In a textbook for 11th grade, atheists are equated to terrorists

While, in accordance with the message of the people’s representatives, uniform textbooks are about to appear in schools, the textbooks themselves continually present surprises. Now all the fuss has flared up around the new, improved 6th edition of the social studies textbook for the 11th grade. In it, the authors equated terrorists and atheists, emigrants and cynics.

It would seem that in the sixth re-edition of the textbook edited by A. I. Kravchenko and E. A. Pevtsova, everything should be perfect. And the authors themselves preface the publication with a story about the “vertical of textbooks” that this work crowns. “It (the textbook) contains a deeper and more comprehensive presentation of the foundations of sociology, law, and cultural studies.”

However, some, to say the least, sloppy statements of the authors caused amazement. For example, about deviant behavior in the paragraph “Illegal and deviant behavior.” Well, it’s clear that nothing good: deviant is deviant. Moreover, it is something that causes disapproval in society.

As an example, the authors cite criminals and alcoholics (hooligans and parasites, a step forward). The authors also include prostitution, gambling, and drug addiction as types of deviation. But the flow of examples does not stop there. Further, the list of types of deviance according to the textbook is supplemented by mental disorders, suicide, and homosexuality.

But that’s not all. In order to explain to schoolchildren the social characteristics of deviations, the authors talk about the two poles of this phenomenon. On one of them there are individuals who have negatively deviated in behavior – terrorists, revolutionaries, political emigrants, unpatriots and traitors. Then the compilers of the volume finally went into disrepute, at the same time classifying the “negative polarity” of deviants as “atheists, criminals, vandals, cynics and vagabonds.” And exactly in that order. And somewhere between the lines, Karl Marx, the author of the maxim about “opium of the people,” is indignant.

In order to give earrings to all the sisters, Kravchenko and Pevtsova also give examples of the other pole of deviance, with a plus sign. Persons with “maximum approved deviations” are national heroes, outstanding artists, athletes, painters, writers, musicians, political leaders, and labor leaders. And just “healthy and beautiful people”!

Something told me that there might be other interesting points in this social studies for 11th grade. And they were found. For example, the authors were very unhappy with hedonism. And simply fleeting moments of happiness are called by stern compilers the lot of simpletons. And “a truly moral person is happy when others are happy, when his homeland has found happiness.”

We looked into the “Family and Marriage” section – the topic is simpler, but even here there were some oddities. The family, it turns out, is a “channel of vertical mobility.” Then the authors moved on to specifics and numbers. The optimal number of premarital partners for boys is 3-5 (girls are not mentioned at all in this context).

Further, the authors, like real fiction writers, describe the gathering of lovers for their first date. “Before leaving, the girl checks her appearance and slowly heads to the meeting place, trying to be a little late. On the way, both think about what they can talk about. A young man buys flowers and a box of chocolates. After mutual greetings, he suggests switching to “you”…

Then I would like to quote directly. “Marriage is a contract between a man, a woman and the state.” “For a wife, her relatives are blood relatives, and her husband’s relatives are relatives-in-law. And vice versa”.

And, of course, the traditional ones – the roles of wife and husband in the family. “Employment in production does not free a woman from household chores; her workload doubles. The husband can take it off (if the children are old enough, some of the responsibilities can fall on them).” This is at the end of the paragraph about families in which both marriage partners work.

“It’s not clear how such wording could even appear in a textbook and pass expert advice,” says social psychologist Valery Raushinsky. – Of course, most of all there is ambiguity with descriptions of deviant behavior. In sociology, it is behavior that does not conform to generally accepted norms. That is, indeed, hooliganism and other crime, alcoholism, drug addiction. However, various theories, such as Merton’s research, the theory of differentiation, remove certain types from the list, proving that they were influenced by a change in value guidelines in society, the social environment during growing up, or the mental and other personal characteristics of the individual.

Speaking from a practical point of view, I would not equate criminals with drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and tramps. Because in the first two categories the problem may be medical. As for the rest of the list: emigrants, atheists, cynics… This simply causes shock, since it has nothing to do with deviance.

And I want to say separately about positive deviations. Yes, there is such a concept. Positive deviant behavior is self-sacrifice, for example, in the name of the homeland, freedom, and one’s people. Or a feat in the name of science, art, faith, selfless charity. A few examples: Giordano Bruno, Alexander Matrosov, Ivan Susanin, Ksenia Petersburgskaya… From the list presented in the textbook, only “missionaries” are suitable. And I don’t understand at all what artists, athletes, politicians and “beautiful people” have to do with it.