Is it possible to turn the "upbringing" from Cinderella into a princess?

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

In a modern pedagogical family of three daughters ? "Education", "Training", "Upbringing" ? the latter is clearly Cinderella. They almost do not remember her, they consider her yesterday, they doubt that effective education is possible at the present time. But, of course, not everyone thinks so.  For example, the Novosibirsk philosopher Nikolai Rozov writes: “The refusal of educational systems from education, which is widespread in liberal Western countries, leads to certain negative consequences: indifference, social escapism, lack or limitation of spiritual needs .., human qualities can be any, but universally valid values must be protected. The educational function cannot be canceled, but the educational value in the aspect of education should be formulated in a new way" ^{[15, p. 321]}. V. Zinkovsky wrote at the dawn of the formation of the Soviet state that the educational function cannot be canceled, that if it is canceled, the school educates "bad sociality".

"Look at what is being done even now in all corners of Russia," he writes.: you will find everywhere a certain number of active, animated by public ideals figures who are overburdened with work, overburdened by the mass of the task assigned to them. And behind them there is a whole mass of “philistines” who only know how to use the results of someone else's work, perhaps they are not averse to criticizing it, but they will not lift a finger to help. The weak development of public amateur activity is all the more striking in our country, because life has now become unbearably difficult. The food, housing, and financial crises are crushing all of us, and despite all this, the same people are performing in the arena of public work... In Russia, under the previous conditions of public life, when any sincere and honest service to the public good was severely persecuted, the type of socially indifferent and socially inert person was naturally put forward by life itself and historically fixed. To these purely Russian conditions, which favored all our Oblomovs, it is necessary to add the factor that has its effect everywhere – namely, the influence of economic individualism of our era. <...>

It would be more correct to say that modern school does not foster antisocial skills, but that it fosters bad sociality. Competition, envy, vanity, etc., are also social feelings that have their root, their meaning only in the social environment – but these feelings do not bring people closer, but push people apart. <...>

Oh, how Russia lacks elementary social virtues now! How few people are able to subordinate their personal, party, class interests to the common good! A rich country full of young, untapped forces, freed from all external fetters, having the full possibility of free self–determination, vaguely aware of all its infinite power - Russia is approaching catastrophe from day to day, torn from within by socially contradictory currents. Let the parents and the school save the children from the terrible corruption that a poisoned life brings with it, and let them prepare in the children the love for the common good, the ability to social rapprochement, the basic social virtues, a lively desire for solidarity, a genuine, and not just verbal love for brotherhood! Let them, in contrast to all the terrible facts of mutual bitterness, mutual distrust and hatred, awaken in children's souls a living love for a person as such, social responsiveness, consciousness of civic duty, honest fulfillment of the duty assumed, a loving attitude to their work and a sincere desire to contribute to the common good!" ^{[7, pp. 296, 303, 329, 343]}.

Hannah Arendt associates the need for education not only with the development of social virtues, but above all with the responsibility that teachers should take for children, introducing them to the new world, introducing them into it. "Since the child does not know the world, he must be gradually introduced to this world; since he is new here, it is necessary to ensure that this new finds its place in accordance with the world as it is, and is not crushed by his age. But in any case, educators appear before the young as representatives of the world and should be responsible for it, even if they did not create it and even if they secretly or openly would like it to be different. This responsibility is not imposed on educators at someone's whim; it already follows from the fact that every young generation born as adults falls into an already changed world. Those who do not want to take responsibility for the world should not produce children and should not take part in their upbringing.…

With our approach to education, we decide whether we love the world enough to take responsibility for it and at the same time save it from destruction, which would not be stopped without renewal, without the arrival of new and young. And we also decide whether we love our children enough not to throw them out of our world, leaving ourselves, not to snatch from their hands a chance to do something new and unexpected for us, but instead to prepare them for their mission – the renewal of our common world" ^{[2, p. 290]}.

If German teachers and philosophers of education generally prefer to talk about education instead of education, then English speakers, on the contrary, most often omit this concept. The elimination of education from the modern English-speaking and Russian pedagogical discourse is not accidental. Firstly, it is explained by the fact that it is very difficult to specify the specifics of education in contrast to, say, widely understood education. Secondly, the ideological orientation of pedagogy (education), the implementation of which in the first half of the last century assumed education, has almost disappeared. In our country, this approach was based on the well-known concept of "life-building", following which L.S. Vygotsky insisted on creating a new person.  In the program methodological work of 1927 "The historical meaning of the psychological crisis" and the book "Psychology of Art" he writes: "When they talk about the melting of man, as an undoubted feature of the new humanity, and about the artificial creation of a new biological type, it will be the only and first species in biology that will create itself... In the future society, psychology will really be the science of a new person. Without this, the perspective of Marxism and the history of science would be incomplete" ^{[4, p. 436]}.

