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A NEW PERSON FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:
THE EUROPEAN ANGLE IN MODERN RUSSIAN EDUCATION
V. N. Skvortsov
In the wake of the Soviet liberalization initiative known as “Perestroika,” Russia’s higher education system enthusiastically joined the integrative trends in European education. The country needed a new breed of professionals, people who are prepared for the challenges of a nascent market economy and the fledgling civil society. Those professionals would be required to possess a professional culture founded organically on a new system of values and creative potential for innovation, a culture perfectly in tune with the concepts of “information society” and “knowledge-based economy.”
For Russian universities, this appears to be the chief educational mission. Welding the Russian pedagogical tradition and European best practice, they are in a position to integrate themselves seamlessly into the current cohesive cultural, economic and educational processes, and to succeed in raising a new generation of graduates for the 21st century. The personality of a new student must exemplify the cohesion between Russia’s educational standards and what is required in Europe in terms of professional training for people preparing to live and work in a common civil environment of Europe. This is what Russian higher education should aim at as it switches to the European two-level degree system for programs and qualifications. Essentially, all training programs should be targeted at nurturing young professionals who are modern, creative thinkers and who share the values of a democratic civil society.
So what are the trends that pave the way for these new people, whose personalities are attuned to modern times? In our view, there are a number of objective cultural, historic, socioeconomic and sociopolitical trends at work, namely: (a) emergence of the continental institutions of a socially-oriented market economy; (b) the European community needs and wishes to resist the growing “mosaicism” of its mentality, while Russian society wants to stave off deterioration of the work ethics and professional culture of its modern highly qualified workforce. In this context, it is important to heed those fundamental factors and trends that condition the professional and civil maturation of a person.
Firstly, the deep, radical political and social shifts proceeding in today’s civil society, most notably: (а) globalization of national economies and education systems; revolutionary changes in how they are reproduced and how they evolve; a shift from determination of the present by the past, to
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determination of the present by the future [3, p. 365]; (b) a shift from status hierarchies to mobile network structures in the organization of many aspects of the life of a contemporary civil society; (c) in a modern society, actors switch from a relatively secluded, mono-cultural existence to open, cross-cultural national, civil and political practices [1, p. 377-380]. This creates an objective need to forge traditions that are close enough in their ethos and are directly related to the organization of everyday life, business and production across the continent.
Secondly, the current trends in the global economy, such as: (а) continuous acceleration of the pace of economic life, and the rising productivity and efficacy of professional work; and (b) dramatic change in the technological and intellectual content and the value and meaning of the professional activity of many economic actors. V.M. Simchera believes there is a strong likelihood that mankind may stand to double or triple the efficacy of its use of all resources in the next 100 years, multiply labor productivity a hundredfold, and multiply the current cumulative industrial output 400 times [3, p. 366].
Thirdly, the "human” shifts in today’s civil society at the turn of the century. As society underwent certain dynamic (and, in Russia’s case, truly revolutionary) changes that concerned all of its subsystems (education included), there arose a stronger need to account in practice for the intuitively perceived undercurrent of the real life of Russian citizens, and there also arose a stronger need in critical governmental decision-making to account for the "potential” meanings of modern life, which are often only implied, but never lie on the surface, are never obvious and never directly follow from the past experience of operation of social institutions (the education system included). In the modern world, life has not merely accelerated to the maximum in space and time, it has developed a "thicker” texture. Viktor Frankl wrote: "In a century when the ten commandments have apparently lost their meaning for many, man must be prepared to receive 10,000 commandments embedded in 10,000 situations life confronts him with. Then not only life itself will appear meaningful (and meaningful means filled with meaningful endeavors), but the man will also develop immunity from conformism and totalitarianism, these two consequences of an existential vacuum. Only an awakened conscience gives man the ability to resist...” [4, p. 39]. In a professional context, humanitarian shifts are tied to: (а) a significantly higher "culturocentrism” of modern public production; (b) stronger integration and mutual interaction between socialization, professionalization and culturalization of modern citizens; (c) them reinventing themselves as creators and innovators, developers of intensive know-how, professionals who can
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intuit and foresee the prospective direction of the entire system of interlinks between professional phenomena; (d) their formation as such persons who are truly and practically capable of responding to all the key contemporary environmental, technological, economic or cultural challenges of social progress.
