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MAJOR ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL RESOURCE OF THE STATE AND THE SOCIETY: LIFELONG PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR SELF-TRAINING N. A.Lobanov
The report is probably the first to treat lifelong professional and amateur self-training as an inexhaustible social, economic and intellectual resource of the state and the society and justify the objective need for systemic formation and development of this form of training.
The guidelines of the report rest upon the hypothesis put forward by the author: it is as early as in the first half of the XXI century that the countries with a high level of innovative scientific and technological development and high living standards will build lifelong professional self-training into the state-and-corporate system of additional vocational training; the institute of external studies will spread widely. The author proceeds from an axiomatic statement: natural material resources such as mineral coal, iron ore, wood, oil, natural gas, etc., providing the mankind's existence, are gradually being exhausted, and only the people's Divine Resource, viz. their ability to expand and deepen their knowledge seems boundless. The major mover of this resource is lifelong professional and amateur self-training.
Preliminary remarks. The title of the report can cause certain bewilderment: is it the right time to discuss the issues of formation of lifelong professional selftraining at the time when the state-and-corporate system of lifelong vocational training exists as theoretical representation rather than a real practice, at least, in Russia? We believe that public discussion of these issues has been awfully late, thus constraining development of an active educational policy in the field of professional self-training. Let us explain our belief.
First, the institutional state-and-corporate system of lifelong vocational training and the institutional system of lifelong professional self-training have been existing quite independently from each other so far; hence, there is no consecutive dependence what should be studied earlier and what later.
Second, the sources of formation and development of these two systems are different: formation of a state-and-corporate institutional system of lifelong vocational training is a state and private-corporate interest and privilege, hence, connected with social and economic interests and opportunities of the private-corporate sector; whereas development of an institutional system of lifelong professional self-training has until recently been caused by a need and a necessity for at least a part of the working population to get additional professional knowledge and skills to preserve their social and/or professional status
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(here, we do not touch on the issue of career development, which is often put in a normative dependence on additional training). However, time is coming or probably has already come when state-and-corporate interests and wage-and-salary earners' interests concerning the purpose of professional self-training will approximate.
Third, it has to be stated that despite general comprehension of importance of the institute of professional self-training as an economic and social resource; the attitude of the state, and largely of the society to professional self-training has remained the same, viz. it is a form of satisfaction of the individual's own interests. We cannot agree with this statement as the only, absolute purpose / designation of professional self-training. Certainly, it fulfilled and goes on fulfilling a social function of satisfaction of individual interests; but the results of these in terests, often rupturing the intellectual shell of personal professional interests, acquire social importance, give rise to new social or technical initiatives, changing our habitual, and even fundamental, outlooks. It was probably to lifelong professional self-training that we owe a lot of discoveries made in the past, and the place and the role of this form of training in the XXI century is still to be comprehended.
On the dual nature of self-training. Self-training is one of the most ancient social institutes of the society, accompanying people all their conscious life through. In a wide sense of this term, self-training is understood as a process of acquirement of knowledge by independent studies. It was in that meaning that the term was included into the majority of dictionaries of the Russian language and specialized dictionaries. Unfortunately, we cannot find any reasonable explanation to the fact that the term self-training was not included into the Explanatory Dictionary of the Alive Great Russian Language by V.I.Dal.
It is significant that until the middle of the XX century, lexicographic sources only applied the word self-training to pre-professional training, i.e. it was rated as the knowledge provided by a comprehensive school. Thus, the Dictionary of the Russian Language by S.I.Ozhegov (1953) and the Dictionary of the Russian Language made by the Institute of the Russian Language of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1961) explain the word self-training as acquirement of knowledge by independent studies outside school and unassisted by a teacher (self-study training) [1, c. 640; 2, c. 25]. Later revisions of the Dictionary by S.I.Ozhegov limited self-training with that provided by school. But even when self-training was considered in a wider context, it was only understood as acquirement of general educational knowledge, leaving professional knowledge at the periphery of scientific analysis. In our opinion, such comprehension of self-training limited not only the semantic essence of the concept, but also the real nature of this
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social process and phenomenon, which always had a dual nature of manifestation and development, viz. a general educational one and a professional one. However, it was only as late as in the middle of the 20th century that professional self-training started becoming really popular; it started to be considered if not as a social and economic resource of the society, then at least as the social phenomenon. We can find confirmation to this opinion in the Pedagogical Encyclopaedic Dictionary (2003), where the term self-training is understood as purposeful cognitive activity controlled by the person himself; acquirement of integrated knowledge in some areas of science, engineering, culture, political life, etc. [3, c. 252]. The authors of this dictionary refer professional / special self-training to basic kinds of self-training, stating that opportunities for self-training were largely increased by appearance of the Internet [3, c. 252]. It has probably been one of the first indications to the service role of self-training in mass professional self-training made in the domestic literature. A similar definition of self-training has been given in the Pedagogical Encyclopaedia (2005) [4, c. 511].
