National project "Education". Positive analytics
Everything is bad, bad, bad ...
Critical attacks towards the organization of school and higher education have become a fashion trend of the last decade. One of the main arguments was the superiority of the Soviet school over "this is all."
The adherents of this idea cite the words of allegedly John Kennedy as the main transparency:
”Soviet education is the best in the world. We have to take a lot from it. USSR won the space race for the school desk ”
.Firstly, it is not a fact that Kennedy even said that. Secondly, the phenomenal success of the Soviet space program cannot be completely attributed to a high level of school education. Rather, the ability of government administrators to accumulate the resources of an entire country to achieve a single goal. What we are not observing now, fortunately or unfortunately. And thirdly, if the school curriculum was so wonderful, why didn’t they win the moon race with the Americans? In addition, education, both school and university, was thoroughly saturated with ideology, which negatively affected even the content of curricula.
Think of Lysenko’s “scientific” dogmas and courses stories CPSU. Any model of education that can call itself successful must be organically integrated into the economic and political systems of the country. Unfortunately, the school in the USSR could somehow support only the political component of the state. Over time, a very inert model of Soviet education became one of the reasons for the collapse of the country. And when began years of unbridled democracy, all schools surfaced cons: no one knows how to implement their skills and talents of all the walls of factories, research institutes and universities. And those who can, are often very unscrupulous citizens. The history of the 90's may provide examples of this in abundance.
Many talk about excellent technical education in the USSR. And it is true. It was extremely difficult for a young engineer to realize himself in a planned economy. Salvation was work in the defense research institute, at the defense plant, as well as employment in the "general" project.
As a result, the country approached the 21st century with a critical technological lag behind the world and an unbalanced education system. Of course, there were positive moments in Soviet education, but we will talk about them a little later.
Another national project?
The national project "Education" in many ways should transfer the school and university education systems to new tracks, although it is impossible to talk about any revolutionary transformations. Rather, a set of measures to mitigate deficiencies. The most expensive segment of the national project is the federal project "Modern School". This is almost 300 billion rubles. As part of this area, rural schools, as well as schools in small towns, will be updated. By 2024, 230 thousand new school places will appear, which will finally allow us to abandon the third academic shift.
The project reveals, probably, one of the most painful problems of the modern Russian school - the depressing state of buildings and classrooms. Moreover, the appearance of the school depends on the region in which it is located. It is lucky if the children go to school in the Tyumen region, the Krasnodar Territory or in Moscow (not everywhere, by the way), when you are met by a well-kept educational institution with modern equipment. But if in the Sverdlovsk, Omsk or Kurgan regions ... In general, even now in the suburbs you can find schools that claim to be almost all-Russian educational centers, which have not been seriously repaired since the Soviet Union.
A serious problem of the entire structure of education since Soviet times was the almost pathological desire to enter higher education institutions. The line "school - university" has become for most the most commonplace. What have we come to? In the 1990 and 2000 years, a huge number of school graduates entered various universities. Those who are more up to date were able to get on a budget, the rest went for a fee. In almost every town and urban-type town, branches of serious educational institutions appeared. This, by the way, was the result of another surge in fertility in the early 80's. The efficiency of such universities was ridiculous - youth five years she studied at the expense of the state, for example, in the economic, legal and pedagogical universities, and then went in a completely different activity. If% 10-15% could work in their specialty, this was already good.
Some went further and after receiving the main diploma they paid for the second higher education and after three more years they finally got a second degree. Absurd? When they calculated how much state funds were actually wasted, the state decided to reform. Relatively low average life expectancy in the country added fuel to the fire, and even if a person 5-8 years old will learn for free ...
One of the consequences of changes in higher education was the introduction of a two-tier system (undergraduate and graduate programs), as well as a sharp reduction in various branches of universities issuing diplomas left and right.
By the way, it’s worth separately telling about the system of postgraduate education, that is, graduate school and doctoral studies, which actually discredited itself in the 1990 and 2000 years. This is especially true of the whole host of humanitarian specialties. Plagiarism, corruption, nepotism in a large part of the defense of candidate, doctoral dissertations and publication of articles then became the norm. This trend partially affected technical and natural sciences - it is still much easier to check research results.
Now with the defense of dissertations the situation is much more complicated. Firstly, after four years of undergraduate studies, a university graduate cannot enter graduate school - a master's level is required, and not every university has the appropriate conditions for this. Secondly, the Higher Attestation Commission put out a lot of advice on defending dissertations that raise suspicions of bias, and also reduced the list of peer-reviewed scientific journals.
The pursuit of giftedness
But back to the national project. One of the most important tasks of the work of the Ministry of Education (everyone remembers that now it is so, and not the Ministry of Education and Science?) Was the career guidance of the younger generation. Moreover, this must be done right now, on the next demographic wave that came after the catastrophic decline in the 90 years. One way or another, this project is served by the federal projects “Success of Every Child”, “Social Elevators for Everyone” and “Young Professionals”.
