Education reform

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

Despite the fact that this detailed and structured article by Andrey Fursov was written quite a long time ago, at the end of the "Fursenko era", it is extremely relevant today, because the situation with education in Russia is not improving, but worsening every year …

The sphere of education in recent years has become a field of a real battle between supporters of its reform and their opponents. Opponents - professionals, parents, the public; supporters - mainly officials and the "research structures" serving their interests - push "reform" despite widespread protests. I am writing the word "reform" in quotation marks, because reform is something creative. What they do with education in the Russian Federation is destruction, deliberately or out of stupidity, incompetence and unprofessionalism, but destruction. Hence the quotes. …

One of the lines of opposition to the "reform" of education was and is criticism of the law on education, other normative acts, the identification of their weaknesses, inconsistencies, etc. A lot has already been done here and with great benefit.

At the same time, another approach is also possible: consideration of a complex of "reformatory" schemes and documents - the Unified State Exam, the Federal State Educational Standard (hereinafter - FSES), the Bologna system (hereinafter - BS) as a whole as a kind of social phenomenon in a broader social and geopolitical (geocultural) context, as well as in terms of information and cultural (psychohistorical) security of the country, which in the modern world is the most important component of national security.

The importance of the social context is clear: any reforms, especially in education, are always associated with the interests of certain groups, institutions, and have social goals. "The geopolitical context of educational reform" - such a formulation at first glance may cause surprise.

However, today, when geopolitical confrontations are acquiring more and more pronounced informational character, when political destabilization is achieved through network-centric wars, i.e. informational and cultural impact on the consciousness and subconsciousness of groups and individuals (we could observe how this is done during the so-called "twitter revolutions" in Tunisia and Egypt), and the result of this impact largely depends on the level of education of the target (the higher the level of education, the more difficult it is to manipulate a person), the state of education becomes the most important factor in the geopolitical struggle.

No less important than, say, the level of social polarization, measured by such indicators as the Gini index and the decile coefficient. I mean that if, for example, the education system contributes to the growth of polarization (up to the state of "two nations", as it was in Great Britain in the middle of the 19th century or in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century), then it works to exacerbate social tensions, and therefore, reduces the level of not only internal (socio-system), but also external (geopolitical) security of society.

Taking into account what has been said in this article, first, so to speak "for the seed", the consequences of the "reform" of education, carried out under the "wise" leadership of Andrei Aleksandrovich Fursenko, will be briefly described; then we will talk about the social dimension and the possible social outcomes of declining educational attainment; then we will briefly “go over” the structures that prepared the reform - for some reason this issue, as a rule, remains in the shadows.

The next point is the question of how the “reform” of education can affect the position of the Russian Federation in the international division of labor and how it relates to the proclaimed course of modernization. I will say right away: it contradicts this course and, moreover, undermines it.

It is not surprising that, firstly, the World Bank allocated money for education reform in the Russian Federation, which decided for some reason and for some reason (really, why?) To do good to Russia.

Secondly, in the Russian Federation, like vultures, representatives of "cunning" Western structures reached out to carrion, behind whose scientific and nongovernmental good-looking status are hidden large and sharp teeth of predators and, paraphrasing the title of the book and the type of activity of Anthony Perkins "Economic Killer", information killers. For some reason, in order to penetrate into Russia, this public chose the sphere of "reformed" education, those educational institutions that "with a bang" accept the reform.

As Pyotr Vasilievich Palievsky noted in his time, Bulgakov's Woland is powerless against the healthy, he only clings to what is rotten from the inside. It is clear that for the success of the network-centric war, the transformation of education into a network “populated” by easily manipulated “networked people” is a win-win move in the global struggle for power, resources and information. Therefore, education today is much more than education, it is the future, the battle for which has already begun, and failure in which means erasure from History. So - in order.

Consequences under investigationIf we talk about the consequences of the "reform", then the first is a significant drop in the level of education and training of students in secondary and higher schools as a result of the introduction of the USE and BS. As a person who has been teaching at a higher school for almost 40 years, I testify: demonstration of cultural and educational barbarization and information poverty … If in the last 25-30 years the cultural and educational level of school graduates has been declining gradually, then for several years not only sharply, but disastrously accelerated this process. It is difficult to come up with a better means of prospective debilization and cultural and psychological primitivization of the younger generation than the Unified State Exam. The decline in the level of intelligence and erudition as a result of the reform has two more aspects that are extremely destructive for the development of mental and educational potential. This is about de-rationalization thoughts and consciousness and about deformation of historical memory … A decrease in the number of teaching hours in such subjects as mathematics and physics, the actual expulsion of astronomy from the school curriculum - all this not only narrows and impoverishes the student's picture of the world, but directly leads to derationalization of consciousness

Belief in the irrational, the magical, in the magic is widely spread today; astrology, mysticism, occultism and other obscurantist forms flourish in lush color, cinema (no need to go far - the saga of Harry Potter) advertises to us the possibilities of magic, miracles.

