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Significance of spiritual factor and ethnocultural traditions in the development of domestic education
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Taizhanov Altai Taizhanovich, West-Kazakhstan State Medical University named after M. Ospanov, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Chairman of Socio-Political Disciplines Department E- mail: [email protected]
Significance of spiritual factor and ethnocultural traditions in the development of domestic education
Abstract: In the article important features of ethnocultural traditions within the context of education and personal development are considered. The urgency of preservation of national components of domestic education in the conditions of growing globalization is specified. The positive and negative moments of globalization processes are shown, their threat for national education system, culture, spirituality is noted.
Keywords: spiritual factor, ethnocultural traditions, ethnocultural identity, ethnocultural education, liberal arts education, cultural-ethnic developments, ethnic culture.
Today we start feeling more and more acutely the crisis situation overtaking the whole mankind. And moreover, pushing the boundaries habitual to us, the crisis interferes into the beyondness of our existence — spiritual area of Being. The mankind can survive physically if it only survives spiritually that is as cultural mankind: the first thing is absolutely inseparable from the second one. The development of human spirituality as synthesis of reason and good will, knowledge and responsibility. People can do too much today, and too much can lead to disaster.
This entails ignoring spiritual foundations of national culture — in politics, economy, education — and this is especially dangerous in the conditions of public transformation. Understanding inconsistent experience of reforms allows realizing deeper and better the role of education and first of all ethnocultural education. Unique oportunities for formation of spiritually integral personality and simultaneous reproduction of national culture of the people through a person, his/her system of values and reasons to live allow considering ethnocultural education as the most important precondition of spiritual security of society.
Spiritual security is the system of the conditions allowing culture and society to keep their vital parameters within
historically developed norms. Their going beyong the norms in-flunced by different factors, of primarily cultural, value-normative nature, leads to disorganization and finally to society disintegration as a complete system in connection with destruction of the spiritual foundations structuring it [1, 7-13].
In the conditions of modern civilization globalization and electronic technologies development culture considered by superpowers as the main mechanism of various regions inclusion into the area of their influence becomes the most important factor of world influence. Strengthening of cultural factor in geopolitical strategy is accompanied by a number of negative consequences which should be considered in the development of conceptual foundations of geopolitics. On the one hand, cultural cooperation and dialogue of nations are the guarantee of justice and democracy, condition of prevention of international and interethnic conflicts, violence and wars. On the other hand — the world community enters a new phase where not political or economic disagreements but cultural-ethnic differences and contradictions will be the dominant factor of global policy and fundamental source of conflicts. The objective or subjective inequality of cultural dialogue partners is the precondition of geopolitical influences. Non-selfsufficiency of one of the parties of dialogue
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and aspiration to copy “another” cultural model reduce the efficiency of partnership in international contacts that deepens national and cultural inferiority complex, opens borders for cultural expansion of countries-leaders.
At present the struggle for spiritual influence and world space division intensifies. Today the strategic objective of geopolitical expansion of world leaders in respect of developing countries is to make them similar to themselves: by political and economic system, social structure, ideology, psychology, culture.
The ethnic culture comprises values and the norms constituting the spiritual kernel of society, represents a peculiar attraction pole, and cases of this attraction violation inevitably lead to disintegration of public organism. And such situation is much more dangerous to destruction of state integrity than external expansion. One of the mechanisms of geopolitical tasks realization in the area of spiritual security is the higher liberal arts education — the most important social institute of transmission of cultural values, norms, ideals, a form of national and cultural world reproduction. Namely the education’s posibitlities of keeping and confirming sense-making coordinates of cultural system allow considering it not only as system of vocational training but as an effective tool of geopolitics and provision of the nation’s spiritual security [2, 29-30].
Unfortunately, at present the geopolitical potential of education is not only used not to the ful, but also it is not comprehended according to the scale of problems and the state’s policy in this area testifies that the power does not comprehend the original role of education, does not realize that without a person, his/her erudition, intelligence the economic wellbeing of society is impossible and pointless.
Ethnocultural education is the most important mechanism of transmission and reproduction of cultural values, ideals and meanings of life which form and content are determined by specifics of “national-cultural world” formed by history, language, philosophy, literature, traditions, psychology. Dialectic interrelation between culture and education, possibilities of the latter to exert significant influence on the condition of spiritual atmosphere in society make the study of theoretical and methodological foundations of its reformation especially important today. The comprehension of education as a factor of spiritual security of the nation is conditioned by its major role in preservation of cultural continuity and spiritual development of a person.
Education provides complete reproduction of a person — according to those ideals of his/her which are formed in culture depths, religious-philosophical, ethical and pedagogical systems and concepts. If training transmits and reproduces only a certain private, specific fragment of culture the education produces and resproduces integral subject of culture and activity — a person in his/her existential and ontological completeness.
Unlike tool-oriented training providing transmission, reproduction and mastering of knowledge, skills, technologies and consequently being secondary in relation to processes
of personality formation and development, education forms complete “image” of a person. Namely the education’s possibilities of domestic culture specifics preservation allows considering it as the most important condition of spiritual security of our state as the “loss of spiritual identity of the people leads to the loss of one’s special place in the worldwide family of cultures and civilizations, and finally — to essential weakening of economic and geopolitical positions. In these conditions the important priority of education is its ethnocultural feature’’ [3, 127]. Unfortunately, it should be noted that in the context of this feature globalization it is not given due consideration. We should not forget that from the viewpoint of state policy and national ideology the education is a means of national consciousness formation, cultural and language interests realization. Ethnocultural education fulfils the function of revival, preservation and development of national culture, helps to reveal national and cultural needs of a person, as well as provides interchange and mutual enrichment of cultures.
