Proper upbringing plays a significant role in the development of any person as an individual. What is important in raising a teenager and what needs to be taught to him? Touching upon the problem of education, B.P. Ekimov thinks about these questions.
Narrating in his work about the old days of Gregory, who for the fifth year in a row takes a vacation and goes to help an old woman, Aunt Varya, the author, discussing the topic of education, asks the question of what had such a beneficial effect on the character of the hero? From the story about childhood, the reader learns about Gregory's orphanhood, the troubles that befell the hero, and about “how wonderful the happy days were.”
Describing Gregory's memories from childhood, Boris Petrovich Ekimov notes the importance of showing kindness and responsiveness to a growing child, so that he understands how little a person sometimes needs to be happy, so that he feels what the person towards whom help was shown is experiencing. Reasoning, the author also comes to the conclusion that when raising a teenager, it is very important to teach him to feel sorry for people and be able to provide help to those who need it, which Ekimov writes about in sentences 81 and 82-85.
It is difficult to disagree with the author that when raising a teenager, he must be taught to be responsive. After all, often good deeds cost nothing to the person who committed them, but they can radically change the life of the person who received help.
Thus, qualities such as kindness, compassion, the ability to help and many others should be cultivated during adolescence.
The radical changes taking place in the life of our society, including in the field of education, require comprehensive understanding. Many years of alienation of a person from genuine spiritual culture, national roots and traditions, from faith, led to a crisis of public consciousness, expressed in an extremely unfavorable social atmosphere: increased crime in society, an increase in crime (including child crime), violence, and open propaganda of lax morals. A particularly difficult situation has developed in the adolescent and youth sphere. The weakening of the attention of the state and society to the targeted formation of social consciousness, to issues of education, and to the school as a whole has led to a change in the psychology of students. Researchers note among them such trends as the growth of individualism, opposition to other people, pragmatism - against the backdrop of the overthrow of recent authorities, the destruction of ideals that have developed over seventy years. Along with the devaluation of values associated with serving society and the state, there is a decrease in trust in the older generation, a reorientation towards personal well-being, survival, self-preservation, and an intensification of the process of individualization and alienation. Material goods have begun to occupy much more space in the desires of schoolchildren; culture and education are being relegated to the periphery of their value orientations.
A striking manifestation of this has become youth culture, in which there is a tendency towards destruction, a protest against decorum in everything: in methods of communication, clothing, behavior, in the entire appearance of a teenager, boy, girl. Scientific research indicates changes occurring at the level of consciousness, which are manifested in utilitarianism and primitiveness of thinking, strengthening of the rational component, the presence of “strange spiritual formations” (G. L. Smirnov), when elements of incompatible types of worldviews coexist in the head of one person: atheistic , Orthodox, pagan, “eastern”, etc.
If in ideological terms these and other similar phenomena are associated with the rejection of Marxist-Leninist ideology, then the spiritual causes of the crisis lie in the linguistic sphere and are associated with the distortion, substitution or loss of many of the most important concepts that form the core of personality. The outstanding philosopher of our time M. Mamardashvili points out the linguistic nature of these “disturbing phenomena”. As if to concretize this idea, psychologist B.N. Nichiporov writes that the absence of the concept of sin in the public consciousness has led to many gross moral distortions.
The Gospel tells about the Word that lies at the foundation of the world. (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”), providing a methodological key to approach the problem.
The range of fundamental ideological concepts requires scientific understanding, strict selection of the conceptual core and inclusion in it of a whole range of spiritual and moral vocabulary (words such as good and evil, virtue and sin, God and the devil, etc.). It is necessary to build them into a system, as well as return them to their true meaning (“pure meaning”).
The search for a way out of the crisis situation for public consciousness was marked by a return to previous value systems, first to the humanistic, “universal”, and then to the traditional – Christian, Orthodox. Both systems are based on Divine commandments, but there are significant differences between them.
The humanistic system differs from the Christian one in that it rejects the Christian understanding of sin and evil, explaining it by the imperfection of the social structure. Proclaiming man as the highest value, she denies his Divine purpose and dispensation, thereby replacing the Christian ideal of the God-man with the ideal of the man-god.
In the system of Christian values, of the two most important commandments (“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”; “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”(Gospel of Mark 12, 30-31) the first is decisive, serving as the foundation, the “rock” on which a Christian builds his relationships with other people and with the world as a whole. It is also the most difficult to fulfill, placing a person in a relationship of dependence, subordination to God - as opposed to a relationship of equality (with other people) or a relationship of domination (over the world of physical nature).
As for pedagogy, the crisis of pedagogical consciousness and the search for a way out of it most fully manifested itself first in the tendency towards humanization and humanitarization of education, and then in the tendency towards “spirituality” - a deepening of interest in the spiritual and moral aspects of upbringing and education (as a rule, without precise understanding the meaning of this word). As a result of this, the school, legally separated from the church and unable to separate the wheat from the chaff, the truly spiritual from the false, was filled with spiritual literature of dubious content of an esoteric, sectarian, theosophical, and false mystical nature. This literature could not (and could not) satisfy the “spiritual thirst” of teachers and students, representing an example of spiritual substitution.
The tendency towards rapprochement and cooperation between the secular and Orthodox education systems turned out to be more fruitful. It was traced in the reports and speeches made at the International Christmas Educational Readings.
Analysis of materials from readings, periodical publications, special literature on the problems of spiritual and moral upbringing and education, published in recent years, allows us to conclude that in the pedagogical environment the opinion is strengthening that religious (Orthodox) education can serve as the basis for holistic upbringing and education personality, contribute to the restoration of the true hierarchy of values, stop the disintegration of the spiritual core of the personality, the emasculation of its inner life.
To approve or deny this point of view, it is necessary to consider a number of issues, in particular, the question of the relationship between faith and science, the understanding, purpose and structure of man in the Marxist-Leninist, humanistic and Orthodox traditions, the peculiarities of the Orthodox approach to upbringing and education, and a number of others .
Faith and Science
Is it even possible to talk about the spiritual, religious foundations of education, pedagogy, and any science in general? What is the relationship between faith and science? What has changed in their relationship recently?
