Destroy to the ground. And then?

The thirst for reforming everything and everyone for the benefit of one’s people is a feature of the national thinking of Russian officials. In the memory of people of the middle generation, there were several agricultural reforms, including the widespread distribution of corn, which promised lightning-fast development of livestock farming and ended in nothing. Younger people will remember the notorious vouchers and the oaths of the reformers that every holder of this piece of paper will soon become the owner of a car. University education has been reformed: now, instead of taking 5-6 years, we “bake” bachelors and masters in 3-4 years. Meanwhile, as the rector of Moscow State University, academician V.A. Sadovnichy, says : “In European countries there are almost no doctoral [degrees]. Only “PhD”, and this is approximately our candidate’s dissertation. What will happen to doctoral degrees next? What will happen to our scientific schools ?,” the Chairman of the Union of Rectors of Russia (“MK”, 2003, September 22) asks bitterly.

Perhaps only schools withstood the pressure of reformers of all Soviet times (from the 20s to the 90s). Moreover, in the 80-90s, our school, discarding excessive ideologization, returned to the traditional 200-year-old system of the Russian school, at the origins of which were M.V. Lomonosov, K.D. Ushinsky and a number of teachers and methodologists. Variants of educational programs and very good textbooks have appeared, which have received recognition not only in Russia, but also abroad. Russian schoolchildren have both taken and continue to take first places at various international Olympiads, impressing foreigners with the depth and scientific fundamentality of their knowledge and creative approach to completing assignments.

Everyone who has followed the development of the school in recent years remembers how the President proposed to engage not in “reform”, but in the modernization of education.

But what some advisers to the Minister of Education are proposing and “pushing” today is essentially the destruction of the entire system Russian school and the creation in its place of some semblance of an American-European college with its pragmatism, standardization, and mechanical memorization of facts. Today, Stolypin’s words are often quoted: “You need great upheavals, but we need a great Russia.” They also apply to our school. It's easy to destroy everything to the ground. What's next? And won’t V.A. Sadovnichy be right in his prophecy: “European standards can lower the level of Russian education”?!

It is characteristic that while the idea of ​​abandoning the Russian methodology of teaching literature is being imposed on society, the anthology “Methodology of Teaching and Studying Literature” (Sapporo, 2001) is being published in Japan, which summarizes the experience of 30 Russian methodologists (from V.I. Vodovozov to Yu M. Lotman). Truly, there are no prophets in their own country!

All this causes legitimate concern among the pedagogical community and numerous statements by media outlets of various political orientations (from liberals and centrists to communists). After all, we are talking about the future of Russia.

The greatest concern is the “reform” of literary education. " Literary Gazette ", " Izvestia ", " Russian Journal " publish letters from scientists, teachers, writers criticizing the project " Educational Standard of Secondary (Complete) General Education in Literature "; approved by the Ministry of Education in July 2003, the “ Federal Basic Curriculum and Model Curricula for Educational Institutions ,” which halved the hours spent on literature and did not provide the opportunity to master even those works that were included in the standards. in the form of testing is of particular concern to the public The Unified State Examination in literature .

To the Ministry's credit, standards improve after every public outcry. At the same time, every time another letter appears in defense of the school from would-be reformers, there is a person close to the Ministry who “privately” ridicules the “conservatism” of the authors of the appeals and comes to the defense of Ministerial officials.

Sometimes such a speech is published “ahead of the curve.” Thus, in the Russian Journal, an article by physicist, school director and part-time adviser to the Minister, Mr. A.A. Pinsky, “ What was written with an axe ,” precedes the publication of “ An Open Letter to A.V. Shishlov ,” written by 51 scientists and teachers living “ from Moscow to the very outskirts" - the Far East and North of Russia - and received on September 16 by the addressee, which removes Mr. Pinsky’s accusations against prof. V.F. Chertova.

Mr. Pinsky reproaches the authors of the letter for “inaccuracies, incompetent judgments and distortions.” All these accusations can be attributed to the author of “written with an axe.”

