Textbooks will be sifted, teachers will be reprogrammed

The Ministry of Education and Science shared plans for the future

With each academic year, the selection of school aids will become more and more strict. As Isaac Kalina, director of the department of state policy of the Ministry of Education and Science, told reporters yesterday, from September 1, 2008, only those manuals that are considered worthy by two hundred experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Education will remain on the federal list of textbooks. “This is a guarantee that the quality of textbooks will fully correspond to the views of representatives of science,” explained a representative of the Ministry of Education and Science. Members of the RAS expert commission, on whom the rejection of textbooks will depend, convinced those present of the seriousness of their approach. Thus, according to the secretary of the commission, Sergei Sidorenko, last year experts considered only 20% of the textbooks submitted to be suitable.

There will be no forced reduction in the number of benefits; rather, this will happen through natural selection. As Mr. Kalina emphasized, the increased demands placed on the quality of textbooks have already led to the fact that the number of publishing houses involved in their production has decreased by a third. And it will continue to decrease. A representative of the educational department recalled that September 1 is not only Knowledge Day, but also the date of entry into force of a federal law that will tighten the requirements for publishers.

“I can say that the quality of textbooks has improved. Previously, I came across such layouts where even commas were not inserted,” stated Sergei Sidorenko, secretary of the RAS expert commission, with some degree of skepticism. But the main thing is not commas, but the adequacy of the benefits to the “demands of time.” Although, as Vladimir Shestakov, scientific secretary of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted, the main problem is not in textbooks, but in teachers. “Teachers often say for years what they were taught many years ago; they need to be retrained, if you like, reprogrammed,” the historian noted.

The three-year work of the expert commissions will come to an end on October 1 of this year. And, as officials from the Ministry of Education and Science and experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Education assure, this does not mean that from now on all schools will be ordered to teach children according to one, the only correct textbook. The principle of variability, which the teaching community has defended over the past decade and a half, will remain unchanged. True, Mr. Kalina, speaking about the right of choice that will be given to teachers, noted: “I, of course, do not really believe that an ordinary school teacher will read all five mathematics textbooks from the list and make an informed choice.” But, on the other hand, the director of the department of state policy of the Ministry of Education and Science emphasized that “I wouldn’t want to leave the choice of the best one to the officials either.” Experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Education believe that teachers need to be helped to find their way - for this purpose it is proposed to hold a competition to select the best textbook on a subject from the federal list. Thus, the winning benefit will not be the only one, but it will be desirable.

However, one textbook has already firmly staked out its niche - we are talking about “The History of World Religions” edited by the director of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Chubaryan . As the Vremya Novostei newspaper has already reported, starting from September 1, the subject “Fundamentals of World Religions” will be studied as an elective in Moscow schools. Yesterday, Isaac Kalina announced that starting from the next academic year, this discipline may be included in the educational standard and, therefore, in the compulsory curriculum. “The standards of the next generation are being prepared today, and in the development of these standards we are involving a huge number of scientific, public and educational organizations, including structures that deal with issues of education in the main religious faiths - Orthodox, Muslim and others,” he announced the initiatives of his ministry, Mr. Kalina. According to him, the Ministry of Education and Science received “very interesting proposals” from religious figures. “I would be happy to support if the content of school education included knowledge of the history of religions, the sources of religious culture, both Orthodox and, probably, others,” Kalina emphasized.

Mikhail MOSHKIN