In such conditions, the reduction of hours in the natural sciences works for the triumphant march of obscurantism, for astrology to take the place of astronomy in consciousness, disorienting people and facilitating manipulation: a person who believes in miracles can easily soar any propaganda that does not have rational argumentation.

One gets the impression that all these manipulations with the school curriculum, among other things, should prepare people to accept a new type of power - magical, based on a claim to magic, a miracle, which in reality turns into something like dancing on stage in the naked form of heroes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But this is a double-edged sword.

Equally damaging is the fact that history courses are essentially either removed from the curricula of all faculties, except for history, or are significantly compressed. Corollary - loss of historical vision, historical memory. As a result, students cannot name the dates of the beginning and end of the Great Patriotic War, Gagarin's flight into space, the Battle of Borodino.

This year I first encountered a student who had never heard of the Battle of Borodino; "Borodinsky" he associates only with bread. It is clear that the deterioration (to put it mildly) of historical memory, especially with regard to Russian history, does not contributethe formation of patriotism and citizenship; dehistorization of consciousness turns into denationalization.

Where the USE ends its activity, the BS picks up the baton. I have repeatedly spoken negatively about the BS (see the Internet), so I will not repeat myself, I will note the main thing.

The introduction of a four-year bachelor's degree instead of five years of normal education turns higher education into something very reminiscent of a vocational school, grounding it down, and if this practice is very bad for institutions, then for universities - catastrophic, the university is being destroyed as a social and civilizational phenomenon.

In terms of the educational BS with its “modular-competence-based approach”, in fact, it destroys the department as a basic unit of the organization of a higher educational institution / university; “Competences” - poorly connected applied information complexes or “skills” - replace real knowledge.

Objectively, the BS divides universities in general and universities in particular into a privileged minority with their own diplomas, programs and rules, and an unprivileged majority; At the same time, educational standards are declining in both "zones", but in the second - to a much greater extent.

Privilege and prestige translate into higher tuition fees, which further increase social differences and the gap in education.

Second. Once we were passionately convinced that the introduction of the Unified State Exam would reduce the level of corruption in the educational sphere. In reality - and only the lazy does not write about this today and does not speak - everything turned out exactly the opposite. The Unified State Exam created the conditions and became the impetus for a significant increase in corruption in the field of education, which again cannot but affect the level of preparation of schoolchildren and students, on the one hand, and the professionalism of teachers, on the other.

Thus, by increasing corruption in education, in general social terms, the Unified State Exam led to an increase in the level of corruption in society as a whole. It is clear that those who have administrative positions and money will benefit from corruption in general and in education in particular; that is, "reform" here, too, increases social inequality and social polarization, and, consequently, social tension.

It is difficult to find a better means than the Unified State Exam to spread corruption from higher education to secondary, to significantly expand and deepen the area of corruption. In this regard, we can say that in addition to a terrible blow to the quality of education and morality of many people employed in this area, the implementation of the Unified State Exam has become one of the directions of the attack on society by corrupt officials.

Third. The Unified State Exam and, to an even greater extent, the BS have sharply increased the level of bureaucratization in the educational sphere. So, with the introduction of the BS in universities, a large number of "specialists" appeared in the implementation of the BS, checking its implementation as an "innovative form of education", etc. And the teachers have a new, time-consuming concern: bringing the usual scientific and pedagogical activities in accordance with the formal requirements of the BS, a concern that is permanent and has practically no relation to the substantive side of the matter

The teacher must worry more and more about the formal side of the matter, spend time on it - there is no time for the content. It is clear that far from the best, not the most professional and creative teachers are ready to cling to the formal side and concentrate on it. In this way, BS is beneficial to outright dullness … Well, I am silent about the fact that the BS creates heavenly conditions for officials from education.

