Позитивные изменения. Образование. Школа будущего (Тематический выпуск, 2022)/Positive changes. Education. The school of the future (Special issue, 2022)

That’s a good question. Psychologists now say that the age of adolescent crisis in children is shifting. If it used to be at 13–14, 15–16 years old, now it starts with children as young as 10. I guess it makes sense to say that the earlier you try different things, the better. At the very least, I’m absolutely convinced that getting experience at an early age really shapes you in the future. I can see it in my loved ones and in the children I am in contact with. And I’ve done three or four thousand interviews with children in the last three years. Those who have had an experience are very different from their peers.

Tatyana Kovaleva, professor at the Moscow State Pedagogical University, believes that the time has come for self skills, the skills needed to take care of oneself. Psychologist and professor Alexander Asmolov speaks of soft skills as a set of competencies that a person must possess in a changing world. In what proportion do you think the School of the Future can and should teach soft, hard, and self skills?

First of all, big thanks to Alexander Grigorievich Asmolov, with whom we have a very warm and close relationship; it is his merit that it is said about these skills so much.

As is often the case with social change, there can be a strong bias at first. Now some private schools are positioning themselves exclusively as soft skills schools, the preparation for the business world. But gradually we will be able to find balance between self skills and soft skills, because, for example, teachers and parents lack the skill to take care of themselves, and a lot of them experience burnout. As an Italian acquaintance of mine used to say: "How are you going to work if you’re not rested?”

These skills help us relate objects to real life. To be honest, I’m a big fan of phenomenon-based learning[3], where you learn one global topic through different disciplines, and you tie all the subjects together in that way.

TRUST AND OPENNESS TO THE NEW

You mentioned the Finnish model of education. What is its main difference from the Russian model?

We visited Finnish schools together with teachers from Russian schools. One day we came to a school that had just introduced education via VR technologies. They taught biology, geography, and anatomy lessons using VR glasses. What our teachers were most concerned about was who paid for these glasses. The Finnish teachers had no idea what they were talking about. I explained that we couldn’t have teachers spending budgets. And at some point it became clear that the key word for Finnish education is "trust," the trust of the state in teachers. The teacher can change the curriculum to suit the students as he or she sees fit. If they think VR glasses are needed, then so be it.

One Finnish teacher told us: "Historically, we have three categories of professionals in our society, the specialists who are more trusted by the country. It’s teachers, doctors, and the police." And we all went: "Oh, I see." Therein lies the difference between Finnish education and Russian education.

In Finland, teachers are legally obliged to try new methodological findings and techniques, that is, they are obliged to follow everything that is new. And I think that’s a very big difference.

I think we need to get off teachers’ back and let them live outside the box at least a little bit. When you have every other teacher complaining that everything is too hard, that makes it impossible for them to get creative.

I think we need to get off teachers’ back and let them live outside the box at least a little bit. Because when you have every other teacher complaining that they find themselves stuck and everything is too hard and they have to find ways around, that makes it impossible for them to get creative. We all like to work in a free atmosphere, without being disturbed by various issues.

Can the School of the Future be available to any child without any admission screening? What does it take?