Not gods – people assigned to work

The round table of the Committee of the State Duma on education on the topic “Labor education at school” was held on Monday, February 13, by the chairman of the committee, Olga Timofeeva.

The round table was really round, as it took place next to the building of the Council of Labor and Defense, where the Duma is located, in the Hall of Columns of the House of the Unions. The Hall of Columns was given to the Duma for temporary accommodation while the main building is being rebuilt. And the plans were Napoleonic. They were ruined by a constant change of concept. Judging by the round table on labor education at school, exactly the same thing is happening in the legislation.

epidemic, however.

The committee received the instruction publicly at a meeting of the Duma from its chairman, Vyacheslav Volodin. The Committee saluted and followed the usual way of organizing a talking shop. This is a parliament with a French meaning in the name. In fact, the organization of a discussion with the identification of positions, their sources and translators is the most difficult and important step in solving any problem in the modern world. Because in this world any problem is universal.

The second universal sign of this beautiful new world was that it was impossible to drag the defendants of the decisions taken into the public arena by the ear and into the sun.

Olga Timofeeva is an experienced parliamentarian and therefore did not even try to delve into the heights of the enchanting eclecticism of power self-organization. Otherwise, it will be necessary to give an obvious answer to the sacred question why the current government does everything that is possible and what is not possible to spite people. If people do not want to see the obvious, it is better for a deputy not to act in terms of destroying illusions. The time will come, everything will be formed, as it was not. Other songs and new problems will come from the same sources.

In pursuance of the instructions of the Chairman of the Duma, Olga Timofeeva managed the main thing at the maximum of possibilities in the current situation. Her committee brought together people who can tell on the merits of the issue, how it was, how it should be and who is against it. It didn’t come to a fight, that’s why the Duma and the parliament of a civilized format. Just like that, for the supporters of labor education, they showed who is against it and how it is done. The verbal sophistication of the executive against the representative and legislative can be heard at most parliamentary events in both the State Duma and the Federation Council. It sounds something like this, taking into account variations in specifics: yes, we are completely for it, but here you put a comma in the wrong place, the source of funding is not indicated, and in general you need to ask people.

Olga Timofeeva, among other things, said that there are few opponents of child labor, but they are very loud. By the way, this fact also has universal significance in the modern world. It turns out that people are against themselves. It is impossible to protest.

The round table discussed socially useful work in the school itself and in the school area, labor education as part of the educational process and the employment of adolescents. The most seemingly simple and natural first option invariably runs into a complaint the next day to the department of education, and even to the prosecutor’s office. The second option is dangerous because of the teacher’s presumption of guilt for any accident, a cut finger or a bump on his forehead.

In order not to fence projective situations like the participants of the round table, I will give an example from my own life. In a chemistry class in a specialized class, one particularly active student out of mischief splashed ammonia in my eyes. By that time, I had experience as a laboratory assistant at the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University, and I rushed to the sink to wash my eyes. The persistent questions of the teacher “Who did this?” I ignored it, otherwise the company would have been waiting for me at the exit. The school was an evening school SHRM 101 on Sokol, the teachers there were outstanding, prone to non-standard solutions for the good of the common cause. Now there is nothing like it.

The participants of the round table talked about their attempts to break the law and what it led to. For example, the children’s rights ombudsman in Moscow, Olga Yaroslavskaya, said that while working as a school principal, she can now confess to her superiors that a locksmith without pedagogical education worked at her school. Before each commission, she fired him so that she herself would not be fired. Finally, I begged, get at least some kind of pedagogical education. The locksmith still works at the school and gives out the winners of the Olympiad for schoolchildren in technology.

The indefatigable Olga Yaroslavskaya, while working in a kindergarten, forced pupils to plant tomatoes. Of course, the kids didn’t do much, adults corrected, but the main result was pride in what was done. Olga Yaroslavskaya expressed the common dominance of various speeches at the round table. According to her, the legislative base is sufficient. We don’t need an evil genius, we need a well-behaved child. Answering a question about complaints, Yaroslavskaya confidently stated that there had not been a single complaint in the Moscow region over the past year. Then she expressed an important thought, which I had not heard from officials before. According to her, for orphans and children in a difficult life situation, work develops vital skills.

The participants of the discussion, using various examples, spoke about the shortage of workers, the lack of money for consumables and equipment at the school, and even that if there are machines in the school, they are covered with a tarpaulin to demonstrate their inaccessibility. In other words, everything depends not so much on laws and regulations, but on the personal position of the school principal or teacher.

They talked a lot on the basis of personal experience about the experience of labor education in the Soviet school, labor lessons separately for boys and girls, recalled training and production plants, which now do not exist. Sukhomlinsky and even Krupskaya were quoted with her idea of ​​a polytechnic education, including home economics. They remembered that the phrase “Who does not work, does not eat” is not actually from Ryazanov’s comedy, this is the norm of the 1936 Constitution. The first two five-year plans turned Russia into an industrial power. It was then that labor education was introduced.

