The most unnecessary

The director of Volokolamsk vocational school # 53, Alevtina Kondratyuk, saved the school from imminent liquidation by finding extra-budgetary sources of funding: she opened self-supporting workshops and placed a branch of the International Academy of Tourism in the school building. (Photo: Pavel Gorshkov )

Agricultural vocational schools near Moscow were clearly built according to a single project. A large area, in the center of which there is an educational building with a sign “Welcome!” adjacent training workshops. Nearby is a dormitory building for students from other areas and a five-story residential building for employees. In the backyard there is a training ground for driving lessons and a hangar with cars and tractors. The equipment is mostly pre-perestroika, 100 percent worn out, but the farms in the region use the same ones.

Teachers recall that in Soviet times, rural vocational schools “lived like under communism.” Students received a scholarship, free meals and travel passes. Basic enterprises helped organize internships, and all graduates were guaranteed employment. Now everything is different. Only orphans live in the dormitories, and students from remote villages come to study every morning. On the train you are a “hare” (the ticket inspectors don’t bother you), but you have to pay for the bus. A monthly bus pass from the regional center of Lotoshin to Volokolamsk, where the nearest 53rd vocational school is located, costs 200 rubles. There have been cases where children dropped out of school simply because they could not pay their way.

In the canteen of the 53rd vocational school, for the second course they offer “boiled sausage” for 2 rubles 30 kopecks and “fried fish” for 6 rubles 30 kopecks (this is the most expensive dish), but students more often take only a bun with tea for a ruble. In the 91st school in the village of Lvovsky, Podolsk region, food is provided for free - the director allocates part of the money earned by the children “from potatoes” for food. And in the 93rd vocational school not far from Ramenskoye, the canteen was closed - the school could not afford free lunches, and the students did not buy anything.

Who to be?
Children enter vocational schools after the ninth grade, when they turn 14-15 years old. All vocational schools, in addition to primary vocational education, also provide general secondary education (eleven-year school education). But if you wish, you can do without a general secondary school - in the 93rd school, a small group of students in a year receives the profession of a machine operator without studying general education subjects.

The most popular specialty in rural vocational schools - "master of agricultural production" - consists of three professions, each of which is mastered in a year: tractor driver, repairman and car driver. A certified “construction master” can work as a bricklayer, concrete worker, or electric welder. In recent years, all rural schools have introduced a specialty for girls: “housewife” (the name was borrowed from abroad). Each school trains “housewives” according to its own program: in the 53rd, for example, she must be a vegetable grower, a cook and an accountant. Several professions provide graduates with the opportunity to find work in at least one of them.

Vocational schools are trying to adapt to the demands of the labor market: for example, School 93, the only one that trained land reclamation workers, during perestroika, when land reclamation went out of fashion, began training road workers (the equipment of land reclamation workers and road workers is similar). A new specialty may be opened at a vocational school based on unexpectedly emerging demand for the profession. Thus, the head teacher of the 53rd, Galina Sotnikova, the chairman of the horticultural cooperative, noticed that Muscovite summer residents cannot find craftsmen in the area who lay stoves. And last year, the school opened a specialization in “furnace making” - the educational and material base is the same as for the training of masons. Often, specialties are opened that are not related to agriculture, for example, in Volokolamsk they train waiters who find work in Moscow. The percentage of rural vocational school graduates working in their specialty is decreasing from year to year. There are no exact statistics, but, according to school directors, the figure is about 50 percent.

In the early 90s, some rural vocational schools in the Moscow region were closed - there was a shortage, and the region no longer needed the previous number of agricultural workers. The remaining vocational schools survived thanks to good managers, many of whom had nothing to do with vocational training before. The director of the 91st, Olga Loginova, worked as an accountant at the college company "Finpo-EDAS", which trained farmers under the Russian-Finnish project (see article on page 54). Alevtina Kondratyuk became the director of the 53rd vocational school last year, when the school was on the verge of closure. And before that, since 1998, she headed the Volokolamsk branch of the International Academy of Tourism. Combining both positions, Kondratyuk united the branch of the academy and the school (read - money and premises): vocational school students study in the school building in the first half of the day, and academy students study in the second. Several graduates of the school, who had straight A's, became first-year students at the academy (excellent students are admitted for free).

