The Russian civilization is looking for a suitable content – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood”, which Vladimir Putin instructed to prepare for teaching in Russian universities by September 1, 2023, will not only correct the block of humanitarian disciplines at universities, but will also make changes to school curricula. This was announced by the course developers as part of the discussion of the project at the site of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. For students of all specialties, they assure, the program will tell about the “historical, geographical, institutional foundations for the formation of Russian civilization” and help in “placement of worldview accents.” However, the content of the course itself, which should reform the liberal arts education, is still being discussed.

Participants of the “DNA of Russia” project and specialists developing the course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” discussed its content with experts at the site of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. The Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, as Kommersant previously told, has been discussing with the Ministry of Education and Science and specialized experts a project to revise the humanitarian block of university disciplines since last summer. The content is planned to be strengthened with correct values, as the initiators say. The project was named “DNA of Russia”. According to the plans of officials, as part of the reform, as early as September 2023, students of all specialties will begin to be taught the course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” to “place worldview accents” (see “Kommersant” dated November 8, 2022). It is assumed that 72 academic hours will be allocated for the development of the material, of which 52 are classroom loads. Teachers will have to undergo advanced training on the basis of a network of “core universities”, the central one of which will be RANEPA. The President of the Russian Federation instructed the Ministry of Education and Science to develop the Basics module by September 1.

“We are losing a lot of students at the university level,” complained the general director of ANO Dialog Vladimir Tabak (part of the project’s working group). As an example, he cited the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, of which he himself is a graduate. In his opinion, in the first or second year, most of the students were “lost for the state” when they had an internship:

“Since there was no ideology, it was replaced by a news agenda. The news agenda was driven by sources that were clearly not pro-government.”

Therefore, the speaker concluded, “you need to start with ideology at the university.”

Vladimir Shapovalov, director of the Institute of Politics, Law and Social Development of the Sholokhov Moscow State University for the Humanities, said that “we have to rework” the entire system of social and humanitarian school education. “It is necessary to build an integrative system in which yesterday’s schoolchildren, having received knowledge in social science, history, geography and some other disciplines, suddenly do not find out that this knowledge does not fit in with the foundations of Russian statehood,” he explained. the school history course is naturally interconnected with the “Fundamentals” course. Before us is a complex in which Osnovy occupy a key position in the formation of an all-Russian identity, citizenship, and patriotism.” And such subjects as political science, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, economics and jurisprudence in universities should be correlated with it. “In other words, there can be no situation in which a teacher today reads the Foundations, and tomorrow he goes to read political science and tells completely different theories there,” Mr. Shapovalov summed up.

Andrey Polosin, scientific director of the DNA of Russia project, presented five sections of the future subject.

So, within the framework of the section “What is Russia”, students are planned to be told about “the country in its spatial, human, resource, ideological-symbolic and normative-political dimension”. In the section “Russian state-civilization” we will talk about the “historical, geographical, institutional foundations for the formation of Russian civilization.” The listeners will also get acquainted with the “worldview and values ​​of the Russian civilization”, the political structure of the country and the “challenges of the future”.

Mr. Polosin did not present the specific content of each block, but spoke about the problems of the social sciences that the developers of the new course had identified during this time. Thus, the “categorical apparatus” of the humanities contains distortions, blurring and polarity of interpretations of the historical process, as well as “problematic interpretations of value and worldview concepts”. However, no examples were given either.

Alexander Rusakov, a member of the interdepartmental working group on the development of an educational and methodological complex (TMC) for the “Osnovy” at the Ministry of Education and Science, told Kommersant that a textbook has already been published for the course. However, the material that will be taught to students is still in the process of discussion and refinement: “TCM implies a large list of what is needed. The list will be completed as the dates approach. We are still debating what to add. There are large blocks that have already been agreed upon, but it is necessary to reach an agreement in the teaching environment as well. The discussions are ongoing.”

Anna Vasilyeva