Vyacheslav Zagorsky. The Unified State Exam caravan is on its way

The Unified State Exam caravan is going smoothly or according to plan?
Vyacheslav Zagorsky

Publication date: July 24, 2003

I took chemistry. I wasn’t worried because I was sufficiently prepared in this subject and had already received the highest score at the Olympiad and became a student at the Medical University in Tomsk.

The tasks in Part A, I think, correspond to the school curriculum, only a few questions went beyond its scope. In Part B, I found a typo that probably wouldn’t have been noticed by an unprepared person: the answer options didn’t include the one I needed, so I made a correction right there. In part C there was a task about protolysis. This is a reaction that is not studied either in school courses or in preparatory courses for medical university. In my version, “hydrolysis” (a reaction similar in type) was added in brackets, and I did it. But others did not have such a mark, and they got confused.

This is a comment from an exam participant, published in the newspaper "First of September" :

For two years in a row, chemists tirelessly criticized the content of the tasks (or rather, control measuring materials, or CMMs) of the Unified State Exam in Chemistry. Chemical CMMs are the most criticized subjects in the natural sciences block. After a heated discussion of the incorrect tasks of the Unified State Exam 2001 1 , it seemed that the Unified State Exam 2002 would not provide so many reasons for criticism. But in an article devoted to the analysis of tasks from 2002, it is stated that at least half of the questions in one of the options are “flawed” 2 . Well, in the third year the exam should be checked, because “mass application” is coming. But it was not there. The substantive, substantive problem of the Unified State Exam in chemistry is quite obvious. In the school "chalk" chemistry course, many reactions are considered at the level of notes on the board, which in fact are not as clear as they are written; The chemical properties of many substances also change significantly depending on conditions. Therefore, the “only correct” answers to tests are compatible only with the simplest school textbooks and have no relation either to “household chemicals” or to science and production. Most popular science books and encyclopedias for schoolchildren can only be an obstacle to gaining points on the Unified State Exam. As a result, any attempt to make ten variants of the same type of problems with a selection of a single answer out of four for all “elements of content” The CMM codifier necessarily faces the limitations of the “real world of substances,” and it is up to the compiler’s conscience (I still believe that they are competent in chemistry) whether to compose obviously incorrect problems.

However, there appears to be an ideological goal towards which the Unified State Examination is oriented. I’m not sure that it is clearly formulated even by the activists promoting it; the level of its formulation may be “subconsciously mystical . ”

In 2004, the Unified State Examination should come to Moscow schools. An interesting comment was made by the Minister of Education in a May television interview that Moscow universities will not yet accept applicants based on the results of the Unified State Exam: “Moscow schoolchildren, having passed the Unified State Exam, will take all places in Moscow universities.” It turns out that Moscow schoolchildren are obviously smarter than their “provincial” peers? But the results of entrance exams at Moscow State University and the final stages of subject Olympiads indicate rather the opposite.

Apparently, the ministry realizes that imposing the Unified State Exam in its existing form on a number of Moscow universities (MSU, Physics and Technology, MEPhI, MSTU) will cause a much more powerful wave of criticism than holding this exam “beyond the Urals.” But there are also Moscow teachers. Many of them, including laureates of the Moscow Grant, which continues the traditions of the Soros Teacher grant , work in schools in addition to scientific and teaching work in universities and therefore are much less dependent on the education department than their colleagues from the Russian hinterland. However, Moscow education managers do not really interfere with the capital’s teachers doing their direct work well, and therefore most of my successfully working colleagues have not even become acquainted (yet) with the content of the educational standards and minimums , which are being heatedly discussed in the press , as well as the Unified State Examination itself. It is likely that, having become more familiar with what they will now have to guide their students towards, Moscow teachers will be surprised and will begin to more actively express their opinions...