Each people have national features. It is necessary to consider them during education modernization for if this component is ignored the essence of the nation is distorted. Today the education became an important weapon in the policy of states. In this context the education system should be built on those fundamental values, ideas and priorities which developed on our earth throughout its thousand-year history, rely on the general cultural heritage of Turkic ethnoses, spiritual and moral traditions of the Kazakh people, the values accumulated by world civilization.
The state policy in the area of education should be aimed at developing national spirit and patriotism in pupils. It is well known that this activity is inherently connected with the state language. Strengthening national bases of education should be closely connected with providing unconditional priority of native language and culture. This policy is realized in many countries. The language issue and ethnocultural education are in a dialectic unity. As the great son of the Kazakh people Akhmet Baitursynov told: “Sozi zhogalgan zhurttin ozi de zhogalady” (“The people who have lost their language get lost themselves”). Is it possible to imagine a Japanese, a German or an Uzbek not knowing native language? It’s certainly impossible. Meanwhile our language situation causes the feeling of uncertainty. Certainly, with years the state language should occupy the position it should occupy. Speaking about this, at the XIV session of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan the President has reminded again that during the years of totalitarian regime the history and culture of the Kazakh people happened to get under the pressure of ideology. This has had a catastrophic effect on the Kazakh language as well which by the end of the XX century was on the verge of extinction. Therefore today the aspiration of the Kazakh people to restore the lost is absolutely natural.
The most advanced people always understood that the future of mankind, nation entirely depends on education and personal development of rising generation. Unfortunately, in
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Significance of spiritual factor and ethnocultural traditions in the development of domestic education
our state little attention is given to the spiritual aspect. We constantly speak about economy. But we should not forget that the development of economy is possible only when there is the development of sciences, education, high culture, while it should the culture which is based on humanity.
Before all subject taught for the Kazakh people has educational-informative value, direction. The duration of study was generally 4 years, from 9 to 13 years. Each aul had a mosque. The mentioned 4 years were distributed like this:
Year 1 — alip bi, abzhet, adep, arken were studied.
Alip bi — studying alphabet consisting of 28 letters (twenty eight Arab letters);
Abzhet — solution of problems with four-unit actions of arithmetic;
Adep — different types and forms of respectful attitude, honoring relatives, inner circle were studied. Respectful relations between younger and senior. Meeting and farewell to guests, different types of relationship and communication with them.
Arken — a section which teaches the beautiful. This includes: self-care, dressing tastefully, taking into account the age, occupied position in public system, ability to produce and preserve various things for a farm and their esthetic decoration. In respect of people and all living things — be humane, especially during care of animals, sick people, etc.
Year 2 — aptiek was studied — understanding, mastering of words content and meaning. Training correct, logic speech and ability to listen. Simultaneously at this stage sha-kirts (pupils) get general information about the Koran by studying small (i. e. short) suras. In other words it is an initial way to studying and mastering Koran.
Year 3 — musannafter, munnazhim were studied. Musannafter (poetry, dastans (epic works))is the study of lyric eposes, eposes about batyrs (heroes) and biiys (leaders) and other poetic works of the people of the old Turkish, Arab-Muslim worlds; Munnazhim (Astronomy) — studying this subject pupils obtain complete knowledge of the sun, the moon, stars, seasons, weather change and reasons of these phenomena. Other heavenly bodies are studied as well. Pupils also receive general information about geographical sciences, natural history. They get to know about the nature, distinctive features of localities and reservoirs, their suitability for different areas of activity, how to find the way at night by means of stars, i. e. were taught observation, etc.
Year 4 — mukhtasar was studied — kind of synthesis of abovementioned subjects having expanded and systematized
appearance. Mainly the pupils study the laws of the Sharia from the viewpoint of morality, etiquette, etc.
As we see, from the mentioned 8 (eight) subjects, except for Mukhtasar, 50 percent are directly or indirectly aimed at studying education problems. This humane, respectful attitude to people around, humanity (imandylyk, inabattylyk, korgendi-lik, parasattylyk), aspiration to the beautiful, etc. All subjects are subordinated to daily need, their need is continually felt, they are far from learning by heart [4, 14-15].
Among the main reasons of fading of creative potential of the people most important is the weakening of intellectual and spiritual traditions as a result of national education system destruction and training of a layer of intellectuals alien to the people, its history, traditions, culture. Consequently, the development of nationally and culturally oriented education is a leading precondition of activization of creative powers and abilities of the nation, mobilization of its spiritual resources. Such understanding of the role of education objectively puts today the problem of reorientation of its philosophical and culturological foundations, need in development of educational paradigm which would avoid eclectic connection of concepts and ideas of other national schools. In particular, copying of western models of education focused on human subjectivity development or transfer of maximum volume of knowledge and development of technologies can cause in the conditions of Kazakhstan the crisis of socio-cultural and personal self-identity as the tool nature of these models belittles the value of spiritual and moral component of educational process, emasculating thereby the original essence of this social institute.
We are deeply convinced that there is no more important task for the nation as education and personal development. Namely the nation which will manage to create today more perfect education system will become the leader of the XXI century. I think that the leader of the third millennium will be presented not by the country having today a high standard of living or the most perfect electronics by the nation that will manage to provide the baton pass of knowledge and culture, find that relationship with the surrounding nature which meets modern requirements of development of the society and the nature.
The considerable part of the Kazakh population is however focused though to a different degree on ethnocultural values. In order to save this fragile socio-cultural system of the Kazakhs the moral and spiritual reorganization of our impoverished being is necessary.
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