MORAL & CREATIVE EDUCATION. ECOLOGY AND HEALTH CONCERN AWAKENING THE HEART AND SOUL
M. Skrebtsova and A. Lopatina
Spiritual and moral education of the individual. As we begin to think deeply about the implications of these words, it soon becomes clear that the way we approach this task has truly widespread ramifications for society, and for the future of any country. A person's entire life and his relationship with the surrounding world, depend on what he or she learns in childhood and adolescence: to love or to hate, to show compassion or to take pleasure in the suffering of others, to put our heart into our work or look for the easy way out.
Let us take a look at what our children are offered in today's schools by opening a guidebook to educational institutions in Moscow. This is what is written there: "In addition to a broad general education students study computer science, mathematics, English and French… There are computer facilities, a private swimming pool and a sauna…" Here we have the main preoccupations of contemporary schools. Of course, there are other goals as well, such as "developing a physically healthy, independent and well-rounded personality, together with creative abilities…" - but these goals are secondary to the educational goals, and are considered far less significant. In one school, where the basic program was described as "the spiritual and moral development of the individual" we tried to discover what exactly this entailed, but did not receive clear answers to our questions. True, there were smaller classes than usual, and children were not humiliated during the lessons, and were even allowed to leave the class for a rest if they were tired. Yet in answer to our question about how moral and spiritual instruction there differed from the program in standard schools we were told only that all subjects are studied in greater depth.
Regardless, the majority of children, wherever they study, have difficulty assimilating the knowledge presented by their instructors. The result is an absurd situation in which knowledgeable teachers arrive at a school, as do six or seven year old kids who are ready and eager for anything new. And after a short time those children begin to tune out their lessons. This rejection is often reflected back in the teacher's behavior, and in some children, especially in the early teens, grows into an outright hatred of school or even life itself. A substantial proportion of children complete school with nothing more that basic reading, writing and arithmetical skills, and even those may be weak. All of those years of pedagogical effort are thus wasted!
More than once we have heard teachers lament about how difficult their work is, and how parents make no effort to help their children. Nobody will dispute this. Yet where there is enough of a desire, a teacher can always reorganize his or her activities, supplementing them and filling them with inspiration. We recall here the words of a young man who took part in one of our seminars, a student from Novosibirk University:
"I've got absolutely ordinary parents, who always made sure that I was healthy, well fed and clothed, and didn't miss any lessons at school. And when I was little I was an absolutely ordinary child. I remember perfectly the group of kids from our building. We were good kids and sometimes even played games where we secretly helped elderly ladies. And then what happened when we got to school? The teachers didn't teach us to do bad things, of course, but it was if nobody in the school could care less about you. They liked you or hated you depending on how you answered questions in class, never mind what sort of person you were. That's no fun for anyone. As a result, by the 9th grade a lot of us turned into perfect hooligans. I've been in fights, even criminal groups, and I've used drugs, though fortunately I was able to get out of all that, thanks to one wonderful person who became my true teacher. But a lot of my friends have died or are sitting in prison. Now I'm studying physics at the university, and I find the subject amazing. In school I though physics was a dull hammer for beating us over the head with…"
A sort of impenetrable wall is building up between children and their teachers. Teachers spend years of their lives and millions of nerve cells on getting children to assimilate knowledge, while the children make every effort to repulse that knowledge, and resort to squirming out of work and trickery and whatever else it takes avoid lessons they neither like nor understand. Can it really be that humanity has developed its knowledge only to see it wasted on our children in this way?
If we picture teachers as a channel for the transmission of knowledge, then it may be that what flows through the channel is lacking, or it may be that the channel is pointed in the wrong direction.
When, many years after graduating, we looked again at the experience of pedagogues from the past, we found a clear and immediate answer to our questions. PEDAGOGY IS ABOVE ALL THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATING THE SOUL, and if pedagogical effort is directed first and foremost towards this goal, then the imaginary wall between teachers and students will come tumbling down of its own accord, and our children will want to learn.
We are the authors of 30 books on creative and moral education of children. Our books are being published by a number of different publishing companies.
Lopatina A. & Skrebtstova M.
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