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THE FORMATION OF COMMON SPACE OF LIFELONG EDUCATION OF CIS COUNTRIES AS A PROBLEM OF PRESENT PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCE
V.A. Myasnikov
With all the differences of the history, culture, national specific features and value ideals, conditions and opportunities of pedagogical activities in the sovereign states (former republics of the USSR), with all the significance of their independent educational policy, one cannot ignore the availability of the numerous invariant characteristics, common regularities and principles, common scientific and methodological approaches to education, teaching and personal development, manifesting and displaying the real ties of the educational-pedagogical community unchanging in the different transformations of social systems in the educational sphere of the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (hereinafter the CIS).
The formation of the CIS, structuring of its political, economic and social life as well as the social-economic, social-pedagogical terminology that formed in the previous years and became usual for us, do not adequately reflect the new realities in many cases. Therefore, their assessment and analysis require substantiation of the conceptual framework, finalizing the regularities and trends of this process. It is no coincidence that there is a steady trend in recent scientific research of denoting the integration processes in different fields as the formation and development of a certain space: informational, educational space, highlighting it as an interaction of subjects of public activities (social institutions) within the definite boundaries of a city, district, region, republic, country, group of countries united by common historical, cultural, educational traditions, or a global space on the world-wide scale. One can state that, on the one hand, the notion of “educational space” is among the most frequently used, and on the other hand, is among the least clear. This actually determines the scientific and practical need to denote the space (in this case we mean the educational space of the CIS member-states) as a specific phenomenon in the public relations of these countries as an element of their political structure. The aggregate of all kinds of educational structures is the zone of the particular interaction of the national educational systems and their individual links. The mutual use of the particular specific features of one country in the educational space of other countries creates similar educational situations in these countries and promotes the development of further integration.
The consolidated efforts of all pedagogical institutions, use of the potential of educational systems, and searches for the paradigm of the education of the future, have become a powerful additional factor in its integration, which results from the previous stage of development of education in these countries, and brings it to the level of integration of the national educational systems within the frames of the CIS member-states. The specific features of such integration are: (a) coordinated educational policy; (b) mutual convergence and complementary national educational systems; (c) synchronization of actions on the basis of their regulation by supranational institutions as well; (d) gradual outgrowth of their state frames by
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the national educational systems and generation of trends towards the formation of a common educational space as the most effective form of implementation of the tasks of the education of the future. This space can be structurally represented by different agents, subjects, and different levels of actions: individual educational institutions, individual regional interstate and non-state educational structures (unions, associations, congregations, foundations, etc.), international activities of national states being the highest level - the basis of international relations and ties, and the basis of integration in the sphere of education. This means integration at an essentially new “soft basis”. That is, the voluntary restoration of ties in the sphere of education (only those naturally that proved their value at the time) on the conditions of maintaining sovereignty, full equality and mutual benefit.
The consequences of the integration (as well as disintegration) processes in the CIS countries must be assessed, in our opinion, on the basis of their analysis in terms of sociality. In other words, the starting point of any development in the context of such an approach must be the human being, and his welfare and wellbeing in the broad sense of the word. Any other orientation ignoring “the social price” or “social effect” of integration in the field of education cannot be considered either ethical or moral. The study of new social dimensions in the CIS countries has brought new notions into our lexicon, such as “the common social (economic, political, legal, ecological, information, educational, criminogenic) space”, “the person in the humanistic dimension”, “a person’s biosocial health”, “people’s public health”, “humanitarian development quotient”, “social safety net” and a whole number of others which comprise the present notion of “new social dimensions” (Москвин Л. Б. СНГ: тенденции и итоги развития интеграции /Общественные науки и современность. - 1997, N 2).
The UN is known to have developed the so-called humanitarian development quotient - an indicator taking account the real purchasing capacity of the population, the condition of public education, healthcare, life expectancy, level of development of democracy, position of women, children and elderly people in society. Such an approach could form the basis of the analysis of the social consequences of the integration processes in the CIS member-states, and promote reasonable adjustments of further development of the Commonwealth, in particular the formation of its common educational space.
Tracing of the trends of development of education in the Commonwealth states, exchange of pedagogical information about achievements in the field of education, comparison and consolidation of innovative processes in education, and advanced models of organization of education (their adaptation), can provide the basis for coordination of the research, management and teaching-educational activities in these countries, and accordingly, serve the interests of the development of education of every state. Besides, this will allow both deep understanding of the processes of renewal in a certain country, and the development of the principles as well as identification of the conditions of optimal development of educational systems, bringing them closer to the continually changing educational needs of different states, especially in the conditions of a market economy, drastic transformations in the structure of employment, migration of the population, and the mobility of the production sphere and labour resources. At the same time, it will allow a more evidence-based approach to the comparison
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and adjustment of educational standards at different stages of education, and assessment of the ongoing processes from the point of view of the world experience of development of education.