First of all, it should be noted that there is a rethinking of them. It is caused by several reasons. Among the most important are two that are internally interconnected: the expansion of the boundaries of scientific knowledge and humanity’s awareness of the irreversibility of global processes caused by the abuse of technological advances. The revaluation of the role of science, according to the American scientist Stanley L. Yaki, occurs as public opinion, burdened by the tragic experience of nihilism and dehumanization that the “age of science” brought - the 20th century, begins to pay constant attention to the environmental crisis and the arms race: “ More and more people are recognizing that the moral strength needed to deal with this and many other problems cannot come from science, which itself was and remains the instrument in causing these problems." The scientist believes that religion has such moral power.
The long-standing dispute between science and religion, which began with the Enlightenment, is now tending to be resolved. One can observe their interaction on a number of issues, including socio-political, social, and pedagogical. “The existence of the Church and the state,” writes Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk and Yuryev, “their mutual non-interference, cooperation and symphony are the conditions for the normal flow of social life, the revelation of the truly human in a person, that is, the realization of the ideals of humanism, therefore, the triumph of morality.”
It is obvious to any unbiased researcher that science and religion do not contradict each other. They cannot contradict, since, in scientific terms, they have different areas of research. Science studies nature, physical objects and phenomena, dealing with relative truths. Religion knows God by touching absolute truths. Science allows the intervention of higher powers (deities) in the laws of earthly life (the phenomenon of “miracles”), without studying them; religion reveals a person’s attitude to these supernatural forces and principles of life and testifies to the possibilities and conditions for their manifestation. Faith exclusively in science is the belief that apart from the empirical, scientific, there are no other ways of knowing the world, there is no other area of existence, there are no other truths. Religious faith makes it possible to experience these truths and understand the dependence of the visible world on the invisible, higher, rational-spiritual world.
Religion, like science, has strictly objective knowledge, but, unlike science, its only source is direct experience. This experience is much more difficult to express in a system of concepts, so we can say that science and religion have different understandings of concepts. “The “heaven” of religion,” writes S. L. Frank, “is not the visible or astronomical sky, but some higher, other world, sensually inaccessible to us, but revealed only in a special, namely religious experience.”
The same can be said about other concepts that religion cognizes and reveals “from the inside,” deepening and expanding their everyday and scientific meaning and taking consciousness beyond the limits of sensory knowledge of reality.
The differences between science and religion concern not only the object, but also the way of knowing. Scientific, empirical research lies in the sphere of human consciousness, is based on the arguments of the intellect and is influenced by feelings and will. Mystical, Divine knowledge (or comprehension of truth) finds its beginning not in human consciousness, limited in its capabilities, but in superconsciousness. At the same time, the truth is known in a special way, a special process of penetration, a special intuition, elusive and incomprehensible to our brain.
The organ of superconsciousness is the heart, which is “the center of human nature, the root of abilities, intellect and will, the center from which spiritual life emanates.” This well-known theological position was recently scientifically confirmed by Prof. V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky, who used data from psychophysiology, parapsychology and genetics to prove it.
The condition for the manifestation of superconsciousness, according to the teachings of the holy fathers of the Church, is a special state of the heart, which must be completely cleansed of passions.
Purity of heart enables the mind not only to retain all the power of logical thinking, but also to acquire Divine properties - simplicity and insight into the essence of things. “The soul sees the truth of God by the power of life,” states the Christian ascetic Isaac the Syrian, thereby testifying that the highest wisdom is achieved not by theoretical constructs, but by exerting all one’s strength in the fight against passions.
The foregoing allows us to conclude that religious truths do not contradict scientific facts, relying on a special way of knowing the world and having the spiritual world as their field of study. They, on the contrary, impart power to knowledge, expanding the mental and moral horizons of the scientist and giving him a true understanding of the nature of things, phenomena, facts and events.
Humanity is the basic concept of pedagogy as a humanities science
Pedagogy occupies a special place among the humanities, being the science of human education. It's obvious that the concept of “man” will be the main thing for her, defining its essence, goals, objectives and patterns, the entire system of its internal and external relationships. Here it is appropriate to recall the famous words of the outstanding teacher K. D. Ushinsky: “If pedagogy wants to educate a person in all respects, then it must first get to know him in all respects.” Another outstanding teacher, our contemporary V.A. Sukhomlinsky, emphasizing the importance of this concept, wrote that the effectiveness of the educational process largely depends on what students know about a person.
Soviet pedagogy viewed man from the standpoint of Marxist-Leninist ideology and saw him, first of all, as a “product of the environment.” The limitation of his existence to a socio-biological framework and the denial of his main, “metaphysical” component - the soul - led to a one-sided understanding of man, the inferiority of his “image” and could not but have a negative impact on both pedagogical practice and the results of scientific research. Often they were difficult to fit into a purely materialistic understanding of mental life, ignoring the clearly expressed facts of interaction and mutual influence between mental, parapsychic and bodily phenomena. “We dismantled a person into parts and learned well how to “count” each of them,” writes academician A. N. Leontyev. “But we are not able to put a person together.”
As for humanistic pedagogy, it should be noted that the anthropocentric focus on the self-sufficiency of man, adopted by it, the recognition of the presence of a soul in him while denying its Creator - God, also distorts the scientific picture of the world, does not allow us to objectively determine the role and place of man in it and, consequently , correctly describe and form an effective educational system.
The most comprehensive definition of man, his complete and integral image, is represented by Christian anthropology - the traditional teaching of the Church about his nature and essence. Christian anthropology is inextricably linked with Christian anthropogony- the doctrine of the origin of man - and Christian soteriology- the doctrine of the ultimate goal of his existence. According to these teachings, man, created in the image and likeness of the Creator, for whom He created the world, is the crown of creation. His superiority over all things is explained by the dualism of his nature, his simultaneous belonging to two worlds: the visible, physical - this is his body, and the invisible, spiritual (transcendent) - this is his soul. “That unchanging stability of the personality that we mean by the word “I”, which creates the identity of our individuality..., writes Metropolitan Pitirim, “is determined from the point of view of Christian anthropology precisely by the soul, the immaterial substrate in which all the information about our “I” is contained.” .
The human world (microcosm) is as integral and complex as the natural world (macrocosm). It is contradictory and is distinguished by the limitations of human physical nature while the aspiration of his spirit to infinity.
