What Russians are good at is learning.
Peter I, after the victory at Poltava, raised a toast to the Swedish teachers.
The captured Swedes grimaced, but drank.
They had nowhere to go.
The beginning of the domestic system of higher education was laid by Peter's daughter, Elizabeth.
And very soon, Moscow University began to graduate specialists who were in no way inferior to those who gnawed at the granite of science in ancient Western universities.
In the early Soviet years, attempts were made to update and modernize both school and higher education, but very soon it became clear that nothing better than the classical system had been invented.
And people who were educated in Soviet universities made the USSR one of the two most powerful states in the world.
In the 1990s, everything Soviet was recognized as wrong and unsuccessful, and if it were not for Vladimir Putin, then, I believe, by the middle of the 2000s, Russia would have completely lost sovereignty, turning for the United States into an analogue of Canada: only formal independence - in that sense, that nothing depends on Canada.
For us it would be like death, Russia cannot be subordinate.
And, by the way, Peter the Great, even when he imposed European norms left and right, did it in order to strengthen Russia.
And the reformers of the 1990s and their heirs, for some reason, took from the entire rich Euro-Atlantic arsenal only what made Russia weaker.
What is wrong with the Bologna system?
The fact that it does not allow to educate a sufficient number of professional specialists whose work keeps the economic well-being and technical sovereignty of any state.
I have come across misconceptions that the Bologna process is a classic European education system and, by abandoning it, we will abandon centuries of development of university and academic education.
No!
Exactly the opposite!
The Bologna Declaration was signed in 1999, and its goal was simple - to collect cream from the countries of a united Europe, so that the best students from less wealthy Eastern and Southern European countries would not have problems integrating into Western Europe.
The same fate was prepared for our students - all capable would be taken away by a Western European brain-sucking vacuum cleaner.
Now few people remember, but in the late 1990s, George Soros was the main sponsor of domestic science.
And, of course, he did this not for charitable purposes, but in order to consolidate dependence and destroy independent Russian science.
Still, in those years, our country walked along the edge of such an abyss, the depth of which we are only now aware of.
I note that the United States, our main geopolitical competitor, did not join the Bologna system.
China is also breaking economic records without copying a freshly invented European brain-sucker.
So why should we continue to teach our students in foreign formats and programs that do not work well in our conditions?
The strength of Soviet education lay in the fact that a ready-made specialist came out of the university, able to immediately start working without further training and twisting.
And where an analogue of the Western magistracy was needed, there was a residency - in medicine, for example.
Now it is obvious that we have very serious problems with the training of special personnel, both industry representatives and teachers themselves speak about this.
This is a strategic area that should ensure the country's technological sovereignty, especially in the face of sanctions that no one is clearly going to lift.
We need a better system, which no doubt was the Soviet one.
Now, unfortunately, there is a feeling that education officials are doing their best to preserve non-working things.
Because it has already been knurled, familiar ... But all the arguments that defend the Bologna system are from the evil one.
There is a fact: the specialty was destroyed, and after that, problems began with the personnel.
So, there is no need to invent anything new, you just need to restore the previously successfully proven system.
Fortunately, most teachers remember very well how it was and what needs to be done.
In our country, unfortunately, it often happens that legislators see a problem and quickly take decisions to fix it.
And in the ministries and departments officials begin to slow down.
Now half-measures cannot be limited.
Qualified specialists are a strategic issue.
So, it's time to forget the Bologna system as a bad dream.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.