The collapse of the education system and the lack of government goals

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

Reforms and innovations in education do not always have a positive effect on the knowledge of schoolchildren and students. In many regional schools there is a shortage of personnel. Probably, the number of professors in universities will also soon decrease. Our blogger Alexander Shevkin commented on an article in the group "For the revival of education" and explained why the latest innovations did not justify themselves.

From the text in the group "For the revival of education":

On February 6, at the State Council for Science and Higher Education, the President read out a text in which the problems of higher education in the regions were first announced. Until now, the top was dominated by a semi-official "reformist" doctrine, according to which real education should be concentrated in top universities in the capitals, and regional universities should be partially closed, and partially transferred to a distance format. And suddenly - such a statement.

There are two significant touches in the presidential speech: the need for “new standards” and the re-used term “competence”. More recently, professor-philologist L. M. Koltsova explained that the abbreviation FSES in higher education has become synonymous with bureaucratic bullying, and the word “competence” in the context of education is meaningless and absolutely alien to Russian speech. And here again "competence and the Federal State Educational Standard".

In the president's speech, many painful points of regional higher education are indicated, and a very complex set of problems is touched upon. What is proposed to solve them? If we exclude non-binding declarations, there is exactly one measure - the redistribution of budget places in favor of the regions.

The President correctly noted that three conditions are necessary for quality education:

good students, good teachers, appropriate material base.

In all three positions, as a rule, things are bad outside the capitals. Graduates from the same region usually enter regional universities. The mass school in the country is sinking. A decent secondary education is almost officially focused on “gifted children” (the “gifted” ones include the offspring of the “elite” after birth).

The "gifted" in the regions make up a small percentage and mostly go to study in the capitals. Regional universities (mostly) graduates from mass schools. As a result, many non-prestigious specialties are attended by an uneducated contingent, under which the imitation educational process is built. If secondary education in the region is going downhill, then there will also be higher education, there is a strong inextricable link.

How can the situation at school be rectified?

No way. To be convinced of this, it is enough to look at the content of the national project "Education". It is easier to raise a school than a university. It doesn't require "good students". Children are a priori good. The school needs only a real teacher, who will be freed from total supervision and given the opportunity to perform professional duties: to teach and educate children, and not to write without counting a piece of paper, to pass "professional exams", continuously pass certification and "improve qualifications." In today's school, a good teacher is often sickening to work.

This has been going on for many years, hence the growing shortage of teaching staff

A year ago, the authorities did not even know about it, but now they suddenly realized the scale of the problem. A case in point: at Leningrad State University named after A. S. Pushkin opened one-year courses for the retraining of teachers of various profiles for teaching mathematics (teachers of this discipline are the most scarce). Teachers of physical education, music, life safety on Saturdays without interruption from work master the basics of mathematics and will teach the queen of sciences. They say that this is better than nothing.

Petersburg is not able to provide the adjacent region with teachers? Does this fit in your head? The President explained that he was repeatedly offered to restore the compulsory distribution of university graduates, but "he is against." Because "we will not solve anything by obligation." And literally right away he says that there will be one hundred percent target recruitment for medical residency - a complete commitment to graduation. Why not introduce the same target set for teachers? It turns out that the position of the authorities: it is permissible to heal the people, but not to teach!

Now about "good teachers"

Universities are on the verge of a total staff shortage, which will hit even more sharply and unexpectedly than the sudden shortage of teachers in schools. It would seem that in any university there is a surplus of staff: most of the teachers work on a part of the rate. This is just a consequence of the presidential decrees in May to "increase" wages.

In schools, teachers are charged with two rates, and the salary doubles. And in universities it is different: each half-time, and the output is the same result (the salary is divided by 0, 5, that is, multiplied by 2). There are two reasons for this:

many teachers are unique specialists, and there is no one to replace them;

a coma of teaching (the quality of which is not paid attention to), professors and associate professors should still be engaged in science, the contribution to which is measured in the number of publications. It is clear that two people will write more articles than one, moreover, twice overloaded with teaching.

The current teaching contingent is largely composed of representatives of the Soviet era. For more than two decades, beggarly salaries practically excluded the influx of young personnel into universities.

The reduction in teachers that began at the end of the 2000s as a result of the implementation of the NSS and the consistent increase in the standard for the number of students per teaching unit also ruled out the implementation of an adequate personnel policy.

