The Ministry of Education has started preparations for the new academic year and the rulership on September 1. “I want to emphasize that we are talking about the traditional, classical form of education from September 1. We do not plan to introduce distance learning, ”said Minister Sergei Kravtsov.
Of course, this is great news, and I would very much like it to remain relevant on August 31, when millions of parents across Russia will iron their children's costumes and dresses on the eve of the solemn lineup and the long-awaited return to school.
But why even discuss distance learning at times like this? Why have we been thinking according to some kind of template lately, as if we have already been implanted with chips that have turned our living human thinking into blind following a program?
Quarantine - stay at home - distance learning. Which in reality is not teaching, but real torment. Constant interruptions in the work of programs, communications, the inability to explain to teachers, and to children normally to learn the material, constant sitting at the computer, which is not at all beneficial to health.
But what about large families where three or more children study at school at once? Where to get money for several computers in quarantine conditions, when many parents also lost their jobs, which means they lost sources of income? Where can working parents find the time to actually master another profession - teachers? After all, it is simply impossible for children, especially younger ones, to do without the help of adults in this format of education.
If all of the above does not happen, what is the quality of education? That's right - zero, or even negative. Where, among other things, do social communication skills come from when all children are forced to sit alone at home at their computers? It's also good when at home, and not on the street in spring or autumn, in the conditions of our climate, sitting on what you have to with a computer on your lap at some nearest pillar on the hill, because only there is communication. This is if the family lives in the village.
What is “distance learning” for? Why not take a break at all and use this time for schoolchildren in a different way? Let them read books from the library at home according to the list of references, study independently interesting topics on geography, history, prepare reports, engage in creative research, in order to then share the knowledge acquired in this way with classmates.
What? Half a year or even a year will be missed? Rather, they will be missed if we persistently implement such a harmful and non-working format that our children experienced last spring. This is a really pointless waste of time.
Let's face it.
How much knowledge, skills and abilities did schoolchildren acquire during distance learning in quarantine? Or did education officials just put the necessary checkboxes in the appropriate boxes?
What do we want - checkboxes or knowledge? What about health? After all, shortly before the quarantine, the same sanitary services were intensively telling us about how harmful it is for a child to sit behind a computer screen and that this should last no more than 15 minutes a day? Where did all these recommendations go? But what about the parents of children who have serious vision problems? Will these children be impaired?
I insist that if at some point, for some reason, it is impossible to teach children well, then it is worth postponing the training until the moment when it becomes possible. Let the children start reading at last. Then at school it will be possible to discuss what you have read, arrange discussions. Maybe this will be the very case when there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped.
As numerous “experts” and “specialists” like to talk about “human capital” lately. So where does this capital come from, if we ourselves are paving the way not to the accumulation of knowledge, but to the degradation of the younger generation, implementing new fashionable ideas about distance learning in school and university education? Or did they simply forget to explain something important about the true meaning of the term "human capital"? Maybe it was just that people were meant to be new oil, and not self-valuable creative personalities? Maybe they need a poorly educated average gray mass?
We gladly received the news about the beginning of the school year on September 1, but the newest times and recent events have taught us to think critically, to trust, but to check. Let's open, for example, one of the texts included in the national project "Education". It says that by the end of 2024 “at least 70% of organizations implementing programs of primary, basic and secondary general education must do so“ in a network form ”.
Let's open the project "Modern digital educational environment". It says that "the number of students ... in online courses" by 2025 should be 11 million people.
And how is the observance of the rights of citizens who prefer their children to study in a traditional rather than distance form guaranteed?
Can we not worry about the future of education in Russia, knowing about the existence of such projects and understanding what goals they pursue? All these are issues of primary state importance, which should be discussed openly and publicly, because they concern absolutely everyone. Backstage is inadmissible here.
If a healthy majority of Russian citizens are alarmed and oppose such approaches and experiments with children, then perhaps the time has come to talk about this openly and honestly.
Education is the future of our country. If we want to be a great power, then it is simply unacceptable here to humbly follow in the wake of alien, dangerous and harmful ideas that are alien to us, dehumanizing education, especially those imposed by supranational structures like the World Bank.
It's time to make your informed choice, as we have already done with the amendments to the Constitution!
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.