(4) Fundamental trends associated with the processes of “professional redefinition” in modern real production, as reflected in the differentiation and merger of professions, and the emergence of new social and economic statuses of production activity (professions) in terms of how they affect the modern man as an actor within a diverse spectrum of the subject areas of public production.
In our opinion, the abovementioned trends, which dominated the progress of civil society in the last quarter of the 20th century and the 21st century so far, objectively impacted on the very genesis of the social, conceptual views on personality. In the first 30 or so years of the 20th century, the dominant paradigm was that of the study of the social and economic reserves for personal development and formation. That paradigm dictated that the formation and upbringing of a person should preferably follow via:
(a) perfection of the mechanisms that provide financial incentives for labor;
(b) improvement of labor organization; (c) redefinition of personal professional training, etc. Until the 1990s, social studies that focused on personal development relied on a paradigm that presupposed the latency of creative and civil development potential. The research focus was on social and psychological relations, conflict resolution and building a diversified labor infrastructure to help a person participate in creative technology design and production management, become an active citizen and contribute to the rejuvenation of civil society. In the past few years, a certain research paradigm gained greater prominence, which stresses a systemic study of the possibilities of personal formation and maturation, which treats every person as an integral whole. The scholars who espouse this paradigm advocate a systemic view on employee’s personality as an actor of the general and professional ethics, a leader and a doer that makes the shift possible from management know-how to self-governing organizational democracy. To realize the formation and bringing-up of such a person in practice, it is proposed to comprehensively leverage all the resources available, to develop anthropocentric, culture-specific know-how of corporate and innovation-based governance, and so on. However, opposite trends are just as widespread in real practice at this time. For example, the modern concepts of labor division in management, conceptualized as a special area of activity, have led to a particularly broad and diversified differentiation and spe-
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cialization in management. This has reflected on management training in higher educational institutions. There exist the following varieties of management: (a) public/municipal administration, (b) accounting management,
(c) quality management, (d) organization and production management, (e) strategic management, (f) investment and innovation management, (g) (an-ti)-crisis management, (h) compensatory management, (i) international management, (j) operational management, (k) project management, (l) risk management, and other kinds. Naturally, all these aspects must be accounted for in practice when the task is for Russian universities to bring up and educate the future highly qualified professionals. A critical role in this belongs to the nurturing of a truly new creative potential in modern man, viewed in the context of cross-European educational cohesion. This must be kept in mind as this is a field where we are facing some very serious challenges (associated with what is known as the "Bologna Treaty”) in reconciling our training standards with the employment and professional requirements of the rest of Europe. From this spring certain tensions in the progress of education as such and higher professional education in particular. We believe that effective removal of these educational and intercultural tensions is conditional upon, on the one hand, the level of cultural potential of the older generations and the manner in which professional training is delivered to today’s students and future highly qualified professionals by the pedagogical community of higher educational institutions, and on the other hand, the depth of our understanding of how best to weld together several cultures which have for so many centuries defined all the aspects of the evolution of the modern European communities, Russia included. It appears that these circumstances are the reason why Russia’s higher education system has such difficulty in shaping and nurturing individuals in harmony with 21st century realities. The object of our reflection should be the actual trends, possibilities and processes of formation of uniform transcontinental professional and labor traditions in the young professionals of today, who are the actors of the cross-cultural shaping - essentially though dialogue - of a common European social environment, which we must enter with a degree of caution. The fostering of creative potential by Russian higher educational institutions in the future highly qualified professionals is a dual mechanism that fulfills their personal potential and facilitates their professional integration into the modern Russian and European civil society and, at the same time, provides the most productive format to prepare students for competitive employment behavior in the domain of public production.
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This complex mechanism assumes that every person, as a professional, is able to synthesize in his/her character the general, economic and professional culture, real work and personal creativity. This can only be achieved through the use of cultural interactive tools and development mechanisms of modern Russian higher education. With this approach, we can understand the true basis that is needed to more effectively unfold cross-European educational integration in this country, and we can unravel the mechanisms needed to educate and nurture individuals geared to a new matrix of employment behavior, followed by the person’s professional inclusion (as he or she meaningfully contributes to domestic production and other spheres of Russia’s social life) in the actually existing transcontinental community. In this context, the said tools and mechanisms should be examined from the perspectives of history, culture studies, economics, social science and the didactic content of higher education as such.
