Scientists-teachers continued to work on a school course to increase the birth rate

Before the 2026/27 academic year, “Family Science” is unlikely to appear

Demographic problems in public focus: the President called the situation with the birth rate in the country “difficult”. And he called for a “union of the state, society and confessions” to solve this problem. Some leaders in the field of education, deputies and public figures see the introduction of a new subject at school – “Family Studies” as one of the ways to improve demographics.

In the spring, the Communist Nina Ostanina came up with the initiative of school family studies in the State Duma. Then it seemed to many that the study of the family at school was an incident. And today the program of the subject is being written at the Institute for the Study of Childhood, Family and Education of the Russian Academy of Education. “Now it is extremely important to create a methodological base for classes in Family Studies,” says Natalia Agre, director of the institute. And he adds that scientific-expert and public councils are being created, designed to study all the existing manuals on the topic. And then there will be “development of methodological materials” until 2024, “testing of methodological materials” until 2025. That is, “Family Studies” at school can probably not be expected until 2026-2027. But the discussion is hot, the opinions are interesting.

Sergey Rybalchenko, a member of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for the implementation of state policy in the field of protecting families and children, for example, thinks that “Christianity arose precisely in the family” when Prince Vladimir married a Byzantine princess (a dubious analogy, since the princess was married off by force, like a military man trophy: “I’m going full, it would be better for me to die here”). Therefore, according to Rybalchenko, the obligatory content of the school subject should be Orthodoxy, and the priests will teach. It is not very clear how this will be implemented in a multi-confessional secular state with a single educational standard everywhere, including in Tyva or Dagestan, for example.

Tatyana Butskaya, the first deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, says that a working group on family science has already been created. And it does not have to become a separate subject – it can be “integrated into each subject.” For example, in mathematics – to teach family budget planning (in the updated OBZH, the “basics of financial literacy” were also announced. – Auth.)

The Ministry of Education reports that there is a legal framework for “launching a new project”. Programs and educational standards were approved by order in May. But there are no tutorials: none of the existing ones “meets the requirements set by public policy.”

In 2021, the section “Family Studies” appeared in social science textbooks. Its contents were shaken down for several years due to heated disputes among parents, departments of the Russian Academy of Education, social activists and churchmen: the latter especially advocated that the textbook should contain paragraphs “The headship of the husband” and “Hierarchy of the family”. “Cook borscht, give birth to children,” the teaching community reacted, wondering how modern teenagers would react to such content. As a result, the textbooks and teaching aids “Family Studies” were partially introduced in Tatarstan, Ufa, the Kostroma Region, and the Khanty-Mansiysk District.

Interestingly, the institute that developed the family program also presented statistics according to which only 51% of students in Russia are going to marry and have a child. And children “as a significant family value” were named only by 16% of respondents. But a year ago, a survey was conducted in schools, which revealed that everything is fine with schoolchildren with “traditional values”: 75% wanted to get married and get married, more than 60% of respondents wanted to have children.

“Those who went to school in the late 80s remember the subject “Ethics and Psychology of Family Life,” says Ivan Sakhnov, a teacher of history and social studies from Moscow. “I myself was a schoolboy at that time. We had a biology teacher who blushed and giggled when she talked about sex. But in general, there were quite progressive things for that time. As far as I remember, the subject was removed from the schedule in 1992. But then, already in the “noughties”, the patriarchal theme began, when a manual edited by nun Nina Krygina for senior classes appeared. But it was not massively implemented even for electives.

Now there are topics about the family on the Unified State Examination in social studies: types of families, economic fundamentals, “Family Crisis in a Democratic Society.” By the way, it also seems to me that if family science is needed, it is better to scatter it over existing subjects. To delegate the budget and financial literacy to the economy, to the life safety – the psychology of relationships, including age-related personality crises in children and adults, for example. Social science should leave the scientific component of the family as a social status model, an element of the economy and demography, of course. And today it is not possible for me to talk about the patriarchal hierarchy in the family or the expediency of women’s emancipation.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29099 dated August 24, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Talk about family