Tutor Education: Meaning, Content and Place in the Transforming Modern Education

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

Tutor education, along with family, open, ecosystem, inclusive, foreign language education, can be considered as one of the centers and sites of experimental and emerging new educational practices, partially replacing traditional education, but more often existing in parallel with it. The basic principles of tutor education, considered not in the historical tradition, namely as a modern education that is becoming, include the following. Opposition to such principles of traditional education as: understanding the student as a generalized average individual and therefore the adoption of uniform laws of development and academic subjects for all students, the concept of formation or immanent development as explaining the logic of traditional education, the class-based system as the main organizational form of education, the principles of discipline and one-sided (rather than dialogical) communication, academic subjects as a cast adapted to the capabilities of a developing individual from scientific subjects ^{[16, pp. 93-103; 13, pp. 498-511]}.

In contrast to them, provisions are formulated on the recognition of different types of individuality and personality and, accordingly, different trajectories of students' development, the installation of contextual and variable interpretation of the laws of development, the concept of individualization and the cultural-semiotic environment of education, the rejection of the classroom system and traditional academic subjects, the cultivation of horizontal relations and two-way communication in the educational community (teacher – student). The tutor positions himself as a teacher of a new formation, who does not give up the task of guiding the student in his evolution, and at the same time cultivating a new ethics of education. The features of the latter in combination: knowledge and consideration of the student's evolution, rejection of unilateral imputation of the teacher's beliefs to him (i.e. formation), assistance to the student in solving the problems faced by the latter, bringing the student stopped in development out of balance, which should be understood as problematization and immersion in situations that initiate his activity and further evolution. These principles and provisions have been discussed in recent years in a number of seminars, several conferences, recorded in published articles and books, for example ^{[10; 13; 15; 19; 20; 21]}. At the same time, several problems and difficulties arose. The main ones are as follows.

If the whole is understood in a traditional school (teachers form students, relying, on the one hand, on the laws of their mental development, on the other – preparing them for life, the main characteristics of which are revealed in the study of modernity), then how is this whole conceived in the case of a tutor approach? Even modernity, not to mention the near future, is currently unclear, uncertain, so it is difficult to understand what requirements will be imposed on a young person at the exit of education. What is meant by education here in general, if students are individuals and, therefore, seem to behave themselves? "The first active and conscious actions," writes A.N. Leontiev, "are the beginning of personality. Its formation takes place in intense internal work, when a person, as it were, constantly solves the problem of "what to be in me"... The more a person's action deviates from the typical actions of most people, the more certain it is that there are "internal" personal factors behind it – internal "dispositions" (predispositions to actions)" (cit. according to ^{[3, p. 140]}. If students are individuals, where do they behave and "educate", are they able to lead where they need to, and what is needed today, from the point of view of tutors? They say that tutors accompany their wards and should not form them. What does support mean, in what sense, and is education possible without formation? And what is meant by "cultural-semiotic environment", what kind of bird is this, it seems that the concept of environment refers to biology, and here psychology and socialization? I will not continue asking, the result is important – traditional education, although it is justly criticized, is generally understandable, but the new education and, specifically, the tutor's, is unclear, there is no clear picture, but some provisions seem to be correct.

  Recognizing this result, I will try to characterize tutor education as a whole, to present a picture of this whole, which in terms of methodology can be understood as the construction of a concept. What does it mean to set some integer? For example, Plato in "Feast" sets a new concept of love: it is the search for one's half and the pursuit of the whole, bearing "spiritual fruits" (beauty, goodness and immortality), harmony spilled in nature, striving for the divine (eros as a genius) ^{[11, pp. 71-75]}. These four characteristics of love attracted in ancient culture, and the first two, excluding the pursuit of goodness and immortality, retain their significance to this day. Does this not mean that Plato defined love as a whole? Although ideas about love have undergone changes in history, platonic love as a whole has withstood the test of time. What new characteristics of education are being realized in our time and can define education as a whole?

  Traditional education aimed to form a knowledgeable person who was ready to join the established culture and production in order to continue their development. Modern education formulates other goals and objectives, at least three groups. First, to promote the formation of a young person's personality and, since personalities are different, to provide different trajectories of students' development. The second group is to form modern competencies in a young person (the ability to learn, think critically, defend one's own opinion, work in a team, make independent decisions, solve problems, etc.). The third is to help a young person understand the main problem of modernity – the crisis of modernity, which has put life on earth on the verge of destruction, the need to save lives, which it involves participation in new projects, actions, own development and improvement. 