The image of God is given to man, the likeness is given, therefore the ultimate goal of his earthly life is to achieve the ideal of Godlikeness (deification, holiness) with grace-filled help from above. The image of God is “inscribed” in the highest properties of the human soul - in immortality, free will, reason, the ability for pure, selfless love. To be the image of God means to be a personal being, that is, free and responsible.
The great Russian teacher K. D. Ushinsky is credited with introducing the Christian definition of man into scientific and pedagogical use. Then, already in our days, professor and priest V.V. Zenkovsky, following the great teacher and scientist, applied the anthropological principle in his pedagogical works, maintaining, with deep scientific elaboration of the material and objectivity of assessments, fidelity to the Christian teaching about man in the projection on child's problems.
It is necessary to say a few words about the conclusions made by this scientist, since they are of fundamental importance for our research.
The most significant thing in his pedagogical system is the provision about the hierarchical principle of the structure of a person (child), about maintaining the priority of the mind, spirit over the flesh in the development of all his bodily powers and aspects. “Suppression, pushing aside any sphere of the soul,” writes V.V. Zenkovsky, “inevitably entails a disorder of mental balance, a disorder in the hierarchy of mental forces. The child is whole, and any rupture in any area of the soul inevitably entails grave consequences.” From this, the scientist concludes that the normal development of the religious sphere is important for the spiritual (and, therefore, physical) health of the child.
“...religious images in a child’s soul help the best movements of the child’s soul unfold,” the teacher notes, “they warm and enlighten it from the inside. A school that does not want to deal with the religious sphere of the child... throws away enormous creative power and is forced to resort to surrogates and substitutions.”
Requests of the spirit that are not taken into account and not satisfied in a timely manner are compensated at the expense of other areas. This leads to a disorder in the hierarchy of mental forces, and in social life it manifests itself as a conscious or unconscious desire of the individual for cruelty, physical or moral self-destruction, which manifests itself in various behavioral anomalies (rudeness, hooliganism, alcoholism, drug addiction, substance abuse, suicide, participation in destructive sects, etc.).
Taking into account the internal integrity and hierarchy of the personality structure (spirit-soul-body), the school should equally care about all three spheres of its real existence.
Another important conclusion for pedagogy concerns the relationship between the spiritual core and psychic forces in a person - “empirics”. According to V.V. Zenkovsky, spiritual life is not “created” through the flowering of empiricism, but is only awakened and mediated by it. It is not derived from the empirical sphere, but is subject to its own laws. “You cannot achieve spiritual growth through the development of mental powers - intellect, will or feelings, although spiritual life is mediated by this development of the mental periphery.” And, conversely, the primacy of the spiritual principle does not eliminate or suppress its own laws of psychophysical life.
The scientist’s thought that spiritual life itself (in its subjective side) does not contain a criterion for the correctness of its direction is also of significant importance.
From what has been said, it is obvious that the anthropological principle in the approach to the problems of education, consistently used by V.V. Zenkovsky, allowed him to draw profound conclusions of great scientific and practical significance.
Secular and Christian understanding of upbringing and education
Christian anthropology, which gives the most complete image of man, allows us to reconsider two other most important pedagogical concepts - "upbringing" And "education". At the same time, it should be noted that the provisions on the relationship (or hierarchy) of concepts are of fundamental importance for scientific research. Giving an idea of the arrangement of parts or elements of the whole in order from highest to lowest, hierarchy, it seems, more accurately than a system (which more characterizes their horizontal, linear subordination) shows their real relationships and connections, indicating the vertical dependence of some on others.
The systems approach, in contrast to the hierarchical one, provides greater freedom to manipulate the elements of the system, for their subjective, arbitrary rearrangement. This, in particular, can be observed in the example of the relationship between upbringing and education throughout the Soviet period of Russian history.
Thus, in the first post-revolutionary years, the urgent need to educate a “social person” is emphasized; the center of gravity of school affairs should be “building a system of communist education.” The 1927 programs provide for an organic connection between teaching and upbringing; ideological tasks are distributed across the years of study. In the thirties, all efforts (both school and extracurricular) were devoted to “ensuring an improvement in the quality of educational work” with the aim of preparing “fully literate people” for technical schools and higher schools (Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1931).
The bias towards education, which had been evident since the 30s, began to be somewhat overcome in the sixties with the creation of extended day groups, the deployment of a network of out-of-school institutions, the introduction of the position of organizer of extracurricular and out-of-school educational work, and efforts to transform the school into the center of educational work in the microdistrict.
In the seventies, the attention of teachers was drawn to the need to strengthen the educational function of education. It must be ensured by the content of educational material, appropriate working methods, the moral orientation of the teacher himself, as well as the nature of the relationship between the teacher and students, and a number of other factors. The school is again called upon to become not only a place of learning and education, but also a place of children's life, where learning and upbringing should form a single and holistic process.
Such manipulation of “elements of the system,” among other reasons, is explained by the arbitrary interpretation of the terms “upbringing” and “education” in Soviet pedagogy. Thus, S. T. Shatsky understands education, first of all, as “the organization of children’s life and activities.” P. P. Blonsky writes about education as “a deliberate, organized long-term influence on the development of a given organism.” The prominent theorist of communist education E. I. Monoszon, picking up this idea, emphasizes that education must cover the entire diversity of children’s relationships with the environment, that it is necessary to provide for the purposeful organization of their activities. The famous modern teacher and scientist V. A. Karakovsky considers education to be a manageable part of the socialization process. The view of education as an introduction to modern culture is defended by N. E. Shchurkova.
Taking into account the difference in opinions, one cannot help but notice that all these definitions bear the imprint of a materialistic view of man. Recognizing him as a “social essence” and not taking into account his spiritual quests, which go beyond the boundaries of earthly relations, Soviet pedagogy in its aspirations tries to “embrace the immensity” and cover, through organized influence, as many environmental factors as possible. Perhaps this position is most clearly expressed in an article by famous Soviet methodologists A. M. Arsenyev and F. F. Korolev. They call education “the interaction of the individual and the environment, or more precisely, the adaptation of the first to the second, the adjustment of the individual to given social structures and institutions.”
