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HOW THE CONCEPT OF LIFELONG EDUCATION DEVELOPED IN TEACHER-TRAINING AND EASTERN SLAVIC PEDAGOGICAL THOUGHT
N.V. Kuznetsova
The concept of continuing education for teachers as an endeavor in the name of self-improvement and personal growth, not just narrowly specialized training, had taken root in Slavic pedagogical thought long before the lifelong education concept appeared in the 20th century. A look at the historical archives of the pedagogical science demonstrates this realization that all categories of educators need to constantly educate themselves-a view shared by many foremost pedagogical thinkers in different epochs throughout history. However, a closer look at historical evidence shows that the concept of self-education for educators was articulated and acted on somewhat differently in Slavic, Western European, Asian and North American pedagogical discourse. Those differences may have had much to do with the origins of pedagogical views, which were very diverse and included religious commandments, schools of philosophical and scientific thought, public beliefs, the history of the formation and progress of the national educational systems and institutions, and so on. Let us take a look at some of the prime examples of what the exponents of "classical” Slavic pedagogical thought had to say about the self-education and self-improvement of educators.
Konstantin Ushinsky, the paterfamilias of Russian pedagogical science, proved that the central figure in any school is the teacher, who cannot be replaced by any syllabuses or curricula, any schoolbooks or technical aids. Ushinsky viewed self-education and self-improvement of teachers in the context of their rising awareness, advocacy of teachers’ rights and proof of the immense value of the teaching profession. To live up to his/her noble calling, the teacher had to be prepared in every way. Ushinsky discussed many aspects of this concept in his "Teaching Seminary Project,” in his work memos and articles. Ushinsky believed that the only way for the graduates of his Teaching Seminary to rise to the top of their professional career was by continuously educating themselves while carefully studying other educators’ best practice and analyzing their own experience.
P.F. Kapterev left us a legacy of pedagogical thought which is still relevant today. Kapterev discussed self-education of teachers in his Didactic Essays on the Theory of Education, most notably in the chapter, Qualities of a Teacher. It was Kapterev who famously said: "Teachers must themselves continuously learn, learn and learn. This is the best advice any didactic scholar can give them, and the key to their great power lies in fol-
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lowing it” [1, p. 598]. Kapterev proved that teachers must constantly work to develop and improve themselves: "While teaching, the teacher must himself learn and the school where he teaches must be his place of learning. His lessons to his pupils must be his lessons to himself, too” [1, p. 600]. Kapterev’s characterization of teachers who stopped in their development is as relevant as ever: "Teachers who have stopped in their development cannot usually develop others; all they can do is "teach” or transmit rigid formulas and information; in a dead, mechanical fashion they will reproduce what they themselves have learned by rote, and they expect others to learn it by rote as well” [1, p. 601]. Kapterev defined them as "teachers by rote, by virtue of habit or of not being able to do anything else; not by vocation or by predilection of the heart.”
Democratic thinker K.D. Alchevskaya, who founded the Kharkov Sunday School, also prized self-education of teachers. There was a teachers’ library in her school as well as a library for students. The motto of the school was: "As much freedom as possible; as few restrictions as possible.” Alchevskaya invented and put in action an innovative method of selfeducation: teachers’ journals, where teachers recorded their pedagogical observations, shared their ideas, thoughts, conclusions, analyses of new learning formats and methods, their perceptions and aspirations [2, p. 109114]. In his article, Philosophical and Pedagogical Education of Secondary School Teachers, N.I. Demkov, a well-known Ukrainian educator who lived in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, wrote: "The more versatile and educated the teacher is, the more conversant he is with various pedagogical matters, the more successful his classes” [2, p. 141-151]. In regard to the teacher’s duty to educate himself, Demkov stressed the need for versatile education and self-education of teachers, and its import on personal selfimprovement. This is how the question of teachers’ self-education was posed and solved in the "classical” Eastern Slavic pedagogical thought.
But how have those ideas evolved in more recent social and historic contexts and, specifically, in 20th-century pedagogical thought? The 1920s saw the rise of two views on teachers’ self-education and retraining. The first one dictated that the content of self-education should be as close as possible to the immediate teaching practice. Proponents of the other view questioned the "narrowing of the methodological and pedagogical content” of teachers’ education and criticized "industrial focus” in teacher-training.
M.M. Rubinstein wrote: "What teachers need for their growth is not some luxury; it’s the bare necessities required by the very essence of modern pedagogical science... After all, a teacher is first and foremost a human being” [3, p. 94]. Were the ideas of Eastern Slavic pedagogical thought on
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the personal self-improvement of teachers through education taken any further in the theory and practice of pedagogical education during Soviet time? Indeed, those ideas were realized in several organizational matrixes designed for the retraining of teachers. There was a School for Young Teachers in the 1980s at the Leningrad Regional Retraining Institute for Teachers (headed by V.N. Skvortsov) and the Laboratory of Education Sociology for Adults at the Research Institute of General Education for Adults of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the Soviet Union (headed by S.G. Vershlovsky). The School quite successfully put the central ideas of lifelong learning to work, most notably, personal development through education by combining narrow specialization and broad cultural learning. Five years of experimentation made some meaningful additions to pedagogical thought, relating to the sources and tools of education in a professional youth environment. Inter alia, the role of communication as a resource for a young teacher’s learning and self-improvement was examined and described. This form of educational process organization proved highly successful. It was discussed in numerous publications during that period. In the 1990s and early 2000s, regrettably, the theoretical and practical expertise built up over the preceding decades in promoting self-education among teachers was lost and never developed any further due to socioeconomic and organizational problems. Ukraine has hardly known any institutions similar to the School for Young Teachers. We believe it is time to resuscitate and further develop the ideas that used to inspire teachers to learn-the ideas that were elaborated on in the "classical” Eastern Slavic pedagogical thought. It is also time to bring back the cutting-edge practical matrixes implemented in the teacher retraining system of the Soviet era.
References
1. Каптерев П. Ф. Избранные педагогические сочинения / под ред. А. М. Арсеньева. М.: Педагогика, 1982. С. 595-630.
2. Моаяшенко В. А., Курок О. I., Задорожна Л. В. 1стг^я педагопки Укра'ши в особах. Суми : ВТД «Ушверситетська книга», 2005.
3. Рубинштейн М. М. Проблема учителя. М.; Л., 1927.
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