Under Alevtina Kondratyuk, the school was renovated, a canteen was opened (on her personal instructions, they hung a poster “Bread is the head of everything”), and self-supporting workshops. On the bus of the Academy of Tourism, 55 teachers went to Sergiev Posad to learn from the experience of the exemplary school No. 22, where children produce pots, fences and clothes for sale. “Repairs need to be done - where can we get the money?” says Alevtina Kondratyuk. “The children will sew our mittens, and we will exchange them for boards and bricks.” We sowed 70 hectares of our land with wheat: “When it grows, we’ll exchange it for flour - the buns will be cheap in the dining room.” When money was needed to repair the boiler room, the students worked for a week on beets at the Kashin collective farm "Ilyich's Path" (the former base enterprise of the school).

Vocational schools survive by training personnel under contracts with enterprises (the 93rd retrains road workers) or by opening popular courses for everyone (the 91st opened a driving school, the 53rd opened a school for motorcyclists). The chairman of Ilyich's Way paid 53 for the training of six machine operators, and the employer from Krasnogorsk restored the training greenhouse for the training of ten greenhouse workers.
Vocational schools operate according to curricula developed back in Soviet times. There are still no connections between the subjects of general education and the professional cycle (for example, vegetable growers study the topic “Fertilizers” in chemistry, which has nothing to do with the course “Agronomy”).


The list of specialties, teachers and equipment in rural vocational schools are still the same as ten to fifteen years ago. The difference is that the state allocates money only for teachers’ salaries, and no one needs graduates. (Photo: Pavel Gorshkov )

Classwork
“They are taciturn among us. I sometimes ask: how do you communicate with girls? After all, you need to talk to them about something. But their girls are probably the same. Or maybe they are lively among themselves. But how They see a stranger and immediately shrink into a ball,” says Nikolai Kasyanov, director of the Ramensky 93rd vocational school for boys, about his students. And exactly. When I tried to “talk” to the freshmen in the school corridor, they looked at me in fear. "What are you going through?" - “Development of fields, virgin lands of all kinds. How different equipment works.” - “What cars can you drive?” - “Well, I’m driving a tractor for now.” - “What kind of tractor?” - "Belarus". - “Where will you work?” - “I don’t know. After college, I’ll probably go straight into the army.” The other boy is also a man of few words. “Who will you be when you graduate from vocational school?” - “They said that he was a general specialist.” - "Who is it?" - “Well, an excavator operator, a roller operator, a bulldozer operator. Also a scraper operator.” I ask what a scraper is. “Well, this is a machine that collects soil layer by layer and transports it.”

Third-year girls (future “housewives”) from the 53rd vocational school turn out to be livelier and vying with each other about their studies: “Our school is clean. If you mess with seeds and someone notices, you will clean up the whole school later.” About his future profession: “An accountant can work as an auditor and check the activities of organizations.” “In the spring, you have to get an internship yourself. You come to some enterprise and say: “Will you take us on an internship from such-and-such to such-and-such?” They take us because we don’t have to pay a salary, and we can help the accountants.” . Most of the girls found places to practice in the winter - the Volokolamsk trade market, the agricultural enterprise "Agrotekhservice", the Lotoshino company "Molot", which produces rubber heating pads. They don’t know whether they will be able to get a permanent job later, they say: “It depends on your luck.”

At the same school, future tractor driver Seryozha Volkov willingly shares his views on life: “Profession? I like it. I like driving cars, I like technology. Modern life is built on technology, and here we are taught to understand it. I’m not afraid of being left without a job - mechanics and drivers are needed everywhere. But actually, I want to become a truck driver. I’ll get a license to drive a trailer and earn money.” I ask about humanitarian subjects, Serezha talks about psychology: “This is a subject that studies the inner world of a person. What types of people are there - choleric, phlegmatic. And I am a mixed type...” In addition to his specialty, Serezha is also studying to become an electric welder (training for a related profession in vocational schools costs about 500 rubles). But teachers say that Seryozha is an atypical student.

I read the curriculum, stumbling over grammatical errors. “Typists are former teachers,” explains head teacher Galina Sotnikova, noticing my surprise. “Don’t you understand who comes to us? The most incapable, the most undeveloped, the most unnecessary in families. In technical schools, the students are different - there is a competition there, but we take everyone." Galina Borisovna unfolds the tables with the results of the introductory test in the Russian language (introductory tests are arranged only so that teachers have an idea of ​​the level of knowledge of future students), drawn on the back of the “Glory to Labor” poster. A group of girls - “housewives of the estates”: 4 threes, 24 twos and 2 ones (one is given when all the words are written together). Boy mechanics don't have any C grades at all. But, according to other tables, already in the first half of the year more than half of the students graduate without failing grades, and among the “housewives of the estate” there are even good students.

