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6Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 12 (2016 9) 2936-2946
УДК 316.61-053.2/.6
Childhood: New Socio-Cultural Trends in Modern Russia
Olga A. Karlovaa* and Alexei V. Lapkovb
a Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia b Lyceum № 6 "Perspective" 52 Kutuzov Str., Krasnoyarsk, 660094, Russia
Received 26.08.2016, received in revised form 27.09.2016, accepted 03.11.2016
This article analyzes some of the relevant aspects of childhood in the context of social and cultural changes of the Russian society in the first decades of the 21st century. The authors seek to understand the prevailing stereotypes in the public consciousness with regard to the most important social and cultural concepts of childhood. The authors aim to define such essential terms of maturation and self-determination of minors as the aggressive environment, information chaos, "collapsing" of the family space and increasing state and society participation in children's lives, and to determine the necessary "action moments" in response to the challenges of our time.
Keywords: childhood problem, childhood object, childhood sociodynamics, new types of children's identity, socio-cultural typology of schools, the space of trial, error, and self-determination, generational ties.
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-2016-9-12-2936-2946. Research area: culture studies.
The phenomena of education and training in the consciousness of modern Russian society are largely connected with the 20th century traditions. Surveys show that the majority of parents believe that their authority is constant and are confident that it should be so. However, social psychologists have discovered that in most cases parents are no longer respected, when the child gets 13-14 years old. "Parents know their children better" is another imperative of the 20th century, which undergoes criticism today. In fact, even when their children enter school, parents have problems (when they want to help their children
to do homework). Evidently, parents have more "daily life" experience, but as practice shows, they lack time and appropriate situations to transmit the important lessons to their children, there are less chances for that. Adults are sure that their child has to listen and obey. In fact, however, even the smallest children can refuse to listen to adults, and traditional parent and teacher shouts nay not have any educational effect. The stereotype of "street is the main enemy in the children education" also appeared in the previous centuries, when the street experience really was in the children's lives. Today there is no outdoor
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: O.A.Karlova@yandex.ru
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space for children as such. And in the new cultural reality of megacities our children gather in completely different and dangerous for them places.
In a sense, the great pedagogical revelations of the past no longer work. In the ABC of the children's world of the 20th century, i.e. the K. Chukovsky's book "From Three to Five", the child usually learns something about the world through the questions and answers of adults. However, modern kids ask adults not so many questions. They have enough of other sources of information to create any kind of their own version of events. Another question is whether the adults have time to pause in their work and discuss this version with the child, explaining whether it is real or wrong. That means the 21st century children do not need our simple answers, as they derive knowledge from other source, the more valuable for them since they do not contain the imperative modality (as opposed to adult responses), but rather information with which one can build their own meanings and versions freely, like playing with Lego. But usually there is not enough time to go along with the child from information to the formulation of the problem, and from this point -to logically right their own hypothesis. And often parents lack skills as well.
And the notion of "child" has long ceased to be unalterable and have a generalising meaning. In today's information culture the concept of "generation" in relation to children is becoming more diversified. Children generations divided by the five-year period, not to say by the decade, are demonstrating more and more divergences. In the mass of children born since 2000s sociologists distinguish at least three generations: children-innovators, children-conflictors and children-reactors. At the same time even one generation displays extremely complicated structure: children orphans and children - social orphans; foster
children, who have not become close to the family and who desperately wish to quit this "adopted status" in the family and at school; children with disabilities; children weighing 500 gram and having special cognitive system; "autistic" children; so-called "stimulated children" born thanks to the family's desire to receive maternity capital: very often these children do not get enough love, care, affection, and even from the school these children are waiting for more than just education1.
For a long time in our society, though in too general terms, there have been discussions about "indigo children". The uniqueness of these children can be diagnosed as early as at 3 years. For example, they use all the modern technology and computers, but have no idea about life. And these brilliant children of virtual reality also come to a regular school and need "life navigation". Next to them at the desk today may sit a child with autism, who may not be sick from a medical point of view, being just another type of a child - a deep and consistent introvert. These children also call for particular and enormous attention which modern school conditions cannot ensure so far. The so-called "state-owned children" in children's homes are from another children's planet, which, on the one hand, is too cold and uncomfortable, on the other hand, it gives everything for free", but only up to full age.
