Film Lessons in Russian Schools: Educating the Future

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today, society is dominated by the point of view that cinema is primarily an entertainment industry, the task of which is to charge a person with positive emotions, help him relax, relax, get distracted, immerse himself in the world of a fairy tale, and so on. This frivolous attitude towards films is artificially maintained through the institutes of awards and the sphere of film criticism, which is used to discussing the form of presentation, but very rarely touches on the semantic component. Instead of evaluating the educational and ideological message of the film, predicting its impact on the individual viewer and society in general, we are constantly immersed in the discussion of secondary points: the acting of the actors, the size of the budgets, cinematic clichés and much more. Even such government departments of Russia as the Ministry of Culture or the Cinema Foundation, which sponsor the production of films, do not conduct any psychological and pedagogical examination of those works for which budgetary, and in fact, people's money is allocated. The result of this system is the education of citizens who are easy to manipulate. They are uncritical about cinema and mass culture in general, and therefore easily adopt the broadcast destructive models of behavior and values. Can the situation be corrected? Yes you can! To do this, from an early age it is necessary to form in children the skills of critical and conscious perception of information, developing in them the habit of analyzing and evaluating any film or cartoon that they watch.

And today in Russia there is already a project whose participants are engaged in similar work with children, it is called - "Film lessons in Russian schools." Its authors - producer Viktor Merkulov and screenwriter Elena Dubrovskaya - managed to realize an excellent idea, which allows not only to teach children correctly, to perceive cinema consciously, but also awakens in them the best human qualities and even involves them in socially useful activities. To this end, Victor, Elena and their associates have been making short educational films for children for several years now. Today, all the films, and there are already more than twenty of them, are published in the public domain, and you can familiarize yourself with them on the official website of the project, making your own opinion about whether such a movie is useful for the younger generation. Most of all we liked such films as "The Great", "I Have the Honor", "A Horse for a Hero", "Mandarin", each of which tells its cautionary story in a touching and accessible form for a child.

Many of you, looking at the work of the project and choosing suitable films for your children, are likely to feel a strong contrast to the works that are shown in cinemas today under the brand of "family" or "children" cinema, and in which even adults often feel ashamed for what is happening on the screen. Because there is a huge difference in the results of the work when the authors set themselves the task of entertaining the viewer and making money on it, or when they seek to educate and convey meaningful constructive meanings. However, the idea of film lessons is not limited to showing children really creative and useful films that help develop mental qualities. The main idea is to conduct regular collective film lessons in schools on the basis of the created catalog of films, involving students in a joint discussion of the films they have watched and the organization of socially useful actions to consolidate the educational message of film stories. At the same time, the guys themselves can come up with the business that they would like to do.

One example of such an activity is the joint collection of waste paper. Actually, most of the films were created with the funds that schoolchildren from different regions of Russia earned by participating in the Kinoecology charity event. In total, it is planned to release 99 paintings for children in the same way over the next 5 years. The situation, although paradoxical, is quite indicative: if the state, represented by the Ministry of Culture and other departments responsible for cinema, refuses to engage in the development of children's cinema in Russia, then people on the ground themselves begin to take on this responsibility, taking care of the future of the younger generation. A detailed algorithm of actions showing how any parent or teacher can take part in the "Film lessons in Russian schools" program is published on the project website. At the same time, the films themselves were reviewed by experts from the Institute for the Study of Childhood, Family and Upbringing of the Russian Academy of Education and received a positive conclusion, all the necessary documentation is also presented on the resource. For our part, we wish the "Film Lessons in Russian Schools" project further development, and we invite our readers and viewers to participate in it as much as possible, involving children in creative social activities and introducing them to films useful for moral education.