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8
УДК 378.1
THE COMPETENCE APPROACH TO EDUCATION AS A THREAT TO THE WHOLE
PERSON
Polyarush A. A.
PhD in Pedagogy, Associate Professor of Civil Law and Philology Krasnoyarsk State Agrarian University Achinsk Branch Rashia, Achinsk poly-albina@yandex.ru Korneyeva T.A.
PhD in Philology, Associate Professor of Civil Law and Philology Krasnoyarsk State Agrarian University Achinsk Branch Rashia, Achinsk tatbobkova@rambler.ru
Abstract: The article reveals the main contradiction of federal state educational standards, the contradiction between the essence of rational cognition and a metaphysical set of competences. The realization of a competence approach is fraught with formation of a fragmentary person, not able to see the system of interrelated processes and solve problems in a dynamically developing reality.
Keywords: the whole person, a fragmentary person, the culture of thinking.
Federal state educational standards of the third generation for training bachelors and masters are 'enriched' with a competence approach to the educational process. Unfortunately, it is difficult not only to destroy but even to undermine the central dogma about the purpose of professional education that exists in the minds of the officials responsible for education. They consider the professional education to be aimed at forming purely professional skills, namely, at mastering only practical activity.
The attention should be focused on the nature of a human being, his deep and universal characteristics. The question should be put this way: is the person in the centre of the world picture, or is his place on the fringes? Or in other words, is the thinking a universal and necessary result of the evolution of Genesis, or is it a product of fluctuation, an occasional event on the fringes of the world, not of a universal but any individual pattern? If the former is right, then the thinking is an attribute of a substance, a matter coming necessarily to self-cognition in the human being. If we hold the latter, then we lose the very subject, the thinking.
One can observe two tendencies in the human behaviour. The first one is an appropriate behaviour that corresponds to the nature of labour activity. The second one is the behaviour agreed with the whole, thus matching the purposes themselves with the universal whole, its laws (to think is primarily to generalize). In the latter case we deal with the identity of the thinking and the existence, as the laws of a goal-setting thought in themselves are the laws of the universal whole, the existence. The person's inner being is infinitely deep and complex, as complex as the world itself.
The antipode of the notion "the whole person" is the notion of "the fragmentary person", i.e. a person whose constituents conflict with each other and do not make a coherent picture of the world. A set of competencies, if realized in pedagogical practice, implies the formation of the fragmentary person. One cannot but get torn in the torn world! University graduates will become either factory workers who perform monotonous work day after day or service staff doomed to
degradation at the computer while sorting out papers, or they will arrange the goods at supermarkets day and night, or become teachers who must monotonously daily move from one classroom to another. This is not a calm life; this is a real death of physically alive people.
Unfortunately, a fixed stereotype existing in the minds of the officials about the purpose of the professional education regarded as formation of professional skills, namely, mastering only practical activity is a nutrient medium for socially dangerous and harmful phenomena. It is enough to remember the tragedy of 17th September, 2001 that took place near Yaroslavl and cost lives of a hockey team. The pilots who had a professional skill of controlling Yak-40 failed to pilot Yak-42 with a brake system different from those in a familiar model. Modern engineering has reached unprecedented paces of development, all spheres of human life are extremely dynamic. It is obvious that the modern information world demands not a notorious skill but the flexibility of thinking able to assess the situation immediately, i.e. see the contradictions of the system and find solutions based on the laws of reasonable (dialectical) thinking.
The skill proved positive at the time of manual and machinery production. With the change of historical conditions (science being the main productive force) the skill has turned into its dialectical opposite - from the engine of progress into its hindrance. And this 'hindrance' as a public blessing is introduced in the Law on Education! The culture of thinking implies that skills and plasticity of thinking should be considered as a dialectical unity of opposites that turns into a contradiction. The plasticity of thinking, while solving the contradictions of a stereotypical thinking and skills based on it, brings the human consciousness to a qualitatively new level.
Thus, the question of how thinking and existence relate is the question of how the logic of action relates to the logic of things. If I do not understand the logic of things, my actions will be meaningless and harmful. To cognize the logic of things, their essence presented in contradictions and the unity of opposites is the implementation of a dialectical method.
Since we have to turn to dialectics, it will be Hegelian dialectics. This great philosopher considers the person to be a complex multidimensional being, whose determination of activity and activity itself are deployed not in one plane but at many levels. The person is global, as a famous aphorism says, he "comprises everything but does not fit anything". The person appears to be a complex conglomerate of various essences and natures. In this connection, we should acknowledge the point of view that in many aspects Hegel reconsidered the very notion of the human being, having complicated it qualitatively as compared to the former stages of German classic philosophy and the previous philosophy in general. So, Hegel made a breakthrough in philosophy in the 18th century! Then we have to admit with bitterness that our modern education with its competence approach is degrading. Undoubtedly, education is meant primarily to form the learners' knowledge. Knowledge is perceived information. To perceive information means to operate it freely as if it were a thing belonging to you. The main condition for perceiving information is its understanding.