The Soviet generation of teachers is already leaving, and there will be no one to replace it. The system of training scientific and pedagogical personnel (graduate school) is actually destroyed

The State Council once again discussed the issue of restoring scientific postgraduate studies. But this is the topic of yesterday. The corresponding bill has already been submitted to the Duma and considered in the first reading. Moreover, it is quite clear that the measures prescribed in it will not solve the problem: the graduate student cannot live on the current scholarship, so he is forced to work. It is impossible to combine work with serious pursuit of science.

There is no reserve of teaching staff in the country, and in the near future this problem will become even more acute. And to convert a teacher of physical education or singing into a teacher of equations of mathematical physics will not work.

And finally, the material base

Then the president read out the following text: “I propose to renovate, build modern student campuses in the regions, with classrooms, sports facilities, technoparks, housing for students, graduate students and teachers.” At this point, the speaker felt an overkill in drawing candy wrappers and inserted from himself: "In any case, we need to start this work." This is our way. Getting started is not a problem. We can assume that they have already begun.

So, there can be no hope for a result with this approach. The reallocation of budget-funded places will not solve any of these problems. As a result, the entire discussed meeting could be assessed as another empty PR, which will end in nothing and will be happily forgotten.

However, among the presidential proposals, there is one that will surely be implemented: "It is important for us to consolidate the resource potential of educational institutions and research institutes and, where it is justified, to raise the issue of their legal unification."

This thesis fits perfectly into the concept of staffing regional universities, and the Ministry of Education learned how to merge and merge

Many employees of research institutes have traditionally taught at universities. They continue to do this now, but if they used to work part-time, now (with the same workload) - by one-tenth. The attitude of the university management towards them is becoming more and more market-oriented: take more, give less. You can take from them, first of all, scientific publications, which are important for reports and ratings.

The system of higher education has built a specific "management vertical", the main function of which is to bring destructive reforms to execution, with which it does an excellent job. In principle, this vertical is not capable of leading creative creative work. Working at a university, employees of scientific institutes see how, under the influence of such "management", university science is increasingly acquiring an imitative character. They categorically do not want to join such an environment. The Academy of Sciences will also be against it.

They will be broken, accused of sabotaging decisions of national importance. As a result, science will be finished off where it is still alive. Such territories have survived, because until 2013, scientific institutes did not “reform” continuously and systematically, as an education system.

Obviously, the capital's universities will be against such a decision. They will be besieged by the same accusation of an anti-state position. They will say that apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, there is the rest of Russia, and people also live there. In addition, when the budget cuts, no one bothers to increase the paid set.

As a result, under a plausible pretext, high-quality free education will be curtailed

When it becomes clear to everyone that budget-funded places sent to the regions do not find an addressee, that there is simply no one and no one to teach, everything will return to the same liberal model that Kuzminov and Co. preaches: real higher education is in the capitals (and mostly paid), and in the regions - remote ersatz. This is a grim forecast, but experience teaches that only negative predictions come true in the education system.

My comment

We are discussing a conversation between builders who are talking about the need to repair a dilapidated building - and this is how Russian education is. They offer to bring paint to the upper floors, touch up, whiten, let someone earn money on this painting and whitewashing. It is clear to any non-builder that one should start by strengthening the foundation - the secondary school, from the foundation that the "reformers" tried to break into bricks, in some places they succeeded. They continue to multiply their efforts.

A well-known psychologist-pedologist imposes on schools the idea of strata - the division of fifth-graders (they would have started with a maternity hospital!) Into groups with different learning abilities. This is an attempt by the new nobles to set up a class school in which only the children of the new nobles will be well taught, and the rest will be looked after while their parents are at work.

We have not clearly formulated state goals in the field of education - one cannot consider it a state goal to get into the top ten ratings of our eternal strategic opponents. We do not even have a clear definition of what kind of society and the corresponding state we are building. The role of education in this construction is not defined, it is not said that it is necessary to teach everyone to the maximum of his natural abilities, inclinations and possibilities - for the benefit of him, his family, society and the state.

From here emerge the ideas of saving through strata: why teach ten people, conventionally spending ten rubles, when you can choose two or three and spend two rubles each. The ideologists of educational fascism are unaware that what they have saved will not be enough in the future to build new prisons, strengthen the forces of law and order, and maintain social parasites, which, with proper training and education in childhood, would be quite capable of working with the benefit of society and supporting their families.

So in the field of education renewal, all steam goes off. Buzzing, brother, buzzing! And the steamer is standing still, as the steam has run out.