Some psychologists and specialists in culture studies point out such type of children's identity as "rhizome": children who are united in a sufficiently mobile community without the pronounced leader. This is a kind of horizontal association of children which they perceive as absolutely normal. Furthermore, many researchers, in principle, believe that "horizontal communities" are a new socio-cultural trend of childhood, as at certain age children begin to treat their parents "horizontally" rather than authorities. More than that, most children place
their teachers in the same "horizontal value scale".
Some specifics of the children self-identification is associated with the new forms of injustice: for example, a digital and technological divide. If earlier signs of higher status were cars, the parents' jobs or fashionable clothes, today these signs are child's usage of modern gadgets and communication technologies, or, say, the command of English. Some researchers call such children "strong" or "children of the world". Thanks to the Internet, they are tied neither to the school or to the surrounding community, nor to the particular city.
All these socio-cultural reasons of modern childhood must be considered in the context of social predictions about the desired future, along with the modern conditions of growing up and self-determination of children, constantly emerging new children identities.
We have already emphasized the fact that we live in the context of planetary-scale information environment. This information environment is not only multi-channel and diverse, but it is not limited, which largely defines contemporary cultural identity. Comparing this situation with one in China, one finds out that there are no international social networks in this country, though there are their Chinese counterparts with all the ideological and censorial consequences. That is some kind of socio-cultural constraints, which even in the 21st century pose threats to a number of children around the world. However, not in Russia: our children, in fact, are super-informed chaotically. Nobody creates knowledge space for the teenagers, not only safe and useful, let alone interesting.
This chaos is undoubtedly a great creative environment. Nowadays children think vividly and fantasize. Their main tool is visualization. It is understandable why they do not hear us: in our contacts with them there is no special visual
component. The younger generation sees us as the generation of "the bookish galaxy" and comprehends our logic with some difficulty. There is a growing generation of less concentrated, but more reactive people. Reactivity is also a positive quality. You cannot say: "We were focused and good, but today they are reactive and bad". Reactivity is the ability to "catch" the situation very quickly, to determine its type and act immediately. Nothing wrong is in that children are becoming more reactive. It should be taken into account that this feature upstages other skills, e.g. logic, initiative and responsibility. Today we are talking a lot about the immaturity of young generation. Moreover, some experts believe that great many adults have prolonged childhood, which results in their inability to foresee the consequences of their actions even in adulthood. This generation evidently experiences shortage of legal understanding of the situations and has not attempted to overcome difficulties.
All these factors coincide with the rising aggressiveness of the environment in which children live and communicate. It is aggressive in everything, including information dimension; moreover, it is mobile, changeable and intrusive. This dramatically increases the threshold of communication tolerance and psychological stability even among the adults. Every day, you can see how due to life problems parents and teachers take them out on children. Naturally, the children's response is the same.
An important focus of social and cultural background: modern society runs a sort of lowest point in relation to the value of life and health. For more than 15 years already Russia has been trying to get out from this point. But the facts are that Russian children have not been taught these values in recent decades and they have very different goals and motives in the first place. Explicit underestimated value of life and health can be, for example, correlated with paramount
consumerism. Teenage suicides that occur from time to time show that if a mother has not bought a dress or a boy has not got enough attention, these situations may be sufficient to pick up a company on the Internet and make an extreme jump from the ninth floor. On the other hand, the same result may sometimes arise from fashion on risky creative actions and extreme sports.
It is in this context observed in recent years the excessive children infantilization must be considered. It is caused by narrowing possibilities for real actions of children and adolescents. Children in kindergarten are mainly trained and educated, but not socialize in the game. Children in school are always busy with lessons, playing in the yard as a place of experience and self-determination has disappeared in the modern city. There are extremely few places where children and adolescents can be free, active and enterprising. Psychologists are wondering, is it because of this the younger generation goes to the virtual space, as young people have nothing to do in real life? It can be noted that in recent decades socio-cultural relations have lost tradition of teaching interaction as a separate value. Communication while working together is not specifically taught in either kindergarten or school, educators relying exclusively on intelligence. And it does not concern only the choice of some spaces for that purpose, given that the new generation has clip thinking, such places for child and adolescent learning via trial and error should not be dull but quite modern to compete with the virtual space of the Internet. In particular, on the Internet children communicate easier because they do not experience discomfort. If one does not like anything, he/she can write everything which comes to mind and disconnect. So it is easier: no internal responsibility. However, experts warn against the underestimation of the virtuality that may be a risk zone tantamount to reality.