And indeed, if we accept a person as a “product of historical development”, a mouthpiece of social thought and public opinion, if we reduce all the diversity and depth of his inner life to the process of “reflecting” reality, then the task of organizing life in such a way that would adequately “reflected” in the heads of those brought up, on the one hand, and “adjusted” them to the existing order of things, on the other. It is therefore no coincidence that one of the modern “images of education”, which, despite democratic trends, carries an old idea: “Pioneer camp. Ruler. Everyone is pulled up and standing in a row. Nobody sticks out to the foreground. Everything is in order."
As for education, in Soviet pedagogy it comes close to the term “training” and is understood as the result of the assimilation of systematized knowledge, skills and abilities. And if traditionally the concept of “upbringing” was interpreted more broadly than the concept of “education,” then recently it has been considered part of it. There is also a tendency to completely wash it out of the pedagogical vocabulary, which negatively affects the real state of education and leads to the attenuation of the educational function of the school.
“In many schools, secondary educational institutions, universities,” writes V. A. Karakovsky, characterizing the crisis of the situation, “education as a pedagogical goal is completely absent... The tragedy is that the reorientation of the mass school to “pure” education occurs at against the backdrop of incredible aggravation and instability in all areas of our lives, when young people who find themselves in a social risk zone are increasingly frightened by a sharp drop in the level of education, lack of spirituality, and blind idolatry.”
An analysis of recent educational concepts indicates a change in approaches to upbringing and education in connection with humanistic attitudes and their orientation towards universal and cultural values. However, in general, they continue to bear the imprint of the “environmental” approach that dominated Soviet pedagogy.
Going back to the all-encompassing image of man, Christian pedagogy provides the most accurate understanding of upbringing and education, which is absolute and does not change over time.
The word “education”, etymologically going back to the word “nutrition”, implies good quality food for the soul and body. In the Christian consciousness it is associated with the greatest sacrament - the Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy. Translated from Greek, “Liturgy” means “common cause.” In this common cause for believers, according to His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus', the most real reality is revealed, a meeting with God takes place and the believers are united in Christ. In this sacrament, the absolutely transcendent becomes absolutely immanent: man enters into living communion with God. He receives the strength to change himself and recognize himself as a spiritual being who must learn to control his “empirics” - intellect, will, feelings.
Thus, the religious understanding of the word “education” is associated with churching, involvement in church life in its entirety, and participation in church sacraments. This seems all the more necessary because, according to patristic teaching, it is impossible to change a person for the better without the help of God, without the assistance of grace. “The sinister practice of the 20th century, the monstrous experience of nihilism and dehumanization,” writes Metropolitan Pitirim, “confirms the long-standing view of human nature, expressed in Christian theology, according to which this nature cannot be arbitrarily improved or remade by graceless means.”
The concept of “upbringing” also includes the idea of return, growth, and care. “Christian education,” writes V. Paramonov, “is caring for a growing organism, nutrition, care for it.” By the same association, education is associated with the word “becoming”. It is certainly connected with education, which, as part of education, should provide “knowledge about God.” However, the main task of Christian education is not so much “knowing about God” as “knowing God”, life in God.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see (see) God”, says one of the Christian commandments, giving the key to approaching the problem. Taking care of the heart as the main source of spiritual life, on the dispositions of which the structure of a person’s thoughts, feelings and actions depends, is the main concern of education.
Much attention was paid to this issue in the works of I. G. Pestalozzi, who considered the end result and goal of education to be the cultivation of “the strength of the heart in love,” for which (as well as for mental activity) exercise is necessary. “Elevation of the heart,” in his opinion, should raise a person to a sense of the pure, sublime, Divine being that lives in him, to a sense of the inner strength of his nature.
“The life of the heart is love,” testifies St. Theophan, the “Vyshensky Recluse,” who is called the most outstanding and influential of all Russian Orthodox moralists of the 19th century.
Thus, the main task of education is to give the heart the right direction, corresponding to the main goal of existence, to develop in it active love for God and for everything Divine and sacred, to cultivate the “taste” of the heart. The Russian philosopher I. A. Ilyin writes about this, arguing that it is necessary to “ignite and heat” the “spiritual coal” in a child as early as possible: sensitivity to everything Divine, the will to perfection, the joy of love and a taste for kindness.
According to a number of teachers and scientists, education also includes the concept of “feat”. This opinion is expressed by the already mentioned I. A. Ilyin. The theologian and priest Alexander Saltykov writes about this, arguing that feat is a necessary condition for spiritual life and personal education.
This point of view seems worthy of attention, especially if we take as a basis the broad meaning of this word (in V. Dahl: “feat” - “movement, aspiration”).
There is feat in battle,
There is feat in struggle too,
The highest feat in terpene,
Love and prayer, -
writes one of the founders of Slavophilism, philosopher and poet A. S. Khomyakov.
The famous Russian philosopher G. P. Fedotov believes that if creativity in art and science, a high spiritual (i.e., prayerful and ascetic) life is the lot of a few, then moral achievement is accessible to any person.
We find an understanding of feat as a life's cross in V.V. Zenkovsky. “The cross inscribed in a person” (i.e., the secret of the individual’s uniqueness, his talent) determines the internal logic of a person’s spiritual quest. At the same time, the “cross” indicates to the teacher the task and direction of educational activities in relation to each child.
Thus, Christian pedagogy speaks of education as the “elevation” of the heart as the center of spiritual life, as the main force of love. This task necessarily includes the teacher’s help in understanding for each student his special path, his “cross” - the feat that lies before him in earthly life in order to achieve eternal life. Education also presupposes churching, when a child, in a free unity imbued with love and brotherhood, reveals his talents, the fullness of his personality.
Christian education how the revelation of the image of God in man rests on Christian education. Prof. compares education without upbringing to a house on sand. M. I. Andreev. I. A. Ilyin calls education without upbringing a false and dangerous matter. “Nature ensures the development of love before the development of thinking,” writes I. G. Pestalozzi.
And indeed, if education is, first of all, care, caring for the heart, correcting and “igniting” it, then the concept of “education” is close in meaning to the word “formation”. It is associated with the formation of the correct way of thinking, the correct (in this context - Christian, Orthodox) worldview.