We consider the integration processes in education in the light of the general methodology of social cognition. Integration per se into the common educational space acts as the manifestation and presentation of real ties in the objective process of teaching and education as an aspect of the developing public organism intent for the integrity and harmony of all its systems and subsystems. While economic integration is restrained for a number of reasons, for example: (a) due to structural non-uniformity and the variety of the economies of the Commonwealth states; (b) due to the difference of the rates of economic development and the gap in the levels of economic development; (c) due to the different rate of reform maturity in the CIS member-states. Being a kind of “reform romanticism”, these reforms are distinguished by inconsistency, different rates, forms and methods, and are implemented in different areas. That is, with all the difference of the conditions of pedagogical activities in the Commonwealth countries, and with all the specific features of the independent educational policy, one cannot ignore the availability of the numerous invariant characteristics, common regularities and principles, common scientific and methodological approaches to education, teaching and development of people in the educational sphere. This is creation of the legal and regulatory framework (basis) of educational systems, and renewal of the content of education, development of standards of education; information, scientific-methodological, legal, personnel, material-technical, financial, structural-institutional support of education; these are issues of the democratization of education, humanization and differentiation of teaching, regionalization and social protection of the sphere of education; development of new models and types of schools in the system of state and non-state educational institutions. These are the problems of integration of the system of education into new social-economic (market) relationships.
This involves integration, because this process is inherently not related to the suppression of the essential parameters of the components integrated into one whole. On the contrary, it presupposes careful preservation and development of the best of the components, and enrichment of the entire system on this basis, including the acquisition of increasingly valuable qualities. It should be emphasized that integration into the common educational space is not just assimilation, and even less so the absorption of the weak community by the strong one (in some respects), but is the voluntary mutually beneficial movement to the integrity that embodies the best characteristics of the integrated subjects. Thus, new qualities of the integrated big system (space) can emerge, that do not come down to a simple sum of the qualities of the integrated parts - also big systems, but of another content and order. In other words, we are at the stage of acute need for a search for ways of reasonable rather than mechanical transfer and assimilation of ideals, values, and life-saving public technologies into the increasingly prepared and expanding common space of educational life activities of the present, and even more so, future generations. The space is characterized by common principles of the state policy in the sphere of education which is formalized by the international treaty of the CIS member-states, coordination of the state educational standards and programs, equal opportunities, and free exercise of the citizens’ rights to
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education in any educational institution on the territory of the Commonwealth states.
This is not the question of unification of the national educational systems or their “harmonization”, but of the need for their greater orientation towards the demands of fast changing and increasingly interdependent development. This is not just the increase of the ties or the number of the countries involved in this process, but rather the intensification of these ties, concentration of the scientific-pedagogical potential, telecommunication networks, databases, educational information processing and transfer, operational use of the latest advances of science and technology in the sphere of education, eradication of illiteracy, including functional illiteracy by means of state-of-the-art technologies, humanization of the process of teaching and education, development of distance learning, and creation of training systems and implementation of the system of lifelong education.
We will also emphasize that integration in the education of the CIS countries is promoted by a new political motivation: for the republics of the former USSR, such academic cooperation is a form of “restoration and reproduction of the culture of democratic traditions”, a mutually beneficial form of relations, a way to increase prestige and competitiveness.
Our initial idea is based on the assumption, according to which the educational space of the Commonwealth countries preserves the common historical path, common organizational and content foundations of building the national educational systems, and conforms to the world prospects of development of lifelong education. The analysis of the present condition of educational systems of different CIS member-states has allowed the identification of a number of factors confirming this idea, namely: (1) the mentality of the peoples of the former USSR. This especially concerns Slavic nations: Russians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians. The deep family ties (for example, every fifth resident of Ukraine is Russian); (2) for several decades, education in all former republics of the Soviet Union has been established and developed on a common methodological, organizational-structural and methodical basis. This is also the basis of the present formation of the already nationalized systems of education in all the Commonwealth countries; (3) a significant factor of their integration is the language of communication. Not all residents of the Commonwealth countries know western languages, but practically all of them know Russian. This is a promising trend.
Thus, speaking about the prospects of the common space of lifelong education, we now define it as a result of long historical, economic, spiritual coexistence, which certainly includes the pedagogical and educational community, unchanging in the different transformations of the public systems. On the other hand, we define it as a complex, non-uniform, multilevel process of closely interrelated quantitative and qualitative transformations, resulting in a new qualitative condition of the object. The process of the formation of the educational community is based on the unity of approaches, the unity of goal-setting, the unity of the content of education, the unity of terminology, categories and standards, and the unity of summing up of the results. In other words, the process is based on the principle of common opportunities.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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