It was proposed to add the Bible, Stephen King and Harry Potter to the school curriculum

Discussions about the need to change the list of school literature have recently flared up more and more often. And now, after a survey conducted by the online education portal, it turned out that parents vote for some books, and the authorities for others. For example, survey participants dream of removing “War and Peace” and other bulky volumes from the program, but adding “Harry Potter”. But State Duma deputy Milonov advocates the study of the sacred texts of the Bible and the Koran by schoolchildren.

The survey showed that 71% of respondents would like to see changes in the school literature course, while 90% of respondents want children to read and know living writers, and not just deceased ones. 46% voted for the inclusion of the 8-volume Harry Potter saga in the school curriculum. 27% voted for the book of the 2015 Nobel laureate Svetlana Aleksievich “War does not have a woman’s face”, almost the same number, 26%, consider the series of books “Manyunya” by Narine Abgaryan to be appropriate in the school curriculum. The third place in the list of preferences was taken by Pavel Sanaev’s autobiographical story “Bury me behind the plinth”.

Also, such writers as Mariam Petrosyan, Victoria Lederman, Alexei Ivanov, Sergei Lukyanenko, Evgenia Pasternak and others were included in the “list of parents”. Among foreign authors, in addition to Rowling, the respondents named John Boyne, K.-S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), Ronald Dahl and Stephen King.

Parents wished to remove the most voluminous “long reads” from the reading program. 41% opposed Tolstoy’s War and Peace, 36% wanted to exclude Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don. Alexander Solzhenitsyn did not please either – many felt that his works were “difficult to perceive.” And, finally, 26% would remove Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita from their school literature list. Who got there with such hard work …

The other day, State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov spoke on the topic of the school curriculum. And he even sent his thoughts in a letter to the head of the Ministry of Education. The essence of Milonov’s new proposal is that school students should develop culturally and spiritually on the basis of traditional religions. For this purpose, it is proposed to introduce the main books of the 4 main religions into the school curriculum. Christian Bible, Islamic Quran, Jewish Torah and Hindu Tripitaka. Such a reading, according to the deputy, will make it possible to exclude from the younger generation “toxic ideologies of gender diversity, sexual promiscuity and the rejection of the Christian heritage.”

“The literature program is our pain,” says literature teacher Yulia Andreyanova. – Yes, it is difficult for children to perceive the classics. To overcome the relatively easy-to-read Chekhov, Kuprin, Alexander Ostrovsky or Pushkin today, they still need a “translation”. Not only explanations of obsolete words and expressions, but also situations, characteristics of characters. Even in the works of the Soviet period, explanations are needed. What is there to talk about heavy artillery, about Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Turgenev with his “beauties of language”, where one description of the sunset sky can take up a paragraph? I’m not talking about the writers and poets of the 18th century and earlier, but they are also in the program. All this is our wonderful heritage, our foundations, on the one hand. On the other hand, neither our modern literature, nor foreign, alas, is no longer fit in school hours. In general, a teacher in the current situation with the school curriculum in literature reminds me of a person who carries around a precious forged casket. And it’s a pity to throw it away, and it’s no longer possible to carry it with you.

– What then, a hopeless situation?

– Of course not. More than once or twice proposals have already been made to revise the program. You just need to change quality. To acquaint with the classics “in small forms”, for example. Not the novels of Lev Nikolaevich, but his own stories or novels, for example. Not Quiet Flows the Don, but Sholokhov’s stories. Colleagues from the institute Vinogradov also offer a variant of “postponed classics” – to study the great works of our pillars in universities, to make a unified program in literature there. “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, “Crime and Punishment” or “Nest of Nobles” – all there. A cultured person should know this. Profile, which is now developing in schools, can also help to graduate the program. If a child studies in a mathematical, physical class, then he should know Russian writers, foreign classics, of course. But, I think, not in the same volumes as in the humanities. Now, for example, in high school, absolutely all students are tormented by comparative tables of characteristics of heroes according to quotes … The result is that Pushkin and his “Captain’s Daughter” are absolutely hated by everyone: even children who love to read.

– What can you say about the list of contemporary writers from the survey?

– I will say that this is a list of modern readers. It reflects the demand for more modern and readable literature, and it must be in the school curriculum. The list, in my opinion, lacks names that are needed and worthy of it. And something extra. It is better to entrust the formation of the program to professionals. But with Abgaryan and Ivanov, for example, I warmly agree.

– What, first of all, should the school curriculum in literature achieve?

– Today, it seems to me, it is especially important that a person who has graduated from school understands how good it is to read. Do not skim blogs with one eye or watch adaptation films based on motives, namely, read the original texts. It doesn’t matter if it’s electronic or paper. For a person to read in the conditions of the most severe information competition. To have a taste for good literature. In a word, we must educate the reader at school. And not discourage any desire to pick up a book, as is often the case.

– Are sacred texts needed in the literature program?

– Maybe I’ll surprise you – they are needed. If only because we use a lot of borrowings from these texts in our speech, like “The one who walks will master the road.” Or we are talking about “a straw in your own eye and a log in someone else’s”. “The plagues of Egypt”, “in much wisdom, many sorrows”, and much more. And even more of this comes across in the texts. Of course, every cultured person should understand where these analogies come from and what they mean. But, of course, it is impossible in any way at school, even in the senior one, to give the entire sacred texts. They are multi-page, confusing, archaic. But the main thing is the “inappropriate content” in the holy books.