Научная статья на тему 'Educational systems in the context of the destruction of social trust'

Educational systems in the context of the destruction of social trust Текст научной статьи по специальности «Науки об образовании»

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Ключевые слова
social trust / higher education functions / social trust rebuilding / macroand micro-levels

Аннотация научной статьи по наукам об образовании, автор научной работы — Astakhova Ekaterina Victorovna

Education, as a system, is currently undergoing major transformations and experiencing a dramatic overload coming from high-rate socio-cultural, economic and political processes. In this context, one of the system’s major problems is to find recourses and means to rebuild and maintain social trust.

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Текст научной работы на тему «Educational systems in the context of the destruction of social trust»

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF SOCIAL TRUST

Е. V. Astakhova

Education, as a system, is currently undergoing major transformations and experiencing a dramatic overload coming from high-rate socio-cultural, economic and political processes. In this context, one of the system's major problems is to find recourses and means to rebuild and maintain social trust.

Key words: social trust, higher education functions, social trust rebuilding, macro-and micro-levels.

At the beginning of the XXI century, education underwent such profound and dynamic changes that could hardly have been predicted 15-20 years previously. The amount of changes in practical terms does not depend on a region or a country. Of course, the state of education, the model of its development, the resource use, and many other components demonstrate clear dependence on the government, the region, etc. But as with all the common things, education, sooner or later, is influenced by globalization and glocalization. Quickly enough, from the key sector of socio-economic development, it was turned into the basis of society’s modernization. The statement that the level of development of any country depends on the quality characteristics of its population, its intellectual and educational potential, has become trivial. Experts started to discuss the preparation of a competitive personality as being one of the major functions of education, a personality, which according to the definition of Jose Ortega y Gasset, should “be on a par with the times” [1].

Thus, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that we do not only mean higher education. It seems very important to ensure public awareness in well-developed countries, of the importance of the development of education as a unified system, and as a model of continuous, unfinished, lifelong updating of knowledge. The leading, key role of the university sector is not questioned, because only this sector is able to generate meanings and set vectors for the entire educational system’s development. However, in the era of an almost explosive development of knowledge, the dependence of educational stages and levels from each other has increased significantly. Gaps and defects in even the preschool period of education, taking into account the pace and depth of the educational processes that are typical for the beginning of the XXI century, are very difficult to fill in. “It is very difficult to solve a problem of a non-socialized first former, if at all possible”, said L.L. Lyubimov in his report at the international scientific and practical conference “The Priorities of Development of Today’s Education: Theory, Methodology, Practice” [2]. Indeed, the negative trends taking place at the initial stage of education, according to classical laws of synergy, turn out to be irreplaceable losses at subsequent stages of life. E. Lorenz called this phenomenon a “butterfly effect”, when minor, seemingly, small changes in initial conditions can lead to large discrepancies in the results: if a butterfly flapped its wings in China, it can cause a hurricane in the United States [3, p. 42].

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Reducing a child's vocabulary, an inability to extract meaning from texts, break of the triad “write-read-speak” - if the above components are a failure, the development of a person itself is a failure. So, in such cases we cannot expect to receive a conscious person at the end of the system. Conversely, without understanding and a holistic worldview, it is not possible to receive either the breadth of vision, so necessary for modern professionals with a higher education, or adaptive abilities, which, in addition to good knowledge, a good specialist shall have after graduation from a university. One way or another, today’s educational system, on the one hand demonstrates constant diversification and differentiation, and on the other hand, the pursuit of integrity and interconnection. It seems that in this conflict, the specific features of the educational field manifest themselves, as well as its paradigmatic focus on the perception of education as an integrated system with a strong humanistic vector.

In addition to the expansion of the social functions of education, mutual responsibility between education and society significantly increases. Educational institutions are more and more dependent on society, the government, and civil institutions. But society itself is largely dependent on the level and quality of educational structures, and results of their activities. In order to be able to successfully perform the many roles which are given to educational institutions in the culture of society today, they must not only be sensitive and responsive, but also actively responsible, responding to the needs and demands of society; the educational system should also be responsible towards society. The big difference between responsiveness and responsibility lies in the fact that in the first place, educational institutions (primarily, of course, universities) have to be receptive to what society expects from them, and in the second case - to take the liberty to set directions for reflection and policy-making in society [4, p. 25]. At the same time, the penetration of entrepreneurial approaches and business models into education in no way transforms it into a service in a pure sense of this word. However, there is such a tendency nowadays, which is rather a rule than an exception.

Education, when it is viewed in the entirety of its performed social functions, fits poorly into the consumer society, because consumption, as a rule should bring rapid appreciation. However, the results of education are not immediately obvious, but rather in the long term. Here, society must receive the correct settings from education, and some criteria-based basics of approaches to assessing the role, significance, and quality. Otherwise, the transformation of the education sector into the service sector poses a real danger of transforming education from a means of development and formation of needs to place of their satisfaction [5, p. 42]. It is well-organized and thoughtful education that helps to prepare a modern man for the constructive changes in life of the society, to production technology, and hence, to adequate perception of new cultural models and permanent, ever-increasing changes.

For Ukrainian society, in the context of a profound structural crisis, another function of education is of particular importance - an ability to reconstruct and develop social trust. In recent years, for various reasons there has been a marked increase in interest in the search for resources and tools through which the formation (in our case - recovery) of trust relationships in different spheres of society is possible. Today, when in Ukraine there is a complete loss of social trust

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both at the basic, elementary (trust to people), and abstract (trust to institutions and systems) levels [6, p. 127], the need for such resources has increased significantly. Indeed, even in everyday life there are clear marks of complete loss of trust in the state authorities, agencies, power structures, the media, the judicial system, and public organizations. Aggravation of the political crisis led to the destruction of trust also on an interpersonal level, and at the level of micro-groups. In such a situation, it is practically impossible to stop the destructive activity and protest action patterns. So, the search for the resources and tools of restoration of social trust becomes of paramount importance. It seems that because of their social functions, scale, potential of age coverage and interaction with different social groups, education is in a unique position in terms of carrying out work aimed at the restoration of social trust. Of course, the educational system can only realize this function in the presence of a cultural and educational environment, in which the imitation and falsified forms of the educational process are not accepted and rejected.

Education, as a factor of the restoration of social trust, is not an opening or singling out of a fundamentally new function. It fits well into the framework of the socio-political and cultural and creative functions [7, p. 14] of education. However, its significance in the context of a deep structural crisis has increased dramatically. Restoration of social trust at the macro and micro levels is a task of society as a whole. However, the first violin here, indeed, plays the educational system that is capable of carrying out restoration through the subject-to-subject relations within the system (of course, taking into account the changes that have already occurred with each of the key subjects of the educational process) and beyond the system. After all, even at the level of building external relationships (educational establishment - employers, educational institution - region, etc.) there are far more reserves than the developed forms of mutually beneficial cooperation.

The report presented at the conference (or within the framework of a discussion) will give a more detailed analysis of the possibilities of the educational system in terms of building and restoring social trust.

Bibliography

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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas

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