Head of the Russian Academy of Education: 70% of teachers have not read “War and Peace”

President of St. Petersburg State University and head of the Russian Academy of Education Lyudmila Verbitskaya said during the International Cultural Forum that about 70% of teachers in Russian schools have not read the novel “War and Peace” from beginning to end. As Rosbalt writes , a study conducted among teachers of Russian language and literature in St. Petersburg showed that many teachers have large gaps in their knowledge of the school curriculum.

“The conclusions are simply tragic. Because many teachers of Russian language and literature in St. Petersburg could not cope with the questionnaires that the children could cope with. It seems to me that it is necessary to introduce special rules for admission to pedagogical universities. 70% of teachers have not read the novel “War and Peace”, but teach children. Let them say that this is a violation of democracy,” Verbitskaya explained.

In addition, the head of the Russian Academy of Education refuted her statement about the need to exclude the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky from the school curriculum.

“I only said that studying the novel “War and Peace” at school is a very difficult thing,” Verbitskaya said. She also emphasized that a student cannot understand the meaning of all the plot twists in such a complex text and isolate the key plot twists. Most often, children pay attention to the love lines that seem most interesting to them.

On September 30, 2016, the head of the Russian Academy of Education, Lyudmila Verbitskaya, proposed to exclude Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, replacing them with a course on Orthodox culture.

Earlier it became known that the subject “Orthodox Culture” may still appear in Russian schools. The subject program is scheduled for the entire period of study - from the first to the 11th grade. The Russian Orthodox Church explained that teaching Orthodox culture within the subject “Fundamentals of the Spiritual and Moral Culture of the Peoples of Russia” will not be mandatory.

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