The scientist spoke about the disadvantages of distance education

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

A well-known scientist, head of the department for modeling nonlinear processes at the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Keldysha, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Georgy Malinetskiy tells why instead of a full-fledged education we are offered its imitation - distance learning, who and why pulls us into a new barbarism, and how the sphere of science and education can help the development of all of Russia.

Georgy Gennadievich, during the coronavirus pandemic, we saw the activation of supporters of the distance education system, the idea was actively promoted that this is our future, that now everyone will be learning that universities should become remote. What do you associate these ideas with, and what consequences can this have for our science and education?

There is such an anecdote. “Why do sparrow and nightingale sing differently, although they graduated from the same conservatory? - Because the nightingale graduated in full-time, and the sparrow in correspondence. What is happening now, what our liberals from education are promoting, is associated with the total replacement of full-time education by correspondence. In fact, this is a course for the elimination of the middle class, namely teachers, doctors, engineers. What is a doctor looking at a patient and what is telemedicine? Those who have not come across this probably do not understand what a huge difference this is.

A similar situation if we are trying to do something in absentia. Of course, this is also a chance to get an education. But this requires tremendous volitional and psychological efforts. And according to my estimates, and I teach at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and at Bauman University, less than 5% of students have these abilities.

For the rest, it is imitation. That is, in fact, a huge step is being taken from the present, normal, at least in terms of the concept of education, to its imitation. What does this lead to? To a very simple thing. Moreover, the concepts themselves - "knowledge", "skills", "skills" - are depreciated.

Recent social polls about the coronavirus have revealed a very curious thing. It turned out that 28% of Russian citizens who were interviewed do not believe all the official data and believe that the real number of cases is much higher. 29% believe that it is much less. That is, it turned out that in our society of this kind, innovations undermine the very trust in knowledge, in the assessments of specialists. And so we are moving with correspondence education straight to the Middle Ages.

What are the interests of those who promote this format of education - are they some kind of commercial interests, or ideological ones?

Just for the fiftieth anniversary of the Club of Rome, a report was released with the title “Come on! Capitalism, shortsightedness, population and planet destruction”. It clearly states that capitalism has exhausted its possibilities, that it has collapsed and has no prospects.

It shows a graph of how the well-being of people with different incomes has declined over 20 years. This graph is called the "elephant trunk". The rich got richer, no wonder. The poorest people in Southeast Asia have begun to live better. And only the middle class everywhere began to live worse. Teachers, doctors, professors - their incomes either decreased or barely increased.

This is again a step into the very New Middle Ages, when there are masters of discourse, rich people, there are poor people who can be issued with digital passes, and there is almost no middle class, but there are corresponding artificial intelligence systems. A book by Kai-Fu Lee, one of the leading experts in the field of AI - "The Superpowers of Artificial Intelligence", has just been published in Russia. According to him and his colleagues, within 10 years, 50% of all employees in the United States will lose their jobs.

Our Higher School of Economics, represented by its rector, Mr. Kuzminov, says that teaching is ineffective. There should be universities of the first category, where professors write lectures, other universities are sent this, respectively, seminars are also not needed, because this is completely replaced by books and tests.

And what will be the result?

I had a chance to talk with colleagues who were supposed to take a remote exam in medical affairs. Do you understand what it means, for example, a dentist who passed such an exam remotely, will you go to him?

Let's remember the liquidation of hospitals, remember our Moscow mayor's office and its decisions - why do we need all this? And suddenly it turns out that in the USSR they were right when they expected that people should have knowledge, skills, skills, that they should have the ability to do this in the event of emergencies, the likelihood of which, unfortunately, increases.

And that in such situations it will play a role. And here, if you remember how we started the fight against the epidemic, all the test results were brought to one center, which accidentally remained in Novosibirsk - "Vector".

There is a feeling that there are people who can do something, did something with their hands and learned not from books, but in fact - all this has been lost. There is a French joke “Why do we need doctors at all? There are encyclopedias where everything can be read and treated. “What if there’s a typo?” Apparently, the new generation that now leads education and science is not afraid of typos.

And what will a society be like where most people will be deprived of a normal education, and they just learn from the Internet?

In my opinion, this is a disaster. The huge problem we have now is that, unfortunately, the Roman proverb “divide and rule” has been implemented. That is, the connections between people are severely disrupted. Society is strong when we can help a neighbor, when we know his problems.