By changing the ratio between the formal and substantive aspects of the educational process in favor of the first, the BS not only contributes to the deterioration of the quality of education, not only wipes out business professionals into the background, worsening their position in comparison with the scribes and eyewitnesses (which is worth the only call to change the courses taught annually, introducing new ones - after all, it is known that a new course requires 3-4 years of running-in; it is clear that such calls are the fruit of a mind game, either professionally unfit or simply crooks), but also changes the ratio of teacher and official in higher education in favor of the latter.

Here - "two balls in the pocket": in the professional sphere - a decrease in the level of education and the strengthening of the position of personifiers of low-quality, formal (formalized) education; in the social - strengthening the position of the official.

In other words, the BS as a union of "gray" in the specific conditions of the Russian Federation is becoming another means of development (in this case, for the education sector) of the general tendency to increase the number of officials and their power over professionals, which leads to the deprofessionalization of both the officials themselves and the professionals of a particular areas of activity.

Fourth. All this taken together contributes to further growth. incompetence and unprofessionalism as a social phenomenon. Thus, “reform” not only ruins education, that is, a separate sphere of society (although this “separately taken sphere” affects all the others and determines the future of the country), but also lowers the general social level of professionalism, hindering the professionalization of society, which is a necessary condition for the proclaimed modernization

It turns out that, both in private and in general, the "reform" of education does not just impede modernization, but blocks it, depriving the future of modernization and society. Maintaining a course on the ongoing "reform" of education and, at the same time, calls for modernization is nothing more than a manifestation of cognitive dissonance.

Fifth … Here it is necessary to single out as a separate consequence what was mentioned above in passing - increasing social divide between different strata and groups as a result of "reforms"

It would be more accurate to say this: the social gap acquires a powerful cultural and informational dimension, and since, as we are told, we have entered or are entering the information society, then it is this dimension that becomes decisive, main, system-forming or even class-forming.

If information becomes a decisive factor in production, then access to it (possession of it, its distribution as a factor of production playing a system-forming role in the overall process of social production) becomes the main means and method of forming social groups, their place in the social “pyramid”.

Access to this decisive factor, more precisely the degree of access, is provided by education, its quality and volume. The decline in the quality of education with a decrease in its volume (from the introduction of basic free and "additional" paid subjects at school and the reduction of hours for a number of subjects at school as redundant to the introduction of a bachelor's degree - an abortive form of higher education) turns the individual and entire groups into information poor, v easily manipulated, shorter - to the lower classes information society, practically depriving them of the prospects for improving their position, that is, pushing them out of social time.

We wanted the best, but how will it turn out? In general, it must be said that the "production" of the lower strata of the "post-industrial" / "information" society started in the West in the 1970s, and developed in the 1980s simultaneously with the spread of the so-called "youth culture" ("rock, sex, drugs"), developed in special institutions commissioned by the top of the West, the sex minority movement, the environmental movement (created with Rockefeller money), the spread of fantasy (and the displacement of science fiction,which is very popular today in China), the weakening of the national state, the offensive of the upper circles of the middle stratum and the upper strata of the working class (Thatcherism and Reaganomics)

That is, it is part of a package of neoliberal counter-revolution, which means nothing more than a global redistribution of factors of production and income in favor of the rich, that is, a reversal of the trend of the “glorious thirty years” (J. Fourastier) of 1945-1975.

Information is a factor of production, and simplification, reduction of culture (The "great friend" of Russia and especially the Russians Zbigniew Brzezinski calls this process "titration" and considers it as one of the types psychohistoric weapons, which allowed America to win its victories, including over the USSR / Russia) and, above all, education is nothing more than the alienation of these factors as the construction of a future society, the creation of its upper and lower classes, its “haves” and “havenots”. In recent years, we have seen this process in the Russian Federation, however, in Russian conditions, the creation of "information poor lower classes" is a dangerous thing: we do not have a well-fed Euro-America, we do not have such a build-up of social fat that can be eaten up for some time, like there, at we have different traditions of social struggle, we have a different people, a different story. But in our history there was once a conscious attempt to drastically lower educational standards, fool the population and thus make it more suggestible and obedient. I mean the activities in the field of education in the era of Alexander III (far from the worst Russian tsar, but go ahead, you bought into stupidity), first of all, the shift of the center of gravity in elementary school to parish schools (derationalization of consciousness) and a circular from June 18, 1887 (the so-called "decree on the cook's children")

Im the Minister of Education Ivan Davydovich Delyanov, for his time a figure no less odious than A. A. Fursenko for ours, sharply limited access to education for representatives of the lower classes, i.e. low-income groups while maintaining access to education for those who, as one of the Gogol heroes said, are "cleaner" (analogous to the introduction in the Russian Federation of paid education in higher education and a plan for the introduction of paid disciplines in primary and secondary schools with a mandatory free minimum-minimum).