  If the traditional school was the main and only educational institution, then at present, in addition to the school, several sources and institutions of education are being formed – the family, the state, communities and society, the Internet, the media, friends, business education, and finally, the personality itself is being formed, if of course it has developed. Each institute sets its own "educational environment platform" and their actions are not always coordinated.

And how the new education can be seen and understood by young people. First of all, as their main business for a long period. They should become adults, independent, competent, ready for political life and saving the planet, and simply disposed to live, enjoy it, as well as overcome difficulties, solve problems that arise in life. There are two orientations here – on working life and social (political according to Aristotle). V. Zenkovsky wrote about this in the early 20s of the last century, and in our time, for example, Hannah Arendt. "Take a look at what is being done even now in all corners of Russia," writes Zenkovsky.: 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 together, 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 a love for the common good, the ability to social rapprochement, the basic social virtues, a lively desire for solidarity, a genuine, 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!" ^{[6, pp. 296, 303, 329, 343]}.

  Hannah Arendt distinguishes two areas of life in education ? the activity (labor) and the sphere of communication and politics. In the first, he must learn the ways of activity necessary for social life, in the second, he will learn to build and define his life together with others. "Exactly what," writes Arentd, "should prepare a child for the adult world, gradual habituation to work and non?playing activities, is excluded for the sake of the identity of the children's world... thereby denying that a child is becoming a person, that childhood is a temporary stage, preparation for adulthood… But this may also mean that the demands and the need for order in the world presented by the world are consciously or unconsciously rejected, and any responsibility for it is denied – both the responsibility to order in it and the responsibility to obey in it" ^{[1, pp. 273, 274, 282]}. The second area of life. "Looking at things from this angle (when it is believed that "all public affairs are governed by power and interest"), 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 in public, from using words and deeds to be involved in the affairs of the world, thereby acquiring and maintaining their personal identity and starting something completely new" ^{[2, p. 389]}. 

  And for a teacher, for example, a tutor, education is the main thing, but with a different content and purpose. The tutor should accompany the young person, help him become educated, share his educational experience, support the tutor's independence and at the same time, noticing that the latter has stopped in his development, figuratively speaking, try to bring the tutor out of balance by initiating a discussion of the circumstances, plunging him into a situation that requires resolution and the next step of development. As a teacher, the tutor should cultivate the personality of the tutor (take it into account and support it), see deviations in the development of the tutor and the problems he faces (which is understandable, it is not an easy matter), offer help in discussing these problems and solving them, share his life experience.

  However, as noted, modern education consists of several educational and often uncoordinated platforms. This is one aspect of the problem. Another, also noted, is the independent development (evolution) of young people moving along different trajectories. Third, the guiding influence of teachers (including the tutor). The sacramental question is: how can all these different educational influences be set and coordinated into a kind of organic whole, so that the student does not turn into a kind of schizophrenic due to opposite influences, which we often observe at the present time? The way out is in the organization of the cultural and semiotic environment. Naturally, it is necessary to explain what it is.

  First of all, it is worth noting that a person, unlike an animal, develops in a mixed environment – physical (as an animal) and semiotic (exactly as a person). Since childhood, the child is not only fed and cared for as a beloved pet, but also talks to him and communicates as a person. Further more, the child begins to live imaginary, but no less real, events involving the understanding of speech, games, fairy tales, music, drawing, etc., which cannot be assimilated without communication and communication with parents and other people. The importance of all these semiotic means naturally increases in adolescence, adolescence and adulthood.

  But semiosis is not only a means of providing imagination, recreating the signified objectivity and, consequently, the development of human consciousness, but also environmental reality, because signs, symbols, semiotic schemes, metaphors determine the ways of understanding and seeing the world and oneself, and often for a long time. Yes, this environment is not like a physical one, it is created by a person, but it acts (influences) she affects him no less significantly and strongly. An important feature of cultural semiotic is not only its artificial nature, but also its "popularity", the multiplicity of its meanings, both due to the fact that it can be composed from different texts and narratives (including subject organization), and read and understood in different ways.

