Learning without a doubt: school programs are adjusted to a single mandatory standard

The innovation, it seems, will finally turn schools into a stronghold of unanimity and put gifted children out of the picture.

Irina Mishina

From September 1, 2023, children, teachers and parents will enter a new reality. According to the law adopted by the State Duma, only the Ministry of Education will develop and approve curricula.

What is important - decide without a teacher

The curricula on Russian language, literary reading and the surrounding world developed by this department for the elementary grades will become mandatory, and in the senior and middle grades - the programs on Russian, literature, history, social studies, geography and life safety. The Ministry of Education promises to develop them by March 1, 2023.

Along with uniform programs, a new order for textbooks is being introduced. From now on, the state order for their development will be carried out by the Ministry of Education. As a result, for each subject there will be only one non-alternative textbook, except for history. In this subject, they plan to introduce a single course on General History and the History of Russia. “The teacher will no longer be able to choose for himself what is important and what is not. Or that he doesn’t have time for this by the hour, so he won’t tell at all”, - said Olga Kazakova, head of the State Duma Committee on Education and one of the authors of the law.

I allow a single course in life safety or geography. But what about literature, for example, where do they study texts? Or will a special textbook now teach how to correctly understand Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy? Excuse me, but even in Soviet schools, ideologized to the limit, this was not the case!

No, of course, parents had questions about school programs. I remember how in elementary school my long-suffering child studied according to a certain author's program in the Russian language, developed by an enterprising lady from Taganrog, who practically denied the rules and suggested that children, in order not to make a mistake, call for help a special spirit of "spelling instinct". Textbooks for this author's program were numerous and not cheap. By the time the school finally saw the light and recognized this "author's program" as ineffective, its author managed to make a good fortune. Quite a few such inventors of copyright programs have recently appeared, and not all of them are for the benefit and good. So, on the one hand, it’s not bad to sift numerous author’s researches through a sieve of common sense.

Uniform programs have one more plus: when changing schools and moving, the child will not encounter problems and relearn. This is where the positives probably end.

Business instead of professionalism

“Schools cannot be the same. According to the law on education, 70% of the program is a standard, and 30% is at the discretion of the school, because schools are different. After all, there are lyceums and gymnasiums, schools for gifted children. They cannot work according to the standard. On the other hand, there are correctional schools, because there are children with disabilities in health. After all, we have inclusive education by law. Based on this, teachers should understand how to give a subject to children with disabilities, taking into account their characteristics. And finally, all teachers have different approaches. Only a bad teacher teaches from a textbook”, - says Yevgeny Yamburg, Honored Teacher of Russia, Director of Education Center No. 109.

In fact, the law adopted by the State Duma contains many contradictions and inconsistencies. For example, according to the law on education and the Constitution of the Russian Federation, ideology is prohibited in our schools. In addition, Russia is a multi-confessional country, and imposing some kind of unified worldview in a multi-ethnic country is a rather controversial initiative. In addition, there are many schools on the territory of the Russian Federation that teach their national language, national literature, history and culture. How to deal with it? Under what standards should all this be adjusted?

A natural question arises: who benefits from a controversial initiative with a single standard of education? The answer is simple: the programs of the Ministry of Education will logically lead to the fact that the publishing house "Prosveshchenie" will become a monopolist in the market of school textbooks.

“There are professionals in this publishing house, but its monopoly is already a business. Academic freedom in recent years has led to an increase in the level of Russian schoolchildren, this is evidenced by the International Program for the Assessment of Educational Achievement of Students PISA. Out of more than 60 countries, Russia is in 33-35th place, and among the countries that are improving their performance. A breakthrough was made compared to the zero years. In terms of primary school indicators, Russia is in the top three, in the subgroup of grades 4-8 in the top ten, especially high rates among Russian schoolchildren in mathematics and natural sciences. Experts recognize that the improvement in results was achieved largely through individual authoring programs. Under the idea of supporting talented schoolchildren, special national projects were created, for example, the Sirius Educational Center for Supporting Gifted Children. Schools were opened with in-depth study of a number of subjects. After all, the concept of UN education involves building an educational trajectory in accordance with the needs of the family, along the path of specialized education, and we have successfully followed this path. It seems to me that the legislators were in a hurry by adopting this law without consulting the pedagogical community”, - says Irina Abankina, director of the Institute for Education Development at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

The final and decisive blow to gifted children

According to most experts, the new law will deal a blow to the "advanced" schools that work with gifted and motivated children, because it is in such schools that teachers most often choose alternative textbooks. “I teach Russian, and if I am forbidden to work from textbooks created on the basis of the Moscow Linguistic School with its hundred-year history, and I am required to teach from textbooks that do not correspond to my scientific ideas, I will leave, even though I worked at school 40 years”, - admits Vsevolod Lukhovitsky, co-chairman of the trade union of pedagogical workers “Teacher”, teacher of the Russian language and law at the “Intellectual” school.

The question arises of how, in the light of common standards, there will be lyceums and training centers at universities, where even professors were oriented towards teaching motivated children. Are professors also being told to submit to a common unassuming standard?

“A rigid framework will lead to a decrease in the quality of education. This innovation is clearly not aimed at supporting strong and motivated guys. There will be a threat to specialized schools with in-depth study of individual subjects, as well as to specialized classes”, - says Irina Abankina, director of the HSE Institute for Education Development.

When the State Duma adopted this law, deputy Pyotr Tolstoy said: they say, well, now there will be no need for tutors. Most likely, right now, on the contrary, they will be even more in demand due to the fact that the school will not be able to meet the needs of motivated children for additional knowledge. Anyone who wants to know more and deeper will be forced to pay for it and sacrifice their own time.

However, there is hope that this time everything will end with a formal approach. “The Ministry of Education does not understand what is behind the introduction of new textbooks and new education standards. This means that it will be necessary to redo the programs, write a bunch of reports. Officials at the top will simply report, and for ordinary teachers it will complicate life and reduce work with children to a minimum. Behind this law, I see only one thing - the desire to master finance by the Prosveshchenie publishing house. This is not even an ideology, but simply someone's desire to earn money. But everything will end, as usual, with formality and profanity, as happened in the case of "Conversations about the Important". Anything happens in these lessons – advertising of some educational platforms, showing cartoons, class teachers pushing a variety of ideas up to anti-patriotic ones, but someone at the top has already reported on the initiative!”, - Dmitry Kazakov, a teacher of history and social studies at a secondary school in the village of Taremskoye, Pavlovsky district, Nizhny Novgorod region, told NI.

P.S. Perhaps, having come up with a common standard of teaching, someone at the top decided to unload the teachers and release them from their direct duties. As you know, now they were seen when going around the apartments in order to hand over summonses for mobilization. The reasoning of the teachers is simple: “We are teachers, we were simply obliged to distribute agendas and report back.” To report on the planting of stereotypes in children's heads on orders from above, to report on the delivery of the agenda for mobilization ... Recently, the profession of a teacher has practically become synonymous with the implementation of not the most humane events. Haven't you noticed it yet?