Independent social activists, lawyers, advocates of information security for children, as well as a journalist and a neuroscientist told a wide audience about the destructive essence of the digital transformation of education, which is not taking place according to our, domestic, templates and is clearly not in the interests of Russia. The only pity is that there were no officials among the participants, according to tradition. As RIA "Katyusha" notes, further ignoring by officials of the topic of the destruction of educational sovereignty should be interpreted as sabotage and even treason.
The event opened with a thorough legal educational program on the risks of transforming education from an expert of the OUZS and the Federation Council, Ph.D. Anna Schwabauer:
“A project for the digital transformation of education is being implemented in Russia. Digital technologies can be used for good, but everything has its place and time. And those regulatory documents that we have now, with the targets that are enshrined in them, unequivocally lead to the destruction of the remnants of traditional education, pose a threat to the health of the nation, information security, provoke cybercrimes, and are a threat to national security. And then she spoke about the national project "Education" adopted in 2018, which was entirely aimed at the digitalization of this area, about the DSP subprojects arising from this, digital platforms, digital educational content, etc. All this is planned to be introduced on a permanent basis, throughout Russia.
Despite the fact that on the government portal regulation.gov, more than 50 thousand citizens voted against the draft government decree on the start of the DSP experiment, and only 400 people voted against it. Yes, the project was accepted. At the same time, high-level officials talk about imaginary voluntariness, but in practice we are talking about the forced nature of the introduction of this environment. The paper textbook should be replaced by electronic media, the assessment of knowledge is transferred to the level of "digital content". The traditional role of the teacher is being blurred, education is moving into a social network.
The meaning of the “reform” is to drive the entire population of Russia into a “digital circuit” and collect the digital footprint of each citizen in this circuit, directing it along an “individual development trajectory” (which de facto is a breakdown of a single educational space). By 2030, the proportion of students who will have a digital profile should be 100%. Here we see that the Constitution does not bother anyone - each person must decide for himself the issue of providing his personal data. Here, no one stutters about voluntariness.
The gamification of the educational process is actively developing. In February last year, an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Education and the Federation of Comp. Sports in the Russian Federation on the development of e-sports, and a festival on "educational e-sports" for schoolchildren from 10 years old is scheduled for 2022. The content in the games selected for the competition is appropriate - blood, violence, brutal murders, frivolous content.
The new Federal State Educational Standards, which will come into effect from September this year, expressly state that work programs in subjects MUST include the possibility of using digital educational resources, game programs, virtual laboratories, etc.
Also, for the first time, an electronic student portfolio is being introduced, where all educational and extracurricular achievements of the student will be recorded. At the same time, an assessment of the “new universal regulatory actions” of the child also arises, which will be considered more important than fundamental knowledge.
What is proposed to evaluate, according to the new Federal State Educational Standards? “The ability to manage the emotions of other students”, “accept yourself without judging”, “accept your right to make mistakes”, “accept yourself without judging”, “realization of the impossibility of controlling everything around”. When you read this, it seems that this is complete nonsense ... but in fact, much here is almost word for word rewritten from the report of Sberbank and the Higher School of Economics "Universal Competences and New Literacy".
This report says that the starting stage for changing education is the introduction of competency requirements into the new GEFs (which we already have). Among the motivating monitoring for officials are the indicators of digitalization of services in the region, to which they should strive, according to which their actions will be evaluated.
In fact, mandatory quotas are being introduced for digital and for imposing digital portfolio profiles on schoolchildren in the education system. There is clearly a tab for the introduction of social rating and "proactive", i.e. independent of the will of man, machine control of his whole life.
Our officials systematically and in detail carry out the instructions of structures that pose a threat to our national security. We invite them to analyze what is happening and return to defending national interests and sovereignty in education,” Schwabauer concluded.
TV and radio presenter Anna Shafran turned out to be her like-minded person, repeating the theses recently voiced in the State Duma about the inadmissibility of playing along with the Government to our geopolitical enemies:
“The officials of the Ministry of Education do not forget to mention anywhere that they continue to work on creating a digital environment… We see that the dog is barking, but the caravan is moving on. Moreover, we are supported by enough deputies and senators, there are many adequate citizens among legislators. But we are seeing how one ministry has usurped all the functionality for itself and is stubbornly moving its “digital” line. That is, the globalist agenda that our enemy has been developing for us all these years. Are we in ourselves, are we healthy, or is it some kind of schizophrenia? Or is the fifth column in our country so steered that we cannot fight for sovereignty? We need to clearly pose and resolve this issue.
And if we cannot agree that in schools knowledge is reduced to nothing and replaced by universal competencies and skills, then all these digital portfolios, biometrics, AI, Sferum, MES... probably do not suit us, in conditions of a total war with the West ? We, as parents, are ready to accept this challenge today, maybe it's time to abandon these technologies in education, especially if they are not useful, but harmful?
Why do we, with persistence worthy of a better application, introduce those practices that lead to degradation? For example, in French schools, all gadgets are prohibited for children to use, in the best schools in the West, the same story - and children show much better results there. Why don't we use this practice? The officials of the Ministry of Education have the task of debilitating our children.
In general, we must call a spade a spade - today we have education in the hands of the enemy. The digital environment is the main tool our enemy uses to get close to children. And while we do not have an answer to the question of how digitalization will be carried out in the absence of our software, in the absence of evidence that the process is safe for children's health, we need a moratorium on digital at school. We need the sovereignization of education.”