It is these specified properties of the cultural and semiotic environment that modern teachers use, organizing conditions for the development of children of different ages and different personalities. Just one, but a detailed example, the family (not) school "Seekers" by Pavel Shivyrev. Theoretically, they focused on the Montessori pedagogical system, "in which the principles of individual independent development and teaching of children, the organization of age groups, the educational environment, pedagogical action as assistance and the creation of conditions for development were stated ^{[8; 9]}. All these principles are interrelated, but if they are understood exactly according to Montessori, they can hardly be considered effective today. In my opinion, Pavel and his colleagues understand these principles more in a modern way and broadly. For example, the creation of an environment that ensures the activity and self-development of a child involves not just the organization of subject manuals and semiotic material by zones (practical skills, sensory perception, mathematical zone, language skills, space zone), but also the use of all means known to modern pedagogy that initiate the activity of children, helping to realize it (maps, tables, stories, visits to Internet sites, videos, movies, test tasks, didactic games, tasks and puzzles, etc., etc.). And sensitive periods of development, according to Montessori, in (non)school, "Seekers" do not really adhere.

Here, the reader can naturally ask two important questions for himself, but they are often asked in different forms to Pavel Shivarev: how does education and learning take place in (non) school, if there are no lessons and regular school classes, and also in what direction does the child develop and evolve if he behaves himself, and not the teacher? The answer will not be quite ordinary and, perhaps, not immediately clear ? it is the environment that, however, creates a pedagogical team of parents (in this case, there are really a lot of teachers in it). The environment of the (non)school "Seekers" consists of three main environments: "anthropological" (family, teachers, children's society), "subject-semiotic" (for example, didactic subjects ala Montessori or Froebel ^{[23; 24]}) and purely "semiotic" (texts, films, stories, questions and answers, etc.). Subject-semiotic and semiotic environments are presented in the classroom (there are no lessons, but there are classes, where they take place, texts, manuals, games, videos, films, etc. are displayed for the next step of children's development). Perhaps it is worth introducing a fourth environment ? "external" (excursions around the city or to nature, visits to theaters, museums, clubs, meetings with interesting people, etc.), because it is also determined by the family teaching staff together with children. Each environment is not random, it is structured on the basis of certain ideas and considerations, often real concepts and scenarios ^{[13; 15]}. Two things are mandatory: the environment should immerse the child in a problematic situation that requires resolution (Pavel pays special attention to this point ? there are no problems and difficulties, the child's activity is not initiated either), the environment should prompt, and often in several ways, the direction of solving the problem situation. But the child himself should choose and come to a decision in principle. Also, however, how to figure out himself, if possible, what task he should solve, what to do in the near future. “Therefore," Pavel said back in 2017, "we do a lot in our space so that the child decides for HIMSELF what, when and how he studies. I took the tasks MYSELF” ^[27]. If you think about the variability, then, in my opinion, it is achieved through hints and help from different environments (parents advise one thing, a tutor another, group mates the third, the manual shows the fourth). Here you want, you don't want, but you will look for your own solution" ^{[12, pp. 168-169]}.          Within the framework of the school, the tutor cannot but coordinate, or rather, not cooperate, his activities with the activities of other teachers and teachers, and above all in the area where personality formation is taking place. For example, he should act together with school psychologists and school administration, as well as come to the aid of teachers when they make decisions or create an environment that determines the development of a student's personality. From an organizational point of view, two main directions can be distinguished in his activities: one-on-one work with tutors (with an individual or a group) and joint work on the organization of a cultural and semiotic environment with other teachers and teachers, including parents.

"Answering the question of one of the parents about the meaning of choosing such an unusual form of education for their child, Pavel Shivarev answered as follows. “In fact, it all boils down to what? You are ready to invest your time and energy in the education of a child, or you are not ready at all, or you are ready a little. Our format is average. Between the case when the family speaks, and we are ready to do everything ourselves, we will fully teach in the family, we all understand how to do it, everything is fine with us, well, thank God, I support such people in every possible way. An alternative option is when the family does not want to participate in education at all, does not want to invest, and it does not matter if I do not want to pay at all or I want to pay and not think about anything further. And our option is intermediate, when, on the one hand, an alternative is desirable, and on the other hand, we do not want to take over the entire educational process, so the average option” ^{[25, p. 166]}.

But in fact, of course, parents-teachers cooperated in the (non-) school "Seekers", fully assuming responsibility for the education of their children. Only they understand education differently than is usually accepted. As Pavel figuratively put it: "A horse can be brought to a watering hole, but it is impossible to make it drink"; education here is understood as self-education and self-development of children with the help of adults (parents and teachers)…

in the (non-)Seekers school, parents help children to study and relax, get acquainted with new things, go on excursions, discuss issues that concern children, and it takes many hours and effort.