Willingness of children to communicate on the Internet is promoted by another incentive: family space itself gradually collapses and shrinks from all sides. Although now they say much about the kindergarten of the Soviet period, in the 20th century, never in Krasnoyarsk, in Russia as a whole, 100% of children went to kindergartens. Approximately half of the urban children were brought home with grandparents, while in rural areas 100% of children stayed at home with very few exceptions. This is a kind of "forgotten revelation" prevailing among modern parents, saying that under the Soviet regime, all children went to kindergartens. They did not go. Because then it was really another generation of grandparents. And there were other families: with at least three different generations.
Today, young people are trying to live separately from their parents, and they, in turn, do not aspire to become permanent teachers and nurses for their grandchildren, so they communicate with them only once or twice a week. "When retired you just begin to live": some retired people are trying to realize their dreams, neglected by while they were working, others seek for self-actualization, and the third just continue to work. By the way, this gap in generational relations has already hit the oldest generation: a common story of leaving the elderly without care, while their children are alive, healthy and successful.
But if the older generation demonstrates a "compression" of the family space, time that working parents devote to their children is even more compressed. Therefore, the first and primary function of kindergartens at the moment is not education (that is to say, the accompanying task, as stated 15 to 30 minutes a day are difficult to be called education process seriously), but namely the "luggage room" for children. They must be left somewhere in the morning and got back in the evening, preferably in a good condition and
mood. Hence, the parents tend to be interested in the topic of education and upbringing of children in kindergartens, which is observed by psychologists in the Internet surveys. People seem to be trying to justify themselves ("although I am the mother, but I cannot ensure my child's safety, care and upbringing"), so they seek to find faults with safety and education conditions, provided by municipal or private entrepreneurs ("I watch for those who take care of my child very carefully"). There is another side, in this aspect the family continues to "shrivel" as shagreen leather: this is single-parent families. Today in schools teachers almost do not ask to write a composition "My father", as that more than half of children grow up without fathers (in Krasnoyarsk coefficient is 1.6).
While family space is reduced, which is in full compliance with Lomonosov's Law, the value of the state (including municipalities) and community in a child's life increases. Today it is a municipality which solves such socio-cultural problem as promoting family communication. This is one of the reasons for the popularity of Tatyshev island in Krasnoyarsk, as it is the place where you can all together ride bicycles or go roller-skating (which is equally attractive for both adults and children), or generally just do something together. It seems that without such outside stimulating role the majority of families cannot cope with their educational problems.
The experts, who often conduct focus groups with parents at the time of selection of educational institutions (in particular, M.M. Mirkes), are convinced that parents strive to make their children "good". But the pitfall is in how they do it. If you read the online forums for parents, the selection criteria will become apparent concerning, e.g., educational organization. The first criterion is the atmosphere ("children like it", "enjoy", "love the nurse"). But in the end the winner can be children's centers, where not
requiring anything special animators instead of demanding teachers work. The second criterion is the individual approach: parents associate it with only one point, i.e. the number of children in groups, but not with the methods of individual training and education. Next is the safety criterion, important one, but, strictly speaking, it has little to do with education. Finally, meals and additional conditions (e.g., a pool). As we have already noted, it is safety which is becoming a key indicator of the educational institution performance for parents. That is, as it turns out, it is becoming the education criterion.
But we have to agree that no matter how important this criterion is, it should not divert parents and educators from the key point, the actual organization of the education, which provides an appropriate result. Parents often judge the education by the elementary children's results. Education is often understood as "many lessons", as well as performances of children on holidays. Few people estimate education and training by, for example, the degree of the child's independence. But the amount of time during which children can act on their own is a very important indicator of their development.
So, modern parents find it difficult to choose a good school or kindergarten. Internet forums only "heat" the most superficial topics ("the child feels bad in the kindergarten", "the child is mistreated", "they keep losing child's things" and so on). The modern childhood in Russia differs due to extreme variability of family education possibilities and a sharp increase in supply of such services. Every day parents get a huge amount of stories about what a good education is. There is a kind of "natural parenthood sunset": in today's world, parents cannot productively educate their children on their own (without experts and educational community).
