“Alien to traditions”: the works of Pushkin and Lermontov were thrown out of the USE project

At the end of last week, the draft of the Unified State Literature Exam for 2024 was published. Codifier-2024 has 12 main works that may be in the first part of the exam. It turned out that there was no more Pushkin, Fonvizin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Gogol, Griboedov… Even The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, the only monument of ancient Russian literature that is studied in high school, has gone somewhere. Yes, they always were, but now they are not there. The list begins with Ostrovsky’s Thunderstorm and ends with Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

There are no luminaries of Russian poetry in the second part of KIMs (control and measuring materials), which can fall out in the largest essay out of five – they need to be written to a graduate in 3 hours and 55 minutes. In general, the entire block of literature until the second half of the 19th century fell through the ground.

Users in social networks are perplexed, “how can one study Russian literature without “our everything”? Teachers mourn the “sun of Russian poetry” and are going to complain about the very top. Most see the machinations of the West – and who else could encroach on the most sacred?

“It’s time to get rid of this rubbish. Russian classics were in demand in the past. But now it is nothing, and even harmful, since it panders to liberal ideas that are alien to our traditions.

Remember the same Chatsky, who returned from abroad and immediately began to teach everyone how to live, and yet he is presented as a positive character, ”they express such an opinion on the Web.

Who was hindered by an object that sowed “reasonable, good, eternal”? Or did someone think that there are too many hundred points, and therefore they need to complicate the task?

Relative to some other subjects, quite a few actually received 100 points in literature: for example, in 2023, 44 thousand graduates took it, 1896 people scored the highest score (about 4%), and, say, 80 thousand chose English, of which only 205 hundred points, that is, less than 1%.

Two years ago, my daughter earned 100 points in Literature, and I can say for sure that this was not at all easy before. Five essays on different topics according to a certain algorithm and structure – it’s not possible to guess “the color of the eyes of Vronsky’s horse,” as one of our well-known deputies once convinced me. In order to pass the same literature very well, one should not only have time to write everything, switching from one topic to another, but clearly and harmoniously state one’s thoughts, argue them, so that the effect follows from the cause, and not vice versa.

No, it’s not a deliberate desire to complicate the exam. I think the reason is different. For some reason, the compilers of the lists decided that since Pushkin, Lermontov and all the others are included in the OGE in literature for the 9th grade, then they are not needed in the exam for high school.

Officials did not take into account the most important thing – those who pass the USE in literature after the 11th, it is not necessary to pass the USE in literature after the 9th. As well as vice versa.

“This year, only 20% of the eleventh-graders from those who will study with me passed the OGE in literature. In principle, this is normal. At the age of 15, a teenager may not think where he will enter at 18, but now it turns out that they have huge gaps in knowledge, they have not read anything of the necessary, and now they are not even going to read Pushkin – why, since there are more of him on the lists No?” — tutor Irina explains her position.

It turns out that a graduate of 2024, going, say, to a journalism department or philology, may not hear anything at all about the golden age of Russian poetry – no one will demand this from him. Then why open these books?

“It would be better if the rules didn’t change every year, and even so dramatically, but at least once every two years,” says Polina, a graduate of 2021. “A lot of people start preparing from the 10th grade. From the same “Words about Igor’s Campaign”. And it turns out that in vain – since by the 11th grade everything had changed, so much time wasted ?!

Of course, you can add a little conspiracy theory, they say, this was done for a reason, but so that citizens would once again be indignant at the USE and, in righteous anger, demanded that it be canceled. As has already been done with the criticized Bologna system of higher education. What did they come up with instead? Yes, actually, nothing … The same 4 years of basic higher education plus 2 years of specialized higher education, only after the withdrawal from the Bologna Convention, the diplomas of Russian universities are not listed anywhere else.

I think that with regard to the final exams for the 11th grade, everything will become even easier. In the coming years, “at the request of the workers”, most likely, they will return the good old essays on the leaves, as in the days of grandparents. The deputies will be glad that there is no “Vronsky’s horse”, but there will be no other thing – competitiveness with the rest of the world. Why go back to goose feathers just because someone wants nostalgia?

But Pushkin will definitely be in such writings. What all the hype with his current loss is probably designed for.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29101 dated August 28, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Pushkin is ours, but not all