctrine and our other developments also included large-scale concepts of the historical change of generations at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, the model of higher values in its opposite of the model of “society anomie”, the concept of socialization of the young generation based on a new type of social networks, building a“gift economy”,“economy of return”and an innovative“economy of seekers and testers”, an avant-garde project of“global Russian networks”as a set of solutions in the spirit of the Russian“dream style” involving a common project, a common cause.
Sources:
[1] The main authors of the report: Vitaly Averyanov, Petr Kalitin, Vasily Simchera.
[2] First of all, this is the Decree of May 7, 2018 No. 204 "On national goals and strategic objectives of the development of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2024".
[3] The authors of the report took this information from personal communication with a number of school teachers. But it is also confirmed by the latest polls, according to which those who do not consider higher education necessary for a successful career have grown significantly (such respondents aged 18 to 24 were 20% in 2008 and in 2018 - already 47%) … There are even more of those who believe that life can be successfully arranged without higher education - in 2018, about 72% in the same age category (Higher education: a path to success or a waste of time and money? // Website wciom.ru, 1.08.2018). In a more recent study, citizens of different ages assess the prospects of university graduates as follows: every fifth respondent (20%) believes that it is practically impossible to find a job for a person who has just received a diploma of higher education; another 18% believethat a job can be found with little effort; only 3% are convinced that a university graduate can easily find a job (Student's Day: why go to study? // Website wciom.ru, 2019-25-01).
[4] Vladimir Pavlenko. From Kuzminov to Walker: Why did the seams of the liquidation project crack? // Regnum.ru 9.02.2019.
[5] The precariat is understood as the social stratum of people employed in temporary, seasonal work or living with odd jobs. Now they began to be qualified as self-employed and, according to the new law, to collect taxes from them. According to various estimates, there are from 15 to 25 million such people in Russia, almost half of whom are today's youth. It is characteristic that many of those older precarians are under the illusion that they are engaged in a profession change, which in fact can last indefinitely. On the growing importance of the precariat problem, see the articles in the issue of the Izborsk Club magazine (2019 # 2): V. Shamakhov, N. Mezhevich “Brave New World” and its Challenges for Russian Youth; Martynov M. Education turned into a simulacrum.
[6] Ekaterina Shulman: Modern youth is the most correct of all generations that can be imagined // Portal "Orthodoxy and the World" 2017-13-12.
[7] Research of Sberbank: 30 facts about modern youth // Adindex.ru 10.03.2017.
[8] For a fairly complete and convincing analysis of these problems, see the report "The Systemic Crisis of Russian Education" (edited by V. Slobodchikov) and other materials of the Izborsk Club magazine (No. 2 2019).
[9] According to the testimony of the professor of the Moscow Conservatory V. Medushevsky, in the 90s our reformers, in an innovative spirit, even tried to transfer the conservatory to the test method of examination! (That is, they wanted to make the students, instead of their ability to creatively reproduce music, demonstrate skills on the principle of “crossing out the unnecessary”.) Miraculously, we managed to reject this proposal of neoliberal, let's not be afraid of this word, idiots.
[10] See the desert website
[11] The Internet is filled with shameless advertising with proposals to organize publications of the Higher Attestation Commission, RSCI, Scopus, as well as not only place, but also "inexpensively" write published articles for the client on any topic. It would not be difficult for the supervisory authorities to identify these firms if they wanted to.
[12] Another area where Moscow State University is going against the tide: creating its own ratings, Russian in origin. This is the rating "Three missions of universities", which, unlike most scientometric rankings in the world, assesses the social responsibility of universities. There are already 500 universities from different countries participating in it.
[13] At the same time, the forced destruction of what is fashionable today is unacceptable; this will only cause a protest from a young man. The task is to make fashionable the best in contemporary art, music, everyday life, etc.
[14] Khomyakov A. S. Complete collection of works. T. 3. M., 1910. - S. 348.
[15] The Soviet tradition of "protection of mothers and children", which indirectly reflected on the concept of "maternity capital" in demographic policy, should be recognized as distorting the nature of the family; this tradition implies, as it were, that the role of the father in the family and in raising the child is secondary; it is necessary to return to society the understanding that the father and mother should take an equally active part in education, and at some of its stages the role of the father becomes even more significant; Russia needs to reorient itself, if not directly to the pre-revolutionary model of the family with the central role of the father-breadwinner, then, in any case, closer to this model.
[16] In applied terms, this means that the basis of the updated education system will be to highlight the history of Russia as a basic subject, which should be taught 3-4 hours a week from the first to the eleventh grade. The course of national history, ideally, is structured in such a way that, already in elementary school, the child forms a firm idea of the civilizational uniqueness and special historical mission of Russia; about the historical experience of political cooperation, when representatives of various ethnic groups, religious and cultural traditions were engaged in a common creative work; about the defensive and liberating mission of the Russian army, about the daring of Russian scientists, inventors and designers, about the priorities of the Russian civilization in the creation of a highly developed culture.
[17] In the final chapter of the report, we summarize the ideas and principles formulated in the doctrine “The Young Generation of Russia” (Moscow, 2008). Thanks to the fact that it has now been republished in the volume “We believe in Russia. From the Russian Doctrine to the Izborsk Club”- everyone can get acquainted with it.