A good example of the development of career guidance in the school system is the All-Russian Forum "Projection", which can be found at proektoria.online. Here, the directions of the research work of the younger generation and career guidance are intertwined in a complex way. And by the end of 2024, more than 900 of thousands of children will receive clear instructions on building their own professional future as part of another project - “Ticket to the Future”. A special place in the structure of educational subjects will be given to “Technology” - a total technical re-equipment of classes and updating of the content are planned. Children will gain access and skills not only with a chisel and hammer, but also with an 3D printer and a laser machine. Further development will receive professional skills contests such as WorldSkills.
A lot of attention and a lot of billions of rubles were allocated for the financial support of young teachers, as well as advanced training for teachers with experience. The federal project “Export of Education” looks interesting. It provides for the following until 2024:
“Twice the number of foreign citizens studying in universities and research organizations, as well as the implementation of a package of measures for their employment.”
The social activity project is called upon to stir up a largely inert society.
Alexey Kudrin - an opponent of the national project "Education"
The work with gifted children, which for some reason is criticized by Doctor of Economics Alexei Kudrin, runs through the entire project with a red thread. In his opinion, it is not worth focusing on young talents now, but you should turn your eyes to lagging and problem children. Allegedly, international experience shows that it is among them that truly gifted children are hiding, capable of becoming real drivers of economic development. Of course, there is a certain amount of truth in these words: many great minds of the 19th and 20th centuries were ordinary two-threesomes at school, but the vast majority were socially adapted talents from childhood. In history, for every Einstein troika, you can find a couple of Landau's honors.
The officials of the Ministry of Education are well aware that the education of even one talented engineer or researcher can bring returns that are many times greater than all investments in education. That is why the administrator of the Education project is Marina Rakova, Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation. At one time, she was the initiator of the creation in Russia of the Quantorium network of children's technology parks, modern analogues of Soviet technical creativity houses. You can get acquainted with the main directions of design work of young engineers “Nanokvantum”, “Avtokvantum”, “Neuroquantum”, “Aeroquantum”, “IT-quantum”, “Roboquantum”, “Cosmoquantum” and “Geoquantum” at kvantorium.ru.
Now in addition to the “Quantoriums” line, the centers of digital education for children “IT-KUB” are joining as part of the federal project “Digital educational environment”. Here, children will program in Python, Java, C ++, work with big data and develop applications for virtual reality. It is important that potential employers are involved in working with gifted children: Yandex, Samsung and Microsoft. By 2024, they plan to build 340 of such “cubes” and attract at least 136 thousand of children throughout Russia.
Marina Rakova, perhaps, is becoming the main driver of all innovations in the Ministry. At the end of the 90's, she was still a schoolgirl and successfully participated in the “Step into the Future” program organized by MSTU. N.E. Bauman. She became the winner of the All-Russian final “Step into the Future”, and later the international “Intel ISEF” and “European contest for young scientists”.
All-Russian Forum "Step into the Future" (www.step-into-the-future.ru) For decades, it has been an excellent platform for students to hone their research skills. Naturally, since the organizer is a purely technical MSTU, the range of areas of work has a serious inclination in the field of technical and natural sciences. A few years ago, the Ministry of Defense appeared as a partner in this program. The military, firstly, supports the participation of pupils of the cadet, Suvorov and Nakhimov schools in scientific work, and, secondly, in every possible way encourage projects of defense significance. Of course, all this should be viewed through the prism of the age of the participants - from the 1 class to the 1 course of universities. Nobody even requires fundamental discoveries from children, but the level of some projects is pleasantly surprising. So, in 2019, one of the winners was a student with the project "Development and creation of an effective jet engine for rocket modeling." By the way, at the competitions of young scientists of the European Union (EUCYS), the project was among the winners.
Marina Rakova
Let's get back to the Soviet education system. All the best that a Russian school took from Soviet education is the fundamental nature of knowledge. If we compare the physics and chemistry textbooks in American schools with our even basic ones, it turns out that in the USA in high school they study what we have in the 6-8 classes. For example, alkalis across the ocean are considered as baking soda and pipe cleaning products. Now our school is moving away from the Soviet fundamentality of the subjects taught, although it is still very far from the US level.
From the material it may seem that everything is simply brilliant in the formation of our state. This, of course, is not so. There are enough problems, and many of them simply will not be able to solve the national project "Education", even if its financial support is multiplied. A certain problem is the transition of almost all pedagogical universities to undergraduate studies: that is, a young teacher comes to school after 4 years of study with an appropriate set of knowledge. At the same time, entering a pedagogical university, for example, at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, now there is no need to take physics. Enough exam in social studies, basic mathematics and the Russian language.
And, of course, the salary of teachers, which should be 100% (and at universities 200%) of the average for the region. In most schools in Russia, mention of this will cause a smile at best.
The differentiation of education into elite and “ordinary” schools is also alarming. Although this practice was also in the Soviet Union with schools at various universities and even research institutes. Still, I really want the teaching level to be equally high in all schools in the country.
At the end I will give a couple of numbers. The national project "Education" is designed to raise the level of education in Russia in the world ranking from 14 places to at least 10, and this must be done before the 2024 year. Wait and see.
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