Education in Russia and the USSR: an alternative opinion
The topic of education in Russia has become a popular object of speculation.
At the same time, there is a clear trend - most materials have a negative coloration from the series
"How good it was and how bad it became."
Various conspiracy theories, Masonic conspiracies and even the predictions of fortune-tellers gained popularity. At the same time, little attention is paid to a truly competent analysis of what is happening. Let's try to fix this and understand whether Russian education has really gotten worse?
Popular mistake # 1: “there were many engineers, there were many managers”
Very often you can see how
people complain about the dominance of “managers”: they say, before the state trained personnel (with a capital letter), but now - don’t understand who: some incomprehensible managers ”.
The mistake is that cause and effect are reversed. It is assumed that the "bad" system just like that (or as planned by an evil Western politician) stopped training physicists, and began to churn out salesmen.
In reality, the education system does not exist in a vacuum and does not at all determine the real needs of the labor market. On the contrary, it is the labor market that creates demand and dictates conditions.
So what has impacted the labor market so much? Banal automation of all processes.
Let me give you a simple example. Previously, drawings were drawn by hand. This means that for a certain project, conditionally 50 specialists were required. Drawing was a very laborious process. For this reason, it was previously taught in every Soviet school.
Some VO readers may even feel nostalgic now by looking at this memorable tutorial.
What is especially noteworthy, children were introduced to drawing, already starting from 7-8 grades.
But progress did not stand still, and modern solutions in the field of automation have greatly simplified the process, the productivity of one specialist has increased many times over. And, consequently, the work of 40 people out of these 50 has become simply unclaimed.
The same thing happened in a huge number of other areas, for example, in the economy. If earlier it was necessary to have 30 people in the accounting department, then today one chief accountant, his deputy, 1C programmer is enough. And a couple of girls who graduated from the institute with a degree in “Accounting and Business Analysis”, but whose real qualifications are much closer to the wording “PC operator”. (They not own accounting. They just know how to interact with the program interface. The algorithm does the rest).
Thus, the decrease in the number of highly qualified specialists is not the merit of the education system. On the contrary, the education system itself is forced to adapt to the changed relationships. While the true reason for this is the total automation of everything and everyone.
Popular mistake number 2: "it is not clear who is being prepared"
In fact, all over the world, professionals in education state one general tendency: the world is changing so rapidly that during the period of study from grades 1 to 11, dozens of professions appear and die.
As a result, no one in the world knows exactly how and what should be taught to those children who will begin their labor activity in 10–20 years.
Let me give you a simple example. A good friend of mine did poorly at school as a child. And everyone said that a very grim future awaited him. Because he could not succeed in anything that formed the basis of the education system then.
But on the other hand, he liked to study at the "artist" and spend time at the computer. As a result, instead of studying at the institute, he mastered 3dMax using a tutorial and left for the USA to work as a 3D artist.
Professionals in this field are paid very good money. But the entire multi-billion dollar industry has grown, in fact, out of the void. Because no country in the world then had an education system that would train a computer artist on a turnkey basis.
Just 20 years ago, no one expected that 3D printing specialists would be in demand. What knowledge and skills should such a specialist have in general?
Now the Internet is publishing a variety of lists of professions that may be in demand in the future.
Among other things:
smart home design,
operator drone,
remote surgery operator,
designer of virtual living environment (VR technology).
Who is a tutor?
The profession of a tutor is remarkable in that it is doubly interesting to us.
Firstly, it should have become No. 5 in the above-mentioned list, although it is in demand today.
And secondly, in the context of the topic under discussion, it is remarkable for its functionality.
According to research by the OECD, in the member countries of this organization, more than 30% of parents are dissatisfied with the quality of secondary education. In the Russian Federation, issues of “grassroots” educational policy are also being discussed. This makes it possible to predict a steady growth in demand for specialists capable of working in the conditions of the rapid co-evolution of the labor market and the education system (methods and forms of education, educational institutions, educational programs and trajectories).
The tutor organizes the development of curricula and educational programs, collection and analysis of data at the level of organizations and households, mediation of conflict situations in the educational process.
The tutor organizes the development of curricula and educational programs, collection and analysis of data at the level of organizations and households, mediation of conflict situations in the educational process.
For reference. The OECD includes 37 countries, including the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy and Israel.
That is, the labor market all over the world is changing so rapidly that the ready-made state education systems simply cannot keep up with the changes.
As a result, specialists are needed who are able to combine together:
- labor market trends,
- interests and abilities of the child,
- offers of various educational systems,
- opportunities for parents.
And based on the analysis of the entire data set, develop individual recommendations for teaching a particular child.
In other words, to create a “good” educational system “on a turnkey basis” in the form in which it existed in the XX century, today it becomes in principle impossible.
Mistake # 3: digital dementia
Another problem that is absolutely groundlessly attributed to the education system is “children get stupid”.