Russia’s economy has gradually built itself into the international division of labor in the past few years. The country has fledgling versions of modern market institutions. Now, for the first time ever, the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev has raised this question: "Why keep dragging into our future our primitive commodity-based economy, chronic corruption, and our old habit of leaving our problems to somebody else: the state, the international community, some “all-powerful” teaching - anything or anyone but ourselves? Does Russia even have a future with such an overload of bad habits?” This is the context in which, we believe, Russian universities should set themselves the task of propagating and raising such human capital that is capable of leading our civil society, our economy and our social system to the vanguard of competitive, sustainable development. This is coupled with broader development opportunities for higher education and its targeting towards training top-notch professionals who would be a new kind of people - people who are able to respond to the challenges of today’s global knowledge-based economy. In this, we believe it is important from the beginning to spring from the fundamental guidelines of the ongoing modernization of Russia’s society overall, and its higher education, in particular: along with the long-term trends on the global scale, it is important to examine the key modernization directions of Russia’s economy today. By this we primarily mean the following guidelines: (1) attainment of a leading position in production efficiency, in the development of new products and technology that are immediately related to mass consumption; (2) restoration of past achievements in the use and manufacture of basic technology; (3) redirecting human resources development in real production across the board, from top executives down to regular hired staff; and (4)
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building a financial basis for the domestic manufacture of information technology and super-powerful computers, which inevitably requires new competencies not just in professionals, but in regular citizens, and designing such IT systems that will incentivize research, communication between Russians and people in other countries, and so on.
The pivotal factor of success for the abovementioned development guidelines is the formation and education of employees as a new breed of people and professionals - actors of a new organizational philosophy and new concepts of governance, modernization and development of the real sector of production, people who will be able to radically improve the productivity of labor. The need to improve productivity is obvious. Productivity is pitifully low in Russia: at most enterprises it does not exceed 30% of the US level. In consequence, Russia’s real production growth is far behind the contemporary business standards of Europe, which cramps Russia’s chances of modernizing itself as a state and society. The formation and education of graduates, young professionals for the 21st century, is objectively tied to the most critical aspects of progress in contemporary higher education, namely: (a) the need for a new methodology to design the contents and quality of higher vocational education; (b) advanced solutions for social partnership between citizens, the state and the business community; (c) design of programs for the formation of new social and professional competencies in the future professionals and administrators, which competencies should, on the one hand, anticipate or respond proactively to the needs of a knowledge-based economy and, on the other hand, match the existing system of professional retraining for already experienced employees. To tackle these challenges, we must analyze and build forward-looking "personal models” of the future professionals, and we should organize quality education for young people as a synthesis of knowledge and practice-oriented competencies, provide reliable communication channels for feedback (between production and higher education), and scientifically sound assessment of the results of on-the-job training (not just on a hands-on level, but also on the desk-top level). This would create a definite scientific platform for further improvements in the training of professionals as a new mould of people - actors of the modernization of Russia’s domestic production.
In our opinion, Russia’s industrial production objectively needs a leadership position and it needs to stimulate the emergence of a new generation of highly skilled professionals who espouse a new philosophy and act according to it. On the other hand, this objective need springs primarily from the fact that competitive western companies have, in a sense, grown out of the "classic management” concepts that had shaped up by the mid-
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20th century. Those concepts are no longer in accord with their development needs (or our own economic modernization needs). The novelty of the situation lies in that, on a personal plane, the familiar "manag-er/specialist” is gradually being replaced by the "leader/specialist,” the carrier of a new corporate culture and organizational democracy, which is hatching in the depths of a post-industrial economy. The traditional manag-er/specialist was expected to: carry out administration, focus on sustaining the system and structure of production, make sure his subordinates produce palpable results and adhere to a specified matrix of production-related and professional procedures. The traditional manager was supposed to aspire to do everything "right” formally, which often detracted from innovation. An appropriate management philosophy also shaped up in the course of the 20th century to go with the traditional manager/specialists, which philosophy postulated a peculiar epistemic "core” of managerial work, which asserted the legitimacy of the professional "power” of "manager/specialists” and their high status not only inside a specific productive organization or company, but also outside it. The professional precepts of a new kind of specialist as an actor of the new organizational democracy of modern production, conversely, assert his commitment to constantly making new, positive and meaningful, changes in the production process. The "new” manager’s focus is always on the people, but he builds his relations with subordinates on mutual confidence, not tight control. He is concerned about the long-term prospects of his business and his team. He aspires to devise new, more successful matrixes of production-related and professional conduct for his subordinates without waiting to be prompted by the higher-ups.