 "Since the plan of the future undoubtedly includes not only the reconstruction of all mankind on a new basis, not only the mastery of social and economic processes, but also the "melting of man", the role of art will undoubtedly change. It is impossible to imagine what role art will be called upon to play in this melting of a person, what forces already existing, but inactive in our body, it will call for the formation of a new person... There will be no new person without a new art" ^{[5, p. 330]}.

 What is "human remelting" if not "re-education", based on Marxist principles and ideals of life-building? And is there no desire for a new melting of a person in power in Russia at the present time? But the question is, what principles does she want to base such a project on?

 In addition to the two indicated meanings of education ("widely understood education" and "formation" of a person, i.e., "controlled development"), there is another one when we say that an educated person is a person who has entered culture and is able to continue it (F. Froebel). In this case, we understand the attitude of education as "cultural conformity". But what is culture in our time of double transition (the crisis of modernity and the formation of prerequisites for the next culture ? "future culture"), in the struggle of globalization processes that reveal the boundaries of national cultures, with the processes of new differentiation? Can we assume that the attitude to cultural conformity retains its meaning?

            Let us now consider the conditions of the conceivability of the traditional understanding of education. There are at least two such conditions. Firstly, it is a principle that can be called the principle of "epistemological transparency". In accordance with it, the teacher knows the laws of the student's (young person's) development and the requirements that will be imposed on him at the exit of education-upbringing. This knowledge allows us to determine both the goals and content of education-upbringing, and methods of education. The second principle, let's call it "deterministic", sets a special character of pedagogical (social) action: the development of a young person can be directed in the direction desired by the state, society and school, blocking at the same time the student's activity leading to the wrong place.

In fact, L.S. Vygotsky thinks within these conditions. Thus, he sets the development, highlighting two main processes in it ? the assimilation of culturally significant forms and methods, as well as the formation of higher mental functions, which he interprets deterministically (they are conditioned by the use of signs-tools behind which society stands). "Marxist psychology,? Vygotsky writes, "is not a school among schools, but the only true psychology as a science; there can be no other psychology besides this one" ^{[4, pp. 421, 435]}. "The concept of 'development of higher mental functions' and the subject of our research," Vygotsky writes, "encompass two groups of phenomena that at first glance seem completely heterogeneous, but in fact represent two main branches, two channels of development of higher forms of behavior, inextricably linked, but never merging together. These are, firstly, the processes of mastering external means of cultural development and thinking ? language, writing, counting, drawing; secondly, the processes of developing special higher mental functions that are not delimited and not defined in any way accurately and are called in traditional psychology arbitrary attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts, etc. Those and others taken together form what we conventionally call the process of development of higher forms of child behavior" ^{[6, p. 24]}. The use of signs, Vygotsky writes, "fundamentally rebuilds the entire mental operation, just as the use of a tool modifies the natural activity of organs and immensely expands the system of activity of mental functions. Both together we designate by the term higher mental function, or higher behavior" ^{[6, p. 90]}.

 It is interesting to compare this approach with another one, in which development involves not only the assimilation of culturally significant forms and methods, but also "self-development" as a socio-political action that introduces the child into an environment of communication and joint creativity, introducing, as Karl Popper would say, to an "open society".  "Looking at things,? says H. Arendt, ? from this perspective (when it is believed that "all public affairs are governed by power and interest" and the task of education is reduced only to the assimilation of the necessary. ? V.R.), we learn nothing about the real content of political life – about the joy and satisfaction of being in the company of equals, from joint actions and appearances on to the public, from being involved in the affairs of the world with the help of words and deeds, thereby acquiring and maintaining their personal identity and starting something completely new" ^{[3, p. 389]}. Judging by the statements, Aristotle also thought about this. "Due to such instability," he writes in Politics, "in the views on modern education, the issues related to it are confused, and it remains completely unclear whether it is necessary to develop in children those mental properties that they will not be useful in practical life, or those that have virtue in mind, or finally, those that lead to higher abstract knowledge... there is also a kind of education that parents should give to their children, not because it is practically useful or necessary for them, but because it is worthy of a free-born person and is beautiful in itself" ^{[3, p. 34, 37]}.           