In 2012, Manfred Spitzer's book Digital Dementia was published.
In the Russian version, it was named "Antibrain". This is not the first and not the only work of psychiatrists and neurophysiologists in this direction, but it was this work that attracted the greatest attention to the problem.
I will quote from the annotation to the book:
In Germany, M. Spitzer's book caused a lively discussion. His way of polemizing seems too aggressive. But the author's anxiety and concern for future generations is justified and justified. One cannot but agree with Spitzer that digital QMS is a blessing for those who have an educational base, then they really contribute to the development and acquisition of new knowledge. But they are destructive for children, moreover, the ease of handling digital QMS does not teach to work at all, the emphasis is on pleasure. The destructiveness of such an attitude is already evident!
However, the process affects not only children - by delegating more and more routine and boring functions to digital gadgets, we thereby deprive our brain of training.
This can be compared with the problem of physical inactivity in medicine - it is known that evolutionarily our body has adapted to constant movement. The development of motor transport has led to the fact that we have become much less moving. And now doctors recommend to artificially pick up the rate of physical activity.
Sitting in the office all day, people pay money to go to the fitness center and run on the treadmill. Some 50 years ago, having plowed a day in a field or at a factory, our ancestors would have twisted their fingers at their temples, looking at us today.
It's the same with the brain.
We do not need to remember phone numbers, it seems to us that we know them, but in fact they are not in our memory, but in the memory of our gadgets.
When we get behind the wheel, we trust the navigator to plot the route and tell us when and where to turn or change lanes. But once in a taxi they took only experienced drivers who really knew the city well, remembered it. In other words, the degradation of qualification requirements exists even in such a profession as a taxi driver.
Moreover, all services are developed according to the principle
"The most convenient for a person."
Want to eat right but don't have time? You can go to the site and order sets of ready meals for the week.
Sophisticated algorithms analyze your passions and suggest products that might interest you based on your previous choices: movies, books, things.
This is just a brief retelling of the ideas voiced in this book and other similar works. If anyone is interested, I recommend reading it.
Within the framework of this article, we can conclude: yes, humanity as a whole is getting dumber, but the education system is not the cause of this process. The real reason is the flip side of technical progress.
Another factor is the abundance of information and the acceleration of all processes. For example, in order for a person to be able to discuss a topic before, he needed to read at least one book from cover to cover. Today, if we do not know something, we can open the Internet and, after reading two paragraphs, draw a conclusion. Our brain stops working with large amounts of information and loses the ability to think critically.
Disadvantages of the Soviet education system
Many authors criticize Russian education and use the Soviet education system as an example. Such a one-sided view cannot be called objective. And to complete the picture, it is necessary to recall the following disadvantages of education in the USSR.
At the same time, I will not waste time on its advantages (due to the fact that they are listed regularly and widely known), such as fundamental nature and accessibility.
Complete disregard for entire areas of human activity
Take the automotive industry as an example. After the USSR “ended” and second-hand foreign cars poured into the market, the huge difference between the Soviet models of the car industry and the Western ones became obvious to everyone.
What caused this difference? Well, first of all, the fact that in Western society it was the norm to divide the market into segments: from budget to premium.
And the premium segment implied the presence of qualitatively different solutions: such a car should not just drive, but it should drive softly, quietly, easily controlled and a person should be comfortable in it.
Such a need determined the demand for a designer, a specialist in the audio preparation of a car, etc.
And the designer does not mean the girl who draws wedding pictures. This is a specialist who must have knowledge and skills in several areas at once:
1) have a technical education, since he needs to work in cooperation with engineers;
2) be able to come up with comfortable, ergonomic solutions and visualize them (ergonomics is a separate complex interdisciplinary area of knowledge that takes into account physiology, psychology, cognitology, etc.);
3) understand the materials used in interior decoration.
Here, for example, what the Japanese car industry produced in 1985.
The example of the auto industry is just one of the illustrative demonstrations. The problem itself is much more serious.
Its scope is well illustrated in this video.
It was the lack of specialists in marketing, financial systems other than planned, advertising, etc. that made it simply impossible to develop and implement everything that highly qualified scientists could come up with. And, as a result, society could not get benefits from the implementation of these developments.
Yes, we have to admit the obvious, being the first in space, we just gave up the entire telecommunications market. But the Soviet milkmaid, who milked a goat all her life, had the opportunity to get an education in the evening and learn what a square root is.
Learning from under the stick
Among other things, planning implied the presence of certain standards for the number of workers receiving education. Conventionally, at some factory 10 people were supposed to receive education (evening or part-time) according to the plan. At the same time, no one was particularly worried about the desire and motivation of the person himself. This led to the fact that the time resources of the teaching staff were spent, in fact, on farce, and not on actual teaching.