Education begins with the birth of a child, being the foundation on which the edifice of education will subsequently be built. Education takes its rightful place with the awakening and expansion of the child’s consciousness, his soul. St. Theophan the Recluse writes: “...The soul appears into the world as a naked force, grows, becomes richer in inner content and diversifies in its activity afterward.”
Based on this precise characteristic, it can be concluded that upbringing influences, stimulates, causes soul growth, A education defines and shapes its contents.
Here it is necessary to return once again to the definition of the concept “soul”. One of its main meanings in Christian anthropology is the personality of a person in a relationship with God, his true “I”, his “quintessence”, which no one except God can destroy. “That unchanging stability of personality, which we mean by the word “I,” which creates the identity of our individuality, despite the constant flow of consciousness, the change of impressions and sensations, the cycle of metabolism,” writes Metropolitan Pitirim, “this stability is determined precisely by the soul, the immaterial substrate, which... contains all the information about our “I”.
Despite the stability of the body within the limits of earthly life and soul (even within eternity), human mental life, the area of interaction between soul and body, is unstable and mobile. This instability and mobility is explained by irremovable contradictions in the very existence of man. By its physical nature, it belongs entirely to the external world and, along with other “things (objects) of the world,” is subject to the universal laws of earthly existence. By the nature of his personality, as the image of God, he also necessarily recognizes himself as more than a “thing of the world.” Consciousness takes him beyond the world and forces him to seek a special purpose in the world. “...The whole history of human spiritual development,” writes Prof. V.I. Nesmelov, “essentially comes down only to the history of his search to solve the riddle about himself.”
Find the answer to the “riddle of oneself”, to the painful questions when the “truth of life” and the “truth of consciousness” appear before a person with all the terrible force of the fatal question of life: “To be or not to be?” and “Why be?” — the answer to these questions can only be found in Christianity. Faith in God, even if very weak at first, forces a person to seek living communication with Him and gradually discovers in God a living image of true existence.
But personal faith, as a state of consciousness, is an impermanent thing. Depending on various reasons, it can fluctuate, rise and weaken, showing an advantage of either the body or the soul. It is for the development and strengthening of this “spiritual embryo” that Christian education is necessary. “Christian doctrine,” writes Prof. V.I. Timid, reveals to man the eternal rational basis of existence and affirms the reality of its eternal meaning.”
The distinctive feature of Christian education (as the distinctive feature of Christianity in general) is the connection between Christian knowledge of the truth and life according to the truth, therefore, the center of Christian education, as well as Christian upbringing, is the Divine Liturgy. As already noted, in the sacrament of confession and communion a person enters into living communication with God, receiving strength to know and change himself. Under these conditions, self-knowledge turns into God-knowledge.
From a philosophical point of view, cognition is a process of interaction between subject and object, knower and known, an act in which “something is known as something.” The complexity of knowing oneself lies precisely in the position of the knower, in relation to oneself as an object. At the same time, in order to know oneself as the image of God, it is necessary to know that God exists and what God is, that is, it is necessary to have an idea about Him.
Based on the principle of hierarchical consciousness, we can conclude that “knowledge of God,” which is the subject of Christian education, and “knowledge of God,” which is the subject of Christian education, are the main ones for the individual, since they contribute to the formation, formation and development of its core - souls.
Knowledge about the world is secondary in its significance for a person; it does not have absolute meaning for him and serves to achieve the goals of earthly existence.
Indeed, a person does not need a variety of information about the world if he does not know who he is and why he is in this world, if he does not have a solid foundation of any knowledge within himself.
According to Prof. V.I. Nesmelov, one can be a great scientist and at the same time an uneducated person, because the criterion and result of true education is the development of a holistic worldview. To achieve it, “it is not enough to fill your head with a programmatic set of all kinds of knowledge, but you also need to create a living nucleus in your head that could absorb the materials it needs from the entire pile of acquired knowledge and, developing from these materials, could grow into a living organism about the world and man and, together with the mystery of existence, could illuminate for a person the value and purpose of his personality.”
To what has been said, it should be added that Christian knowledge meets these requirements, it is holistic in nature and can satisfy the demands of the mind, the aspirations of the will, and the demands of the senses. Christian knowledge is necessary for a child, since “a child needs that worldview in which for him everything in the world makes sense, everything goes back to the Creator and Heavenly Father.” Christianity allows him to “live in search and awareness of clear life truths that do not allow the slightest doubt.”
A correctly found relationship between “knowledge” (“mind”) and “heart”, upbringing and education allows us to speak of their harmony. It presupposes a state of mind when the mind restrains excessive impulses of the heart, the heart warms the cold rationality of the mind, and both of them direct the will in the right direction.
Thus, upbringing and education in their true meaning can be likened to a tree, a seed planted in the heart of a person. Its growth and formation depend on many obvious and hidden factors. Its fruits are those fruits of the Holy Spirit that are repeatedly spoken of in the Gospel: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, mercy, faith, meekness, self-control. They will have to be used both in the life of this century and in the century of the future.
Comparing the secular and religious understanding of the words “upbringing” and “education”, a number of conclusions can be drawn.
1. The secular interpretation of these terms (from pronounced class, Marxist to softer cultural, humanistic) is based on the materialistic definition of man as a “product of the environment” and therefore pursues the task, first of all, of its improvement, ennoblement, creation of appropriate conditions through the correct organization of children's life and activity, including also the “fit” of the individual to the environment. At the same time, shortcomings in upbringing and the lack of expected positive results are explained by the so-called spontaneous, unorganized influences on the personality or its biological, genetic characteristics.
The Christian, Orthodox understanding of the meaning of these words comes from the view of man as the image and likeness of God. It involves not only creating appropriate conditions for the growth and formation of a child, but also taking into account and using God’s grace-filled help in this process through participation, first of all, in the liturgical life of the Church.
2. Without recognizing the metaphysical beginning of the individual, his immortal soul (or recognizing the soul without its Creator - God), secular pedagogy sees the meaning of upbringing and education in achieving visible results of the “best existence”: wealth, prosperity, high professional status, moral improvement for the sake of moral improvement, etc.
Without denying the relative goals and objectives of earthly existence, Christian pedagogy subordinates them to the main, absolute task of existence - “introduction to eternal life in empirical life.”
