Teacher: violence became a scourge of Russia's schools

Legislators, in full agreement with the bureaucratic logic of all the latest school reforms, consider upbringing to be something separate from learning and generally surrounding reality.

Marina Baluyeva, teacher, educators union activist

They seriously believe that by writing a plan of "activities" and carrying out these activities in a submissive sequence and without deviating from a "pre-approved" plan, you can educate someone. That an aunt teacher, after giving a lecture at the classroom hour, will really contribute to the upbringing, and the students will receive the messages from above, like a computer database.

The voice of the Communist Party deputy Oleg Smolin drowning in the rumble of "approval", reminiscent of the concept of upbringing education or training education that existed once upon a time in a Soviet school. Deputies on a blue eye do not know that a person is educated by the environment, brings up an example of actions, not words of adults (words only reinforce what is shown by life, if true). Alas, this bureaucratic undertaking is fraught only with an increase in the number of plans-and-reports. Children will see what they see, and the surrounding reality will continue to educate them.

What is this school reality today?

It is diverse. For example, according to the media and social networks, the number of stories related to violence and bullying at school has increased. The teacher hit or insulted the child, the children hounded or brutally beat a classmate, the student beat the teacher, and - finally, the school or college student came to the school with weapons and killed a certain number of people. Such stories occur at alarming intervals.

Society is confused and divided, moreover, almost exclusively by the principle of choosing the addressee of punishment, deciding who to punish - teachers or children with parents. Meanwhile, taking punishments is equivalent in this situation to treating tuberculosis with fresh air or a fracture using jogging. Violence is the paradigm in which the modern Russian school exists, and the paradigm needs to be changed. But the paradigm shift is not discussed at meetings of the State Duma. Exclusively about the “action plan”, its “approval from above” and the report on “implementation”.

How should the school education paradigm change in order to educate a person, citizen, patriot, in a word, all the hypostases of a person who promise to educate us in a planned-reporting way? In a recent series of incidents, my attention was drawn to two incidents involving the beating of teachers by teenage students. They were widely discussed in the media and social networks, so I will not name and give a link so that the search engine does not give out another text that injures the parties.

Specific names are not important here. It’s enough that these are typical examples. They are united by the fact that the teenagers' attack on an adult was caused in one case by the fact that the teacher pulled out the earphone from the ear of a schoolboy who was listening to something else in her lesson, and in another case, the teacher pulled out a chair from under the schoolboy he swayed and did not pay attention to her remarks. That is, both times the attack was, although excessive, but retaliatory and caused by what psychologists call the violation of the personal boundaries of the student.

Here, as already mentioned, in the discussion, part of the cries of the angry public was devoted to the unprofessional behavior of the teacher, such, they say, has no place in school. Others shouted that the children were completely unbelted, and that parents should be fined and other strict measures should be applied to children. Unfortunately, there are very few calls so far to examine in detail the basics of modern education in a Russian school, and only then draw conclusions.

I will take upon myself the ungrateful, if not dangerous, task of designating both sides as victims. No matter how much you fine your parents, this will not make it more enjoyable for a teenager to stay in school, where he constantly suffers humiliation, hidden and obvious, where his elders don’t pay attention to him, where his achievements are depreciated and his shortcomings are stigmatized, where he has to fight for himself - alone or in a pack. And no matter how much we talk about unprofessional teachers, theoretical knowledge of personal boundaries will not help a person whose own boundaries are constantly violated.

A man accustomed to violating his personal boundaries will never understand “what is it” he did, violating others. After all, for him this is the norm. Violence (often psychological) is the norm of official ethics for a Russian teacher today. And the teacher consciously or not really broadcasts this ethics to children. And this is scary.

Google: what does the Internet say about personal boundaries? The search engine provides a wide variety of links. The top definition is from 2014; “Personal boundaries are a line that extends between individuals, the people around them, and larger social systems. They are needed so that we can clearly feel: where I am, and where not me; where are my own emotions, actions, beliefs and thoughts, and where are strangers”.

That is, according to this definition, all psychological manipulations that force a person to “voluntarily” do what he does not want are to violate personal boundaries. Here is a simpler statement, from the parent site: "If the people around you in your own words or actions cause you physical or emotional discomfort - this is a violation of personal boundaries." Psychologists warn: the formation of personal boundaries is the most important stage in the formation of the personality of a teenager. Experts warn parents: do not violate boundaries, do not read correspondence, do not demand order in the room by rude methods, seek trust. Also on the Internet there are tons of tips on how to protect your child from hidden or overt aggression by a teacher.