On September 23 , A.A. Pinsky writes that “in today’s version of the standard [ adopted on September 20 ], “Doctor Zhivago” and “Quiet Flows the Don” are equal in rights - both are presented entirely in the profile, and both are presented as an overview at the basic (non-profile) level.” . But as early as August 26, on the website of the Ministry of Education, Pasternak’s novel was conspicuously absent from the non-core level, while the profile was supposed to be a “review study with analysis of fragments.”

The authors of the "Open Letter", unlike Mr. Pinsky, were not present on Saturday (!) September 20 at these gatherings with the Minister, where, as the Minister's adviser himself admits, the discussion of the most important project was again conducted behind closed doors, without involving the general public , teachers, parents. Those who signed the letter to A.V. Shishlov were not armed with the text of the bill being discussed by the Duma (it is very difficult to find it), but the very fact that the Duma adopted the Law on Standards raised a number of questions for them. Simple logic says that first we need to create standards, test them in practice, convince ourselves that this is a worthwhile endeavor, convince State Duma deputies of the same, and only then approve the law on their introduction. Otherwise, in the words of the famous song: “It was smooth on paper, but they forgot about the ravines. And walk along them.”

Mr. Pinsky distorts the text of the “Open Letter” when he claims that in it “ the discussion about the appropriateness or uselessness of the Unified State Exam in literature is elegantly translated into a series of judgments about the harm of the Unified State Exam in general .” The letter actually cites the view of Yu.M. Luzhkov, who compared the Unified State Exam to a game of thimbles, but then it is written in black and white: “ We do not undertake to judge how true this is in relation to the exact sciences, but for the humanities the Unified State Exam is really disastrous .”

Realizing that it is impossible to refute the TV story shown throughout the country, Mr. Pinsky elegantly (to use his term) turns the conversation to the “ ethical side of the text ” of the “Open Letter”.

Isn’t it better for Mr. Pinsky himself to think about how ethical it is to call Honored Scientists, Honored Teachers of the Republic, prominent scientists and famous practicing teachers who signed the “Open Letter” an “ educational and subject lobby ”!

Thus, in Mr. Pinsky’s comments, the main attention is drawn to the emotional side of the letter and its substantive side is completely ignored: key questions in the total volume of hours about reducing the number of hours devoted to literature , about the introduction of the Unified State Examination in literature in the form of testing, about the need to improve standard as a whole (and not just about the inclusion or non-inclusion of two novels in the standard).

The letter of '51 was prompted not by corporate interests, but by concern for the national tradition of literary education and the preservation of Russian culture.

Let us summarize what has been said: the pathos of the “Open Letter” lies in the fact that the country’s leading scientists and teacher-methodologists consider it necessary to submit for wide discussion the most important documents relating to literary education and, relying on their rich teaching and scientific experience, offer their participation and maximum assistance in the reasonable modernization of literary education in school.

While we were writing our response to Mr. Pinsky, we received a message that the Russian Language Council under the Government of the Russian Federation had generally approved the revised and significantly expanded draft standard for literature. As far as we know, at the meeting of the Council, wishes were also expressed in the “Open Letter” to study “Quiet Don” textually, to pay more attention to all Nobel laureates in the field of literature, the works of recent years. We dare to think that our “Open Letter” contributed to this revision.

The Council's decision to "increase the number of teaching hours on literature in the draft basic curriculum: in grades 10-11 at the basic level - 4 hours per week; in grades 10-11 at the specialized level - 6 hours per week" also causes satisfaction." Only one problem remains unresolved: the final test of knowledge in literature . We are convinced that it should be submitted for discussion to the wider pedagogical and scientific community , and before that, a moratorium on the Unified State Exam in literature in the form of testing should be imposed and a return to the mandatory written creative exam in literature and the Russian language and an oral exam in literature.

L.D. Gromova (Opulskaya), corresponding member. RAS, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences;

M.I. Shcherbakova, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head. Department of Russian Literature IMLI RAS;

M.M. Golubkov, Doctor of Philology, Professor of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov;

F.S. Kapitsa, candidate of philological sciences, leading researcher at the IMLI RAS;

A.V. Urmanov, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of Literature of Blagoveshchensk Pedagogical University. university.