Is it possible that the parents of children attending (out of) school (one or both) cannot work outside the family in normal organizations, because they are fully invested in the education of their children? When else will children become completely independent and begin to study and be educated themselves, and will it happen at all? But what about the division of labor on which our civilization rests, shouldn't the school and teachers take on this huge work? And the fact that the work of education is huge and hard is obvious…

Nevertheless, parents and teachers (outside) the "Seekers" school are taking this step from an ordinary traditional school to a school, as they believe, of the future, from an irresponsible attitude towards their own children, to a responsible one, to a real, not glossy love for them…

And regarding the division of labor, we must think. So far, indeed, the traditional school provides an opportunity for parents to work, and the school to educate children with all the positive and negative consequences that follow from this. But at present, especially with the advent of the Internet and the processes of digitalization, as well as the formation of new forms of sociality, the organization and division of labor, the situation is changing a lot. Maybe soon parents will be able to work and not transfer their children to the school box." ^{[12, pp. 166-168; 26]}

In the traditional paradigm, the content of education is set based, firstly, on how human development is understood. For example, in the concept of formation as the assimilation of activity. "What happens to a person from birth to death," asks V.V. Davydov? – Nothing else but the mastery, acquisition, mastering, appropriation of the underlying “social nature”, which is objectified in material and spiritual culture, i.e. in the special products of the subject activity of previous generations of people. His own activity is being formed, in particular, and its governing mechanisms – the psyche" ^{[5, pp. 37-38]} Secondly, setting the content of education, they rely on the knowledge of the present and the near future to determine the requirements that are likely to be imposed on a young person at the exit of education.

Today, it is almost impossible to define both the first and the second as solid, universally valid knowledge. There are different concepts and points of view about human development, there is a controversy, and modernity and especially the future are not visible, they are increasingly characterized by the concepts of complexity and uncertainty. Of course, an individual teacher can independently develop a position on these issues, after all, he graduated from a university or university (many do so), but it is unlikely that this decision is correct. 

It is this community that can and should develop ideas and positions that are generally relevant for this pedagogical community (for example, a tutor) within the framework of collective research and discussion. At the same time, since there is a change in the educational paradigm within the framework of the general crisis of modern culture, the foundations and concepts of "education", "development", "personality", "modernity and the future" have to be re-established and understood as hypothetical. For example, the concepts of personality, education and tutoring discussed here in recent years have been discussed at seminars and conferences organized by the tutor community. And here is how the idea of development and personality is seen in a hypothetical modality.

Development as a category presupposes a distinction between "becoming", actually "development" and "completion". At the same time, development is understood not as a structural change (transformation) of the whole, for example, a biological organism, activity or psyche, but relative to the whole, culturally conceived and as a form of life (for the tutor, knowledge about two such wholes is especially important – "childhood culture" and "coming of age culture"). For example, I show that the culture of childhood presupposes the community of "prama" (a term proposed by L.S. Vygotsky, designed to emphasize the unity of the child with his parents), the development (equivalent of cognition) of the world and especially the adult world with the help of schemes, games and fairy tales, the first forms of self-awareness ("I", "I myself"), teaching techniques (speech, self-service). ^{[17, pp. 33-62; 14]} The listed characteristics and features of childhood do not take shape immediately, at the age of one to four years their formation, then development, that is, the complication and reproduction of these features, and the disintegration of pram, learning the first techniques of thinking (for example, the simplest reasoning, accounting of facts), elementary independent actions are indicators of the completion of childhood culture.

The formation of the culture of adulthood is conditioned by the requirement of independent behavior and the real need for such behavior when entering primary school. In turn, the transition to independent behavior necessitates the construction of "private schemes", one's own vision and understanding of the world and oneself in it. In other words, a new whole is being formed – a personality that is characterized not only by independent behavior, but also by self-management and difficult relationships with adults. By the way, Immanuel Kant also associated adulthood with self–government ("A minor," he writes, "is an inability to use one's mind without guidance from someone else" ^[7]). But self-government does not mean autarky (autonomous life activity and denial of others), in the picture of the world, personalities are constituted, naturally, in different personalities in different ways, individuals with whom a young person has to deal.