Some specialists in cultural studies, in particular, N.P. Koptseva believe that against the
background of the ideas about natural parenthood typical of all peoples of the world 2 the current generation of Russian parents has lack of "parental navigation"; it is like the sociality destruction. Other experts note that while procreation is natural, parenthood is a social process that needs constant teaching supervision. In particular, A.K. Lukina sees the reason in that the childhood of modern parents is different from the childhood of today's children. In addition, the children value and their significance for parents have changed significantly. The child is now seen as a brand, a certain social reward: in this regard, parents are successful to the extent their child is explicitly successful. On the other hand, parents try to compensate their failures by raising their child as successful.
Current socio-cultural task of society and experts is to give parents more meaningful directions. It is necessary to strengthen the expert support of parents, otherwise marketers and animators win. However, expert opinion should be treated very seriously: the expert system concerning children upbringing is still poorly developed in the Russian society, while number of requirements for educational practices is growing. Many cannot imagine education outside the traditional forms, whereas parents who prefer family form of education for their children have a completely different mindset. For example, "school" children think in general about terms and subjects, but "family children" about sections of subjects and the educational formats.
Be that as it may, the current destruction led to parents becoming a risk group. Some parents only declared the children safety as their priority: this hot summer, more than half of children drowned in Krasnoyarsk died literally in front of their parents. While the number of traffic accidents involving children and on their fault is steadily decreasing (indicating, inter alia, their growing awareness of road rules), the number
of children knockdowns right on pedestrian crossings is growing. Parents often give their children not the best example of the society behavior. Sociodynamics of domestic violence is even more dramatic. Cases of child abuse occur more often, especially in families with one stepparent, the mother often supporting stepfather, even in the case of sexual violence. Five years ago it was difficult to conceive of father's sexual violence against their own children, but now and again these situations happen more often.
Reduced parent responsibility for their children (or substitution of this responsibility with the virtual one) can be called socio-cultural trends of our time. Instead of walking in the streets typical of our childhood modern teenagers prefer rented apartments through the Internet. Here they gather at night to drink and socialize, and if they not bought in enough of spirits, they flee to the 24/7 store. So having got a head injury during a drunken brawl in a courtyard, Krasnoyarsk teenager was killed during a night trip to the store. That night none of the parents of teens in the group called them or began to search for their children.
Parenthood in its modern incarnation, responsive to the challenges of today, needs to be learned specially, it is a fact, because stereotypes do not work. What is the first thing parents ask when they come home? "Have you done your homework?" We do not assert, however, that parental control of study is unnecessary, far from it. Only now, in today's primary school lessons are so difficult that parents cannot do them. Even when they look in the first-grader's notebook and see equations with X, they admit being of little help as they were taught differently. On the other hand, there is one area where very few people other than the parents can help the child and adolescent; it is the sphere of emotional life, the sphere of human relationships and interactions. And that parental experience is priceless in this
regard. But it rarely becomes the subject of a special communication with children. That is why it is not surprising that half of children who are registered in the juvenile inspection are from well-situated families.
Much has changed in the public spaces of children stay, particularly in schools. There are schools, which can be called "universal leaders": they are trying to prepare children not only for the United State Exam, but also to the life projects and effective communication. Such schools are scarce. Among them there are ones that have become federal experimental facilities long before, and those who have broken through to victories in projects literally lately. In these schools, the project approach is not only a fashionable mask or even a learning format, but the norm, the main way of educational and social life of teaching and student staff. In the culturological term, this means that the school provides students with the universal competences, corresponding to the relevant challenges of the time.
More common are schools with leadership in teaching this or that subject. They absorbed the long tradition of special classes with profound studying of some particular subjects. Their graduates pass exams well and love the research areas, which they choose to study at university, but the "yen" in the transition from purely learning to scientific and practical thinking processes is a quite spread phenomenon. These schools lack project leaders among their teachers, those able to organize and support new forms of communication and training. This applies both to the field of professional competence, and the sphere of personal leadership in modern communicative and project cultural formats.