To teach children in vocational schools, special pedagogical methods are required. The university “lecture-seminar” system does not work in schools. Children do not like to read or write, they do not do homework, so the emphasis is on work in class (the teacher must repeat information several times during the lesson to remember). Collective discussions, business games and other active forms of work are very effective. Nikolai Kasyanov several years ago introduced a modular education system in his vocational school: until the guys learn one subject, they don’t start another (they study mathematics for a whole week, then chemistry, etc.). At the same time, class magazines were cancelled. “Why do our students need grades?” Kasyanov argues. “After all, you can’t drive a car with a C or a B. Either you can or you can’t.” But at the direction of the regional authorities, the experiment was stopped.

Old Isergil
Teachers of rural vocational schools do not like to talk about the fact that their students end up in colonies, that the regular guests at the schools are drug addiction doctors, that the problem of education remains largely unresolved. Psychologists in regional vocational schools are a rarity, and teachers solve children’s relationship problems on their own. “We figure out what’s what without a psychologist,” says Nikolai Kasyanov. “We noticed, for example, that in a group of one or two guys, the rest are always “baling.” And we realized that it is impossible to put different zodiac signs in one group - “Aquarius” with “ “Sagittarius,” for example, is not allowed. The situation in the groups became completely different.” Galina Sotnikova has developed a program for the subject "Fundamentals of Psychological Knowledge", which has sections on "conflictology", "personality structure", "imagelogy" and even "Facebuilding"! On the eve of March 8th, she taught the boys how to choose gifts. Explains the difference between the concepts of “comrade” and “friend”, teaches “to say nice words to each other.”

The subjects of the compulsory curriculum for secondary school are beyond the capabilities of most students. It is useless to give bad marks and force people to take retakes - there were cases when teachers who made excessive demands on the knowledge of their subject had to resign from vocational schools.

In the 91st school of literature they are studying “The Old Woman Izergil”. In the previous lesson, the teacher read the entire text aloud, and now the lesson is discussing the work. There are about twenty guys in the class - short haircuts, identical clothes and a persistent smell of sweat. Teacher: “Name the main characters of the story.” The guys immediately remember Larra and Danko. There's a hitch with the third hero. Suddenly someone was found: “Well, this one she was talking to is Gorky himself.” - “Why does the old woman tell two legends?” - “So that they listen to her, probably.” - What did Larra do? - “He killed someone. He killed the girl for himself." The topic of pride comes up, and the teacher asks a more complex question: "How is the pride of the old woman Izergil different from the pride of Larra?" After several unsuccessful attempts, a loud voice from the back desk exposes the old woman: "She was a rakish woman! With a yellow ticket! That's her pride."

The conversation about Gorky's heroes is interspersed with a discussion of everyday problems. “What trait do you put first in a woman?” - “If only there was a cook! You could die of hunger.” - “And I’ll put the figure first.” - “When you get married, what will come first for you?” - “The child will come first.” Again the voice from the back desk: “So the children still need to be planed!” The conversation continues between two “couples”. It is believed that the purpose of such an activity is to make you think about at least some life problems.

But when it comes to the profession, future machine operators are well versed. Even before college, most students enjoyed tinkering with engines, knew how to drive tractors and cars, and were familiar with agricultural machinery. After graduating from vocational school, guys have a direct path to the army - they will serve in a motor battalion or drive combat vehicles (it is believed that driving a tank is no more difficult than driving a tractor). So they won’t lose their plumbing and driving skills. Unless, of course, they end up in Chechnya.

A guy on a wheeled tractor confidently makes circles around the yard of School No. 91. “He doesn’t have a father, his mother drinks,” says the director, “and he’s homeless in basements, on trains. In a word, he’s an orphan. He’ll disappear for two weeks, then we’ll find him, wash him, change him, put him in a hostel. He’s good for lessons.” , rides on a tractor, and a week later runs away again.”


Starting from the new academic year, the CVP will be resumed in all vocational schools in the country. The directors welcome the innovation: the boys will have the opportunity to prepare for military service, where they have a direct path after graduating from college. (Photo: Pavel Gorshkov )