Drawing, astronomy, logic and other old subjects of the USSR replaced the Law of God

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

The system of Russian education has undergone changes more than once. Over time, some items disappeared from the school curriculum, then reappeared. Let's find out what lessons are no longer taught in domestic schools.

Drawing

Drawing lessons were canceled in schools 5-6 years ago. But somewhere else they teach this subject as an elective or instead of a few hours of technology per week in high school.

Disputes about the necessity and uselessness of drawing do not subside even today, when this subject has already been excluded from the general school curriculum. Some people think that drawing is an absolutely useless subject. Others, on the contrary, argue that without the skills of "sketching" in senior classes, and even more so in a technical university, nowhere.

“I am a former drawing teacher. “Former” sounds very sad. I adore my subject, but for the last three years I have been forced to teach it only in the form of an elective course,”teacher Natalya Zaitseva writes on the social network of educators. - Is it really possible to give complete material on this complex and, in my opinion, very interesting subject in 17 hours? And how children suffer who do not attend my course, and then in 10th grade are faced with stereometry and cannot build an elementary geometric body. It is not clear why it was canceled? But the fundamentals of marketing, the basics of business communication have been introduced … Apparently, the country does not really need engineers. Sadly.

In the professional network, many teachers express regret about the abolition of drawing and hope that the subject will eventually be returned to the general school curriculum.

Logics

Another subject from the Soviet past that did not fit into the concept of modern education is logic.

Logic was taught in schools as a compulsory subject in the 50s of the XX century. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in its resolution "On the Teaching of Logic and Psychology in Secondary School" of December 3, 1946, declared it unacceptable that these subjects are not studied in secondary school. At the same time, logic was in demand in secondary educational institutions before. Only after the events of the Great October Revolution this subject was banned from studying not only in schools, but also in universities.

However, after the end of the war, on behalf of Stalin, the discipline was returned to the curriculum. But as soon as the "leader" died, the subject was again excluded from the school curriculum. Under Khrushchev, logic was finally banned, citing concern for the students, so as not to overload the schoolchildren.

Currently, logic is not a compulsory subject at school, so each educational institution decides on its own whether to include it in the curriculum or not.

For more details, read the article: Why did they stop teaching logic in schools?

Astronomy

The study of the motion of celestial bodies for schoolchildren was canceled in 2008. Meanwhile, astronomy was included in the course of compulsory school sciences since the time of Peter I. Before the revolution, over 40 different textbooks on this discipline were published in Russia. Its gradual blurring in the school curriculum began in 1993 - the astronomy course did not fit into the structure of the main curriculum.

Today, astronomy is not formally prohibited in schools. It is just that officials from science cannot find a place for it in the structure of modern educational standards. What is there more in it - natural science, physics or chemistry? Or will discipline be better perceived as a separate subject? Scientists and educators are still arguing.

basic military training

Initial military training was not indicated in the matriculation certificate as an academic subject. As a rule, it was conducted under the leadership of WWII participants or officers of the armed forces sent to the reserve.

Students in grades 8-10 were taught drill, fire and tactical training, talked about the nature and characteristics of the domestic armed forces. They taught how to disassemble and assemble a machine gun, use a hand grenade, gas mask, dosimeters, taught the basics of first aid, etc.

Today, there is no such subject even as an elective in Russian schools (with the exception of specialized educational institutions). In contrast to some states of the former USSR, where pre-conscription training of young people in schools is still conducted.

Calligraphy

Calligraphy is a subject inherited by the Soviet educational school from Tsarist Russia. It was included in the schedule as "calligraphy". This discipline demanded perseverance and high concentration of attention from the pupils of the elementary school. Schoolchildren were taught not only to write cleanly, but also to hold the pen correctly so that the letters were neat and beautiful.

Today, the role of calligraphy is assigned to numerous copybooks. At the same time, at school, no one pays special attention to how elementary school students hold a pen.

Read more in more details in the articles: Calligraphy and the Brain

The benefits of calligraphy and the origins of Russian calligraphic writing

Why is there no calligraphy at school?

Natural history (natural history)

Natural history or natural science - the science of the world around us - was dropped from the school curriculum in 1877. Only in 1901, a special commission on the organization of secondary school education in Russian schools adopted a position according to which natural science and geography were supposed to be studied in grades 1-3.

It was proposed to study nature in "hostels": forest, field, garden, meadow, park, river, and mainly on excursions. Over time, the program of the course has undergone many changes - it was singled out as a separate course "Natural Science", and combined with lectures on other subjects. There is no natural science in the modern general school curriculum. It is present only as part of the World Around curriculum taught in the elementary grades of secondary school.

Philosophy

Philosophy is a useful subject, but there are studies that show that the child's psyche has not yet reached such a level of maturity that this subject is perceived at the proper level. The problem is also that in our schools children have never been taught critical thinking, which is a necessary condition for understanding the foundations of modern philosophy - almost always history, literature and social science were taught tendentiously.

The law of god

Until 1917, there were the Rules on parochial schools in Russia. They stipulated who should carry out the teaching and declared the "Orthodox teaching of faith."

On August 1, 1909, at the All-Russian Congress of Teachers of the Law of God in secular educational institutions in St. Petersburg, it was decided to use a fresh teaching method. Namely, try to bring discipline closer to the modern way of life. Only a few years later, in September 1917, the Local Council adopted the definition "On Teaching the Law of God in School", which noted that in all public and private schools where there are Orthodox students, the Law of God should become a compulsory lesson. At the same time, the Law of God was considered not only as an educational subject, but first as an educational one. The students studied the history of the Old and New Testaments, the divine service of the Christian Orthodox Church, and the catechism.

With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the Law of God disappeared from the school curriculum. Only in 1991 was religious education and teaching in Sunday schools and Orthodox grammar schools officially revived in Russia. Today, its simplified version is taught as an optional, without assessment of knowledge, in the 4th grade of a general education school when choosing the discipline "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture."

Since 2012, the "Foundations of Orthodox Culture" (OPK) has been a full-fledged academic subject included by the Ministry of Education and Science in the school curriculum in all regions of Russia. At the same time, the OPK is included in the course "Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics", consisting of six cycles: "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture", "Fundamentals of Islamic Culture", "Fundamentals of Buddhist Culture", "Fundamentals of Jewish Culture", "Fundamentals of World Religious Cultures" and Fundamentals of Secular Ethics.

I am not against the return of the child's spiritual development to schools, but why, at the same time, those subjects were removed from the school curriculum thanks to which the USSR once made a breakthrough in the development of society, science, culture, and industry.

Looking at all this (the reforms of our education), it seems to me that the spiral of development is going down and not up as it should be.

If society developed in the right direction, and not in the opposite direction, then posts with such a topic would not be popular on the network and their authors would not be so popular.

Whoever is interested in and needs old Soviet textbooks for learning can download here.