Most of the schools are the "functional ones" which demonstrate consistently low results, they act within the "permissive norms", do not show initiative and are not fully in demand (i.e. demand is felt only due to the territorial principle
obliging children to enter the school where they live). Finally, a significant proportion is schools of "poor performance", showing stable low results, without any educational initiatives, not demanded by the population. If we study this phenomenon from the socio-cultural point of view, we can see the following picture. Today among the latest cohort of schools, about 20% schools have signs of social institutions, 20% have low levels of human resources; slightly more - 25% schools demonstrate signs of management inefficiency. Up to 7% educational institutions are located in areas with depression signs, and the same high number of schools have deviant children. If we consider the problem of inefficient schools in socio-cultural context, the lag is mainly caused by the state of educational organizations, in the second place - the state of the family, in the third place - the state of the environment.
Thus, a substantial deficit today (and the most important factor for positive change in relation to childhood in Russia) is the implementation of the right competencies system at all levels. To create children's good communication-project (or any other universal) competencies it is necessary to have teachers with at least a good level of these competencies, as well as those who know the corresponding educational methods. How to do this, if still in the Pedagogical University, for example, a student getting a Master's Degree of Chemistry continues to study chemistry rather than pedagogy or child psychology?
Secondly, compulsory and supplementary education should have effective teamwork. It is school which must connect and address all areas of the children activity and development. Today, in contrast, there are conflicts between a secondary school teacher (as regards the principle of education) with a student actively attending, say, a sports school.
If we touch the children assessment at school, there are even more sources of conflict.
So, the school compares a child with anyone, not with him/herself in the process of development and learning. The child has virtually no chance to improve. Once he/she had received a satisfactory mark, he/she is unlikely to get a good mark further.
On the other hand, the Russian school has not formed socio-cultural concept of multi-faceted human success, still we refer only to the academic success, and now also to the success in tests. Although there can be athletic success of children, but it often leads to conflicts with the subject teachers. There are talents in the arts sphere, revealed in art, dance and music schools, but very little is known about them in a secondary school. And such children's talent as an entrepreneurial success is not diagnosed at all, although, according to American scientists, there are only 14% of people with this talent in the world. Perhaps this is the legacy of the Soviet period. But then, why have not we learned to diagnose and adequately develop this entrepreneurial success?
Today again there are serious discussions about that so many white collars, graduating from our universities, are not necessary in modern Russia. Russia does not need these ambitions related not so much to education got but to a diploma. On the other hand, there is a high demand for talents and tinkers in society. However, today's schools do not place the photos of children who are skillful at crafts and have, say, poor success in physics on the honors board. So Russian schools form the vast majority of children with the loser's psychology, who have to go to college and get a degree as evidence of success to be rehabilitated to themselves, their classmates and their parents, whatever it costs.
Psychology of losers has been generally ingrained in the Russian school in the last decade. In 1990s, not only schools, but also universities experienced exodus of a large number of strong professionals. In the first place, they sought a
salary, which was almost not paid in education then. Who stayed in education? Apart from a small number of enthusiasts, those people who could not get another job. With the advent of a new wave of teachers it has become particularly noticeable. This new generation mostly had another purposes, not connected with pedagogical vocation or enthusiasm. If, for example, a person graduated from the faculty of foreign languages at the Pedagogical University and was unable to settle in a foreign company as a translator, he/she felt like a loser who has no choice other than to teach at school. If a young physicist was unable to go on an internship abroad, he/she was on the same path of failure - to teach at school. This psychology prevails inevitable if teaching subjects begins to occupy a leading position at school, while pedagogy as a basic sense of the profession takes on a secondary role, if it keeps its place at all. Some generations of children were forced to communicate with people who considered themselves underdogs, behaved like losers and transferred this position to the children's environment. It may seem that this is not very important, as such teachers still more or less honestly taught children. But from the socio-cultural standpoint, all this is not harmless. Having grandparents who won the World War II, their parents, who were able to survive and realize themselves in the difficult 1990s, these children were held as hostages in a situation, when their childhood in post-Soviet Russia proved socially useless. At this time people did not think about what would happen tomorrow and how a generation of losers can build a successful country. To some extent, the children were saved by the inertia of Soviet psychology and the fact that education is the most conservative environment in the social sphere.
The legacy of that time is, by the way, one more socio-cultural feature of modern school, abundance of many retired teachers. What made
the Russian school in the 1990s "stay afloat" today becomes a problem. What are technological ways Russia lives and works in now? The President and the Skolkovo leaders name 5-6th technological ways. And what is the technological context of people of retirement age who teach our children, even if communication with a simple mobile phone becomes an insoluble question for them? Modern Russian school experiences a problem of technological multistructure, which cannot but affect the quality of education.