This was done in order, I repeat, to turn the lower classes into an obedient manipulated herd and to avoid a European-style revolution. A European-style revolution was happily avoided. The revolution of the Russian model, much more cruel and bloody, did not escape. Moreover, Delyanov's "reform" of education played a role both in the approach of the revolution and in its bloodiness.

The bottom line is this: the "fool" in education, of course, makes people less developed, they do not know how to clearly articulate their interests and requirements, it is easier to fool them by hanging on their ears "noodles" of promises. But this is - for the time being, until the "roasted rooster" pecks, that is. until an awful social and economic situation arises, because you can't ruin it with an educational "fool".

But when they bite, the underdevelopment of the masses, their low education or simply lack of education begins to play a role opposite to that which the authors of the scheme "give the level of education below the plinth" are counting on.

Firstly, poorly educated people are easier to manipulate not only the ruling elite, but also the counter-elite, especially when it has financial support from abroad. This is precisely what happened in 1917, when international bankers and Russian revolutionaries threw the Russian masses onto the ruling stratum.

Secondly, the less educated a person is, the less he is able to consciously be guided by national-patriotic ideals, and, consequently, to defend the homeland and the upper classes from an external enemy (for example, the behavior of a Russian peasant dressed in a military overcoat at the front in 1916-1917).

Thirdly, the less educated and cultured a person is, the more he is guided by instincts, often brutal (A. Blok: “wild passions are unleashed under the yoke of a flawed moon”), the more difficult it is to influence him with words and the more likely it is that in “flawed” conditions of a crisis or just a difficult situation, he will respond with a pitchfork to an attempt at rational argumentation of the authorities. And it cannot be said that such an answer is historically completely unfair.

The pre-revolutionary leaders forgot (or maybe they didn’t know) the lines written by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov back in 1830 (published in 1862): The year will come, Russia’s black year, When the king's crown will fall; The rabble will forget their former love, And the food of many will be death and blood; On that day a powerful man will appear, And you will recognize him - and you will understand, Why is his damask knife in his hand. It makes sense to memorize these lines to everyone who rules or is going to rule in Russia, which the Chinese do not accidentally call "ego" - "the state of surprises", "protraction and instant changes." Our crashes do happen instantly. So, in 1917, autocratic Russia fled, as Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov noted, in two days, at most three. And no one stood up (as in August 1991 for the USSR), in one word, “disappear, perish, birthday girl! “And the Wild Division from the mountains did not help. Nobody helped at all. The bottom line is that the game of lowering education for social purposes, in particular, with the aim of enhancing the security of the upper classes and their manipulative capabilities, is short-sighted, dangerous and counterproductive. And the poorer the society and the worse the economic situation, the more dangerous and counterproductive - up to the socio-cultural suicidal nature of the cut-up tops, as happened in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, which in some respects, although not in all (primarily due to the Soviet legacy, and also due to a different world situation) relations are similar to the Russian Federation at the beginning of the XXI century, especially if you look at the gap between the rich and the poor. Is the rake really a favorite artifact of our history? I repeat: almost all of the above-mentioned consequences of the "reform" of education are already visible today and, over time, their detrimental effect on education and society, on the future of the country. will only grow, most likely, exponentially.

The question arises: do those who push them understand the harmfulness of what they have done and are doing? If they don't understand, then these are complete idiots in the strict (Greek) sense of the word: in Greek, "idiot" is a person who lives without noticing the world around him.

If they understand, then we need to call a spade a spade: we should talk about a conscious large-scale and long-term cultural, psychological, informational sabotage, but in fact - a war against Russia, its people, first of all - the state-forming, Russians. And this is no longer idiocy, but guilt in a crime.

As civilized people, we choose the position of the presumption of innocence, i.e. in this context, we proceed from the version of "idiocy", i.e. people do not understand what they are doing, do not (pre) see the catastrophic consequences of their activities. True, if this is so, then why do they strive to introduce their program into life on the sly, without discussion, secretly? What are they afraid of?