3. In the coordinates of secular science, the concept of “upbringing” weakly correlates with the concept of “education”, loses its leading, in relation to it, meaning and broad conceptual meaning, its etymological roots and is often understood as part of education.
A similar process occurs with the term “education”, which is currently closer to the concept of “training” and has the narrow meaning of accumulating all kinds of diverse information - without taking into account its value for the individual. Both of these concepts (as well as the concept of “person”) are used in pedagogical everyday life in a distorted form.
The words “upbringing” and “education” in the Christian consciousness go back to their etymology: to the word "nutrition"- care, observation, nurturing, proper, high-quality nutrition of soul and body, personal growth, growth; by the way "image"- restoration and formation in man of the image of his Creator and Creator. The meaning of these words in Christian pedagogy is used throughout the entire range. The scope of the concept of “upbringing” is broader than the concept of “education”. In development, it implies expansion, deepening, growth of the soul and all the forces associated with it, while the concept of “education” implies the formation of its content. These two concepts are closely related to each other, their intersection forming, as it were, an invisible cross.
Makarenko A.S. Purpose of education
… “We must graduate from our schools energetic and ideological members of socialist society, capable without hesitation, always, at every moment of their lives, of finding the correct criterion for personal action, capable at the same time of demanding correct behavior from others. Our pupil, no matter who he is, can never act in life as a bearer of some kind of personal perfection, only as a kind or honest person. He must always act, first of all, as a member of his team, as a member of society, responsible for the actions not only of himself, but also of his comrades.
Particularly important is the area of discipline in which we, teachers, have sinned the most. /…/
Every good, every honest teacher sees before himself the great political goal of educating a citizen and strives persistently to achieve this goal. Only this explains the truly global success of our social and educational work, which has created such a wonderful generation of our youth.
It will be all the more appropriate for theoretical thought to take part in this success.”
“Raising children is the most important area of our lives. Our children are the future citizens of our country and citizens of the world. They will make history. Our children are future fathers and mothers, they will also be educators of their children. Our children must grow up to be fine citizens, good fathers and mothers. But that’s not all: our children are our old age. Proper upbringing is our happy old age, bad upbringing is our future grief, these are our tears, this is our guilt before other people, before the whole country.”
Jan Amos Komensky "Mother's school or the caring education of youth in the first six years"
“For what purposes does God give children and what should we strive for when raising them?
People teach an ox to plow, a dog to hunt, a horse to ride and carry heavy loads, because they were created for such purposes and cannot be adapted for other purposes. Man, a higher creature than all these animals, must be led to the highest goals.
Therefore, parents do not fulfill their duty enough if they teach their children to eat, drink, walk, talk, and adorn themselves with clothes, for all this serves only for the body, which is not a person, but serves as a hut for a person. The owner of this hut (intelligent soul) dwells inside; one should take care of it more than this outer shell.
Parents should take care that, in addition to the exercise of faith and piety, they give their children the opportunity to acquire graceful cultural habits and learn the liberal arts and all the necessaries of life.
In a word, the threefold goal of educating youth must be firmly established: faith and piety, good morals, knowledge of languages and sciences. And all this in the very order in which it is offered here, and not vice versa.”
Johann Pestalozzi "Swan Song"
“I cannot do otherwise, I must admit that the true essence of human nature is the totality of inclinations and forces that distinguish man from all other creatures on earth. I must admit that it is not my mortal flesh and blood, not the animal essence of human desires, but the inclinations of my human heart and human mind, my human abilities for mastery - this is what constitutes the human essence of my nature, or, what is the same thing, my human nature.
From here it naturally follows that the idea of primary education should be considered as the idea of nature-conforming development and ennoblement of the strengths and inclinations of the human heart, the human mind and human skills 2. Therefore, the conformity with nature that this idea imposes on the means of developing and ennobling our strengths and inclinations, in the same way, certainly requires completely subordinating the claims of our animal nature to the higher claims of the inner, divine essence of the inclinations and strengths of our heart, our mind and our skills, i.e. .essentially to subjugate our flesh and blood to our spirit. It follows further that the totality of the means of the art of education, used for the purpose of nature-conforming development of the strengths and inclinations of a person, presupposes, if not clear knowledge, then at least a living inner feeling of the path along which nature itself goes, developing and shaping our strengths. This course of nature rests on eternal, unchanging laws inherent in each of the human forces 3 and in each of them associated with an irresistible desire for one’s own development. The entire natural course of our development largely follows from these aspirations. A person wants everything for which he feels the strength within himself, and he must want all this due to these inherent aspirations.”
Diesterweg Adolf “On nature-conformity and cultural conformity in teaching”
“It is necessary to educate in accordance with nature, teach in accordance with nature, act in accordance with nature. This is absolutely true and remains valid if the concept of conformity to nature is taken both in the broad and narrow sense of the word, i.e. if this principle is extended to nature in general or, what is better, limited to only human nature. The principle of nature-conformity education is firmly established. Everything that is recognized as being in accordance with nature is therefore also true, praiseworthy and good. After all, human nature is good, it was created by the creator in order for it to develop and improve on earth in accordance with the laws inherent in it and laid down in it. The principle of conformity to nature has been established for eternity on the pedagogical horizon as a brightly shining, never fading, never changing its position as a guiding light. It represents a pole, an axis around which all other pedagogical and methodological rules that gravitate toward it revolve. They form a circle, a multitude; our principle is also unity. He personifies the ideal to which we should strive both in life and in education and training, without expecting, however, given the limitations and imperfections of our knowledge and other means, to ever fully achieve it. After all, a completely nature-conforming institution, management, education, etc. would also be completely perfect, but there is and cannot be anything perfect on earth. Thanks to this, our principle does not lose any of its meaning, but, on the contrary, becomes our eternal guiding star.”
