What is a good school? This is a school where a child goes to in the morning with joy and from where he returns in the evening in a good mood. And during the day he works: intensely and with interest.

But in order for it to be both “joyful” and “working”, we have to change something at school. What exactly? This is discussed in the book "Action School".

A school where children can attend lessons

There are specialized schools: schools for so-called gifted children. There are special schools: for children requiring “special conditions of education and development.” But there is still a group of children who need a special - different - school. These are ordinary children.

Because regular school becomes unbearable for them.

What a typical school is ready to praise a student for:
for diligence - that is, the ability to lie down
and for perseverance - that is, the ability to sit!

School requires a child to do something absolutely impossible - immobility. Having ten years of strict school behind us, we have become accustomed to the word “need” and do not believe in “want.” But what if you still try to create a school with faith in the reasonableness of children's interests and desires?

Twenty-two years ago, Rustam Kurbatov and his teacher friends decided to create just such a school.

And they succeeded.

How can a school be organized where you can go to class? Its director, the author of this unusual book, talks about this, reflects, and makes fun of it.

Another School's Attempt

“He’ll go to the board... He’ll go to the board...”.

Everyone over thirty remembers these words and the long pause after. Cold down my back.

Our entire School held on to this pause. It was so, it is... how could it be otherwise? Is school possible without a blackboard, without “let’s go...” and a trickle of cold sweat down your back? Is Another School Possible?

About how to work without a program, how to teach the Russian language without rules and exceptions, how to remember three thousand stories at once and for life - Rustam Kurbatov writes about this in his new book (which, according to the author, is doomed to become a pedagogical bestseller )..

School principal's tanks

“My tanks are not quite ordinary tanks. These are small stories, individual thoughts, unfinished phrases, pencil sketches in the margins of the School. Like haiku - only a little more authentic. You can write seriously about the School: pedagogical dissertations and poems. Or, probably, like this: frivolously, in three or four lines.”
R. Kurbatov.

The tanks of this book, indeed, in some ways imitate the reflective intonations of the tank and haiku of Eastern poetry. But at the same time, these are precisely those thoughts and impressions that give the school director the strength to break through the unshakable defense of the traditions of pedagogy that is indifferent to children, and to make decisive moves forward over very rough terrain.

The most unnecessary subject in school

In September, at the first lesson, each teacher begins with the fact that his subject is the most important in school: without this you cannot be an educated person, it will be very useful in life, you must pass the exam.

The new book is written on behalf of a teacher who teaches a subject that is clearly not the main one: there will definitely not be any uniform exams on it.
The history of childhood, the world of the Russian village, the family tree, singing in French, Soviet everyday life, cinema and cooking... Based on the discussion of sometimes quite unexpected matters, plots of often funny, sometimes sad and always entertaining observations of the teacher over the reflections of the students and his own grow. Over the thoughts that come in lessons that meet three defined requirements:
- the first requirement is some disorder,
- second - the ability to ask smart questions and wait,
- and the third requirement is that all this must have some meaning.

The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes walked around Athens in broad daylight with a lantern and looked for a person. Rustam Kurbatov, a history teacher and director of the private school “Ark-XXI,” walks around Krasnogorsk near Moscow and is also looking for a person, or rather, children, to teach them the Russian language.

You may ask, what child in Krasnogorsk does not speak Russian? They exist - very young and teenage boys, whose parents came to Russia to work from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

“They will reinfect us all with hepatitis, tuberculosis and God knows what else!” When Rustam Kurbatov first shared the idea of ​​opening a free Russian language elective at the lyceum for visiting children, he had to listen to something else.

Build bridges, not walls

These children either do not go to school at all - they are denied the right to education under the pretext of not knowing the language - or they go, but understand little in class. Naturally, they slow down the class and cause discontent among teachers and parents.

We do not yet have a clear solution at the state level - for example, a system of free electives for children, as is common in Europe - the whole burden of the problem falls on the shoulders of ordinary teachers.