One of Moscow experts K.P. Ushakov said, we have at school what we have, because there is a double negative selection. Those who cannot enroll in another place go to the pedagogical universities, and graduates from the pedagogical universities go to school if they could not get anywhere else3. The question how to circumvent it is not that simple. What the children education lacks today? The first thing is competition, and the second is the development of responsibility. What is meant by competition in the children education? We are so accustomed to the fact that the educational field is non-uniform (there are strong schools and weak ones), but no one ever says that we have a competition among the children themselves. Let's imagine a standard form of the lesson. What is the highest achievement of the children? "Sit down, five". And is this "five" a right assessment? The neighbor gets "five" too, is it the same "five"? What makes the child move on? And then pure cognitive dissonance occurs, based on the belief that "I received a 'five', so mission is accomplished".
Perhaps, in a sense, the ideal model of schools is described in "Harry Potter" books. Above all, there are four houses, and therefore due to the competition between these faculties children can develop within their community. The Russian school has no history of competition between classes. In Soviet times, there were pioneer detachments, there was a type of social
competitiveness, say, who collects more waste paper. And we have lost even that.
There is no competition within the class, there is none between classes as the whole system is arranged in such a way. Abroad the situation is different, let's take China as an example. In China competition among students is not just big; it is incogitable, because such is the social and cultural reality: there are a lot of children. There is even a saying: "If you do not move forward, then you have already been surpassed". All the children move in the educational trajectory, in the 11th grade they have Gaokao - the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (USE analogue), three most important hours in the students' life. These are 4 exams, 2 mandatory and 2 elective ones. Cheating on the National Higher Education Entrance Examination entails a lifetime ban without the possibility of resitting. The exam in different versions has existed since 1957. Students come to take it when they are trained to automatism. This is despite the fact that their school day begins at 8a.m. and ends almost in the evening.
Aforementioned facts have, obviously, negative social consequences as well - up to significantly high suicide rates. But there is a very clear trajectory of success and, of course, motivation. In addition, if by the results of Gaokao one cannot enter the university in the capital (and this person is from the province), then he/she has still only a year or two on average to try to realize themselves. Then the law obliges the person to return to the place where one is from.
In Europe, too, there is competition, but of a different type. In Germany, we drew attention to the fact that the desks are placed in a way entirely strange to us: children can sit facing each other. Between them there is no one. But there are bountiful training materials, all marked with color. What do German colleagues cultivate in their children? First and foremost, the responsibility
- through a competitive component. The child chooses a topic and the number of points that he/ she wants to get by doing the task. The teacher asks what one needs to do. The student replies that this topic is marked with this or that color. "So I will go here to this bookcase, there are materials which I'll take, then I'll sit down and start studying". The teacher monitors the process, and the children come to him/her for advice: this all is very reminiscent of the library. The student tries to take their own educational barrier, and for the fact that he/she took this barrier and outlined the barrier themselves, he/she accrues bonuses. If they cannot take the next barrier, then they sit down with the teacher and discuss why it happened. What is trained? The emphasis is on the development of self-responsibility. The students begin to think about themselves. This is probably one of the hot button issues today in Russian education.
It is important to teach your child to set goals and achieve them. Now we decide for the children, and they must learn to decide for themselves. Not in the sense that they should "enter the state-financed faculty" only, but to choose what kind of high school to go to and why on their own. This will happen when we give the teenager opportunity to develop not only knowledge of a subject, but to opt for metasubject knowledge, to form project thinking and communication skills. In Russia, there are cities that have already begun to implement a variety of accredited events in which a child can get an estimate of his/her metasubject result. However, the majority of schools remain conservative. There are two most stable features - a "school bell" and "class-lesson" system. The reform provided school with USE, but this is just a new form of the exam, because it is still based on teaching subjects as a priority. There is no exam on project logic, on the way of realising their own ambitions, on the basics of correct life choices. USE does not teach the
graduate how to organize time, how to evaluate the effectiveness of this or that decision.
