Unprofessional professionals

Reflections on professionalism are now in fashion - professionals are needed everywhere. It is difficult to argue with this, if not, it is pointless. Who will refuse the services of a professional car. A little more complicated with doctors, there is no such unity of opinions - some prefer grandfather’s methods and turn to grandmas. And what about teachers? Thinking about the methodology and professionalism at school, I always recall the teacher of English literature, who swept through a bright comet on the school skill when I studied in the 9th grade. It was a woman of about forty, which was favorably different from other teachers with the widest erudition and rare charm. She had a real English, not “Inhizovskoye”, pronunciation, she gave us to listen to films with the records of Lawrence Olivier and John Gilgud and talked about Britain so that it still seems to me that I had been there, although I could not do this.

The only time in ten years I dreamed that the summer holidays ended as soon as possible. What a shock was for me, and not for me alone, returning to school walls: it turned out that Natalya Nikolaevna no longer works and we have another teacher of English literature. The bitterness of disappointment gradually settled, and we got along with the new teacher, although there is still a picture in my eyes: she is tearing off the stands from the walls, which we made so enthusiastically last year, throws them to the floor and walks along them ...

As it turned out later, the administration hastened to get rid of Natalia Nikolaevna, because she did not have a pedagogical education. She was the wife of a diplomat, lived in the UK from her early youth and, being a curious and prone to self -improvement, not only mastered the art of shopping, like many women with a similar fate, but also managed to comprehend the spirit and culture of the country. Without owning pedagogical techniques, she conveyed her experience to young minds, as professional travelers have done for centuries, whom N., in essence, was.

She was replaced by a woman with a good pedagogical education at a combat post (which, however, did not tell her that it was impossible to indifferently destroy what they did with love in front of the children, you can at least wait until you remain in the class alone). She knew the language and literature tightly, but the subject from the holiday turned into a routine. If Natalya Nikolaevna shared with us that shock from recognizing a particular phenomenon that she survived, now the amazing one has disappeared from the lessons. Evgenia Borisovna conscientiously retold to us what she was taught at the institute, where, apparently, she did not feel any shock from comprehension of the subject.

Now that I think about it, I come to the conclusion that the brief “reign” of Natalia Nikolaevna still determined what I eventually began to engage in professionally. By the end of school, I firmly decided not to enter the Language Faculty, as I thought with youthful maximalism that the language is not a profession. The language was supposed to help me in the development of some other profession. My career is ridiculous to the same, like two drops of water, biographies of English and American writers, memorized in the lessons of Evgenia Borisovna: it was possible without even looking into the book that the name has tried a lot of professions. I also: I left the institute as a historian, then became a ministerial worker, then a journalist, but English and English culture did not let me go, I was constantly engaged in translations until I focused on this completely. The question is, why was it so to evade fate, which was determined in the ninth grade?

Now the choice of path is in front of my youngest daughter. No matter how I tried to captivate it with history, there is no prophet in my fatherland. But once last year she told me that, probably, she would become a historian. What the mother failed, the teacher managed, who, by a strange coincidence, is also not a professional teacher. Like the average English writer, she “tried a lot of professions” - was an archaeologist, a restorer in the Tretyakov Gallery, a guide, that is, if I may say so, “touched the story with her own hands.” Now she brings to children her surprise from contact with history, and not just retells lectures - even very good - professors of the pedagogical institute.

I asked my acquaintances and, on the basis of this simple sociological study, came to the conclusion that in most cases an unprofessional teacher affected the choice of a profession. It can be a parent who is familiar, but often a teacher, however, as a rule, one who managed to “smell powder” - to work in production, in science, etc.

Here is a vivid example: the daughter of my friend, a student of a biofacment of Moscow State University. I envied her mother in a good way, because she was not facing the problem of choosing a profession for a child, Sasha chose her at 11 years old. It is hard to believe, but at this age she wanted to become not a writer or actress, but ... a microbiologist. One went through the whole city to classes of a scientific circle, then she went to school at Moscow State University. By graduation, its scientific experience will exceed ten years. It seems that this will not be the worst specialist.

For some reason, I was sure that the school teacher carried her biology, but, as it turned out, she only advised the girl who was not too fascinated by the subject, but quite smart, go to a meeting of the biological circle. The first lesson shocked Sasha. Listening to the scientist who told about the cells, she experienced a sweet sense of doom. Magic thoughtfulness and magical pattern reigned in the world of cells. Feeling a chill running on the back, she realized that her life was as a foregone conclusion as the fate of the plant, which was destined to stab from a tiny seed. “Since then I have been lost to society,” she finished in crushed her story.

When I think about it, a dull lighted cave, a stooped old man, deftly pinching small scales from a piece of flint, and grouting around it, who are fascinated around, are fascinatingly watching from a shapeless fragment, that will make their distant descendants in the age of the Internet and genetic engineering arose, and genetic engineering. Breathe on the museum glass. Probably, the old master (who lived to Mafusailov’s age 35) pretended that he did not notice the clumsy attempts of some boys to beat the pebble with a pebble, but from time to time he corrected them, showing how to squeeze the gun, and even let the other jerk off the scales from his fragment.

Now let's try to imagine how technical progress would develop in those times, if all the children were driven into another corner corner, where a specially trained mentor who made only a few tips during practice would have learned: “They took the stones into the right hand, and Silicon squeezed between the knees. On my command, we bake around the flint, there is nothing interesting there”.

For more than a decade, veterans-pedagogues have been complaining that "young people are not rushing to school." But maybe this has its own expediency? Maybe “so nature wanted” so that youth sought to do something, open, invent, and in maturity in us, sophisticated people of the twenty-first century, a primitive desire to pass on to the young generation the accumulated experience. Own experience.

Of course, I do not urge the disbandment of pedagogical universities. It would be strange if only self -taught taught in elementary school, who mastered the alphabet and score without outside help. But it is preferable that people affect the formation of ideas about professions to be professionals themselves. I am by no means inventing a bicycle: this experience has been mastered in the West for several decades, where there are programs to attract specialists from production and scientific institutions to the senior classes. According to the same principle, pedagogical groups are formed in our lyceum type schools. There are many such people in secondary schools, but I would like to have more.

Often, a person who did not want to hear about school, after forty, the ancient instinct of the master hee wakes up - he wants to capture himself in generations, and, not limited to the circle of his own family. However, often someone should tell him where to go. On the other hand, he, quite possibly, does not want to part with the main work, and school administrations do not really like part -time. That is, there must be programs that would help these two subjects - school and professional - meet.

A person who studied only one thing is to teach chemistry - and all his life did only one thing - he taught chemistry, most likely he can light students with only one fiery passion - the desire to become a chemistry teacher, but not a chemist. And this is not bad, but chemists are also needed. And here inevitably, no matter how you dismiss it, a heretical thought arises of reforming pedagogical education. Or maybe some faculties of pedagogical universities of the one ... following the example of some countries where, in universities, when preparing specialists in different fields, knowledge read a small course of pedagogy ... And a person can at any stage of his career, feeling mentoring itching, offer his services to the school ...

No, it is harmful to dream. Now she closed her eyes and imagined that not only a former archaeologist leads the story, but also biology - a weathered breeder or an entomologist, a mysterious OBZH subject - a veteran of a counter -terrorist unit, French - a former diplomat, and literature in high school is not just a member of the writers, but a person who writes deliciously. After all, everything is possible in dreams, right?