Translated material
In linguistics - with enthusiasm
From July 8 to July 17, 2018, another summer linguistic school was held in the Voronovo training center near Moscow. A member of her organizing committee (already 10 years), cand. Filol. sciences, scientific. sore. Schools of Philology of the Faculty of Humanitarian Sciences of the NIU-VSE, laureate of the Enlightener Award Alexander Piperki . Talked by Natalia Demina .
- You can be congratulated on the completed school. Can you tell a little about the history of its creation? Who was her initiator, how many years she has already existed?
- The first summer linguistic school opened in 1992. She went in Dubna, she was founded by Maxim Krongauz and Elena Muvenko .
The idea of the school appeared as an answer to the fact that Moscow had many wonderful linguists who had children who needed to come up with a summer fascinating rest. And then a whole project grew out of this. From the small “between the parties” LLC was becoming more and more serious.
This year is already 26 years old. There was some small break at the turn of the century, and in the current format it has been working every summer since 2004. In July, the 20th school was held.
- And what is the concept of this school, who is invited to it?
- The school is intended for a variety of schoolchildren interested in linguistics. For the past 10 years, we have not invited anyone to her, we will send information about the school, and the guys submit applications themselves. This year there was a rather large competition - 3 people per place. It's nice. Participants are schoolchildren who are interested in linguistics in different senses. If earlier the winners of the traditional Olympiad in linguistics were called to the school, now not only them, but also participants in different creative competitions are participating. Children are taken to school rather not for the ability to solve problems, but for various creative abilities.
- And how many people are you gaining?
- 75.
- Is this restriction caused by infrastructure?
- Yes. It is no longer placed more, but we are not very ready to expand very much, because if you gain 200 people, then some “warm lamp atmosphere” may be lost ... when there are 75 schoolchildren, the teacher can more or less remember everyone. And if there are 200 of them, then even I who are engaged in their set, I will not know them in the face, and this, of course, is not quite what it is necessary. We have such a friendly format! Although 75 is also quite a lot. 10 years ago it was 50.
- What is the age range?
-Standardly-from 8th to 10th grades. But then, by exception, students of other ages appear. So, if a very good application appears from a seven -grader or sixth grader, then we can accept it. Once a participant in the school was a fifth grader Andrei Nikulin , who then three times became the winner of the International Olympiad in Linguistics. But it was before me.
- Did you go through this school yourself?
- No. I was called as the winner of the Olympics, I refused, which I regret now.
- And how is the program of another summer school done? Who teaches on it?
- There is a program committee, which includes Maxim Kronhaus, Elena Muveneenko, Boris Iomdin, Vladimir Fayer and me. These are five people who are engaged in the organization and the selection of children and teachers. As for the program, over the years we have developed a standard scheme: we conduct lectures in the morning and seminars after lunch. Lectures are one -time, seminars are built in cycles of three classes.
There are teachers who have come to school for many years. But we try to vary the program, and it turns out that every year about 40% of new teachers. Since there are a lot of linguists in Moscow and not only in it, this is quite realized. Academics and students teach LLC.
- Who finances this project?
- In different years, we were supported by different organizations. Once upon a time, the Dynasty Foundation supported us with grants, Yandex helped us, ABBYY allocated money for many years. In 2016–2017, the Evolution Foundation gave scholarships to the authors of the best applications that covered half the participation of value in the school - 12.5 thousand rubles.
- What seems to you the most pleasant and interesting when organizing this school? And the reverse side: what is the most difficult and unpleasant?
- The most pleasant thing is when everything is already organized and you can see how it all works and that the children are satisfied. In addition, I myself get intellectual pleasure, because it is accepted at school that teachers are listening to each other's lectures. So I also go, study. And from the unpleasant? Any organizer of summer schools will say that in recent years there have been more than a different bureaucratic load, now you have to sign a huge number of all kinds of papers.
Moreover, the most diverse: from the notification to the traffic police on the transportation of a group of schoolchildren in buses to some instructions to the shift managers. I see that every year there are more and more papers, every year one or two pieces of paper are added, which must be handed over somewhere, to get some kind of seal of approvals. I’m not sure that this really leads to an improvement in the quality of education, to an increase in safety, but you have to do it.
- And how is leisure organized? After all, in addition to lectures and seminars, do you have any games? Which?