 My teacher, the famous philosopher-methodologist G.P. Shchedrovitsky, spoke in this case about the "ideal content" that should be presented in proper education. "If parents," he writes, "do not "put" the ideal content of their professional activity into communication, if they simply act, then the child captures content of a completely different kind – communal, everyday...in my life it happened – I don't know, maybe the father and mother understood it, or maybe, it happened by itself, it's hard for me to say now – that this is the ideal content (patterns of behavior, deeds, historical books. ? V.R.) has always existed as real and was more significant than real. Maybe the fact is that there was still that culture of the old intelligentsia, where there were some, perhaps, unfixed methods of presenting this content, laying it out - either by buying certain books, or by certain orders in the house" ^{[17, pp. 201, 204]}.

It is not difficult to notice that at present these two conditions of the conceivability of education (epistemological transparency and determination) practically do not work. Social reality is increasingly thought of as pluralistic, complex and uncertain. Its structure is not visible in classical optics. Moreover, some philosophers say that it is not necessary to know how reality works. "Einstein," observes Pierre Ado, "was delighted with the laws of nature, which presuppose a transcendental mind, and with the order of the world corresponding to the order of thought. One could say about this: it is not clear that the world would be understandable...the question of providence and the order of the world are of little importance. Epicurus did not believe in this, and, by the way, the views of the Stoics, after all, are not very far removed from some modern concepts" ^{[1, p. 240]}.

  And determination in the field of education is getting less and less, on the contrary, the principles of variability, the need to take into account different types of personality and divergent trajectories of their development and evolution are rising to the shield ^{[8; 9]}. In addition, as follows from the above, the traditional concept of education is largely eclectic and has long been inconsistent with the nature and characteristics of modern sociality. 

The concept of education, taking into account modern challenges of the time and sociality, in my opinion, should satisfy the following three attitudes – "environmental approach", "personalistic" and "reflexive-conceptual". From our point of view, a person consistently builds himself in time, creating and maintaining an individual reality by his actions, so it is quite possible to talk about the environment of his life. Such an environment is a product not only of a culture that creates "personality-oriented practices" (thinking, law, art, love ^[11]), but also of the creativity of the person himself.

In culture, the environment is not intended, but is created, and, on the one hand, it is a semiosis (signs and schemes), on the other – a technique. The cultural environment must be constantly maintained and reproduced (again within the framework of symbolic and technical activities of man and society). "The environment," the Belarusian authors write, "is not predetermined and is not imposed from the outside on a subject or group. It is a product of joint construction within the framework of actual communication, and therefore it cannot be considered separately from the situations in which it is generated and the effects that it generates... The environment is part of a local symbolic practice. The educational environment is not the opposite of practice, does not condition it as an external environment. Since the medium is a symbolic construction, it is impossible to draw a clear boundary between it and practice" ^[16].  

With the appearance of personality, the environment of an individual is created (the "personality environment"), and it is supported and reproduced not only by creativity (building personal history and scripts) and the actions of the personality itself, but also, very significantly, by social, personality-oriented practices, as well as social institutions ^[10]. For example, in antiquity, platonic love, art and ancient thinking were supported by philosophical communities, academies and schools. It turns out that the personal environment as its necessary condition presupposes a well-defined cultural environment ^{[8, pp. 109-110]}. Currently, not only the family or school educates, but also the media and the Internet, friends, the whole atmosphere of social life, often a person who has realized his personality educates himself.

Under the influence of the educational environment in a broad sense, the young person's own efforts and actions, "educational situations" are formed that need to be comprehended (reflected) and conceptualized. If both take place, we can talk about the implementation of a reflexive-conceptual attitude and "self-education" ("self-education").   

            It is clear that self-education can unfold, working, so to speak, for the benefit of culture, but it can create problems and tensions in culture (conflicts, antisocial behavior, deviant behavior). Here is the mission of modern forms of education and upbringing – tutor, family, open, ecosystem, etc. ^[9].  Teachers of these areas contribute to ensuring that the development and evolution of students meet not only the challenges of modernity, but also be culturally appropriate. However, not due to the formation, as was mainly the case in the traditional paradigm, but horizontal forms of communication and communication, support and assistance ^{[12; 13; 14]}. A vivid example of such a new pedagogical action is the tutor movement and education, as well as the family (non–) school "Seekers" by Pavel Shevarev ^{[9, pp. 26-43]}.

            I hope that the implementation of the principles and attitudes indicated here will contribute to the transformation of "education" from Cinderella into the princess of our time.