Rustam Kurbatov decided to act independently - and came up with the project “Migratory Children”. This is a unique educational program for migrant children: an elective for younger schoolchildren who do not speak Russian well, and a separate class for older children, 11-15 years old, who do not attend school at all - they have the hardest time. Plus Russian language courses for adults.

A year later, the project has already shown results - small children, teenagers and adults master the difficult Russian language in an average of two months, and municipal schools are gradually beginning to adopt the experience of “Children of Migrants”.

Knowledge of Russian is passed on to children not only by professional teachers. First of all, the same guys work with them - volunteers from among the high school students of the Kovcheg Lyceum. The director is very happy about this circumstance.

“Our teenagers, who are now communicating with Tajik, Kyrgyz, Uzbek boys and girls, will develop resistance to the xenophobia virus,” says Rustam Kurbatov. “And for the children who come, Russia and our culture will also not be strangers; good memories will remain with them forever.”

Grandma Venus

Many migrant families live in the Pavshinskaya floodplain near Moscow. It was there that Kovcheg teachers posted advertisements about free Russian language courses - in supermarkets, clinics, elevators; we looked into markets, hostels and shopping centers. They thought that a stream of children would pour into the school, but no one responded.

Then they began to walk along the boulevards and parks - talking to mothers walking with their children, talking about the courses. In response - a polite “thank you” and again silence. The Kyrgyz grandmother Venus and mother-teacher Gulbarchyn Dzhanbaeva helped establish contact.

“These women were listened to, and children began to be brought to us - in the end a group of 15 people gathered,” says Rustam Kurbatov.

At first, the parents, just like the teachers from the lyceum, were full of suspicion: “What will they do with our children there?” Once, a whole delegation even came to the school to make sure that everything was in order.

Analysis of new words in the lesson. Among them is the funny word “saucer”. None of the children know what it is, but they try to guess and make different assumptions. One kid is really suffering, clutching his head with his hands, trying to remember or do something with this word.

- Now! - he shouts.

- Do you know what a “saucer” is? — he suddenly turns sharply to the volunteers.

They nod quickly.

A sigh of disappointment...

“The children are not spoiled, they are very open and responsive, they have an incredible thirst for knowledge and a passionate desire to learn,” this is what teachers say about their migrant students.

The girls in the small class of 11 people - it was assembled in the "Ark" from those children who, for various reasons, did not go to school at all - dream of becoming nurses in the future, and are waiting to start studying chemistry and biology. Boys - complete courses in auto mechanics and accounting. Everyone's favorite subject is Russian.

The point of the Migrant Children program is not just to learn Russian - it is important to introduce children to Russian culture and help them make friends. Integration into society takes place in a playful way - Russian and English language classes alternate with sports, theatrical performances, hikes, and excursions.

“Four people, three Uzbeks and one Tajik, congratulated me on Facebook on Victory Day,” recalls Kurbatov. – For them, this is still our common holiday, they remember Soviet films and sing our songs. These are people who were raised here on this land. They did not want to leave the Soviet Union. And they are offended by the word “migrants”. They feel like fellow citizens with us in the CIS, even the young ones.”

Rustam Kurbatov has many new students and many stories. Observing how hard it is for them - working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, living in cramped trailers without any amenities, a tiny salary, most of which is sent to their family back home - he tries to help. For some - with a part-time job, for others, like the boy Sulaiman recently, he collects money for treatment or a necessary operation.

Rustam Kurbatov, founder of the Migratory Children project. Photo: facebook.com/rustam.kurbatov

Two brothers, Hussein and Hasan, came from the Tajik city of Kulyab to work - they left large families in their homeland. Rustam Kurbatov is studying Russian with them at the Yusupov estate in Arkhangelskoye, not far from the place where the trailers of migrant workers are parked.

“Find me a forty-five-year-old Russian man who works 12 hours a day, and then goes to learn a foreign language,” says Kurbatov. – Our grammar didn’t work out for us, so we started watching “The Diamond Arm” with them and learning the language using phrases from the script. How much delight this caused!”