The development of the culture of adulthood consists in testing the images of the world and oneself built by the personality, clarifying and revising these images in the direction of more effective and realistic own behavior ^{[17, pp. 18-19]}. And the completion of this culture, which is not happening at all, is associated with a crisis of personality, the impossibility of its preservation. The tutor's knowledge of the culture of adulthood does not mean that he should strive to direct his ward in exactly the same direction and in the same way as a personality was formed in the history of culture. This is impossible due to a number of circumstances: the living conditions have changed, there are several personality types, as I show, the tutor could have already embarked on a certain path of development and others. Nevertheless, knowledge of the cultures of childhood and adulthood is necessary, given that a person in his development passes, but due to these circumstances, fundamentally different (in the logic of ontogenesis), historical stages of development.

It is necessary to distinguish from development the "evolution of the individual" ("evolution of personality"). The fact is that educational influences in some cases achieve their goal, and in others they do not. One of the reasons for the latter is the discrepancy between the educational impact and the ongoing process of evolution, i.e. the direction and content of the individual's development. For example, a young man strives to do good, to be more attentive to his elders, to help them, and due to some circumstances, for example ideological, he is inspired that a person should be strong, ignore others, achieve his goals at any cost. It is unlikely that such pedagogical influence will be effective. By the way, if someone thinks that we are dealing with an exception here, they are very mistaken, perhaps we are talking about the Russian tradition. Here, for example, is a letter of instruction from 23-year-old Pushkin to his 18-year-old brother. "You're going to have to deal with people you don't know yet. From the very beginning, think about them all the worst that you can imagine; you won't make too much of a mistake... despise them in the most polite way... be cold to everyone... don't be obliging and curb your heartfelt disposition if it takes hold of you: people don't understand this... What I can tell you about women would be completely useless. I will only note that the less we love a woman, the more surely we can master her." "In general, at this time, Pushkin," recalls the son of P.A. Vyazemsky, "seemed to systematically act on my imagination in order to attract the attention of women, that it was necessary to go forward brazenly, without looking back and seasoned his moralizing with cynical quotes from Shamfor" ^{[4, p. 123]}.

It is unlikely that the tutor will be able to help and correctly influence the tutor if he does not understand in which direction his evolution is going. It is also useful for a tutor to have such a concept as "the life world", it is also culturological in type, but it is also connected with the concept of becoming new. To clarify, I will first offer one case, namely the story of Pavel Florensky's gaining faith in God.

"Judging by his upbringing and hobbies, young Pavel had to grow up to be a complete atheist and a scientist with a physicalist orientation. The father, whom Pavel loved very much, guided his son to natural science classes, carefully avoided topics related to faith in God, and Pavel himself devoted most of his school time to physics and other natural sciences, which naturally led him to the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University (graduated in 1904).…

And suddenly, when Pavel was graduating from the Tiflis gymnasium, religious reality came to the surface of his consciousness, broke through, and the old world, built on the dogmas of science collapsed (Florensky realizes exactly what was happening to him at that time: “there was a rift, a rupture of biography, a sudden internal collapse... the most important thing was: the surprise and catastrophism of it”“..one can, perhaps, see in what happened the sudden opening of the doors of another world” ^{[22, p.117]}. At first, against the background of unclear experiences and longing, the message came to Paul in a dream (... ”the thinnest ray, which was an invisible light, or an inaudible sound, brought the name – God” ^{[22, p. 195-196]}), which upon awakening he realized as follows. “It was a revelation, a revelation, a blow to me. From the suddenness of this blow, I suddenly woke up, as if awakened by an external force, and, without knowing why, but summing up everything I experienced, I shouted to the whole room: “No, you can't live without God” ^{[22, p. 212]}.

Then, after a series of similar experiences, already against the background of beautiful nature, Pavel has a real revolution: in addition to his consciousness, thoughts themselves begin to come to him, resolutely crossing out the scientific worldview.  “And again the same answer is that the whole scientific worldview is trash and convention, which has nothing to do with truth as life, as the basis of life, and that it is not necessary. These answers of another thought sounded tougher, more definite and more merciless… And finally, the last question about all knowledge. It was clipped, like all the previous ones… All the objections to scientific thought that I have ever heard or read suddenly turned over in my mind and from conditional, easily reflected if desired and artificially invented quibbles, suddenly got the power to strike at the very heart of the scientific worldview. At some moment, the magnificent building of scientific thinking crumbled into dust, as if from an underground blow...” ^{[22, pp. 241-242]} …   

This suggests a comparison of the path of Paul Florensky with the search for St. Augustine. Both of them went to Christianity from philosophy and passion for science. Both, gaining faith, experienced a spiritual upheaval that shook them. But, of course, another time, another era and another life experience. Paul came to Christianity as a young man during the crisis of Orthodoxy that was beginning in Russia among the masses, and Augustine was already a mature, differently lived man, at that time many and many joined Christianity. But what is surprising: if Augustine obtained faith by hard work and struggle with himself, then it seemed to come to Paul by itself ... (But is it really so, let's try to figure it out).