So what are the personal qualities of such a specialist, which we expect universities to impart to students in order to make them compatible with new the requirements of production and of our modern civil society, so that university graduates could become successful professionals in their future jobs, so that they evolve into true leaders of Russia’s economic modernization, and so that they fit in perfectly with the European professional and business standards and ethics or, better still, exceed them in their Russian businesses. We believe that a new specialist must, first and foremost, be a person who can be an inspiring "thought leader” for his subordinates. This presupposes the ability to let the most significant values of one’s colleagues be a guide in further development and a pointer to the critical goals of organizational growth. The new leader should know how to motivate his colleagues to act not solely in their own interest, but in the interest of the team. Higher educational institutions must very soon learn to train specialists on a mass scale, who will be able to sustain the continuity
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of responsible, self-governed teams, foster in their subordinates the ability to help themselves and others, and to act as an integral whole. Every university graduate must be able to build his relations with subordinates on mutual trust in harmony with the philosophy of modern production teams and corporations.
In response to the challenges of a modern economy, it is desirable that universities rethink the standards of professional training that apply to their graduates, including those of them who will continue their professional advancement within the system of postgraduate/lifelong education. Specialists leaving the walls of universities and institutes are expected to possess new knowledge, skills and competencies: they must be good listeners, be able to absorb complex, dynamic information, to communicate and engage their colleagues in constructive, meaningful dialogue in challenging situations. The new leader must be a mentor and inspiration for his colleagues and subordinates, encouraging them to fulfill their creative potential. He must be ready to take responsibility for himself and for others. And he must set a good example for his colleagues. In essence, the whole package of the professional and personal competencies of a modern specialist must position him as a central link in the production chain, the pivotal person in both routine work and organizational development. He must be perfectly conversant with all the aspects of his organization’s life: (а) shape its values, corporate culture and ethics and educate employees accordingly; (b) promote innovation and creative take on work in his subordinates, successfully solve any problems that may arise in the course of productive activity; (c) build human relations and interfaces between different employee teams, and between individual staff members of his organization; (d) constantly perfect his leadership qualities and qualifications, create opportunities for cross-learning, personal growth and expertise-sharing. The core personal qualities of a modern specialist should be: reliability, attention, creativity, initiative, teamwork, communicative excellence, dedication, integrity, willpower, sound judgment, spiritual strength, consistency and commitment to always finishing what he started. These are not just skills and competencies, but tried and true strategies for professional development and fulfillment, such as: value-building and team-building strategies, flexible leadership strategies (when leadership functions pass from one employee to another as the situation dictates), strategies for building self-governed teams of innovative thinkers, strategies for removing red tape from the life of his subordinates, strategies for maximizing professional synergies inside the team and between teams, and so on.
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An organization in which specialists like these set the trends will be more likely to avoid many negative development tendencies, particularly in times of crisis. It will be free from unnecessarily strict discipline, management rudeness in respect of employees, concealment of information from employees, clandestine decision-making, unreceptiveness to new ideas, indecisiveness of employees, propensity of managers to pass responsibility to subordinates in the event of failure, or usurp credit for other people’s work in case of success, etc. If universities prove capable of nurturing and graduating such people, then our society will be able to overcome many negative habits and stereotypes on its modernization path.