It was in the epoch of escalation of institutional forms of vocational training and increase in the role of additional training all over the world that the need for professional self-training became a social and economic imperative for an appreciable part of the working people, a condition of their preservation of the social status and the professional image, as well as a condition of their competitiveness in the labour market. In the same way as a publicly performing pianist needs everyday practice to maintain his level of mastery, so a todays modern worker needs constant maintaining of his level of professional knowledge and skills to be competitive both at the domestic level, i.e. within the company / organization, and in the external labour market. In vocational training, this compensatory function is largely performed by professional self-training. It is common knowledge that a lot of outstanding scientists and cultural workers achieved the highest results only by self-training or largely owing to self-training. At the same time, it is absolutely clear that professional self-training was not reduced only to acquirement of knowledge, but implied acquirement of some skills and experience. The researchers did not treat the two latter elements in the structure of self-training as an independent subject of analysis, which considerably impoverished scientific representation of importance and function of professional self-training in the intellectual and social process of formation of a person. In the process of professional self-training, the person acquires not only professional knowledge, i.e. integrated data on this or that subject or phenomenon; but also some skills and experience of application of this knowledge, which is generally developed into steady skills in certain kinds and forms of labour activity.
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Paying a tribute to the primary, secondary and higher vocational training provided by educational establishments, 1 cannot but draw your attention to the fact that even the XXI century has enough activities / jobs that people can perfectly master themselves. For example, they include driving and car repairs (we do not touch on the issue of passing a driving test), cultivation of vegetables and building of summer residence and adjoining structures, learning of foreign languages and acquirement of computer skills, etc. Well-known have become international actions of hackers, who are mostly self-educated people in some cases demonstrating professionalism surpassing that of analytical programmers having special vocational training. In other words, even in the XXI century, people can independently master many professions, be competitive in the labour market and preserve this status for the whole of their lives if they constantly raise their professional level by themselves.
On amateur self-training. There might not be people in the world who have not mastered this or that activity induced only by their own wish and interest, for example: trucking, foreign language, musical instrument, woodcarving, knitting, mushroom pickling and a lot of other useful and interesting occupations. Amateurishness and professionalism always go hand in hand, which makes human life more diverse and interesting. The Dictionary of the Russian Language stipulates amateurishness as an Occupation with something without proper knowledge / awareness; dilettantism [7, c. 282]. The history of mankind knows a lot of examples when amateurishness reached the tops of professionalism - Paul Gauguin, suffice it to say. In our opinion, there is no exaggeration in saying that all the greatest discoveries and masterpieces of the world classics were made and created in the post-university period of vital activity of genii (if they studied at university); and it was by professional and amateur self-training (if this word is applicable to the work of a genius) that they obtained knowledge necessary for creativity. However, it is not only due to geniuses that human capital grows up. Every day billions of people worldwide independently seek to expand and/or deepen their knowledge, skills, experience; thus increasing their own and planetary intellectual capital. It is probably high time, at least, for the governments of industrially developed countries to introduce economic and moral incentives for people to need and wish to get self-training as this form of vital activity has huge economic, social and intellectual reserves. Votes in favour of state support of such an action have already been heard [8, c. 5-12; 9, c. 12-20].
