Alexander Shevyrev: Unity of dissimilar people is normal

On February 21, 2006, the REGNUM portal published an interview with Alexander Shevyrev, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, the reason for which was the publication of the textbook "Mosaic of Cultures". The publication is intended for teaching history and social studies in secondary schools and is aimed at developing tolerance in a multicultural society. The manual is aimed at schoolchildren in grades 10-11, but can be used by younger students. A. Shevyrev was one of the editors of this publication.

One of the main tasks in the activities aimed at developing attitudes of tolerant consciousness A. Shevyrev sees drawing attention to this topic: "In our opinion, the demonstration by historical examples of the" normality "of a multicultural society, the organic migration of people, the possibility of resolving conflicts by painless means and worthy behavior in conditions of the most acute conflicts - these are the means that will help to realize that today's problems did not arise yesterday, and that humanity has already accumulated considerable experience in resolving them .

At the same time, the team of authors, which is engaged not only in the development of educational materials, but also in the organization of competitions among schoolchildren on the topics "Meeting of cultures", "City - the unity of dissimilar", etc., understand how difficult it is to draw attention to this problem of schoolchildren, teenagers. According to A. Shevyrev, the way to draw their attention to the problem of tolerance "is to switch to their intellectual and emotional level of perception of a foreign culture, to give them the opportunity to be in the shoes of another and feel that the other is not necessarily a stranger. For example, studying the history of migration of one's own family, analyzing the memories of deported children, or writing the autobiography of a guest worker depicted in a photograph can help to understand the motives for migration and the difficulties that ordinary migrants face" .

And another way to form tolerant attitudes is to "let schoolchildren understand that the other has his own truth. Many people participate in any historical event, and each of them has his own vision of this event. There is no one, only correct assessment, therefore, in order to to form one's attitude to both historical and contemporary events, one must be able to carefully listen to the other .

Sources

• "Let schoolchildren understand that the other has his own truth": an interview with Alexander Shevyrev IA REGNUM // IA REGNUM. 2006. February 21.