In the past few years, Russian universities, institutes and other higher educational institutions proved that, despite the recent economic downturn, the kinds of young professionals our economy needs for its modernization already exist, they are among us. This assumption is vindicated by the results of international intellectual competitions, overseas patenting of inventions made by young engineers in Russia, and the veritable head-hunt waged by the major international corporations and universities targeting our best graduates and specialists. After 20 years of reforms, we in Russia now realize that the smarter and more efficient our economy, the higher the living standards of our citizens. But the Russian economy and democracy will not be able to modernize unless we openly, pragmatically and without shame draw on the intellectual resources of today’s western post-industrial society. There is no room for hurt feelings, swagger, hang-ups or mistrust, let alone hostility. We must weed all these things out of our educational system in the interest of economic and social modernization. This is the key to greater freedom and social success for modern Russia, and the key to economic prosperity and entrepreneurial success. If we obtain real results, we will be able in the near future to significantly advance our understanding of the mainsprings of our progress, but more importantly, we will see some actual progress. In Europe, the leading thinkers and entrepreneurs have realized this, too. "We in the West,” writes researcher and entrepreneur Robert Salmon, "have at last realized that people and nothing else are the prime source of competitive strength. Everything depends on the people. For much too long we have believed or wanted to believe that there exist other, more important things; we placed our hopes on machines, technology and IT. But the truth cannot be circumvented. We are now turning back to Man, his personality, his creative potential.” [2, p. 273].
In conclusion, let us summarize our main points.
Firstly, in the formation of a new breed of people for the 21st century, the intercultural nature of the work of Russian universities will have to be
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redefined as a strategic vision for the entire higher education system in Russia. This will: (a) lend an interdisciplinary character to the pedagogical work of Russia’s higher educational institutions, develop it as a logically and didactically thought-out synthesis of all the intercultural contents of the modern educational phenomena; (b) enable them to weld the time-honored theoretical and empirical pedagogical expertise with the intercultural aspects of the formation and education of modern highly qualified young professionals; (c) orientate university teachers towards a broader and deeper application of integrative development tools to its different subsystems, treated within a specific context of the unfolding trans-European educational cohesion; (d) help us devise more successful social and economic policies at various levels and stages of formation of the creative innovative potential of the Russian workforce to integrate it more effectively into the professional and employment best practice of the modern Russia and Europe.
Secondly, it must be noted that the essential character of the progress of today’s higher education in Russia (including its teaching practices aimed at nurturing the personality of the future highly qualified professionals) can only be comprehended from a scientific, systemic perspective. This principle should serve as a precondition for the higher education teaching community to reach a new level in how they understand their own mission and objectives in the context of Europe’s educational cohesion. Notably, the application of this principle to the mechanisms that ensure the blending of Russia’s higher education into the European cultural and educational context would considerably enhance our teaching practice in the educational institutions. It would make sense to extend the systemic principle beyond the range of issues related to the integration of Russia’s social, economic, pedagogical and cultural aspects - to the level of understanding the unity, integrity and intercultural nature of the work of Russia’s universities and institutes, and higher education overall in its pan-European development context.
And thirdly, relying on the systemic practice of building Russian universities into the European educational practice, we must bear in mind that these processes are objectively tied to our actual ability to upgrade and creatively unfold the intercultural contents of their educational curricula, and to nurture and shape our future professionals as persons of a new mintage. In this, the application of the principle of cross-cultural relations, which implicitly includes and generalizes the key philosophical, scientific and pedagogical categories, must retarget the entire educational process towards the nurturing and shaping of new future professionals, and towards an intercultural awareness based on a deep logical and didactic rationale. The
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principle of intercultural cohesion may, in our opinion, prove highly instrumental in helping us strike a good balance between the ideals of universal-ism and our post-modern propensity to boundless relativism in the nurturing and shaping of a new breed of young professionals. The truth is, that intercultural cohesion, being the principle according to which Russian universities organize their work, allows them to rely upon the assumption of the equipollence of education actors representing different standards, values and religions. All this enables the teaching community of higher education to conceptualize any contemporary educational act along the lines of meaningful cross-cultural interaction between the key parties to the educational process. Which is why we think it is important to develop our contemporary higher education in accordance with this principle and target it towards the nurturing and shaping of future highly qualified professionals as new people for the 21st century, and to view cross-cultural interaction as a steady and critical component of that educational process.
References
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