And then they can draw interesting conclusions. Two years ago, at my school (MSC MSU), one of the teachers hung on the stand fragments from the book by S.G. Kara-Murza about the “school of two corridors” 3 . At that time, this text, describing the stratification of the education system using the example of modern France, seemed overly politicized and intimidating. Here is his short summary:

From the point of view of teaching methods, in the school of the “second corridor” (for the masses) the “pedagogy of laziness and permissiveness” dominates, and in the school of the “first corridor” for the elite - a pedagogy of intense mental and spiritual effort. Surveys of teachers and school system administrators showed that, in their opinion, the main task of the “semi-secondary practical” school is to “occupy” teenagers in the most economical and “student-friendly” way. This school instills in teenagers a pattern of behavior that makes it completely impossible for them to adapt (if any of them tried) to the elite high school system, which has already taught their peers to strict discipline and concentration.

The “semi-secondary practical” school is by no means the “worst” version of the elite full secondary school, as it were its “lowest” level, from which one can, with an effort, step into the “first corridor” school. On the contrary, a “semi-secondary practical” school actively shapes a teenager as a “crowd personality” (“Pepsi Generation”), which is, in principle, incompatible with a school for the elite.

The idea of ​​a single ("university") school is that there is a common "body of the people", whose children are initially equal as children of the same tribe. In a single school they are brought up as speaking the language of one culture. The “dual” school is based on the idea of ​​a double society - civilized (civil society or Locke’s “Republic of Owners”) and uncivilized (“proletarians”). Between the two parts of this society there are relations not just of class enmity, but relations of racism - these are, as it were, two different tribes.

At the exit from the “second corridor” school, you should end up with a “respectable citizen, employee and consumer.” In contrast to the “university” unified school, in “civilized countries” a “mosaic” culture has been created and its bearer is the “man of the masses”, filled with information necessary to carry out controlled operations. A self-satisfied person who considers himself educated, but educated precisely to be a cog - a “specialist.”

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gaset wrote about such people: “A specialist serves us as a vivid, concrete example of a “new man” and allows us to discern all the radicalism of his novelty... He cannot be called educated, since he is a complete ignoramus in everything that is not part of his specialty; he is not an ignoramus, since he is, after all, a “man of science” and knows his tiny corner of the universe perfectly. We would have to call him a “scientific ignoramus,” and this is very serious, it means that in all matters unknown to him, he will behave not like a person unfamiliar with the matter, but with the authority and ambition inherent in an expert and specialist... Just look at how foolishly they behave today in all life issues - in politics, in art, in religion - our “men of science,” and behind them are doctors, engineers, economists, teachers... How wretchedly and absurdly they think, judge, and act!”

Of course, the “specialist cogs” need to be managed. Therefore, small elite schools remain, where a fundamental and holistic, “university” education is given, strong, self-respecting individuals, united by a corporate spirit, are raised. This is how a bifurcated, socially divided school system arises, directing the flow of children into two corridors (the fact that some children of workers also end up in the corridor of the elite does not change matters). This is the “school of capitalist and post-industrial society”, a new phenomenon in civilization.

After getting acquainted with the above fragment, thoughts arise that all Russian education, like the country as a whole, is now trying to drive it into the “second corridor”. Therefore, for the sake of one’s own peace of mind, it is easier to consider S.G. Kara-Murza’s text a paranoid horror film unworthy of serious discussion. However, in an article from the School Review about the mistakes of the Unified State Exam 2002 in chemistry, its author, who may not have read the book cited, poses the question: “Is this intentional?” Apparently, it will soon become clear whether this was planned or miraculously “turned out, as always.”

Notes

1 Zagorsky V.V., Mendeleeva E.A., Morozova N.I. Unified State Exam: How we “made fun” of our schoolchildren // Chemistry at school, ╧ 3, 2002, pp. 11-13.

2 Sternin I. Is it easy to boil metal?// School Review, ╧ 1, January-February 2003, p. 55-57.

3 Kara-Murza S.G. Manipulation of consciousness. - M.: Publishing house EKSMO-Press, 2001. - pp. 249-257.