An illustrative demonstration of this state of affairs is the Soviet film "Big Change", the script of which was written based on the story "Going to the People" by Georgy Sadovnikov. It is also important that Georgy Mikhailovich at one time himself taught in an evening school.
Here is one of the speaking moments of this wonderful film in all respects.
There was also such a negative aspect of planning.
The fact is that in the USSR they tried to ensure universal employment. And therefore, the vocational schools en masse took Losers and C-students who did not enter universities, and also forcibly placed juvenile criminals there. As a result, the average quality of the student body in vocational schools has fallen sharply. In addition, the career prospects of vocational schools were much worse than in the previous era: a huge number of skilled workers were trained during the industrialization of the 1930s and 1960s, the best jobs were taken, and it became more difficult for young people to get to the top. At the same time, the service sector was extremely poorly developed in the USSR, which was associated with serious restrictions on entrepreneurship, and it is the service sector that creates the largest number of jobs in modern developed countries (including places for people without higher or professional education).
We are used to believing that this is an absolute blessing - to help people who have stumbled, to pull them up, even if they do not really want to go there. But it is obvious that in the USSR this process was a little overdone. As a result, a whole segment of important professions collapsed - welders, locksmiths, etc.
Monopolization of education
Among other advantages of the Soviet system, the ability to think critically is often cited.
After such statements, I recall a film based on the story of Boris Vasiliev "Tomorrow was a war." It very well demonstrates the emphases that prevailed in the education system at the time. And what fate was in store for those people who, in the words of one of the heroes, believed that it was important
"To ask a person questions, not to give ready-made answers."
Here is a small excerpt from this work.
- Mom, what is truth?
Mother put down the book, which she was reading carefully, with extracts and bookmarks, put the cigarette in the ashtray, thought, took it out and lit it again.
“I think you phrased the question casually. Please clarify.
- Then tell me: are there any indisputable truths? Truths that do not require proof.
- Of course. If there were no such truths, man would remain a beast. And he needs to know what he lives for.
- So, a person lives in the name of truth?
- We - yes. We, the Soviet people, have discovered the immutable truth that the Party teaches us. So much blood has been shed for her and so many torments are accepted that to argue with her, and even more so to doubt, means betraying those who have died and ... and will still perish. This truth is our strength and our pride. Spark. Did I understand your question correctly?
“Yes, yes, thanks,” Iskra said thoughtfully. - You see, it seems to me that at our school they don't teach to argue.
- There is nothing to argue with friends, but you have to fight with enemies.
- But you have to be able to argue?
- It is necessary to teach the truth itself, and not how to prove it. This is casuistry. A man devoted to our truth will, if need be, defend it with weapons in hand. This is what needs to be taught. And chatter is not our business. We are building a new society, we have no time for chatter. - Mother threw a cigarette butt into the ashtray, looked inquiringly at Iskra. - Why did you ask about this?
Mother put down the book, which she was reading carefully, with extracts and bookmarks, put the cigarette in the ashtray, thought, took it out and lit it again.
“I think you phrased the question casually. Please clarify.
- Then tell me: are there any indisputable truths? Truths that do not require proof.
- Of course. If there were no such truths, man would remain a beast. And he needs to know what he lives for.
- So, a person lives in the name of truth?
- We - yes. We, the Soviet people, have discovered the immutable truth that the Party teaches us. So much blood has been shed for her and so many torments are accepted that to argue with her, and even more so to doubt, means betraying those who have died and ... and will still perish. This truth is our strength and our pride. Spark. Did I understand your question correctly?
“Yes, yes, thanks,” Iskra said thoughtfully. - You see, it seems to me that at our school they don't teach to argue.
- There is nothing to argue with friends, but you have to fight with enemies.
- But you have to be able to argue?
- It is necessary to teach the truth itself, and not how to prove it. This is casuistry. A man devoted to our truth will, if need be, defend it with weapons in hand. This is what needs to be taught. And chatter is not our business. We are building a new society, we have no time for chatter. - Mother threw a cigarette butt into the ashtray, looked inquiringly at Iskra. - Why did you ask about this?
Yes, the USSR was very closely involved in education. But there was also a downside - there could not be points of view that would ideologically, socially, conceptually contradict the party's position.
Conclusions
It is normal and even natural to be dissatisfied with the education system.
You should always strive for something bigger and better. However, if we want this discontent to be constructive, then it is necessary to clearly understand the real challenges of the time. And all the problems that humanity in general and our country in particular are facing are like total automation.
A direct comparison of the educational systems of the USSR and Russia is divorced from reality and has no practical meaning.
Because today the realities are completely different. The mass study of the same drawing in school will not open up the prospects for children that they had in the 1950s.
And in order to assess the real pros and cons of modern Russian education, it is necessary to use a modern scale that takes into account modern realities.
We will talk about this in the next article.
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