There is another important childhood perspective - space of acquiring knowledge should be interesting; it is the only criterion. However, today this criterion, unfortunately, is useless in approaching the modern school educational process. It is a pity. But all the more necessary to create the independent online educational tools, throwing them like network in children's minds. Why does not this happen in the classroom? Because if the lesson is interesting, it is a good anomaly. The lesson today has another function, namely the function of quiet atmosphere maintenance. Because if the teacher finds it not necessary to maintain discipline, he/she does not need these very 45 minutes, and the school bell, and the table between him/her and children4.
So, it looks like the problem of childhood in modern Russia? Do we have now the object of childhood in socio-cultural terms, which we lost in the 1990s? We believe it to be in the initial stage of formation since childhood as a cultural phenomenon manifests itself when the society thinks about it, decides what to prepare children for. Attitude to childhood in Russia is outdated: from the expert point of view, this is a "protective type" of childhood. But in the world there are other models, e.g., "competent childhood", "cool childhood", "advancing childhood". Russian society has to answer the question: why does it need children? Just to make them serve in the army? Or to have the afflux of consumers? Or does it need children to give the next generation possibility to live successfully and happily and build a successful country? It is important to remind that the current generation of parents does not have the wording of the object of childhood. Today, they do not even formulate goals as once their grandparents formulated ("to have someone to give a glass of water when I am on the verge of dying").
The most important task of the moment sphere, without fear of offending someone or is a serious public and expert reflection of the being misunderstood. processes taking place in the socio-cultural
1 See: Vavilina, N.D., Skalaban, I.A. (2015). Sotsial'noe kartirovanie: metod issledovaniia i instrument razvitiia territorii [Social mapping: a research method and a tool of the territory development]. Novosibirsk: Publishing House "Sibprint".
2 See: Koptseva, N.P. (ed.) (2012). Korennye malochislennye narody Severa i Sibiri v usloviiakh global 'nykh transformatsii (na material Krasnoiarskogo kraia). Ch. 1. Kontseptual'nye i metodologicheskie osnovy issledovaniia. Etnokul'turnaia dinamika korennykh malochislennykh narodov Krasnoiarskogo kraia [The indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North and Siberia in the conditions of global transformation (on the basis of Krasnoyarsk Krai). P.1. Conceptual and methodological bases of research. Ethno-cultural dynamics of the indigenous small-numbered peoples of Krasnoyarsk Krai]. Krasnoyarsk, Siberian Federal University.
3 See: Ushakov, K.M. (2004). Razvitie organizatsii: vpoiskakh adekvatnykh teorii [Organizations development: in search of adequate theories]. Moscow, Publishing House "Sentiabr' ".
4 See in detail: Karlova, O.A. (2013). Na kakikh iazykakh govorit pokolenie kreatorov? [What languages does the generation of creators speak?], In Vestnik KSPU [Bulletin of the Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V.P. Astafyev], 2 (24), 6-13; Karlova, O.A. (2014). Problemy sovremennogo obrazovaniia i seti interesnogo [Problems of modern education and the network of interest], In Praktiki razvitiia: sovremennye vyzovy. MaterialyXX nauchno-prakt. konf. [Development practices: current challenges. Proceedings of XX Scientific and Practical Conf]. Krasnoyarsk, KKIPK, April 2013, 87-99; Karlova, O.A. (2013). Uchitel' 2.0: traditsionnyi gumanitarii ili effektivnyi sotsial'nyi tekhnolog [The teacher 2.0: traditional humanities or effective social technologies], In Obrazovanie: tseli i perspektivy [Education: goals and prospects]. Moscow, 4-11.
Детство: новые социокультурные тренды в контексте современной России
О.А. Карловаа, А.В. Лапков6
а Сибирский федеральный университет Россия, 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79 б Лицей № 6 «Перспектива» Россия, 660094, Красноярск, Кутузова, 52
Статья посвящена анализу некоторых актуальных аспектов детства в контексте социокультурной динамики российского общества первых десятилетий XXI века. В ней предпринята попытка осмыслить бытующие в общественном сознании стереотипы в отношении важнейших социокультурных концептов детства; обозначить такие существенные условия взросления и самоопределения несовершеннолетних, как агрессивность среды, информационный хаос, «сворачивание» пространства семьи и увеличение присутствия государства и общества в жизни детей; определить необходимые «моменты действия» в ответ на вызовы времени.
Ключевые слова: проблема детства, объект детства, социодинамика детства, новые типы идентичности детей, социокультурная типология.
Научная специальность: 24.00.00 - культурология.