We need to talk about xenophobia and racism

Teacher Rustam Kurbatov about civic education of schoolchildren, sex education and religious intolerance of children and adults

How many years do you need to go to school? Is it right to instill citizenship in schoolchildren? How should religious education and sex education lessons be taught? These questions were answered in the second part of the interview with Realnoe Vremya by the creator of one of the first private schools in Russia, teacher and writer Rustam Kurbatov (see the first part).

“In the States and Europe, schools teach the ability to live with others, and not just for one hour a week.”

Rustam, in the West there are separate classes in schools where schoolchildren are introduced to modern politics and “taught” citizenship. Should this be done in our country too?

Perestroika, democratization - all this quickly ended in our country. Everything returned to its previous positions. Apparently there were no deep changes. Therefore, I am convinced that democratic citizenship should be developed in school. Otherwise, we all become simply performers, mediocre people who deliberately remove themselves from solving common issues. In a sense, this is the problem of the Russian intelligentsia: “I will live completely calmly without politics, let all public affairs be decided somehow by ourselves and other people.” I think our teenagers need to be raised differently. All issues of our lives can be discussed together, and everyone has the right to speak out and vote. Already at school, a person should get a taste of the possibility of change, that he can influence the situation. This is the basis of civil society. You can relate to Western society in any way you like. But it is no coincidence that in the States and Europe they teach citizenship, the ability to live with others, maybe even more than one hour a week. Russians can do everything - mathematics, physics, biology, and reading speed, but we don’t have the art of social interaction.

Let’s imagine that they don’t study “Eugene Onegin” at school. What happens if they don’t say anything about the Great Patriotic War at school? Will a person die from this? There are some things that you can basically live without, but not very well. And for the Russian intelligentsia there have always been such indicators - these are “Eugene Onegin” and “War and Peace”. If you have read them, you can be considered an educated person. It seems to me that in the current situation in our country, politics can be such a test drive. In principle, a person can live without politics, just as without Eugene Onegin. But this life will not be entirely complete. We must decide that politics is not only participation in elections, political parties, and the president’s speech. In a broad Aristotelian sense, this is the possibility of citizen participation in common affairs. And if we stop this possibility, the person, of course, does not physically die, but his life is not full. And in a sense, he can no longer be called an intelligent person. Just as before one could not be called intelligent who did not read the classics, so now one cannot be considered intelligent who says: “I don’t care, let others, the authorities, do it.” Politics is a public or civil sphere of life, the same sphere of life as music, literature, and art. All this creates a person.

Already at school, a person should get a taste of the possibility of change, that he can influence the situation. This is the basis of civil society... Russians can do everything - mathematics, physics, biology, and reading speed, but we don’t have the art of social interaction

- And how do you carry out this political education in your school?

Differently. Of course, in history lessons, and in social studies, and during recess. But it seems to me that mainly civic education occurs at class meetings. Because the theory of hostel life is taught in the lessons, and the assembly of the class is a workshop, laboratory work. This is the ability to live together, make decisions, carry out the will of the majority, listen to the minority, argue, speak out. It's a skill like multiplication tables. We have been teaching mathematics for a decade, 5 hours a week. This is 1.5 thousand hours of life. And as a result, we have good mathematicians. We devote approximately one thousand hours to the Russian language - 10 years, 35 weeks. And as a result, we write everything correctly. But in order to raise a person who knows how to live in society, it also takes a thousand hours. This is an equally important skill. And one is not born with this skill. Man is not born free. He becomes one. The natural state of a person is to punch everyone, tear the covers of notebooks, and yell at the whole class. It's natural. Everything else needs to be taught.

“To lock a child in an Orthodox school means to choose for him”

- How do you feel about systems such as the Russian classical school?

I do not want to analyze specific schools of Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, classical and any other education. I'll look into the idea itself. This is an attempt for everyone to run to their corners and closets. This is a kind of anti-modern movement. For several centuries, the world has had the idea that it is improving, evolving, modernizing, and we are all striving for reasonable unification, understanding each other, and developing common humanistic liberal values. This was the basic European idea of ​​progress. But now it seems that everything is falling apart and everyone is running away into the back streets. Therefore, I can only speak critically about these schools. This is an attempt to stop time and say: “Let's go back to the era of Pushkin's balls, let's speak Latin, German, French. Let's teach boys and girls dance and piano." In general, this is based on a feeling of fear of change.

