By Vestnik Kavkaza
On October 14-15th in Penza the movement “People’s Front for Russia” will report to Vladimir Putin that more than half of his orders in the educational sphere haven’t been fulfilled, Kommersant reports. The main topic of the meeting with teachers will be patriotic educatio,n which should be a basis for national identity.
The Minister of Education, Dmitry Livanov, is sure that “the formation of the socially-active personality of a citizen, a patriot of our country, who has a sense of national pride, civic decency, love of their homeland and the nation, is the most important task of the educational system.”
According to the minister, at the moment the content of school programs is being seriously changed: “In November 2013 the Russian Historical Society approved the new concept of teaching history – a new historic and cultural standard. At the moment experts are working on history textbooks which would meet the requirements of the standard. These will be textbooks for different classes, for professional classes in high school, where history is studied at a deeper level. It will be a complex of methodological materials for teachers and a complex of historical sources, i.e. texts to which teachers and pupils will refer in lessons.”
Meanwhile, Livanov says that “even though the textbooks are not ready yet; this year our schools shifted to new standards of history teaching. It is important to continue the same work on other school humanitarian subjects – the Russian language, literature, natural sciences. The better our efforts are united – experts and professionals, teachers, scientists are working on new approaches to other school subjects.”
“It is important that not only in lessons, but also in extracurricular activities the school atmosphere encourages settlement of the tasks of patriotic and moral education of people,” the minister thinks. “The professional skills of teachers play an important role. Today we have a new professional standard of teachers. It reflects inter-ethnic relations, patriotic and moral education of pupils. And a new system of teacher training and education in universities will be built on the basis of the standard, as well as a system of efficiency rating and retraining.”