-All this is arranged in such a way that there are few free time left for the schoolchildren, we are trying to deal with this somehow: to stimulate to go out on the street, to play on something day, because in the building in which the school is now passing, you can spend all 10 days without leaving it. But we strive for the guys to come out.
We have no obligatory charges, morning constructions, and so on, nevertheless, we try to organize opportunities for sports. There are basketball and football platforms, we have evening games, mostly intellectual input - such as “what? Where? When? ”, There is a“ literary masquerade ”, which Boris Iomdin has been spent for many years. This event is very popular:
They make quotes from literary works, but the names of literary heroes are replaced, and we must guess what there is something. All sorts of linguistic games are held. Sometimes they show films more or less related to the theme of the school.
- Vladimir Igorevich Arnold, when he was still alive, came to the summer linguistic school, then held in Dubna. At first, he was present at one, then on the other - the Modern Mathematics school.
- Yes, it was 2009. Always after graduating from a linguistic school, mathematical begins. And then, on the last day (linguistic) school , V. I. Arnold and A. A. Zaliznyak came to us, gave lectures, and then they gave lectures on the first day of the mathematical school. Usually a bell came to us at the very beginning of the school, but at that time he came for the sake of this at the end. Since 2007, he has always traveled; I always loved to joke that we began to go to schools in one year and did not miss a single one. Now, unfortunately, he misses ...
-Have there been any curious cases with them?
- If you return to Andrei Anatolyevich, then he always talked with schoolchildren with interest and passion. At some point, one of our schoolchildren approached him and asked him: “How to say correctly:“ slippers ”or“ slipper ””? Burnedly looked thoughtfully, and then cheerfully said: “I don’t remember, look in my grammatical dictionary, as it is written and correctly.”
- Have there been children among the participants of the school, who later became stars of linguistics? Or is it too early to talk about it?
- I think it is quite possible. Still, the school is already 26 years old, so there are a fairly large number of famous people. The already mentioned Andrei Nikulin is now famous
A specialist in the family of languages macro, widespread in South America. And, for example, Georgy Starostin went to school as a student.
- And what course did you read at the last school?
- With my colleague from the tower Ivan Levin, I read a course about language complexity.
- What is the difficulty of compiling a course for schoolchildren? Do you test him on someone?
- The difficulty is very simple: you need to spend three classes for 50 minutes, this must be put in a lot of things - on the one hand. On the other hand, I want it to be interactive, we often try to conduct some experiments at the school. And we tried not only to make a presentation, but to involve schoolchildren, to demonstrate to them in practice how complex and irregular phenomena in the language arise.
- Are homework in a summer school during classes?
- Rather, not, because children still do not have time to make them. Sometimes they ask, but this is not necessary and not for everyone. This is not like mathematicians where they pass the tasks, we do not have this. They set some kind of task-interested people did. And so that everyone must do some kind of task, this does not happen more likely.
-Any traditions of the summer linguistic school have already developed? Game in the "Hat"?
- Yes, this is one of the popular things. Local memes also appear. For example, at some point, we had coffee breaks between the seminars where there were no coffee, but there were a lot of pears. Since then, we began to call coffee breaks “pear-breics”, and the name has been fixed. In recent years, there are no pears, but the breaks are just like that
And they are called.
- What advice would you give people who think about the creation of a summer school? What is worth doing, what is not worth it? Which rake should not be advancing?
- To be honest, I don’t know how to create a summer school, because it was created when I was two and a half years old, I came to this project when it was already mature. What to do from scratch - I don't know. According to the experience of other projects, the creation of which I watched, I can say that it seems important to me to immediately understand what exactly the students will receive in this school. For example, whether there will be a systematic program there or it will be “all about everything”.
If this is a systematic program, then it must be built. Our program is fundamentally not systematic, because we do not set ourselves the goal of teaching, roughly speaking, the course of introducing the first year of the university, as some other schools do. In this sense, maybe it’s easier for us.
It also seems important to me to remember that there are many interesting people who can be called to school, and from a variety of areas. It is important not to close on one topic. Of course, it is very tempting to call only linguists to a linguistic school. But it seems to me important to invite from related sciences-psychologists, mathematicians, and classic philologists. It turns out a good variety. I myself in June taught linguistics at the Moscow Summer School in Mathematics. It seems to me that such an interdod-discipline is quite important.
- Thank you very much for the interesting conversation!
Alexander Pipersky
Talked by Natalia Demina
Photo from the LLSh archive