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HUMANITARIAN PARADIGMS OF EDUCATION
Y. V. Senko
The humanization of various spheres of human activity has become the identification mark of the late 20th century, a way to overcome the negative effects of civilization. Foundation of the worldwide humanitarian funds to support relevant projects, provision of humanitarian assistance to various regions affected by natural disasters, wars, epidemics, environmental disasters, social upheaval - all these events are typical of the early 21st century.
The current state of education, and not only in Russia, is characterized as a critical one. In connection with the search for a way out of this situation, various doctrines, concepts, strategies, education paradigms are being built and widely discussed, in which its critical situation is considered in various aspects: ontological, socio-cultural, methodological, and pedagogical. First of all, the crisis of education acts as a crisis of “education of a person” (F.T. Mikhailov, M.K. Mamardashvili, M. Heidegger, V. Frankl et al.). The systemic nature and extent of the crisis are good reasons to associate it with the problem of existence, the development of a person in today's fast -paced world, the problem of warning about impending anthropological disaster, and hence, the problem of finding harmony with the world, values and meanings in the world. As one of the heroes of the dystopian novel by M.A. Bulgakov, “The Dog’s Heart” used to say, “devastation is not in the outside world - it is in the minds of people”.
Another aspect of the crisis in education is associated with the “deficit of culture in education” (V.P. Zinchenko), technocratic overload of education, its “humanitarian starvation” (E.D. Dneprov) and, as one of the consequences of these events, with the translation of knowledge in an alienated, impersonal form that has exhausted itself. The dehumanization of education is a clear manifestation of this fact. It is backed with different types of alienation (a student from a teacher, a student from school, a school from society, a teacher and students from their own tasks and goals), and the existing tradition in determination of the content of education, its development, and its presentation to students. Thus, the task to achieve and maximize the “objectivity” of the fragments presented to students from social and historical experience has led to the fact that subjective, personal moments have been excluded from it. In the words of Alexander Herzen: “a person who died in science, hid in a parabola”. In this situation, “foreign” socio-historical experience is alien and dehumanized in relation to a student. The personality of a student and personality of a teacher turned out to be lost, and hidden in relation to education. This crisis is so deep that it is time to declare education a humanitarian disaster zone.
However, there are the origins of the crisis in education, lying within education itself, in its methodological grounds. It is known that in the critical periods of development of science at the stages of change of the style of thinking, there is an urgent need for reflection of the foundations of science, its category toolkit, subject and methods. Pedagogy is currently experiencing exactly this period. It is characterized by a change in the ideal of education, its transition from the filling
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paradigm (children - bags for the program), to the cultural and creative one, which involves the development of “life” knowledge, the transition from an “educated person” to a “man of culture” (V.S. Bibler). In contrast to the “educated person”, who mastered the achievements of the society and uses them, “a person of culture” matches in his mind the irreducible cultures, focusing its activities on others, and is willing to start dialogue with others. This topic is covered in the summary of the report of the European International Commission on Education for the twenty-first century. Its chairman, Jacques Delors, believes that the foundation of modern education should include four pillars: to learn to live, to learn to know, to learn to do, and to learn to coexist (UNESCO, 2006).
There is a major fact in pedagogy, the essence of which is that the interaction of direct participants of the pedagogical process in its ontological foundation, determines the very existence of the educational process as a pedagogical phenomenon. After all, the educational process is a meeting of people in the meaningful world. However, this meeting in humanitarian and technocratic paradigms of education has different semantic meanings, and contains nonidentical messages.
The base of each professional culture includes a pattern - a definite historically constituted matrix that forms the “core” of culture, and is formed by it. It articulates the culture, is a kind of metaphysical or ontological symbol of this culture, and implicitly contains its universal representations. In pedagogical culture, this role belongs to the author's position of a teacher. This position constitutes its activities: determines the value-based and sense-based coordinates, a subject, the ontological representations about the pedagogical process, and its methodological guidelines.
