"Children feel good that they are used"

Psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya - about whether the “patriotic” education will work in Russian schools

Starting September 5, new lessons entitled “Talk about the Important” will appear in Russian schools - separate classes of classes have already been developed for students from 1 to 11 grade. At these lessons with children will discuss their attitude to the family, Russia and military service. In addition, the authorities plan to create a new youth movement “Big Change”-as once a pioneer movement, it should “participate in the upbringing and career guidance” of the younger generation and form a worldview of youth. The psychologist and writer Lyudmila Petranovskaya told the “cold” about why such an indoctrination harms children - but not at all the way you could expect, as well as how parents and teachers can behave to minimize this harm.

Patriotism teaching children can actually affect them and instill in them some kind of “ right ” point of view?

- How teaching ideology affects children, I did not professionally engage. But I have the experience of a person who has grown in the USSR with all the corresponding slogans, political information and line, and I know that there are very few children remain in the heads of all this. The more persistently, necessarily and mediocre it is taught - and this is usually the case, the more it causes rejection and disgust.

On the other hand, when adults themselves do not believe in what they say and do it only because they “need”, children feel such things very well. Therefore, I doubt very much that these lessons will work as planned. I would like to say a couple of encouraging words to those who are horrified by the fact that their children are indoctrinize by imperiality and militarism - no, it does not work in the forehead.

But somehow in the generation of people who have now gone to the front, these ideas spread? Or did they affect something except the school?

- They could be affected by the fact that their school was not very good and did not give the opportunity to study normally and get a good profession. If you do not have strong support in the family or some outstanding abilities, and at the same time the school does not help you, but only humiliates and puts deuces, then you can already desperate in the first and second class of the class and understand that you are doomed to be a loser and a loser. And after school, in a situation where you do not see any prospects, you receive such an offer-on the one hand, to be related to some historical events, on the other-rather big money and honor-possibly posthumous, but who thinks about it at 20-25 years old?

Children learn from adults whom they trust, while imitating not to words, but by behavior. And they absorb not what the adult says, but what he believes in.

The harm of the teaching campaign for patriotism will consist in the fact that children will see a lot of adults, because mostly adults will say all these things, because it is ordered, with false voices with played emotions. And it is not easy for children to see this - because it is not possible to despise adults. And in this situation they cannot but despise.

When I was in the 9th grade, at the Komsomol meeting, students were scolded who were walking a demonstration. The director baked them with jokes-converters, and then her phone rang. She asked for something in surprise, hung up, calmly reported that Brezhnev had died, and continued to hih to be hih-another hour and a half.

The next day, on the mourning line, she sobbing, sobbed: “Our dear Leonid Ilyich, who did you leave us to?” And I looked at this and did not understand - how is it possible? In adolescence, such experience may be useful - but at eight years it is definitely harmful.

Why is it harmful to children to experience contempt for adults?

“When children see adults as people who cannot be trusted, who cannot cope with life and are afraid of someone themselves, they lose a sense of safety necessary for the child for growing up.” It is important for children to know that there are people who can trust, respect them, admire them. There should be people who know what to do, believe in something and have self-esteem. If the child sees only those who do what is ordered around is scary, because he has nothing to rely on.

In addition, the child can not simply tell that we are against all, because "we are beautiful, and they are goats." We need a context, some horrors: how fighting geese fly on us, how boys crucify ... Tales that a battle awaits us ahead, that we should go and die all for many children will be quite traumatic and painful content.

When feelings for their country, dreams of the future, an active position appears in a vulgar, formalized way and talk about it from under the stick, it is very bad for children-because in fact these things should be valuable and important. For children, this is no less harmful than pornography, which also confuses about the fact that there is a relationship, sex, intimacy.

It is also harmful to understand that you are used as a means - for example, they are built in letters at different events. Adults solve their problems - to express an ideological replica or to curry up before the authorities. A child is a trump card in our detentric world: a tear of a child, a child’s drawing ... And children feel good that they are used.

Do not you think that not all teachers will be hypocrite - after all, the percentage of those who sincerely believe in the ideology advanced by power is large enough? Maybe not every word, but in the very idea that “ we are attacked, we need to defend ourselves ” ?

-Some people really sincerely believe in it, but it does not follow from this that they will directly affect the children.

For people who believe that the idea is more important than a person, that for the sake of some ideas you can sacrifice people, other people can really go, including children. They are very charismatic - precisely because they themselves sincerely believe, and they are ruthless to themselves and to others. But, firstly, there are never many of them. Secondly, they themselves always believe that they are on the side of the good-and therefore, when they set out their ideas, they do not say “hit, burn, kill”, they say some pathos, correct and, in general, good things-“help”, “protect”. I think that a big surprise awaits them, when it turns out that the children have learned this part, and who actually helped and who attacked it there can well be reviewed at any age, turning to the chronicles.

