Classical education system

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

Why the Bolsheviks had to forget about experiments in education and recreate a traditional gymnasium

Many people are convinced that modern technology will change schools and universitiesbeyond recognition.

Education will move online, students on the Internet will listen to lectures by the best professors of the planet, history will be replaced by the game "Civilization", instead of textbooks and notebooks there will be tablets, the classroom system will give way to an individual approach to the student, and each of them will be able to form a curriculum for themselves based on from desires, possibilities and needs …

No matter how conservative the education system is, public opinion puts pressure on it quite seriously. Moreover, there are experts who believe that the traditional system of post-Soviet education will degrade and break down somewhere in the mid-20s of the 21st century. Therefore, governments willy-nilly will turn to innovators for advice.

Thus, the development of modern educational concept and for Russia, and for Belarusis on the agenda. By the way, President Lukashenko spoke about this at the republican teachers' council just the other day. However, before engaging in the creation of a modern education system, it is worth turning not only to the futuristic sketches of theorists, but also to a very specific historical experience.

After the October Revolution, the Soviet government also had to rebuild the school anew. And in this she achieved impressive successes … Soviet education for its time was very progressive and effective. It was borrowed by many countries - for example, Finland, whose secondary school is today considered the best in Europe.

Ideas and gadgets of the early 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, grandiose changes associated with technological progress were also expected in education. Theorists have practically buried the classical grammar school. The school of the XXI century was presented something like this:

American inventor Thomas Edison assumed that books would soon disappear from school altogether, and cinema would replace all textbooks. Why not. A film, even at the technical level of the beginning of the 20th century, may well be a teaching tool, and the radio made it possible to listen to lectures at any distance from the place of study.

The same, but in the form of a diagram:

Thus, the Bolsheviks (like us today) lived in a society in which a progressive society expected truly revolutionary reforms in educational technology and pedagogical methods.

In emigration, Lenin asked Krupskaya to systematize modern ideas about pedagogy in order to imagine the school of the future. According to the research of Nadezhda Konstantinovna ("Public Education and Democracy"), it turned out that the old school, in which the teacher punches the students on the fingers with a ruler and stuffs obsolete knowledge that is not necessary for a future life, is already outdated. The school should give the so-called " useful" knowledge. In short, less theory and more practical skills.

Similar ideas are very popular today - here is one, another, the third of many articles on this topic.

In theory, these concepts look interesting. The same Lenin highly appreciated the work of his wife and achieved its publication in the form of a book. And when he returned from emigration, he considered "Public Education" quite a suitable work plan. However, Vladimir Ilyich had no pedagogical experience. Meanwhile, the practical implementation of educational tasks made significant adjustments to the original plans of the Soviet government.

Turning to a traditional school

The next resource-intensive project turned out to be an educational program. In every village in which there were more than 15 illiterates, it was necessary to create a so-called liquidation center - and give at least 6 hours of classes a week. After the educational program, the next stage is the fight against illiteracy. Were needed millions of new teachers, which also needed to be learned.

Consistently solving educational problems, step by step, the new Soviet system, willy-nilly, returned to the traditional gymnasium. However, unlike pre-revolutionary Russia, it was a single school, for everyone, regardless of social and national origin.

Elite classics

In the 1930s, the teaching of history returned to schools and universities, which was at first discarded as a useless relic of the pre-revolutionary past. Moreover, they returned it in a much larger volume than before.

The same thing happened with the Russian classics. Literature was returned as a subject, and these were well thought out, chronologically consistent courses with the necessary accents. It's hard to believe, but before the revolution, high school students, for example, did not study Pushkin … The compilers of the programs previously considered his work unnecessary in the course of Russian literature. In the Soviet school, tens of millions of boys and girls, passing through the general education system, read Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.

Standard school curriculum

As it turned out, progress does not greatly change the content of education. Soviet teachers came to these conclusions. Probably the same is to come understand us too … As a hundred years ago, and now at school, a student must:

1. Master the skills of correct oral and written speech … It doesn't really matter whether he writes an essay in a notebook with an ink pen or writes a blog on social networks under the supervision of a teacher. Thinking activity and evaluation criteria are the same essence.

2. Have some knowledge of mathematics and geometry.

3. Take the course natural sciences: physics, chemistry, biology. Again, it doesn't matter what he uses when preparing a school essay. The difference between Wikipedia and the Brockhaus and Efron dictionary is not that significant. The principles of compiling an encyclopedia, familiar to us, were formed back in the 18th century.

4. Know foreign language … Previously, for language practice, students often corresponded with peers abroad. Now, thanks to the Internet, it is much easier to do this, you can communicate on forums and in social networks, but in general, nothing changes. Naturally, you need to know how to use a computer, but this is already implied by itself.

5. Get to know domestic and world culture, first of all, literature and cinema. That is, they did not think of another way to read, watch and listen.

6. Story … She hasn't changed.

7. Physical education, health, geography, etc. "Unloading" lessons to give the brain a rest.

This is a standard "gymnasium" program … Over the past centuries, they have repeatedly tried to come up with a more effective, interesting, modern teaching concept. These deviations always led to a drop in the level of knowledge, school material lost its structure, conceptual thinking was lost. Gadgets Is a good thing in order to increase the efficiency of the educational process, however, the educational process cannot be turned into the study of gadgets.

Moscow - Chicago. Score 1: 0

After the launch of the first artificial earth satellite, the idea arose in the American leadership that such a success of Soviet cosmonautics was impossible without a strong education system. Life magazine, with the assistance of American and Soviet diplomats, conducted an interesting experiment.

They took two sixteen-year-olds. Alexey Kutskov from Moscow and Stephen Lapekas from Chicago. Both were assigned correspondents for a whole month, who were with them all the time: in class, during their leisure time, in the library, in the pool - in general, everywhere. So they wanted to find out what in the USSR and in the USA they mean by a good secondary level of school education.

The results of the study, to put it mildly, surprised American readers: