A conversation with a classic: on the bicentenary of the birth of the great teacher Ushinsky

The situation is even sadder with the anniversary of KD Ushinsky, the founder of scientific pedagogy in Russia. His portraits hang in the corridors of almost every pedagogical institute, but the attitude towards him, with rare exceptions, is formal and ritualistic. The bearded “old man” in the portraits is a dead relic of Russian pedagogy. Such is the archaeological fossil. Meanwhile, this “old man” died at forty-eight. For a humanities scholar, this is the age of creative flourishing.

Konstantin Dmitrievich passed away, being expelled from the university and deprived of the right to teach. For what? For disrespectful attitude to superiors, free-thinking and atheism. To accuse him, a deeply religious person, of atheism – for this, the head of the pedagogical institute, M.P. Leontieva, had to try.

Alas, an ordinary Russian story, when disrespect for the authorities is the main sin of a creative person, and the rest of the arguments are rigged. The most demagogic ones are used: lack of patriotism, atheism, dangerous freethinking. Alas, for years, decades and even centuries this position of the bureaucrats has not changed, who, of course, have not read Ushinsky.

Well, let’s drop all this historical husk. But one more sad fact of our history is that the complete works of KD Ushinsky were last published in our country in 1946. The Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR decided on January 3, 1946, in connection with the 75th anniversary of the death of the great Russian teacher Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky, to publish a collection of his works.

Fulfilling this decision, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR immediately began publishing a ten-volume collection of works by KD Ushinsky, including not only pedagogical and psychological works, but also his other works. Since then, the classic has not been reprinted, but in vain.

Meanwhile, I regularly experience the pleasure of talking with a classic. Do not be surprised, I regularly have a mental dialogue with him.

For example, it was Ushinsky who pushed me to create a working group, which began to prepare and test the professional standard of a teacher. “In the matter of teaching and upbringing, in the whole school business, nothing can be improved without the head of the teacher” – this is a classic phrase.

Today, when in the matter of retraining teachers the emphasis is mainly on the technical re-equipment of teachers, try to call this idea of ​​Ushinsky irrelevant.

Ushinsky is the founder of pedagogical anthropology. Anthropology, as you know, is a synthesis of human sciences. Today we are aware that none of the specialists related to the child has the full knowledge about him: neither a teacher, nor a doctor, nor a defectologist, nor a psychologist. Hence, to ensure effective education and development of the child, the need for teamwork is obvious. This is a super modern approach! Meanwhile, cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, and so on are growing on this rich foundation.

“In order to raise a harmoniously developed child, you need to understand how it works, and then develop it physically and mentally. Only then will education bring benefits, not harm, ”Ushinsky said. And this is where things get really bad for us!

Anthropology is not only a synthesis of human sciences, but at the same time a reliance on beliefs and religious insights. On sound reflection, they do not contradict each other, but mutually complement and enrich the process of cognition. I will give just two examples.

Once, in ninth grade, a teacher was discussing the biblical myth of Adam and Eve being expelled from paradise because they ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. The ninth-grader was indignant at the despotism of the Almighty. People wanted to learn to distinguish between good and evil, and they were punished for this. From the girl’s point of view, Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise for their cognitive activity.

Meanwhile, they were punished for their pride, for wanting to be like the gods. In science, there is the concept of “excessive anthropocentrism” – an exaggerated idea of ​​\u200b\u200bhuman capabilities. People of my generation remember well the line from the Soviet song: “We have no barriers either at sea or on land,” as well as the slogan “We do not have to wait for favors from nature. It is our task to take them from her.” It was this proud attitude that led to the ozone holes and global warming. In the biblical myth – an intuitive insight into what V.I. Vernadsky would call the noosphere. The noosphere is the sphere of interaction between society and nature, within which reasonable human activity becomes the determining factor in development.

The same position can be seen in the works of the outstanding Russian philosopher and teacher Sergei Iosifovich Gessen, philosopher and psychologist Semyon Ludwigovich Frank, Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh (a doctor by education), Archpriest Fr. Alexander Men (biologist by education).

This line was developed in the works of the Kharkiv teacher Vladimir Solomonovich Bibler, who passed away at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Another example that has the most important ethical significance and allows educators to help students competently master biblical texts.

Once a ninth grader expressed her negative attitude towards one of the biblical texts. A person approaches the Teacher and says: “Master! I’ll follow you, but let me bury my father.” To which the Savior replies: “Let the dead bury their dead, and you go and proclaim the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:59-60).

Indeed, if we take this statement literally, then this is God knows what. I had to explain to the students that, since it was hot in the East, the dead were buried on the same day, and then the commemoration began, at which toasts were first proclaimed for the dead, and then, forgetting in whose name they had gathered, the audience began to sing and tell jokes. In the eyes of the Teacher, they are spiritually dead.

The compatibility of scientific and religious education is also shared by the majority of modern scientists.

I hope that after all that has been said, it is clear why, speaking about the classic of pedagogy K.D. Ushinsky, I recalled the poem by V.V.

“I love you, but alive, not a mummy.

They brought a textbook gloss.

You, in my opinion, in life – I think –

also raged. African!”

Raging, still raging! Konstantin Dmitrievich managed to publish two volumes of his works during his lifetime, but did not finish the third. But even what he created is enough to practice slow reading of his works with a pencil in hand.

God, what Russia has become and could have been! Remember, in Khodasevich’s “Monument”: “In Russia, new, but great, they will put up my two-faced idol …”.

Believed! And we believe with you!