You can start with the same thing that Paul himself points out in “Memoirs”, that is, with parents and family. The father, who determines everything in the family, was without roots, an orphan, but with ideas and plans. He wanted to depend on no one, neither on people nor on society, planning to build everything on the family and considered it the only reality, “paradise”… Theoretically, the head of the Florensky family can well be called a “social marginal”, but very educated...It was from the marginals in the second half of the XIX century that both the raznochintsy and the intelligentsia and revolutionaries of different stripes came out.

The father certainly belonged to the first category. He, as P. Florensky notes, “treated revolutionary ideas both distrustfully and contemptuously, as if they were boyish claims to remake society, which is what it is, according to the laws of necessity,” and anxiously reflected on the consequences of revolutionary attempts that could “lead Russia“ into complete chaos” ^{[22, p. 123]}. Paul, obviously, fully adopted this belief of his father. Two years before the revolution, in a letter to V. Rozanov, he writes with irritation: “It is necessary for our intelligentsia to finally abandon the consciousness of providential duties and firmly tell themselves that the world and the fate of history go and will go not by their “declarations” at all, but by mysterious laws guided by the Hand of God” ^{[22, c. 281]} …

By the standards of the family, Pavel's father also understands social relations. Sociality for him is “humanity” (“this is the father's favorite word,” Paul remarks, "with which he wanted to replace religious dogma and metaphysical truth... humanity, warmth and softness of human relations comes from the family – he believed" ^{[22, p. 122-123]})…  

What kind of atmosphere reigned in the Florensky family and what was the education of their children. If we define this atmosphere in two words, then the words suggest themselves: love, kinship, respect. As Pavel says, his family members were people “imbued with love and tender care” for each other. And in terms of education, children were connected to culture in the best sense of the word: foreign languages, history, literature, art, natural sciences, crafts and technology. But there was also one peculiarity – an unusual attitude to nature and its development, nature was understood as a living being and was known not abstractly, but in a penetrating, re-alive, Goethe-like way… But what does Goethe have to do with it? The fact is that it was Goethe, who wrote 13 volumes on natural science (Goethe's Large Weimar Edition has so many), who set the understanding and attitude to nature, which goes across the tradition, as a living phenomenon, the knowledge of which is inseparable from its experience and participation in the life of nature…

 But what really happened in those and subsequent years was an increasingly acutely felt contradiction between the natural science worldview and Paul's real attitude to nature and life, between the family isolation cultivated by his father and the real life around him, as well as the same history and culture. A lively, ecstatic attitude to nature and immersion in the richness of the history and culture of mankind did not fit in Paul's mind into the natural science picture of the world with its rigid uniform laws. The feeling of love and respect for a person, immersion in history and culture did not correspond to family isolation from society. The tolerance and pluralism of his father's worldview, and Pavel felt this, did not correspond to the general tendency of that time to participate in social transformations, a tendency based on the same natural science worldview and related ideas of social engineering...    

Pavel Florensky perceived nature in two ways and contradictory ways: on the one hand, in terms of the natural science worldview, as a physical reality mummified with the help of eternal laws of nature, on the other – as a living being and a humanitarian reality. And social life looked contradictory: her father saw her only in the family, and outside the window she shimmered with all colors and went to infinity, if not to eternity. Perhaps that's why, despite the love that reigned in the family, everyone felt lonely (“I started talking,” Pavel notes, "about my loneliness, but, in different ways, everyone was lonely" ^{[22, p. 70]}). And when Pavel began to grow up and think about the meaning of his life, he felt that he could no longer combine these two understandings of life, that a new reality was growing in him, as if against his will. Why was it realized in a religious way? This is understandable, because the idea of God for Paul was not only a mystery, but also turned out to meet many of his aspirations. Indeed, God not only created nature, but also dwells in it as a living principle, God personified the family beloved by Paul (Father, Son, Mother of God), but not narrowly, but on the contrary, in a universal way, opening the narrow world of the Florenskys, God brought unity and meaning into the chaos of life and much more.