K.D. Ushinsky “Sins of education in general and Russian education in particular in relation to the nervous organism of children”
“Man does not possess all the powers and abilities that are hidden in his nervous organism, and from this rich treasure a man belongs only to that, and precisely that which he has subjugated to his consciousness and his will and which, therefore, he can dispose of at will.” . One of the main goals of education is precisely to subordinate the forces and abilities of the nervous organism to the clear consciousness and free will of a person. In itself, nervous involuntary activity, no matter how brilliant abilities may be manifested in it, is not only fruitless and useless, but also positively harmful. This should not be forgotten by educators, who often very carelessly admire the manifestations of the nervous irritability of the child’s body, thinking to see in it the beginnings of great abilities and even geniuses, and increase the child’s nervous irritability instead of weakening it with prudent measures.”
Dewey John "Schools of the Future"
“We know nothing about children, and the deeper we delve into issues of education with our erroneous concepts, the more we become confused and lose our way. The wisest writers carefully describe what a person should know, without wondering what is available to a child. Such generalizations are typical of Rousseau's Emile. Rousseau considers existing education to be worthless, because parents and educators think only about the achievements of adults, and for him, any beneficial transformation in education depends on an attentive attitude to the strengths and weaknesses of the child. Rousseau constantly emphasizes that education should be based on the innate properties of those for whom it is intended, and on the study of children - a study that reveals to us the essence of innate properties. This thought of Rousseau gave direction to all modern quests in pedagogy,
This means that true education is not something imposed from the outside, but growth, development of properties and abilities with which each person is born. This position of Rousseau gave rise to a number of conclusions and considerations that were further developed in the work of various reformers in education.”
Upbringing in the development of personality is an important factor along with heredity and environment. It ensures the socialization of the individual, programs the parameters of its development, taking into account the versatility of the influence of various factors. Education is a planned, long-term process of specially organized life for children in conditions of education and upbringing. It has the following functions:
b diagnosis of natural inclinations, theoretical development and practical creation of conditions for their manifestation and development;
l organization of educational activities for children;
b use of positive factors in the development of personality traits;
b impact on social conditions, elimination and transformation (if possible) of negative environmental influences;
b formation of special abilities that ensure the application of forces in various fields of activity: scientific, professional, creative-aesthetic, constructive-technical, etc.
“The integrity of man, who has a single social essence and, at the same time, endowed with the natural powers of a living, sensory being, is based on the dialectic of interaction between the social and the biological.” Upbringing cannot change the inherited physical characteristics, the innate type of nervous activity, or change the state of the geographical, social, home or other environments. But it can have a formative influence on development through special training and exercises (sports achievements, health promotion, improvement of excitation and inhibition processes, i.e. flexibility and mobility of nervous processes), and make a decisive adjustment to the stability of natural hereditary characteristics.
Only under the influence of scientifically based education and the creation of appropriate conditions, taking into account the characteristics of the child’s nervous system, ensuring the development of all his organs, taking into account his potential capabilities and inclusion in appropriate types of activities can individual natural inclinations develop into abilities.
When organizing education, teachers should remember that different types of activities have different effects on the development of certain human abilities at different age periods. Personal development depends on the leading type of activity.
A person’s true achievements accumulate not only outside of him, in certain objects generated by him, but also within himself. By creating something significant, a person himself grows; in creative, virtuous deeds the most important source of his growth. “A person’s abilities are equipment that is forged not without his participation.” Education and activity create the basis for the manifestation and development of natural inclinations and abilities. Practice has proven that targeted education ensures the development of special inclinations and initiates spiritual and physical strength. This is confirmed by the successes of innovative teachers and the practice of neurolinguistic programming (NLP). Incorrect upbringing can destruct what has already been developed in a person, and the absence of appropriate conditions can completely stop the development of even especially gifted individuals. Leading the reader to an understanding of the role of education and activity in the development of abilities, we note the need to develop such abilities as hard work and high performance. Many famous geniuses of mankind claim that they owe all their success to hard work and perseverance in achieving their goals and only 10% to their abilities and inclinations.
When organizing education, apparently, one should proceed from the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky about two interconnected zones of development: the actual and the immediate, taking into account their individual capabilities and the adequacy of the requirements, the development of the motivational sphere of those being educated.
Until now, pedagogy has justifiably affirmed the decisive influence of education on the development and formation of personality through the stimulation of internal activity (motor, cognitive activity of communication) and the activity of one’s improvement and self-development. In other words, this is the formation of motivation.
S.L. Rubinstein noted that everything in personality development is to a certain extent externally determined, but does not follow directly from external conditions. In this regard, the position of R.S. is also consonant. Nemova: “Man, in his psychological qualities and forms of behavior, appears to be a social-natural being, partly similar, partly different from animals. In life, his natural and social principles coexist, combine, and sometimes compete with each other. In understanding the true determination of human behavior it is probably necessary to take both into account.”
The development of a child occurs in conditions of diverse relationships of a positive and negative nature. The system of pedagogically sound educational relations shapes the character of the individual, value orientations, ideals, ideas, worldview, and sensory-emotional sphere. However, the child is not always satisfied with a properly organized system of relationships. For him it is not actualized into a vital necessity. Forming a variety of relationships to reality, it sometimes does not take into account the inner “I” of the individual, mental development and conditions of physical development, the hidden internal position of the person being educated. A high result of development and formation is achieved if the educational system, represented by the teacher, provides a subtle psychological and pedagogical influence in the context of like-mindedness with the child, ensures the harmony of the emerging diverse relationships, takes him into the world of spiritual activity and values, initiates his spiritual energy, ensures the development of motives and needs .
But, at the same time, analyzing the patterns of upbringing as a planetary phenomenon, I would like to note that a conscious attitude towards one’s improvement and purpose on Earth is, perhaps, the main objective condition for the continuation and preservation of life. And in this sense, education is a phenomenon nurtured and preserved in the genetic code of humanity.
The activity of a person’s personality is seen in two aspects: purely physical and mental. These two types of activity can manifest themselves in many combinations in an individual: high physical activity and low mental activity; high mental and low physical; average activity of both; low activity of both, etc.
A person is influenced by a number of factors that determine his activity. The first of these is his heredity, which determines his atomic-physiological and mental organization. The second factor is environmental conditions. And the third factor is education in the broad sense of the word. It can influence the development of physical and mental activity through a system of specially organized training and education itself. For schoolchildren this is education, the development of cognitive interest in learning, the formation of learning motivation, the development of mental activity, the development of a system of value orientations, spiritual ideals, spiritual and material needs.
