Children are our mirror: don’t be afraid to look into it

Today, even many fifth graders have their own Telegram channels. Decades ago, in essays on the topic “What would you like to become?” children wrote: astronauts, doctors, teachers. And today a girl writes that she would like to become a blogger! Why not? Staying at home and earning big money is so attractive.

We all live in a glass house, because the Internet has intertwined the planet. Literally everything is known about each of us, because personal data is leaked onto the Internet, which scammers readily take advantage of. It is necessary for adults to take these challenges of the time into account and, accordingly, regardless of age, to teach our children new safety rules on networks. Threats are growing today: neural networks and artificial intelligence are an objective reality.

Let me give you a specific example. The elderly teacher, who had already been scammed once by phone into taking out cash allegedly for an urgent operation for her daughter who allegedly got into a car accident, was on the alert this time. An image of a girl appeared on the display screen – a complete clone of her daughter. The pseudo-daughter with a bandaged head again made a similar request. Questions about the year and place of birth were followed by correct answers, down to the name and breed of the domestic dog. And then the teacher asked to name the names of the girl’s younger sisters. The scammers immediately disconnected. The fact is that no younger sisters of the daughter existed in nature, so there was no information about them on the networks.

Children are our mirror. And, as the classic advised, there is no point in blaming the mirror if everything is not in order with your face. My graduates, to whom we instilled a love of reading and who are now over fifty, complain that due to their incredible busyness, they have absolutely no time left for thoughtful reading. What can we say about children and teenagers! But this does not mean that we should give up in introducing youth to culture.

Here’s an example: two years ago in Germany, which is sensitive to the eradication of the national trauma of Nazism, comics about Nazism were published. People of my generation there, and ours too, pursed their lips and hissed: how is that possible?! And I let the kids in second grade watch Anne Frank’s diary in comics. They then asked for books about the diary and went online to look for information, as they say, about Anne Frank. That is, comics have become such a hook of interest.

Another example. I teach an elective in film history. I have a cinema hall at school, the equipment is good. The elective is difficult. We are discussing the work of Istvan Szabó, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Andrei Tarkovsky, Federico Fellini… And the guys somehow “catch” me: “Have you really not watched Avatar?” I had to look. It got boring at the 10th minute. The picture is incredibly beautiful, but the Strugatskys had all this for a long time already. That’s what I told my film fans. And he suggested: “Look at Solaris, it’s like an anti-Avatar.” I was dumb at your age, I understood the film the fifth time. You may understand by the third.” I gave everyone flash drives with the film. A week later, parents come: “Finally, we have found common topics with the children! All evenings we discuss the heroes of Solaris.

Another way of transmitting eternal values ​​and meanings of culture to young people is the theater, which from time immemorial has always been a public school for people who still retain the ability to deceive themselves, that is, to harbor illusions, to perceive suggestion from the writer.

The outstanding Swedish playwright August Johan Strindberg wrote: “In this drama I did not try to create something new, because this is impossible, but only wanted to modernize the form in accordance with the requirements that, in my opinion, people of the new era should make for this type of art . And for this purpose I have chosen or allowed myself to be carried away by a topic that lies, one might say, outside the party strife of today, since the problems of social rise or fall, high and low, good and bad, relations between men and women have always caused, cause and will always cause interest”.

Strindberg was not bothered by the fact that his characters spoke in a somewhat complicated language. But Shakespeare’s characters sometimes spoke the language of the philosopher Francis Bacon. This popularization attracted an unenlightened audience. Strindberg acted as a navigator for the uninitiated and confused in a torn world. This was at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today there are many more such people.

Youth is truly our mirror. Egocentrism becomes the norm of life. Today, few people will write: “I remember a wonderful moment. You appeared before me.” In a modern interpretation it would sound: “I remember a wonderful moment. I have appeared before you.” Children, like a sponge, absorb this worldview and transmit it in their own language.

Example. A seventh-grader brought me her poem. Agree – this is a sign of trust in the teacher. But the demon of ambition equally seduces both adults and teenagers who want to receive a qualified assessment of their creativity. She, of course, was aware of my writing activities. The poem told about her relationship with Sasha, whom they dated, but then he left her, switching to another girl. The final stanza sounded like this: “So good riddance to the road along which you and I walked.” The next day she looked into my office. The following dialogue took place between us.

– Well, how?

– In your language, it doesn’t work.

– Why?

— Your situation occurs quite often in life, including in the lives of the greats, including A.S. Pushkin. The woman did not reciprocate his feelings, but he does not send curses after her, but writes:

I loved you: love is still, perhaps,

My soul has not completely died out;

But don’t let it bother you anymore;

I don’t want to make you sad in any way.

I loved you silently, hopelessly,

Now we are tormented by timidity, now by jealousy;

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,

How God grant that your beloved be different.

Another example is Anna Andreevna Akhmatova:

I have one smile:

So, the movement of the lips is slightly visible,

I’m saving it for you

After all, she was given to me by love.

It doesn’t matter that you are arrogant and angry,

It doesn’t matter that you love others.

Before me is a golden lectern,

And with me is a gray-eyed groom.

The poetess understands that she loves an unworthy person, but you cannot command your heart. And she is grateful to this man for arousing a feeling of love in her. After all, you can live your whole life without experiencing it. Passion that flares up and disappears is often mistaken for love. I will also note that your poem contains many grammatical and syntactical errors.

– Well, it has begun… I treat you as a person, and you find fault as a teacher.

– Don’t get excited. There was such a wonderful bard Evgeny Klyachkin. He has a great love song. In those years when it was written, there were no voice recorders. Girls your age recorded their favorite songs right at concerts, from the author’s voice. The recording technology was as follows: the first girl writes the first line, the second – the second. And so on throughout the entire song. Then the text was copied into girls’ albums.

So, Klyachkin has a song:

Don’t look back, don’t look

Just rearrange the names.

They sleep in your eyes, the rain sleeps –

Don’t leave them for me.

Hang your keys away

Change the address, change it.

Now be silent a little longer,

This is for me.

One day after a concert, a girl approached the author and asked for an autograph under this song, copied by hand into her album. Evgeniy was stunned – it said “don’t look at your butt, don’t look.” (My interlocutor laughed loudly.)

Psychologists characterize adolescence as a period of protest, when the advice of adults is met with hostility. The reference, significant group for them is their peers. You have to be able to survive this. As they grow up and have children of their own, they begin to evaluate their parents. The poetess Anna Arkatova expressed this dynamic in a lapidary poetic formula:

The most courageous thing:

Mom, can I go without a hat today?

Most dangerous:

Mom, can I visit a friend today?

Latest:

Mom, can I visit you today?

Let me summarize. We all need to learn to calmly, without panic, accept the challenges of the time. And then it turns out that the gap between children and ancestors is not as fatal as it seems.