“Irrelevant” school subjects pushed aside: astronomy and law are no longer compulsory

Six disciplines can now not be taught at once

Astronomy, law and a number of other school subjects will no longer be compulsory for Russian students. The order of the Ministry of Education came into force, correcting the structure of the main educational program of secondary general education.

So, education officials considered that the following subjects are not so important for young Russians: economics, astronomy, law, natural science, Russia in the world and ecology. At the same time, the course “Probability and Statistics” has now been included in the basic level of mathematics.

“This is happening in connection with the unification of the educational space, and I believe that this is an absolutely correct decision,” Viktor Panin, chairman of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of Consumers of Educational Services, said in an interview with MK. – Over the past few decades, in our country there has been a blurring of the traditional subject line – mathematics, physics, chemistry, the Russian language, history – with subjects that are far from the educational component of our traditional Russian school.

According to Viktor Panin, subjects such as economics and law are more characteristic of the Western education system than ours, while they allocate hours that we take away from the Russian language and the same mathematics.

– This did not contribute to improving the quality of education, blurred the target settings of education, in other words, did not lead to anything good. We are finally returning to our roots in the education system, and this should lead to an increase in quality, strengthening the position of traditional subjects in the school. Either way, it will do you good.

Teachers themselves are now actively discussing the introduced changes in teacher and professional chats.

– We will now put subjects such as astronomy or economics at will. If there is an opportunity for timing and there is a need for children, we will turn it on. And, of course, they won’t leave the specialized classes, ”Julia, a Moscow school teacher, told MK. – In general, my colleagues and I behind the scenes believe that in this way they want to free up space for “Talk about the important.” By the way, in elementary school there were two physical education classes per week, and now one of them has been removed from our school. Maybe the second one will then be replaced by initial military training, the introduction of which is now increasingly being talked about. By the way, several subjects were added specifically at our school: semantic reading (meaningful reading), which became a compulsory subject from the fifth grade, and extracurricular from grades 1 to 11. Also, the network must have functional literacy and financial literacy. I don’t know how officially these subjects are mandatory, but we were not allowed to refuse them. Now we are forced to spend them the sixth hour after all the lessons for junior schoolchildren and an additional hour for the middle and senior level.

– Since, according to the above-mentioned order, the amendments to the GEF will come into effect, we will now have to update the curricula. The list of compulsory subjects, as well as the levels at which they can be taught (basic and advanced) have now changed. In general, this is an additional headache for me, – the director of one of the Moscow schools sighs. – As for the removal of the “status” of compulsory subjects from some subjects, I personally have two views on this. For example, I would definitely leave astronomy, it is necessary. By the way, my opinion is confirmed by the data of a recent opinion poll. He showed that more than a third of Russians believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, so it would not hurt to emphasize astronomy in schools. Economics is also useful to know – at least for teenagers.

We also recall that on September 24, President Vladimir Putin signed a federal law providing for the introduction of unified general education programs in schools. The Ministry of Education of Russia will develop and approve them. Mandatory will now be federal work programs on the Russian language, literary reading and the outside world for the primary level and the Russian language, literature, history, social science, geography and life safety for basic general and secondary general education.