DENIED

EDUCATION

Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church achieved the abolition of the subject "valeology". Instead, a modified local history will be introduced - with a story about "traditional beliefs" and the task of "forming the personality of a comprehensive patriot." The secular authorities of the region are so...

Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church achieved the abolition of the subject "valeology". Instead, a modified local history will be introduced - with a story about "traditional beliefs" and the task of "forming the personality of a comprehensive patriot." The secular authorities of the region were so attentive to the wishes of their spiritual colleagues that they ordered to start the reform in the middle of the academic year.

Valeology (“Fundamentals of a Healthy Lifestyle”) appeared in Saratov schools in the late 1990s. The program was developed by physicians and psychologists from Saratov universities, taking into account local specifics - the residents of the region suffer the most from environmentally dependent diseases, plus Asian drugs "for the poor" come through the Kazakh border. The discipline is designed for children from three to 17 years old, consists of ethical, psychological, legal, family science and medical blocks.

The methodology was approved by the expert council of the regional Ministry of Education, tested in 50 educational institutions and was supposed to be introduced in all the rest in stages. But here the president ordered to take care of the health of the nation. A fashionable subject was “sold” to schools by order. As the teachers recall, they gave me a bare program - and work as you know. Additional hours and rates were not allocated, the social load was divided among the least busy teachers. For example, in the Saratov school No. 75, a military instructor talked about contraceptives.

Gradually, the program acquired textbooks (manuals for grades 5-9 and six types of manuals for teachers), 17.6 thousand teachers completed advanced training courses. As the monitoring shows, 28 percent of schoolchildren showed “positive dynamics in the state of somatic health” (the number and duration of diseases decreased during the school year). The number of teenage abortions has decreased by five times (Saratov figures are the lowest in Russia), the growth of young motherhood (among girls under 16 years old) and cases of child abandonment (180 per year) has stopped, 25 percent of expectant mothers now consult a doctor before pregnancy . According to polls, valeology was recognized as a necessary lesson by 90 percent of high school students and 85 percent of parents.

But fashion has changed again. The Orthodox diocese organized a collection of signatures against the "planting of alien values", protest sheets were posted in local churches. Representatives of the diocesan administration have not been to the lessons, but they know that the OLS contains occult information (since “the followers of agni yoga affirm the hypothesis of evolution as a worldview”), unnecessarily “focuses the attention of children on their virtues and rights”, because of which the child “loses faith in the authority of parents and national traditions”, and the teachers are silent about the “pseudo-spiritual aggression that is carried out in relation to our people”.

“The course is filled with outrageous things: sex education, use of contraceptives, tolerance for “different” behavior in relationships. The reason for our indignation is a fundamentally unchaste approach to a problem that is not customary to discuss at school,” says the head of the Saratov diocese, Bishop Longin.

The governor was informed about the ideological threat. At a meeting of the Council for Interaction with Religious Organizations, Mr. Ipatov recognized the program as “corrupting high school students” and ordered to “sort it out” within a month. Instead of valeology, local history will be introduced as a regional component of education. There are no teachers or textbooks for this subject yet. But, according to the governor, you can use the surviving manuals from the Soviet era - just point out to the children which paragraphs are no longer relevant.

The schools were surprised. “The state of health of schoolchildren not only leaves much to be desired, it is catastrophic. Of our 1215 students, every fifth suffers from disorders of the musculoskeletal system. Today's kids have more diseases than graduates. For three second grades (there were once seven), there are four absolutely healthy children, the rest are already with pathology, ”says Tatyana Pravdina, a psychologist-valeologist of gymnasium No. 1. According to health saving programs, the educational institution began to work in 1988, long before the advent of the healthy lifestyle. There were no complaints from parents. Sometimes mothers even say that school is lagging behind life. One student refused to attend lectures on religious beliefs - she was allowed (valeological classes are held in the form of class hours).

- Sex education is two lessons out of 32. One lecture on contraception in the ninth grade and one in the tenth. Human anatomy is studied in the eighth. Basically, we are talking about how to properly carry a briefcase, sit, eat, do exercises and acupressure, Tatyana Mikhailovna is perplexed. On the way from home to work, she counted 28 billboards. On 18 of them cigarettes are advertised, on three - beer. The diocese does not call them "alien".

- I think the real reason for the conflict is something else: we ask children what they are interested in and how to help them? Apparently, this is unacceptable for churchmen.

The same opinion is shared by the developers of the ill-fated OZOZH. “We are talking about the fact that the child is the master of his own health and his life, which the church cannot allow. In fact, this is an ideological divergence,” says Marina Mikhailina, head of the Department of Psychology at the Institute for Advanced Training of Educators.

The Regional Studies program is not yet ready, but Saratov teachers have no doubt that they will receive the renamed Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture - otherwise the diocese would not have spent so much effort. According to the Saratov Minister of Education Igor Plehve, the new subject carries "not an informational, but an educational approach - the formation of the personality of a comprehensive patriot of the region."

According to teachers, it is not only a matter of a single subject of healthy lifestyle. Religious figures may not like biology (with Darwin), literature (with Balda), drawing (depicting the creations of Allah), etc. Secular authorities willingly listen to the wishes of colleagues for their own reasons - the school curriculum should take on a very relevant look: after all, boys must fulfill the plan for conscription, girls must correct demographics, and extra knowledge is from the evil one.

Help "New"

According to the monitoring of children's health in educational institutions of the region, the study load exceeds the norm for 53.2 percent of schoolchildren. 53.8 percent of children experience fear of testing knowledge, fear of self-expression and problems in relationships with the teacher. Fatigue at school is felt by 67.4 percent of pupils. Eight out of ten first-graders have already tried some kind of alcoholic drink, only one in ten considers smoking harmful. Every fourth 11th grader has experience of using drugs.

60 percent of teachers experience constant internal stress. The greatest stress is the interaction with the administration. 70 percent of calls to a psychologist are related to conflicts with students.

Among 20-year-old Saratov residents, 4.5 percent of those surveyed suffer from infertility. Among 35-year-olds - a third, by the age of 40 the figures rise to 70 percent.