The function of education in this case will be reduced to the development (“launching”) of mechanisms of self-regulation, self-movement, and self-development in the child. In many ways, man is his own creator. Despite the fact that a certain program of individual development is already laid down at the genetic level (including physical and mental predisposition), a person retains the right to develop himself.
Without denying the primary role of education in personality development, I would like to note that not all people are amenable to developmental and formative influences tested in society. The simultaneous complex influence of positive and negative (primarily social origin) factors on personality development expands the range of mutations of mental neoplasms that threaten the health of an individual, nation, state, and planet. Spiritual values are being replaced by sensual and material values, the number of drug addicts, sadists and maniacs of various orientations, representatives of sects ready to destroy almost all of humanity for the sake of their idea, people with suicidal behavior, psychopaths (people who are unable to make any compromises) are growing. , “when the world of things created by people begins to prevail over the world of human values.” Apparently, society needs new theories and concepts, a dialectical revaluation of existing social and socio-psychological resources that, in modern conditions, ensure the development and formation of an individual capable of self-development and self-preservation as a special biological species on Earth.
Education presupposes the purposeful activity of society to manage the process of human development through its inclusion in various types of social relations in study, communication, play, and practical activities.
To carry out such activities, society uses all the means at its disposal - art, literature, mass media, cultural institutions, educational institutions, public organizations.
Education considers its object at the same time as its subject. This means that purposeful influence on children presupposes their active position.
Education acts as an ethical regulation of basic relationships in society; it should contribute to a person’s realization of himself, the achievement of an ideal that is cultivated by society. Education is based on the qualities of public morality, and the individual receives these qualities in the process of education. In their unity, development and education constitute the essence of human formation.
Education involves equipping a person with a certain amount of socially necessary knowledge, skills and abilities, preparing him for life and work in society, for observing the norms and rules of behavior in this society, communicating with people, and interacting with its social institutions. In other words, education should ensure that a person behaves in a manner that will correspond to the norms and rules of behavior accepted in a given society. This does not exclude the formation of individual personality traits and qualities, the development of which is determined both by the individual inclinations of a person and by the conditions that society can provide him with for the development of these inclinations.
Education is a very important factor that has a great influence on the development and formation of a person’s personality.
The most important patterns and factors in the development and formation of personality can be considered both external and internal.
External ones include the combined influence of the above-mentioned environments and upbringing.
Internal factors include natural needs and drives, needs for communication, altruism, dominance, aggressiveness and specific social needs - spiritual, creative needs, moral and value needs, needs for self-improvement, interests, beliefs, feelings and experiences, and so on, arising under the influence environment and education. As a result of the complex interaction of these factors, the development and formation of personality occurs.
In the process of development, it is difficult to find a period of uniform influence of all factors. As a rule, their alternating or group predominance is observed
External factors of personality formation, manifesting themselves through a strong biological principle (we also mean the original spiritual substance), ensure development and improvement. The biological in a person is not always sufficiently subordinate to external factors of development. Apparently, some genetic atavism takes place in biological development.
Pedagogical practice knows many examples when excellent living and upbringing conditions did not produce positive results, or, on the other hand, in difficult family, social, living conditions, in conditions of hunger and deprivation (years of war), but with the correct organization of educational work, the creation educational environment achieved high positive results in the development and formation of personality.
Pedagogical experience of A.S. Makarenko, V.A. Sukhomlinsky, V.F. Shatalova, Sh.A. Amonashvili shows that, first of all, the personality is formed by the system of relationships that the individual develops with the environment and the people around him, created by parents and teachers, adults.
Education can also be considered as an integral part of the influence of the social environment on a person, but at the same time it is one of the factors of external influence on the development of a person and the formation of his personality. A distinctive feature of education is, in addition to its purposefulness, the fact that it is carried out by persons specially authorized by society to perform this social function.
The development of a child occurs in conditions of diverse relationships of a positive and negative nature. The system of pedagogically sound educational relations shapes the character of the individual, value orientations, ideals, ideas, worldview, and sensory-emotional sphere. However, the child is not always satisfied with a properly organized system of relationships.
For him, the system of relationships does not become vital. Forming a variety of relationships to reality, it sometimes does not take into account the inner “I” of the individual, mental development and conditions of physical development, the hidden internal position of the person being educated.
A high result of development and formation is achieved if the educational system, represented by the teacher, provides a subtle psychological and pedagogical influence in the context of like-mindedness with the child, ensures the harmony of the emerging diverse relationships, takes him into the world of spiritual activity and values, initiates his spiritual energy, ensures the development of motives and needs .
But, at the same time, analyzing the patterns of upbringing as a planetary phenomenon, I would like to note that a conscious attitude towards one’s improvement and purpose on Earth is, perhaps, the main objective condition for the continuation and preservation of life. And in this sense, education is a phenomenon nurtured and preserved in the genetic code of humanity.
An important factor in development is the personality of the student himself (or a person in general) as a self-regulating, self-propelling, self-developing, self-educating person.
The activity of a person’s personality is seen in two aspects: purely physical and mental.
These two types of activity can manifest themselves in many combinations in an individual: high physical activity and low mental activity; high mental and low physical; average activity both physical and psychological; low activity, both physical and psychological, and the like.
The function of education in this case will be reduced to the development (“launching”) of mechanisms of self-regulation, self-movement, and self-development in the child.
In many ways, man is his own creator. Despite the fact that a certain program of individual development is already laid down at the genetic level (including physical and mental predisposition), a person retains the right to develop himself.
However, the strength of its influence depends on a number of circumstances, and its significance in relation to the influence of the environment and heredity varies.
The result of the education process should be a person’s effective social adaptation, as well as his ability to a certain extent to resist society and life situations that interfere with his self-development, self-realization, and self-affirmation.
In other words, during education it is necessary to help a person determine the balance between identification with society and isolation in it.
A person adapted to society who is unable to resist it (conformist) is a victim of socialization.
A person who is not adapted to society is also its victim (offender, deviant).
Harmonizing the relationship between a person and his environment, mitigating the inevitable contradictions between them is one of the important tasks of the education process.
Therefore, education begins to take on a different meaning: not imposition, not the transfer of social experience, but management of socialization, harmonization of relationships, organization of free time.