However, the old reality did not go away, and Paul found himself crucified on the cross of his contradictory aspirations – both to God and to science. In the mid-1920s, Pavel Florensky writes about it like this: “It was a characteristic disease of the whole new thought, of the whole Renaissance; now, in retrospect, I can define it as the disunity of humanity and science. Inhuman scientific thought – on the one hand, senseless humanity – on the other…In me, these two elements collided with a special force, because the renaissance science was not an external appendage and not a plumage, but a second nature, and I understood its true meaning not because I learned from someone, but knew directly, as my own desires. But this understanding was opposed by no less strong experience, revivalist plans fundamentally denying them" (my italics. – V.R.)" ^{[22, pp. 217-218; 18, pp. 160-168]}.

I propose to characterize the spiritual upheaval that occurred with Pavel Florensky as a change in the life world. What are the conditions of this shift: on the one hand, an "intersubjective situation" (family, education, parents' attitudes), on the other – a "problematic situation" (Pavel was unable to combine contradictory attitudes and realities in his mind), on the third hand, "work of consciousness", which resulted in a change of "immediate reality" (not nature, understood scientifically, but God). Paul had to overcome the misunderstanding of the world in which he lived, and he did it by constructing (discovering) a new objectivity – God, and not quite canonical (as a Noumenon that symbolically defines all phenomena). "Based on Goethe's ideas, Pavel Florensky in the mid-1910s formulated his own approach, called "symbolism": behind phenomena and things one must see the life of a "noumenon", a phenomenon does not exist without a noumenon, and the latter without a phenomenon; in this sense, the phenomenon must be understood as a symbol of the noumenon. "All my life," writes Pavel Florensky, "I have been thinking, in essence, about one thing: about the relation of the phenomenon to the noumenon, about the discovery of the noumenon in phenomena, about its identification, about its embodiment. This is a question about the symbol…Phenomena are the essence itself (in its appearance, it is implied), the name is the named one himself (i.e., since he can pass into consciousness and become the object of consciousness)…a phenomenon, an announcement, a manifestation of a thing, is not separated from a thing, and therefore – just as “here” as “there”... Look into the phenomenon and you will see that it is the husk of another, deeper lying. And what lies deeper is the “noumenon” in relation to the first as a “phenomenon”... Yes, if we talk about primary intuition, then my was and is that mysterious illumination of reality by other worlds - shining through the reality of other worlds…It runs, because it lives... it has never occurred to me to expose, there has never been a thought of mortification, of stopping, of analysis. It was clear to me that this analysis would be self-deception...my desire was to know the world precisely as an unknown one, without violating her secrets, but by spying on her. The symbol was a peeping mystery. For the mystery of the world is not closed by symbols, but is revealed in its authenticity as a mystery." ^{[22, pp. 153-158; 18, pp. 165-166]}

So, the formation of the life world presupposes at least two things: the work of consciousness overcoming misunderstanding of the world and itself, and the construction of new meanings and objectivity that resolve a problematic situation, restore understanding, but this is different. It is clear that spiritual upheavals, like the one described by Pavel Florensky, occur infrequently, and it is understandable why, because we are talking about a change in the immediate reality that determines a person's life for a long time. That is, we can assume that the world of life and the cultures of life, although different realities, nevertheless, they have common features – to define life and understanding of reality for a long period, and their change is subject to culturological logic (similar to the change of some cultures by others).

Again, in a hypothetical way about the present and the near future. Tutor education, of course, should be modern. In my opinion, this means at least the following. The understanding reached as a result of education that our culture has entered a deep crisis: the main semantic project of the New European culture (mastery of nature) has exhausted itself, the work of social institutions, primarily the state, has ceased to satisfy, there is a threat of social and man-made disasters, environmental crisis, etc. As a consequence, the understanding of the need to participate in the constitution of the future culture. The primary condition of the latter is new competencies: living in conditions of disasters and crisis, independent activity and thinking, responsibility to the future, readiness for radical changes, including a revision of ideas about the world and oneself. I assume that these competencies should become important goals of tutor education.  

Tutor education is just taking shape. But today it was necessary to discuss such fundamental issues for pedagogy as attitude to educational concepts (first of all, the concept of traditional education), understanding of modernity and the near future, an idea of the development and nature of personality, the essence and features of new education (cultural and educational environment, new pedagogical relations and ethics, and others). This work is a feasible contribution to this discussion.