“Social” subjects in schools are about to undergo serious changes

There will be more history, social studies will begin later, ROV will be divided by age

Our society, including schools, is undergoing significant changes. And the changes have already affected the so-called socially significant objects. The courses in history and social studies and the Unified State Examination in these disciplines have changed. For two years at school there was an extracurricular, but compulsory, hour of Conversations about Important Things (CT). Work returned to the schedule, education was made the responsibility of the school. But judging by the speeches of deputies and educational departments, this is not all. What other innovations will the school face?

“Social studies” will be taught only in high school, and not from 6th to 7th grade. This was stated by the Deputy Head of the Committee on Education, Science and Culture of the Federation Council Ekaterina Altabaeva.

“We have been teaching this subject since the 6th and 7th grades, now it will be promoted to the senior level,” the senator said. They say that not only in its seriousness, but also in its content, the subject does not correspond to current tasks: “it does not correspond to the sovereign education system, the unified educational process that we are now building.”

According to Altabaeva, the hours allocated for social studies will be redistributed by September 2024. The subject will be taught only in grades 9-11.

The first deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Education, Yana Lantratova, suggested changing the topic of “Conversations about Important Things” depending on the age of schoolchildren. The deputy sent a letter with such an initiative to the Minister of Education. They say that a program that is uniform for all classes, mainly telling about various Russian and international holidays, is not always interesting to schoolchildren. As an example, Lantratova cited a topic dedicated to International Circus Day: understandable for kids, but not interesting for high school students.

And it happens the other way around – let’s remember the “fairytale elections” between Cinderella, Winnie the Pooh, Karabas-Barabas and Snow White, about which MK wrote last year. And all because the topic of state and parliamentarism is difficult to adapt for primary school students.

Two years ago, a lot of noise was made by the assumption that history lessons would begin from the very first grade. The ministry even had to write an explanation on its website.

“Historical education will be carried out in schools from the first grade. Not history lessons, which began and will begin in the 5th grade, but educational programs.” You can study the history of your family, your region, visit museums and exhibitions.” This will also be historical enlightenment.

Apparently, it is the extracurricular format that is increasingly becoming the leading one. And these are not only trips to the theater and exhibitions, trips to historical places, but also events directly at school: concerts, theatrical performances, quizzes, parades, etc.

So, the day before in the Altai Territory, schoolchildren staged the siege of Leningrad. They were shown how the freezing children of the great city wrapped themselves in warm clothes, and were given a ration of black bread, equal in weight to what the Leningraders received. The event was called interactive.

“I don’t know whether such concepts as interactive, quest or immersive production are appropriate here,” says historian Ilya Malinovsky. – The siege of Leningrad was the longest and most terrible blockade in the history of mankind. And the coldest, moreover, the frost in the winter of 1942 reached -32 degrees. One and a half million dead, the exact number of victims is unknown…

It seems to me that tragedies of such a scale as the blockade, the Holocaust, the Battle of Stalingrad, and in general the topic of the Great Patriotic War can be touched upon very delicately and to the point. And professionally. Avoiding the mummer effect, in any case. Although I know examples when that very interaction was appropriate and successful. In a small town on the Volga, for example, I saw a museum where an ordinary school classroom from the Second World War was recreated. There you can sit at a desk, hold textbooks in your hands, of which there were very few for the class, newspapers in the margins of which they wrote, a pot of potatoes that the children ate and that was all the food for the day…

This story is really very clear. A live, material exhibition or performance – now many programs aimed at primary schoolchildren follow this path.