I understand that religious and national feelings are awakening. This is wonderful. But trying to isolate yourself is a dead end. Orthodoxy can be taught as a culture in school. But locking a child in an Orthodox school means choosing for him. I respect religious feelings, but I see fear at the heart of it: “We will isolate ourselves because this crazy world is scary and it’s going to no one knows where. We don’t want the child to get lost in all this traffic.” But it seems to me that this is not a solution. The way out is for a person to stand on his own two feet, think with his own head, and make decisions himself. So that he can determine his own life. And if we go back to the 18th-19th centuries, give the child some crutches, give some old models of behavior, what will we get? This is very sad. Even though there are a lot of good people in these schools.

- And they have good ideals.

Yes. But then let's create a medieval school of the 14th century. Beautiful! Or a Chinese school, where everyone sits and crams the canon of three hieroglyphs. Why not? It’s also good, there was a great civilization. It is clear that these are frantic attempts to hide.

In order to raise a person who knows how to live in society, it also takes a thousand hours. This is an equally important skill. And one is not born with this skill. Man is not born free. He becomes one.

- Some of these schools have separate education for girls and boys. What do you think about it?

Exactly the same. We have a charity program at our school; we teach teenagers who come from the CIS countries - Central Asia and the Caucasus. Tajiks, Kyrgyz. And the parents of Moscow children are a little worried, they say, the Kyrgyz have a different attitude towards women, their boys and girls communicate differently. And when you talk about the idea of ​​separate education, it is in the same vein. Let's go back to the end of the 19th century, where there were gymnasiums for boys and girls. At the heart of this is the fear of life: life throws new challenges, and we do not know how to react to it. We need to teach a person to be free and think for himself. Then there's nothing to worry about.

But supporters of these systems cite statistics that in the case of separate education, school performance is much higher.

This is not an argument. The great construction projects of communism also claimed high labor productivity. Who measures it? We have separate training in cadet corps. There's also awesome academic performance there. There's nothing to think about. Hormones don't play a role. Children focus on their studies. But the question is: what kind of life are we preparing our children for? To a monastery?

“A good school should have many - both 10 and 12 years old, but there should also be more sports and arts”

- How many students should there be in the class?

From 10 to 20. It is clear that large classes cannot be justified. This is a matter of economy and economics. And when some people say that large classes are great, I feel ashamed. Large classes are just savings. The school itself is a barracks. This is an army. It doesn’t matter if there are 10 or 30 people - it’s still a barracks. But when there are 30 people, this is a harsher barracks. We could, of course, sing a whole song about small classes. But a class of three to five people, individual training will always be the prerogative of only wealthy people. It is amazing that even good European schools still have classes of 25 people. However, 15 people are best. This changes discipline, relationships, and removes many psychological problems. We have classes of 15 people, and I haven’t heard, let alone hysterical, just loud screams for a long time. But the number of people in itself does not change the school. There may be 10 people, but it is still a militarized school. Therefore, this is an important point, but not the most important.

- Is 10 years really the necessary period for training? Or can it be reduced or increased?

The question is what to reduce and how to increase. It’s a shame to sit in a mass traditional school for 10 years. This is exactly the period that they serve. But it is clear that education should be long-term, as long as the economy allows, as long as the generals and their army tolerate it. There should be a lot of good schools - both 10 and 12 years old, but there should also be more sports and arts. Then it will not only be a download of intelligence.

Any test of knowledge will be formal. I can't think of a more flexible, subtle, human test of knowledge. This is a standardized process anyway. Let there be an Unified State Exam. After completing the Unified State Exam, you can do other things more freely

“The topic of the Unified State Exam is just an excuse to distract from important conversations about school”

- How do you feel about the Unified State Exam?