I will digress a little more from the round table in the Duma to give it some contrast. At the same time, in the Federation Council, the relevant committee of Lilia Gumerova was preparing a government hour with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. Among other things, he introduced a definition of technological sovereignty. From a long, non-specific phrase, I only understood that with this government, nothing shines for us. The glorification of the Soviet against the background of non-Soviet stupidity has become a common theme of the legislature since television. And with all the more pressure, the executive branch proves that it was impossible to do otherwise, and it is generally unacceptable to return to the state plan and the deficit in Soviet times. Last year, explanations were sometimes heard of where the prohibitions and rules were built. But this is rare. Even rarer are examples from the experience of the United States, where the labor of prisoners provides for the army, but in schools everything is optional. As a rule, there is no desire even to make your own bed, this is done by a Mexican nanny. The infamy of doing one’s own hands was part of the national idea of ​​the United States of North America during the days of Confederation. This fact is enshrined in the sacred novel for the United States “Gone with the Wind”. As a result of the civil war, blacks were freed from slavery, and rich whites had to get their own sources of food and livelihood.

At the round table in the Duma, they didn’t dig so deep. They habitually complained that labor lessons were replaced by technologies, and it was not clear what it was. In some schools, technology lessons have turned into sitting at the computer under the guise of teaching computer science and information technology. What computer science has turned into, they also did not go into. Examples of positive experience sounded as a separate storyline, which can still be done in terms of organizing labor education.

Deputy Head of the Department of Education and Science of the City of Moscow Natalia Kiseleva spoke about the peculiarities of the capital. 80% of Moscow schoolchildren are guided by admission to a university and do not go to colleges. Accordingly, Kiseleva’s department embodies the idea of ​​getting professional education at school. Graduates receive a certificate of a programmer, junior nurse, and so on.

The chairman of the organizing committee, Olga Timofeeva, recalled Makarenko’s words, “Proper upbringing is our happy old age, bad upbringing is our future grief, these are our tears, this is our fault before other people, before the whole country.” In an edifying tone, deputy Timofeeva said that a piece of paper will not throw itself into the trash can, borscht will not boil itself. And for modern parents, a doormat has become a scarecrow, which will be forced to wring out their child.

The round table lasted two and a half hours, and its overall result in two theses was not reached by consensus, but rather in spite of resistance.

First, labor must be universal, like mathematics or literature.

Secondly, if the consent of the parents, and even more so of the children themselves, is asked, labor will never be a universal subject of education. Some will wring out a doormat, others will stick their tongue out at them.

Director of the Department of State Policy and Management in the Sphere of General Education of the Ministry of Education Maxim Kostenko began with a rhetorical question, when did we see a film about a working man? Kostenko assured that the Ministry of Education supports the amendments to the law and is ready to introduce them into the standard. Then he issued a fundamental phrase: “We must understand that the school should not become a workshop. Labor should not become an obligation, so as not to cause rejection.

In her closing remarks, Olga Timofeeva noted that she thinks the participants in the discussion have heard that there are differences. According to the chairman of the committee, work should be for everyone. A teacher cannot always please everyone. Done – well done, and not done – also well done. We need to make sure that children are not shy to work. How to do this, Timofeeva did not say.

The round table on labor education attracted deputies with different profile workloads in the Duma. The father of police lieutenant Magomed Nurbagandov came and said: “Work, brothers!” before being shot by gunmen. This was probably the most powerful argument.

Aleksey Didenko, Chairman of the Committee on Federal Structure, made a radical proposal to amend the preamble of the Constitution. Perhaps Deputy Didenko is on the right track.

It seems to me that the topic of labor education is not at all the topic of Olga Timofeeva’s committee; in the current structure of the Duma, it is rather the committee for control of Oleg Morozov. When Chairman Volodin gave out instructions to ban vapes, he refused to involve the industry committee, realizing that the relevant committee would drown in approvals and lead the wrong way. And with the theme of labor education, he did just that. School work has never been easy, and at the beginning of the new century, according to tradition, it turned into moral hard labor. A hundred years ago I did not live, the irrepressible activity of schoolchildren and the impotence of teachers are described in the cult novel of the twentieth century “Two Captains” by Veniamin Kaverin. Teachers themselves are partly to blame these days. They got involved in the program of destruction of labor collectives, which was tested with great success on the destruction of science even before the collapse of the Union. Particularly active parents, forced enlargement of institutions, centrifugal selection in the formation of school leadership, and directorial arbitrariness in remuneration were connected to the destruction of the school. To those who are dissatisfied, the compilation of an unexecutable schedule and, again, the dissatisfaction of individual parents are applied.

By the way, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko told the senators on the same day about his intention to consolidate scientific organizations. So the scheme is universal.

My feeling from the round table is that nothing will work out that way.

Again, the Duma is not about that. First, it is necessary to remove insiders and residents of external administration in the national government and apply to them the law on obstructing the activities of deputies, which Volodin spoke about at the end of last year. I do not know this. Then there would be no resistance from the ministry. Kostenko is simply a performer of what is stronger. In today’s world, international rules are stronger than national laws.

However, the format of the work of the Duma also has its own meaning, which I have written about many times.

Mankind has been covered with many sub-lethal factors, under the influence of which there are two exits – to the grave or to a higher level of organization. Russia is looking for ways to overcome the impasse. The world is waiting for what Russia will do. The path of Russia is not easy and interesting. The discussion reflects the realities of the current time. For example, that modern girls can do everything. And what to do with the boys? This means that some need to be awakened somehow, while others must be directed in the right direction so that both can coexist in harmony.

This is the mission of the teacher.

Lev MOSKOVKIN.

Photo by Olga Davydova