So, many people who at the end of the Soviet period wanted activity - and did not miss the Komsomol meetings, like the majority, became bright oppositionists. For them, this value layer of ideas exists, and they don’t care. They had a reassessment of historical facts or the role of, say, parties in today's society - but ideals, the desire to change the world remained.

In addition, do not forget that children always pass the separation period, and the more they are strangled in the family and school with some values, the more they push them away and depreciate them during their youth.

That is, we can say that from these patriotic programs there may even be some benefit?

- No. There can be nothing useful in making children the subject of ideological processing and pumping. They really need to talk about values ​​and love for the homeland - but in a free, protected atmosphere. So that they can ask, doubt, to say that they do not like. And from this free thought, love for Russia can be born. But I think that in fact, the purpose of these programs is that, God forbid, no true love for Russia was born. If we all fell in love with our homeland, then the authors of these programs, their customers and sponsors would have been sitting on the bunks for a long time. There is no benefit in indocrisation, but the harm is a little not where it is expected.

And if parents notice this harm, what to do to minimize this influence on the child?

- Sometimes parents manage to unite and reduce the number of such events in schools - for example, they refer to laws on education, where this is not provided. Sometimes they come to the conclusion that the child still understands little, but figure it out when he grows up.

But if the child is over 10-11 years old, then the way out is to talk to him about what he is watching. Explain things such as conformism, the moral choice of a person who can remain in some position only on condition that plays a certain game. These things should be explained to children because we release them in such a world. But it is important that the child knows that a person is not doomed to do so, he can choose. After all, to be, for example, a director is not a vital necessity.

Could the current situation influence the fact that the generation, which was brought up in the 1970-1980s, perceives the return to indocation more calmly than if this happened for the first time?

- Certainly. But there are different aspects. Firstly, most can never be non-conformists. This is the meaning of conformism and following group norms: they ensure the stability of society, the transfer of rules, routine, values. It would be impossible to build civilization if most people did not do “like everyone else” or as their parents.

On the other hand, there is a general context and hierarchical system, where the same rules are reproduced at each stage. For example, the director at my school behaved like that, because otherwise she would have been baked in the same way, say, in the district committee. If the directors do not bake in the district committee, then after a while no one will come to the demonstration, and then they will already bake the district committee. And so on. Children who live in this system see many people who should portray commitment to ideas that they do not have. And, of course, this creates the basis for cynicism, when in fact there are no values. Values ​​are for wise men. If there is nothing to do, then you can pass the evening at the discussion of “NATO plans”, but in fact, health and salary are important.

It seems that the way out of this vicious circle is impossible without changes in the system. But can the teacher somehow influence it at his level-and not harm the children, and at the same time remain a teacher?

- You can always speak not in a dogmatic manner, but in a dialogue. Ask children, give them a word, pay attention to different points of view, to mismatch and paradoxes. To say that each point of view is not taken from the ceiling and is not read from the book-behind it there are some ideas about the world, feelings, experience, identity. For example, if your loved one participates in some event, then your gaze will differ from the perception of those who do not have such a close one. To observe and analyze how our positions are formed can be very useful for children. And the topics of the lessons can be the same.

But it can be risky. For example, as in the case of Irina, a gene of Penza, when the children recorded her words, and now she faces a criminal punishment.

- It is clear that there is no safe strategy. But turning a lesson into propaganda from the other side is also in a sense the use of children. But if the adult will speak less and ask more, then there will be nothing to record, and children will be useful if they are at least once in their life.

If we imagine that tomorrow children will be taught not how to patriotism and militarism, but by some democratic values, it will not be better-or even worse from the point of view of further prospects. Because if we make an ideological program and at the same time look at the children as a pan, in which we put something, then we need to cram more, then it does not matter what we try to invest, because this approach for the child is basically harmful and depreciates the content.

It is worth listening to what the children think, to help them organize a discussion, to show that we can discuss without being persons. Is it safe? No. Is it useful for children? Probably yes.

Do you think these programs of patriotic education will develop in an even more aggressive side? Or is it impossible to predict it now?

- Since the real, sincere support of all this is not so strong, all this will turn into a boring routine and lost time. Most of the children will be bored, and only excellent students will make something to shut up. In this sense, it was very reasonable to put such lessons first on Monday. Everyone is sleeping on them.

Those teenagers who are ready to be pro-government activists for the sake of a career, patriotic movements can give some new opportunities?

-Some older children can use them in this way. But they have no prospects. For example, where are the activists of all those youth projects that we have observed for the past 20 years now? At least one of them made some career? These movements are positioned as a social elevator, but they give nothing. Sooner or later, one of those who participated in them, having reached the top, won and then encounters a criminal case. That's the whole career that they promised to them.

All these youth stories work in growing systems. Let us distract from whether it is a good system or bad, but when it is growing, it all causes real sincerity and excitement. In the spirit of Tomorrow Belongs to Me . And we have the opposite. The system collapses and degrades, so children who will believe in pro-government activism as a social elevator will be seriously deceived-no one is going to let them steal.