Our school is far from the real process of perceiving information. As G. Hegel said as far
back as the 18th century, ".....we can play on words even without possessing a thing. But it is
not only the word to blame, but full of drawbacks, indefinite and empty thinking. Just like a true thought is a thing, then similarly is a word when it is applied by true thinking. To the extent the intelligentsia is filled with a word, it takes in the nature of a thing. The memory in itself is only an outer method, a unilateral moment of the existence of thinking. A transfer to thinking is.... the identity of reason and a mode of existence." [1, 303] It is the sphere of education that particularly demands an urgent change of a mode of thinking, a basic change of a subject's cogitative tool; otherwise a practical activity which is so cared for by practice-oriented education will be inefficient.
The contents of education should, first of all, care for the logic of formation of the specifically universal, which sets a necessity for clever entry in the contents of a subject and,
therefore, with the need forms the mind. To learn how to form a theoretical abstraction and keep within the limits of its certainty is a necessary condition for the culture of intelligence.
Dialectics is a science about the reflection of nature and history in the human thinking, a science about the laws of turning reality into a thought (i.e. about the laws of cognition, the laws of practical realization of notions and theoretical concepts in natural material, in practical activity. This should become the main concern of the educational process.
A person who applies the dialectical categories as sharpened instruments for a critical analysis of reality gets safely immunized against "information waste" that is dumped on the modern youth. Strictly speaking, for thinking consciousness there is no danger of personality destruction by information means. The problem has emerged from the rational activity of the modern person which is being cultivated by the educational process.
The global educational crisis is connected with cardinal changes of the forms and paces of the life, with reduction of the periods of stability of production patterns, with rapidly changing technologies, unprecedented rates of informatization growth, and sophisticated labour forms and equipment. These processes, being incommensurable with modern framework of educational cycles and their information space, have demonstrated core inconsistence of the efforts of education to keep pace with them. Education is hopelessly lagging behind the life, being driven into a dead end. This gap is understood now as a fundamental narrowness of the former model of education.
Isn't it paradoxical that we admit the crisis of the world educational system and at the same time make "extra efforts" to adapt this vice to our education? Obviously, the crisis of the Russian educational system is extremely deep and requires the same deep theoretical comprehension but not hasty administrative decisions imitating the search for the ways out of the crisis. While trying to solve the problem of "what to teach", the progressive part of local sociologists comes to the conclusion that the preference should be given to fundamental, ideological, scientific knowledge and thinking activity. In other words, there is a shift of the accents from the cognition of the objective reality to the knowledge of the subject's characteristics and the laws of his functioning and development.
If we are looking for universal knowledge, suitable for all occasions, then the most optimal way is to acquire knowledge of how to get knowledge, i.e. the method of cognition should be discussed in general. Having mastered the instrument of cognition and universal approaches to the development of knowledge, a person will never fail to keep pace with scientific, technological, social and cultural progress. What is more, a person who knows the regularities of the surrounding world is able to foresee these events.
It does not matter how firm the object is held by a word, or a concept, or algorithms of correlation of its elements, which the lecturers spend all their efforts on, it will be seen by students as detached from objective reality, mysteriously separate science, which is observed and consolidated in the modern educational process. That is why there is no whole system of notions, and as a notion is an instrument of cognition, then our graduate is not capable of cognizing the world and himself, therefore, of making a conscious professional choice and mastering this profession, to say nothing of building the future prosperous society.
The intelligence is thought as an inherent universal means of an individual to organize an appropriate, effective and safe activity. The intelligence grasps only visible attributes of objects and does not see their nature, essence, moving down to dogmatism, fixed "absolutely true" ideas of the object and the same fixed and indisputable forms of their introduction into the learner's consciousness [2, 234]. And this vicious fact is stated in "The Law on Education in the Russian Federation".
The possibility and necessity of formation of the culture of thinking is implied in a dialectical method of cognition that presents an indivisible unity of formal and dialectical logic. The world is dialectical, hence, the method of cognizing it should be dialectical as well. In other words, in the process of education we just need to outline an approach, a general approach to the
cognition of the universal and diverse world. This is what is meant by the culture of thinking. And, undoubtedly, this approach is dialectics. Cultural thinking is dialectical thinking [4, 46].
To master the method of knowledge formation is a necessary condition for the culture of mind. Modern crisis of the rational thinking principles is revealed as the crisis of educational policy in the Russian Federation in particular, which is reflected in "The Law on Education" under consideration. The problem of education cannot be either set or solved without the dialectical approach, without search for universal forms of the human cognitive activity [2, 290]. In other words, educational process only needs a method, a general approach to the cognition of the universal and diverse world.
This method is the method of dialectical teaching, with its methodological core being the display of notions (knowledge) through the prism of revealing and solving contradictions. The method empowers a person with the knowledge of how to get knowledge.
In conclusion, it is worth quoting Losev A., "Dialectics is good eyes, and no matter where they penetrate, everything is lit there, reveals itself, becomes reasonable and visible" [3, 234]. If the higher school keeps calling for practice oriented education, then we will not find the way out of the crisis under the given political and economic situation and we will be further taught to live in crisis.
References:
1. Hegel G.W.F. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. V.1. The Science of Logics. Moscow, 1971. - P.244.
2. Il'enkov V. Philosophy and culture / The Philosophical Issues. Moscow, 2005, № 4, P.
35-38.
3. Losev A. Essays on antique symbolism and mythology. Moscow, 1927, P. 542.
4. Polyarush A., Nurgaleev V. The formation of pupils' ecological thinking on the basis of dialectical approach. Krasnoyarsk, 2001. - P. 145.
