From school to family, from family to school

This week was marked by some extraordinary interest in home, family (call it what you want) education. An article in the "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" , material on the website "Orthodoxy and the World" , and at the end of the week - a discussion about the most important thing, about whose big shots are in the forest, that is, about money .

It’s surprising that this issue did not come up earlier and did not become the subject of public discussion - given the current principle “the money follows the student.”

At first glance, everything is very simple: since the money goes where the child receives an education, then all the money should go to the family, because he receives an education there, because parents, instead of the school, take upon themselves the organization of the educational process. Being home-schooled, the child has a purely formal relationship with the school, he is assigned to it, but does not actually study there, does not wear down the school equipment, does not bother teachers in class, does not require desks and interactive whiteboards, and all that stuff.

Of course, the school has the formal functions of accounting, control and method support. But in practice, all this is not so burdensome and is carried out carelessly, which, in fact, thank God, with today’s miracle Methodists.

From this point of view, transferring funds to a school is a misuse of funds, since the school itself does not bear virtually any expenses associated with the education and upbringing of the student. This is a waste of money - on the one hand, and a violation of the defining principle of the current educational policy "money follows the student."

However, there is always an argument “against”.

And the point here is not at all about dysfunctional parents, as Viktor Panin, chairman of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of the Rights of Consumers of Educational Services, writes, who may want to receive school money (this is about 100 thousand rubles a year). The point is in this very principle “money follows the student,” which is the other side of the general trend toward the collapse of the education system. The fact is that if money flows into the family, the contingent of those who will take this form of education into service will increase significantly, and this can lead to a crisis in institutional education, to the transformation of schools into methodological centers, and nothing more, in the distant future . This prospect becomes quite real due to the fact that family education, due to the collapse of school education as a whole, has now turned from a specific element of the latter into the only alternative to it.

All this sharpens interest in the monetary issue, the solution of which is the solution to the question of the future of the education system in general.

In the public consciousness, it has somehow already become the custom that family education is considered as such a specific form, which is resorted to either by patients (disabled from childhood) or sociopaths.

However, in modern conditions, this is, first of all, the only chance to give a child the education he should, to raise him correctly and give him real education, in contrast to school education, which can hardly be called normal and real. Family education in the current conditions is not for those who want to give a person more, but want to give him what he needs, which, in general, is what society ideally requires.

This approach to family education makes school completely useless in the educational process. Parents have to take on everything themselves. And under these conditions, they begin to play the role of a mini-school, which, accordingly, must provide all the appropriate conditions for learning - from a table and pencils to textbooks and teaching aids. All this requires funds, because family education is not so much about indulging in family whims, but about fulfilling a function that the state is unable to perform.

In these conditions, when all the burdens of educational activities fall on the family, it should receive all the funds, while the school should be content only with paying for methodological services, which are, in fact, purely symbolic, as I noted earlier.

Transferring the educational function from school to family is a big blow to the future of the education system as a whole. And it is from this point of view that the position of the same Viktor Panin is understandable, who, while opposing the transfer of money to the family, supports such a transfer to private schools. Unconsciously, he is trying to preserve this very institutional form.

However, understanding the importance of preserving the institutional form, I look at the current state and think that such a collapse may be the only way out of the current situation.

We talk a lot about civic engagement and grassroots initiatives. Perhaps the destruction of our current ugly school will clear the ground for a more correct and natural organization of the educational system. Perhaps, when everything is destroyed to the ground, then from family education we will build a new, normal, and not an ugly school?

I don't know, I don't know. But this thought, the temptation to start all over again, has not left me lately.