The topic is in demand. It is good if the child learns to defend himself. But if he calculates the measure, and the teachers will be taken to the hospital by ambulance? How long will the school turn into a place dangerous for the health and life of participants in the educational process?

The bureaucratic vertical will answer this question by the usual planning and reporting method, organizing “advanced training courses” after work for bonded teachers, not a single gram changing their slavish humiliated position, which the Teacher union faces daily.

Of course, our historical camp background, the psychology of the screw, coupled with the concept of “educational service” added to them later, does not fully contribute to preserving the personal boundaries of the teacher, but is there a law? Alas. The breath of the law has so far turned towards the powers that be and that paradigm of the power vertical that has formed in their heads under the influence of the historical background and momentary gain.

For example, formally, by law, the teacher’s work is paid depending on the number of lessons held, and preparation for lessons does not entail a separate payment, but the time of this work is organized and distributed by the teacher independently. In practice, the salary established before the start of the school year, based on the number of proposed academic hours, means no more than the "cost" of the workforce of a given unit of personnel, under which this unit is placed at the almost complete disposal of the administration.

And neither the law nor job descriptions are a decree. Subbotniks, apartment walks, cleaning the territory, repairing the school, writing an incredible amount of useless papers and electronic files, working in election commissions, distributing baby food, collecting money from parents - it's hard to list all the options for using free pedagogical labor.

Who will object to the claim that these people are crushed by their lack of rights? They can be despised for this, your will. But they will bring up children by their own example, based on their own values and a model of behavior formed in their heads. Do you need this?

And for those who are inclined to despise teachers “from the couch”, a small report on the practice of resistance to administrative arbitrariness by activists of the Teacher union. Several dozen cases related to the restoration of labor rights (and therefore human and professional dignity) are now in the courts. Moreover, only about half of the claims will be satisfied, despite the fact that our union is provided with legal assistance and does not support unsubstantiated claims. But even those claims that the court recognizes are far from always satisfied subsequently by administrations.

You don’t have to go far for examples. Our “cultural capital” is famous for its violence against teachers.

For example, the Academy of Urban Management of Construction and Printing. Here they may simply not let an objectionable teacher into the workplace. So, the teacher Elena Rimgailo last year spent more than a dozen hours at the entrance building, where her workplace is located. She sat first on the cardboard, then on the high chair, which the students carried to her. Director Anatoly Krivonosov ordered not to let the teacher in without any reason. Wanted - and did not let go.

For the second year, the teacher of proof-reading Yulia Markova cannot “knock out” the pedagogical load for herself, about the right to which she has a court decision. After the court won, she worked for a year “methodically” - she wrote reporting papers under the supervision of video cameras and a separately allocated observer on a salary from among the employees loyal to the director. Teaching students to her, a teacher of a rare discipline and the author of a unique textbook, is not given.

Other teachers of the Academy are seeking their violated rights. But the Committee on Science and Higher School, as well as the apparatus of the vice-governor V. Knyaginin, who oversees the committee, invariably respond with unsubscribes. The director-abuser is convenient to the system, and she is in no hurry to bring him to life. The author of these lines also has been suing the educational organization for the second year, where she did not like her media commentary on the distribution of salaries in educational organizations using the example of the school where she worked.

State budget educational institution “Center “Dynamics” loved to visit Valentina Matvienko when she was governor, and once even Vladimir Putin visited the school. Therefore, far-fetched reasons for disciplinary action and dismissal of a disloyal teacher are approved by the court with little consideration of the evidence and arguments of the parties. The latest masterpiece of jurisprudence on the part of the city court is the conclusion that the threat of dismissal under the article defaming the employee, clearly expressed by the employer at the beginning of the conversation (and proved in court), is not coercion to dismiss and further agreement was reached on the basis of the employee’s free will.

Here is such a vertical, and such a struggle for their rights. Therefore, do not rush to throw a stone at the teacher: he or she is taught and educated as best he can in accordance with the promises explicitly sent down from above.

The latest Convention (No. 190) of the International Labor Organization, which includes Russian unions, adopted last year, is dedicated to the elimination of all forms of violence in the workplace. Even before the adoption of the ILO Convention, many countries made changes to their laws that directly prevented violence at work.

To this day, Russian legislation has almost no norms that could be relied on to combat violence in the world of work. Why should the deputies instead of meaningless debates about the “action plan” not think about this topic and start correcting the education of schoolchildren precisely from the eradication of violence at school?

Marina Baluyeva, co-chair of Interregional professional union of educators "Teacher". The article is not a programmatic statement of the union; the author expresses his personal point of view.