Self-training and self-education in the context of secular and religious cultures. One cannot but note one more important social function immanent to professional and amateur self-training, viz. self-education. It is quite obvious
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that many results and, first of all, the outstanding results achieved by particular people by self-training were largely a consequence of self-education rather than only increments of professional knowledge. Both self-education and education have a dual nature, viz. a secular and a religious one, the latter being often implicit. However, domestic pedagogics is keeping silent on influence of religious culture on self-training and self-education even in the post-Soviet period. Having created a few tens of new educational methods based on universal or democratic values, which are apparently the greatest achievement of human culture; the todays pedagogics has absolutely ignored the thousand-year religious culture, forming a base of the modern secular culture of the whole mankind. If the issues of training and education are from time to time discussed in the context of influence of secular and religious cultures [5;6 и др.], then the issues of selftraining and self-education have never been discussed in this context, the latter does not mean that the institutes of self-training and self-education did not experience in the past, viz. in the Soviet period, and are not presently experiencing an all-pervading influence of religious culture and, first of all, Orthodoxy, which can be explained by the following:
first, secular education has never broken off its connection with the spiritual foundations of Christian culture, even in the period of monopolism of communistic ideology. It is enough to recollect that classical samples of Russian and foreign literature, painting, architecture etc. have been transfused with Christian outlook, entering the hearts of those who touched the great creations of the Russian world culture even for a short time if not through consciousness, then through subconsciousness. Though several generations of the Russians were violently isolated from religious culture and preceptorship, millions of people of this distressful country remained in the bosom of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as other creeds; thus, the information field of religious consciousness was preserved;
second, moral values of the modern civil society represented as the national and universal values, included in school and other educational programs as the greatest achievements of the open society as well as the goal-setting ideals of the communist morals have been borrowed from Christian ethics; and it was as long as for two millennia that nobody managed to supplement these moral standards / precepts with any new revelations. If we need better understanding of the essence of self-training and the role of self-education in this social process, actuation of self-training, its engagement into solution of social and economic problems of the society; it is necessary to remove a lot of barriers still separating secular and religious training and education. It is on this way that new opportunities of self-training and self-education appear, stipulating our
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relation to work and professional activity in many respects.
Independent mastering of this or that trade, kind of labour activity outside self-education and spiritual development leads to formation of a morally defective and in some cases even antisocial personality. Dualism of self-training is obvious enough. In this connection, it becomes clear that formation of a harmoniously developed personality is possible if self-mastering of this or that trade and maintenance of a necessary and sufficient level of professional competence are integrated with self-education, spiritual and intellectual selfimprovement. We realize a certain conventionality of the term self-education as people are not formed in separately taken apartments and do not exist in themselves, and socialization is influenced by many state and public institutes; nevertheless, the moral principles the people put forward and follow all their life through change their morality and spirituality as a result of their will and self-education.
Professional self-training as an objective necessity. Self-training has two main forms: aspiration for independent self-knowledge and cognition of the surrounding world, on the one hand, and aspiration for self-affirmation in the social world, on the other hand. Comprehension of self-training in this sense is integrally connected with such a personal feature as independence. The Dictionary of the Russian Language gives a developed comprehension of this word, disclosing it as a personal feature on the basis of the adjective independent, namely: «1. Free from subordination or dependence on anyone / anything; selfrelying. ... 2. Capable of independent actions, judgements; able to act by his / herself, unassisted or uncontrolled ...3. Made by himself / herself or unbidden, unassisted or uncontrolled [2, c. 29]. Professional self-training allows not only deeper disclosure of the personal potential in the selected professional area, but also better understanding of the surrounding world. The extent of penetration into the personal professional potential and the secrets of the social and natural world surrounding us depends not only on the personal native abilities, but also on the intensity and continuity of the independent efforts to master knowledge and skills.
The conventional educational system treats self-training as a non-institutional form of increment / augmentation of knowledge or making up for some deficiency in the system of knowledge. As the volume of the knowledge devolved and the duration of conventional training are determined by this or that stage of the educational system, which makes the objectives of such training finite; a role assigned to self-training was local and rather auxiliary. Such role met the conditions and tasks of conventional training. However, this service role of self-training undergoes substantial changes when passing from conven-
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tional to life-long educational system, which is connected with the objective gain of scientific knowledge in all branches of professional activity and a sub jective need of specialists not to find themselves at the periphery of professional knowledge. And one method to overcome the gradually accumulating deficiency of professional knowledge is professional self-training. Since the second half of the XX century, professional self-training passes over from the area of subjective individual need to expand and/or deepen professional knowledge and skills to the
objective necessity to master new knowledge as a condition of social survival. For modern Russia, this form of training, viz. professional self-training, becomes especially pressing, objectively necessary for professional growth of the specialist wishing to be competitive in the labour market and meet the growing requirements made by the employer to wage-and-salary earners. In a well-developed system of lifelong professional education, professional self-training is now ranging among recognized forms of advanced training and will probably be financially stimulated by employers when proper time comes.
Not only does professional self-training develop and deepen the knowledge received in a professional educational institution, but also allow successful overcoming of a certain scantiness of the knowledge received during the studies. I am absolutely sure that neither the systems of lifelong professional education already existing in the world practice, nor those to be created in the future can enrich the world with new Newtons, Lomonosovs, Einsteins, Vernadskys, new Nobel winners if these educational systems are not supplemented with a lifelong professional self-training system.
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Translated by Central Office of Translations (SPb.)
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