The question of how the reform was prepared, how was the preparation going, for example, for the "implementation" of the law on education or for the introduction of the Federal State Educational Standard deserves special attention, since the answer to the question " as? "Sheds a lot of light on the questions" why? », « for what purposes? "And - ultimately - to the main question: cuibono, those. in whose interests. So, what structures and under whose leadership were preparing the "reform" [1]?

"Reform" of education - authors Let's go back to the end of 2010 - the beginning of 2011, when there was a discussion about the Federal State Educational Standard and about the new federal law "On Education in the Russian Federation." Both documents were criticized: by lawyers - for inconsistency with the features of the codified act, for the lack of a state guarantee of the right to compulsory education; teachers and parents - for many, many essential flaws that destroy education. The FSES was praised only by the rector of the State University - Higher School of Economics Yaroslav Ivanovich Kuzminov, who referred to the authority of Alexander Oganovich Chubaryan and Alexander Grigorievich Asmolov (speech on the Russia-24 TV channel). Developed by the Federal State Educational Standard, established in 2006, the Institute for Strategic Research in Education (ISO) Of the Russian Academy of Education (RAO); Director of IISI - Mikhail Lazarevich Pustylnik, Ph. D. in Chemistry; scientific supervisor - Corresponding Member of RAO Alexander Mikhailovich Kondakov

This person, who, while working in the Ministry of Education and Science, led the life safety and civil defense unit, in 2006 was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Education. One of the main tasks of the reform, Mr. Kondakov sees in to fit the Russian education system into the global (for this, the Russian system must first be destroyed? - I ask); Mr. Kondakov is convinced that there is nothing wrong with the brain drain no, but the Internet itself is a source of knowledge, which he openly talks about.

But about the fact that the structural reform of the Russian Federation The World Bank made a loan he speak does not want … And he wants, of course, to defend the "reform", which he did at a meeting of the State Duma on February 9 in 2011 in tandem with Isak Davydovich Frumin.

Mr. Frumin is Scientific Director of the Institute for the Development of Education of the State University - Higher School of Economics and concurrently coordinator of the International Programs of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD); apparently IBRD is very concerned about Russian education, probably, his leadership "hurts the soul about all of us and aches the heart").

This institute was also involved in the development of the Federal State Educational Standard. The Director of the Institute is Irina Vsevolodovna Abankina, known for her works (for example, “The Culture of Desertion”), which assert the need to merge “costly” rural schools and libraries into “integrated social institutions” in large settlements. I call it simple: elimination of culture and education in the countryside, and if you add medicine - then life in general.

It is also necessary to mention one more a structure working in the field of reforming our education. This is the Federal Institute for the Development of Education (FIRO); first CEO - Evgeny Shlyomovich Gontmakher (now - Deputy Director of IMEMO RAN); deputy. directors - Leibovich Alexander Naumovich, who often presented himself as the general director of the National Agency for the Development of Qualifications under the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs; ex-chairman of the Liberal Club Evgeny Fedorovich Saburov was appointed the scientific director of FIRO. The history of the creation of FIRO is interesting. It happened on June 29, 2005: according to Order No. 184, on the basis of five central research institutes (higher education, general education, development of vocational education, problems of development of secondary vocational education, national problems of education), one was created - FIRO. Those. buildings, equipment, and other material values were confiscated from five research institutes and transferred to a new research institute created by a wave of a magic wand. Recently, FIRO was marked by the proposal of another innovation - the replacement of textbooks in the lower grades with electronic readers. The experiment will take place in several regions of the Russian Federation. Doctors sound the alarm: it is not known how all this will affect the health (eyes, nervous system) of children. Doctors talk about the need for preliminary, at least six months, research. But all this is not a decree for the "neutons" from FIRO; it seems, children's health is an abstraction for them; reality - the funds allocated for the experiment. The list of institutions that prepared the reform can be continued, but the essence is already clear. In addition, the real direction in which our society is moving the education reform can be judged from the interview of A. A. Fursenko "Moskovsky Komsomolets" (2010), or rather even, one phrase at a time, surprisingly frank. " Why is the Soviet education system “bad”? »

A. A. Fursenko and her hidden ciphers

The minister stated: The main flaw of the Soviet school was that it strove to educate a person-creator, while the task of the Russian school is to prepare a qualified consumer who can use what others have created.

So, the upbringing of creativity, of a person-creator is a vice. Nobody has thought of such a formulation yet, and in this regard, Mr. Fursenko's phrase should be entered into the Guinness Book.

Andrey Fursov