The pattern of classical pedagogy is paternalism (this harmony does not seem random) with its clear-cut dominant to the implementation of target-rational, subject- object relations in educational practice. This scheme was organically built into the technocratic paradigm of education. In this situation, the objects of the external world and the students are perceived by a teacher as a condition or environment of his/her teaching activities, focused on the achievement of his or her own goals. The pattern of post-classical pedagogy is a focus on others, with its clearly defined focus on the implementation of value- rational, subject-subject relations in educational practice. These relationships are defined by initially recognizing the value of others, and a conscious belief in the value of a particular mode of their activity as such, irrespective of their final success. Focus on others means the establishment of a mutual understanding of each other, inside which a person takes the place of the other person. It is something more than empathy and compassion. This also includes the willingness of a teacher to always learn, based on the experience of his or her students. In this case, a teacher has no monopoly as a tutor, a mentor, a counselor. The focus is on mutual learning and understanding of life among all participants (G.S. Batischev). Focus on others is also an understanding and appreciation by a teacher of the right of other people to be different in relation to the teacher and the students; to be themselves. One of the three major rights mentioned by J. Korczak in the “Magna Carta” is the right of a child to be him or herself.
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The real meaning of pedagogical activity consists of the creation of conditions for the development of “Ego”, and “Self-existence” of other people. The definition of its purpose is paradoxical: my activities (I - teacher), but its purpose is formulated in the terms focused on others. Therefore, the interaction “a teacher - a learner”, “a teacher - a student” involves real teaching activities, insofar as a teacher links a subjective sense with it. We may talk about the teaching activity, only when its meaning is related to the activities of the other person, when it is focused on the discovery and implementation by other people of the essence of their activities. Here, we have in mind not some “objectively correct” or metaphysically “true” meaning, but the subjective meaning of interaction by a teacher with other people. The author's position of a teacher, which originally implied co-authorship with students, organically fits into the humanitarian paradigms of education.
At the end of the 20th century, D.S. Likhachev expressed his opinion about the age to come, which will be the century of humanitarian culture. By that time, for many of us it had become clear that the era of classical pedagogy as a science of education was coming to an end. Narrative teaching was also coming to an end - a story about the educational process. It showed a turn from the system to the fate mentioned by L.S. Vygotsky. This turn is difficult and lengthy: education in the 21st century is an effort to be a humanitarian education. It means a switch from the pedagogy of paternalism, the focus on a specific subject, a monologue, an explanation of pedagogy focused on others, cooperation, dialogue, and understanding. Overcoming the technocratic illusion associated with the rational calculation of a “graduate model”, the “standard of education” with complete predictability of the training results, is impossible without humanitarian thinking, and without the humanitarian education of a teacher. Such a teacher does not operate functionally, following the social role, but rather implements his or her own vision of the pedagogical process, building his or her life, and himself or herself, implements together with the students his or her position of an author (essentially, co-author!).
It should be noted that education is resistant and conservative, first of all due to the position of teachers, who in today’s conditions not only perform their professional duties, but rather fulfill a mission of enlightenment. Moreover, even in times of crisis this system shows trends of its own development. Such trends include humanitarization, fundamentalization, and informational support of education. Movement in each of these directions has its own “specific logics” defined by the originality of a trend. However, with all their differences and even contradictory character (fundamentalization and information support do not change, unlike humanitarization, the traditional, filling model of education), they are likely to be relative to complementary aspects, rather than opposing ones. Probably, there is no single universal solution to this multi-dimensional, multifaceted problem of overcoming the crisis in education.
Nevertheless, in all possible ways of overcoming it, humanitarization is the first condition. This statement is a consequence of awareness by society, of the fact that the humanitarian component of a person is a core of personality. Moreover, the humanitarization of education is associated with global, and planetary changes in the modern world (overcoming technocratic and scientific
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traditions as well as the split of culture and education into humanitarian and technocratic components), with the hope of changing the mentality of the society.
In the early twenty-first century, the article “a teacher on the verge of the twenty -first century” written by Y.M. Lotman, ends with an uncertain outlook: The twenty-first century may prove to be a huge barracks, and it may also be a new Renaissance. Development of science and technology gives us both doors. It depends on us, which door we will go through” 1. The construction of education as a humanitarian practice helps us to make this forecast clear. Today and in the future, it is important to ensure that the pedagogical process, over the course of which education is built, is faithful to its own nature, i.e. is adequate from the point of view of humanitarization, and is moving towards the multidimensional complexity of a person’s subjective world without inflicting damage on it, by means of the schematism of ordering.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
1 Лотман Ю. М. Воспитание души. СПб., 2003. С. 180.
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