Teachers will not be left with options – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The State Duma was proposed to seriously change the approach to teaching humanitarian subjects at school. A group of deputies and senators demand that teachers set strict limits – the minimum set of knowledge that they are required to give to children in the lessons of the Russian language, literature, history, social studies, geography and life safety. According to the deputies, the existing standards are not enough, because they depend too much on a particular teacher. The adoption of the bill will lead to the emergence of a “state order” in the market of textbooks. The teachers themselves ask to leave them “academic freedom”.

A group of deputies and senators from United Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party, the SR and the New People prepared serious changes to the Law on Education. They want to introduce unified general education programs for Russian schools. Now schools independently prepare programs according to which students study subjects. At the same time, they are guided by federal state educational standards (FSES) and exemplary basic general education programs that are approved by the Ministry of Education.

The Federal State Educational Standards contain mandatory, but rather general requirements, and exemplary programs are only advisory in nature.

However, legislators propose to build in Russia “a single educational space in accordance with uniform quality standards.” To do this, they want to introduce mandatory federal programs in the humanities. So, in elementary school they are offered to be introduced for the “Russian language”, “Literary reading” and “The world around us”. And in grades 5–9 and 10–11, it is proposed to make the programs “Russian Language”, “Literature”, “History”, “Social Studies”, “Geography” and “Fundamentals of Life Safety” mandatory.

It is assumed that the Ministry of Education will develop and approve the standards by March 1, 2023, and schools will switch to them by September 1, 2023.

The bill retains the right for schools to develop their own educational programs, but their content must be “not lower than the corresponding content and planned results of federal basic general education programs.”

One of the authors of the bill, the head of the State Duma Committee on Education, Olga Kazakova, points out that the Federal State Educational Standard sets out the knowledge that schoolchildren should have as a result of mastering the programs, but it does not say how to teach them. “There were a lot of questions from parents and teachers why children in one school have one kind of knowledge, and in another they have different knowledge,” she says. “Why children in one city have less knowledge than in another. It even happens that in the same school in different parallels, children study according to different programs. Therefore, the deputies propose to consolidate the “foundation of knowledge” in a number of subjects, which every student should receive. “If, for example, Tyutchev is studied in a literature lesson, then the teacher will not be able to decide:“ I won’t give a biography to children, we’ll go straight to the works, ”she gives an example.“ If the programs say what kind of material the teacher should convey to the child then he must do so. He can no longer choose for himself what is important and what is not. Or that he doesn’t have time for this by the hour, so he won’t tell at all.

The deputies believe that the variability of teaching is the problem of the humanities. “The exact sciences do not involve many options for presenting the material, it is difficult to interpret them in any other way,” explains Ms. Kazakova. “But in the humanities, you can bypass some material. Also, these items are needed for the formation of a person as a citizen.

The implementation of unified educational programs will lead to a new procedure for the development of textbooks – the state order.

The Ministry of Education will approve the authors of the textbooks, but the rights to them will belong to the state.

“Now the group of authors is creating a textbook, undergoing an examination that it complies with the Federal State Educational Standard. Then the authors can launch it in print, and schools get the textbook,” says the deputy. “As a result, we have more than 2,000 different titles. And parents come to me for an appointment, show a textbook and ask: “Why do they teach this, who is responsible for this?” And I can’t even answer. Now the Ministry of Education will be responsible for the programs and content of textbooks.”

Evgeny Yamburg, director of Moscow School No. 109, believes that all programs cannot be the same: “There are advanced schools, correctional classes, lyceums. All children are different, and the teacher at school knows better how to vary these programs. You need to trust professionals who see real children.” Marina Sharova, a teacher of history and social studies at one of the schools in the Sverdlovsk region, confirms that now all programs are quite framework – according to her, thanks to this, teachers have the opportunity to delve into some topics. “And if both methods and technologies are written down to the smallest detail, then all teachers will write letters and ask them to leave them academic freedom,” she says.

“Our task is to create equal conditions in all educational organizations,” Maxim Kostenko, director of the Department of State Policy and Management in the Sphere of General Education of the Ministry of Education, said earlier. and development of the child, the content of education should be the same, especially in our rapidly changing world where families may be on the move. Entering a new school or kindergarten, the child should not experience discomfort and difficulty in adapting. This is connected with the content of educational programs, and with documentation, and with textbooks, according to which the child studied at the previous school.

Anna Vasilyeva