Elena Golubeva. Unprofessional professionals

Unprofessional professionals
Elena Golubeva

Publication date: February 12, 2004

Thinking about professionalism is now in fashion - professionals are needed everywhere. It is difficult, if not pointless, to argue with this. Who would refuse the services of a professional car mechanic? It’s a little more difficult with doctors; there is no such unity of opinion - some prefer old-fashioned methods and turn to grandmothers. What about the teachers? When I think about methodology and professionalism at school, I always remember the English literature teacher who streaked across the school horizon like a bright comet when I was in the 9th grade. She was a woman of about forty, who stood out from other teachers with her broad erudition and rare charm. She had real English, not “Inyazov” pronunciation, she gave us tapes of Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud to listen to and talked about Britain in such a way that I still feel like I’ve been there, although I never managed to do so do.

For the only time in ten years I dreamed that the summer holidays would end quickly. What a shock it was for me, and not for me alone, to return to school: it turned out that Natalya Nikolaevna no longer works and we have a different English literature teacher. The bitterness of disappointment gradually subsided, and we got along with the new teacher, although I still have a picture in my eyes: she rips off the walls the stands that we made with such enthusiasm last year, throws them on the floor and walks on them...

As it turned out later, the administration hastened to get rid of Natalya Nikolaevna because she did not have a pedagogical education. She was the wife of a diplomat, lived in Great Britain from an early youth and, being a curious person 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 mastering pedagogical techniques, she conveyed her experience to young minds, as professional travelers had done for centuries, which N.N., in essence, was.

She was replaced at the combat post by a woman with a good pedagogical education (which, however, did not tell her that you cannot indifferently destroy in front of children what they did with love, you can at least wait until you are left alone in the class). She had a strong knowledge of language and literature, but the subject turned from a holiday into a routine. If Natalya Nikolaevna shared with us the shock of recognizing this or that phenomenon that she herself experienced, now the amazing has disappeared from the lessons. Evgenia Borisovna conscientiously recounted to us what she was taught at the institute, where, apparently, she did not experience any shock from comprehending the subject.

Now that I think about it, I come to the conclusion that Natalya Nikolaevna’s short “reign” nevertheless determined what I eventually began to do professionally. By the end of school, I firmly decided not to enter the language department, since I believed, with youthful maximalism, that language was not a profession. The language was supposed to help me in mastering some other profession. My career is ridiculously similar to the identical, like two peas in a pod, biographies of English and American writers, memorized in Evgenia Borisovna’s lessons: you could rattle off without even looking at the book that the name has tried many professions. It’s the same for me: I left the institute as a historian, then became a ministerial worker, then a journalist, but the English language and English culture did not let me go, I was constantly translating until I focused completely on it. The question arises: why was it necessary to evade the fate that was determined back in the ninth grade?

Now my youngest daughter faces the choice of path. No matter how I tried to captivate her with history, there is no prophet in his own country. But one day last year she told me that she would probably become a historian. What my mother failed to do, the teacher succeeded, who, by a strange coincidence, is also not a professional teacher. Like the average English writer, she “tried many professions” - she was an archaeologist, a restorer at the Tretyakov Gallery, a tour guide, that is, so to speak, “she touched history with her own hands.” Now she conveys to children her surprise at coming into contact with history, and not just retelling lectures - even very good ones - by professors at the pedagogical institute.

I asked my friends around and, based on this simple sociological research, came to the conclusion that in most cases the choice of profession is influenced by a non-professional teacher. This could be a parent, an acquaintance, but often a teacher, however, as a rule, one who has had time to “smell gunpowder” - worked in production, in science, etc.

Here is a striking example: my friend’s daughter, a student at the Faculty of Biology at Moscow State University. I was jealous of her mother in a good way, because she did not face the problem of choosing a profession for her child; Sasha chose it for herself at the age of 11. It's hard to believe, but at this age she wanted to become not a writer or an actress, but... a microbiologist. One traveled across the city to attend a scientific club, then she entered school at Moscow State University. By the time she graduates from university, her scientific experience will exceed ten years. I think this will not be the worst specialist.

For some reason, I was sure that the school teacher had fascinated her with biology, but, as it turned out, she only advised the girl, who was not too keen on the subject, but was quite smart, to go to a meeting of the biology club. The very first lesson shocked Sasha. Listening to the scientist talk about cells, she experienced a sweet feeling of doom. In the world of cells, magical thoughtfulness and magical regularity reigned. Feeling a chill running down her spine, she realized that her life was as predetermined as the fate of a plant that was destined to hatch from a tiny seed. “Since then I have been lost to society,” she sadly concluded her story.

When I think about this, before my mind's eye there appears a dimly lit cave, a stooped old man deftly plucking small flakes from a piece of flint, and grimy children huddled around him, fascinated as they watch as from the shapeless fragment emerges that exquisite perfection that will make their distant descendants in the age of the Internet and genetic engineering breathe admiringly on the museum glass. Probably, the old master (who lived to the age of 35 at Methuselah) pretended not to notice the clumsy attempts of some boys to hit pebbles with pebbles, but from time to time he corrected them, showing them how to squeeze the tool more skillfully, and even let someone else pinch off a scale from his fragment .

Now let’s try to imagine how technological progress would have developed in those distant times if all the children had been herded to another corner of the cave, where a specially trained mentor, who had made only a few tips during practice, would have loudly taught: “Take the stones in your right hand, and "The flints are squeezed between the knees. At my command, we hit the flint. Stop looking back at Master He, there is nothing interesting there."

For decades, veteran teachers have been complaining that “young people are not eager to go to school.” But maybe there is some purpose in this? Maybe “that’s how nature wanted it”, so that youth would strive to accomplish, discover, invent something, and in maturity, in us, sophisticated people of the twenty-first century, a primitive desire arose to pass on the accumulated experience to the younger generation. Own experience.

Of course, I am not calling for the disbandment of pedagogical universities. It would be strange if only self-taught people taught in primary school, having mastered the alphabet and counting without outside help. But it is preferable that the people who influence the formation of ideas about professions are professionals themselves. I am by no means reinventing the wheel: this experience has been mastered for several decades in the West, where there are programs for attracting specialists from production and scientific institutions to high school. The same principle is used to form teaching teams in our lyceum-type schools. There are many such people in secondary schools, but I would like there to be more of them.

Often, in a person who from a young age did not even want to hear about school, after forty the ancient instinct of Master He awakens - he wants to imprint himself in generations, and not limited to his own family. However, often someone needs to tell him where to turn. On the other hand, he quite possibly does not want to part with his main job, and school administrations do not really like part-time workers. That is, there must be programs that would help these two entities - the school and the professional - meet.

A person who studied only one thing - to teach chemistry - and all his life did only one thing - teach chemistry, most likely can ignite 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 about reforming teacher education arises. Or maybe some faculties of pedagogical universities... following the example of some countries, where universities teach a short course in pedagogy when training specialists in various fields of knowledge... And a person can, at any stage of his career, having felt the mentoring itch, offer his services to the school. ..

No, it’s still harmful to dream. Now I closed my eyes and imagined that not only our history is being taught by a former archaeologist, but also biology is being taught by a weather-beaten breeder or entomologist, the mysterious subject of life safety is being taught by a veteran of the counter-terrorism unit, French is being taught by a former diplomat, and literature in high school is not just a member of the Writers' Union , but a person who writes deliciously. In dreams, everything is possible, right?