Remember, there was a Soviet song: “You, me, he, she - together a whole country, together a friendly family, in the word“we”one hundred thousand I”. And now in apartment buildings, in fact, communication has been destroyed. The same poll data - if there are active people in such a house who can help the elderly and their neighbors, then 25% are aware of this, and 65% expect that this should be done by the social security authorities.

There is a wonderful quote about mutual alienation by Martin Niemeller - “when they came for the communists, I was silent - I’m not a communist, when they came for the trade unions, I was silent - I’m not a member of the trade union, when they came for the Jews, I was silent - I’m not a Jew, when they came for me, there was no one to protest”.

There is another aspect as well. Remember the book about Pinocchio. Buratino had very short thoughts. If you open our media, you will also see very short thoughts there. If we compare modern newspapers with those that were in the sixties, then there was a serious analysis, interesting journalists, something bright, talented. And now the calculation is that a person will run through 1-2 paragraphs and a couple of pictures. Without any idea of whether this has anything to do with reality or not. And this is also a step into the New Middle Ages.

What needs to be done in order to resist this, maybe it is still necessary to move towards some other model?

Our politicians, even those who designate some "left" principles, they were absolutely unprepared for this new reality. That is, they believe that what worked great in the 19th century will work in the 20th. That some resolutions will work, that someone will read them. The reality has already become different. We are already in many ways in this New Middle Ages.

And then you need to do what was always done in the Middle Ages - you need to create communities. I think that one of the key concepts of the 21st century will be the concept of self-organization. Let me give you an example - in one of the cities that used to be a closed city, parents were shocked that their schoolchildren did not know anything. Then the parents themselves arranged a "super-school" upbringing, when people who work in first-class scientific institutes could tell something interesting to the children.

We now have a similar situation with special schools - physics and mathematics, music, sports - all this was in the USSR, and it was free, and now it is almost eliminated. And here, too, some kind of self-organization is needed.

Therefore, if people are ready, say, to organize circles for children who are interested in it, to tell them something, then this should be done. I think that it is self-organization that will lead us to other forms of life, to a different structure of society. Immanuel Wallerstein assumed that in the search mode for a new model the world would live from 30 to 50 years, now the time for such searches is coming. That is the time when we can figure out which designs will work in the future.

It can be noted that the economic model plays an important role in all this. Because if a country does not plan to develop its own industry, and, in principle, is mainly focused only on some chains of the global division of labor, where both brains and money flow out of the country, then, indeed, there is no need for a strong education that prepares those very engineers, specialists you are talking about. That is, it turns out that at the same time it is necessary not only to self-organize for all caring people, but still try to change this model. Because a developing economy automatically needs its scientific staff …

I think that the situation here is still deeper and more alarming. The Soviet Union was the second superpower in science and industry. A giant country. Now, after 30 years of reforms in the field of education and economics, we have significantly reduced our opportunities. We now have 30% of all mineral resources in the world, but our contribution to global GDP is 1.8%. As a country, we have become a gas station, a raw material appendage of other states.

The question is how to get out of this? We can get out if we have people who think about it, they know how, they want it. But this is already key to education. It is believed that we have an excellent education. Soviet was beautiful. And now no longer. There is such an international test for schoolchildren, PISA, which has been conducted since 2000 in more than 70 countries - this is a test for an average 15-year-old student, in three nominations - mathematics, science and reading comprehension. At the beginning of the 2000s, we were in the middle of our third decade.

And now at the beginning of the fourth. And if we look at Ukraine, Belarus, their positions are the same, although their educational systems are different. And Kazakhstan, Moldova - much further. That is, we are being pushed for many decades of the future into the pitiful niche of the appendage of the developed countries.

The only conclusion that suggests itself here is that without a general change in the development model, nothing will come of it. Only in a complex way can one go to a different trajectory

Here, fortunately, I see great prospects. There are two questions. The first question is how to raise the whole country. This is indeed a very serious and responsible business. But our politicians, neither the left, nor the right, nor the centrists, understand that it is not necessary to take on everything. Take up education. In fact, the future is happening there.

And the second thing. At one time, Yuri Leonidovich Vorobyov, deputy chairman of the Federation Council, and then he was the first deputy minister for emergency situations, offered to train governors. In order to drive a car, you need to learn the rules, pass an exam. And the governor should not know anything, and his team should not.

But the governor has a huge region, sometimes there are more European states, huge resources in his hands and a huge responsibility. It would seem that he must learn to understand what threats exist, what emergencies can arise and how to respond to them. But it was not possible to introduce such a training system. And now, therefore, everything happens like Cervantes in the novel "Don Quixote": "How many governors are there who read in warehouses, but as regards governance, they are real eagles!"