The head of the expert center at the Public Commissioner for Family Protection Andrey Tsyganov, who at another session of the Forum argued with IT expert Igor Ashmanov about measures to protect children from harmful information, gave vivid examples of the destructiveness of machine dead learning of people through algorithms:
“As a father of seven children, I know that it is possible to bring them up correctly only by personal example - no digitalization even close solves this issue. So the Ministry of Education is doing everything to remove human communication from education. What is happening now is a struggle with a person and replacing him with various digital “innovations”.
Our country has a great physicist, Academician Georgy Fursey (now deceased). He was an orphanage "difficult teenager", in fact, he was already decommissioned within the framework of the education system, nothing shone above the FZU. But he loved Soviet science fiction, believed in himself and eventually became one of the discoverers of the explosive emission of electrons. So, in the case of the system of “personal educational trajectories”, when no one knows who directs us and it is not clear where within the framework of the prescribed algorithms, Fursey would have a much sadder future.
In general, in every great discovery there is an element of talent, insight, intuition. And this creative moment is completely eliminated by “innovation”. Our state began to understand a lot of things after February 24, but in this area it is unfolding very slowly. It is no coincidence that the national security strategy pays almost no attention to the digitalization of education, these risks are underestimated by our ruling elite.
When a few years ago we analyzed the 600-page scientific nonsense of the “strategy of the education of the future” from Skoltech, which was also written in English for budget money, it seemed to us that this was complete nonsense, which simply could not be. That in reality they will not abolish all seminars, lectures, teachers and change all this for a chip in the child’s head, where “holders of human capital” will upload certain skills and competencies once every few months ... Well, really, we ourselves could not believe it. And now we see that all this is being implemented at the legislative level!
So do not be afraid to chop with a saber. It is necessary to revise everything and everything, to return a person to school, a teacher with a capital letter. Of course, we need paper textbooks, paper diaries, and nothing motivates a person more than a good example of a living teacher. Let's revive our education and completely change the state policy in this area!” Tsyganov urged.
An expert on toxic content on the Internet, Alexander Afanasiev, pointed out the risks of using “educational platforms” that the Ministry of Education is aggressively introducing in schools:
“And the famous Uchi.ru platform - my parents sent me a huge amount of negative comments. Teachers themselves take the children's PD and register them on the platforms. Often, refuseniks are given deuces only on the fact of refusal, which is also illegal. This system has developed tools that provoke competition among children, their desire to be the first - and for this you need to buy new content.
It is no coincidence that we recently received news that all imported hardware and IT-related programs do not fall under Western sanctions. That is, it is critically important for them not to tear us away from the global educational system, which raises more and more questions for the Ministry of Education,” Afanasiev noted.
Neuropsychologist, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor of URFU Sergey Kiselev gave important facts about the scientifically proven harm from digital anti-learning:
“Every person in his soul has a fear of new knowledge, even an adult. And for the child, the teacher acts as such a living intermediary. It is important not even what the teacher says, but how he does it. And digitalization greatly reduces the role of the teacher in this process. This can lead to a change in the very nature of the knowledge that the child receives. How this will affect us in the future is difficult to predict.
There are so many risk factors that scientific research has already proven that the digital / virtual world negatively affects the psyche, brain and behavior. For example, it has already been said that the ICD-11 introduced a new diagnosis "digital addiction (addiction)". Now for every small child there is a competition between the real and the virtual world, the virtual world wins. The child experiences a lot of positive emotions, he likes to be in this world.
The development of digital addiction in childhood encourages the growth of other forms of addiction - alcohol, drugs, all this is confirmed by research. And we will soon increase the percentage of such dependent children accustomed to games from the cradle.
We are also now seeing a correlation between the development of digital technologies and the increase in the number of children with autism. The thing is that in the virtual world the child does not communicate with living people, although it is extremely necessary for him. Try to play and negotiate with a living child - you need to spend a lot of resources on this, including the kindergarten teacher. Today, a child with autism will simply choose the virtual world, he logically chooses the path of least resistance.
Another consequence of the digital school is hypodynamia, that is, a decrease in the child’s muscle activity. Also, thinking can be rigid, or it can be flexible. Development without numbers favors the second option. It is in large motor skills that the child needs to master all the key skills as early as possible - then he will develop flexible thinking accordingly. The digital world is arranged in such a way that it exploits in the child, first of all, involuntary attention, i.e. orienting reflexes to various external stimuli. This leads to the robbing of the development of voluntary attention and the child, which can cause a backlog in school.
I want to finish with Andrei Tarkovsky's phrase: "A person needs a person, and a child needs a teacher, not a virtual intermediary," Kiselev summed up.
The round table was closed by Ya.S. Bykhovsky. You can’t even call him an official, but he was also extremely far from a specialized expert here. Bykhovsky's sluggish attempt to justify the imposition of numbers in schools failed miserably.
“There was a lot of criticism against the Ministry of Education, but it seems to me that everything lies in the family ... We need to work together with parents and teachers to determine the goal setting (digital education). If we, as a society, agree and understand the purpose for which we are doing this, then the understanding will come that digitalization is not the digitalization of chaos, it is a continuation of the processes that have been going on in schools for hundreds of years. And when we understand this, then we will find ways to use digital technologies at school,” without hesitation, Bykhovsky decided to transfer all the arrows and responsibility for digitizing the brains of children to parents.
But about the fact that we have technologies that are clearly potentially dangerous for children are being introduced without elaboration - he is on point.
"The opinions of patriots and people who really want a better future for the country and our children sounded in unison. Recommendations based on the results of the discussion panel have been prepared, the enemies of the country are called enemies, and their sabotage is sabotage. Now the most important thing is that this be heard at the very top," - summed up the participants of the meeting.