It’s cold here now, and I can’t influence the weather, I can only dress warmer. In the same way, there is no point in fighting the Unified State Examination. The topic of the Unified State Exam is just an excuse to distract from important conversations about school. In my opinion, the Unified State Exam and not the Unified State Exam are the same thing. Just as before they were asked formally during the exam, so it is now. Therefore, I do not share the position of sharp critics of the Unified State Exam from the point of view that it ruined the Soviet school. There was nothing to ruin: the school was quite formal. Any test of knowledge will be formal. I can't think of a more flexible, subtle, human test of knowledge. This is a standardized process anyway. Let there be an Unified State Exam. After completing the Unified State Exam, you can do other things more freely.

- You write: “One of my pedagogical tasks is to teach how to express feelings culturally.” What does it mean?

As they said a hundred years ago, a teacher should laugh with his students in class for 5 minutes a day. Now the situation in the world has become more serious, so I think we need to laugh more. As Baron Munchausen said: “Laugh, gentlemen, laugh. I understand your problem: the biggest stupid things were done with a serious expression on your face.” I think that if we laugh more at school with the students, not fool around, but laugh, we will solve some problems. Because laughter is a manifestation of freedom. Our children can laugh in class. I teach cultural history to high school students, and we often watch different films. And the choice is this: either a film where we cry, or a film where we laugh. And both of these feelings are equally good. The absence of any feeling, indifference, is bad. Today it is believed that feelings should not be strongly expressed, we do not have an emotional and affective education, so people grow up who do not have the ability to express their feelings. There is such an intimate joke: “I got married successfully, we laugh in the same places in the film.” The ability to laugh in the same places - this creates a common context, this is understanding, education, and intelligence. I like to watch comedies with high school students, not because they need to be relaxed, but because school education suffers from a lack of affectivity, everything is too dry and official. And the way out of this is laughter.

“I am sure that in school we should talk about politics, sex, and religion”

I read your article on the topic of religious intolerance among schoolchildren. When you read to them the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis, in your classes, the reaction was sharp both from believers who do not like the secular nature of commentary on the scriptures, and from atheists.

Both sides are intolerant. In Russia the religious topic is now electrified; believers are very touchy. But what is more puzzling is the intolerance and aggressiveness of atheists. It is very sad. They view the attempt to read fragments of the Old Testament in school as instilling medieval obscurantism. Fir-trees, and if I read ancient myths, will it be an inculcation of ancient obscurantism? The same “Eugene Onegin” can be perceived as an imposition of outdated morality; after all, literature is two hundred years old. I see a way out only in good education, in the understanding that all these texts of the Old and New Testaments are part of our life, our culture. And whether you are a believer or not, this all shaped us as Russians and Europeans; these ideas about the creation of the world, that there is one creator, that man was created in his image and likeness, according to the word of God, lie at the basis of our culture. Therefore, to say that we do not need this is the position of not very educated people. Although formally they may be very educated.

I think that if we laugh more at school with the students, not fool around, but laugh, we will solve some problems. Because laughter is a manifestation of freedom. Our children can laugh in class

- What about sex education?

When I look at children, I think that they themselves are ready to conduct sex education among teachers. They know everything themselves. But is it possible to talk about this at all? Of course you can. Who else will talk to them about this? Family? I highly doubt it. I understand the indignation of parents, because everything that the public school does is not done very well. And parents are afraid that at school they will talk about it in such a way that... Yes, these are the realities of a mass school. In a class of 30 people, talking about sexuality is not very good. But in general, these conversations should take place. If they are not there, everything remains in the subconscious. And then it all spills out from the subconscious in the most wild and sick forms, and the person goes to see a psychiatrist. All Freudians, including Jung, say that all this needs to be spoken out, taken from the area of ​​the subconscious, instincts, uncertainty to the level of adult thinking and understanding. Therefore, such conversations should take place, but on the condition that this is not a government school, that these conversations are tactful, at a good level. Because I don't think the family is in a position to talk about these topics right now. Parents are indignant, but they themselves will still not do anything. And this is given not even to the street, but to porn sites. Therefore, the alternative is the following: either the school or the Internet will talk about these topics with the teenager. I am sure that in school we need to talk about politics, sex, and religion.

- You do it?

No specifically. But if someone asks, we'll talk. The general idea is this: you need to talk to teenagers about everything. If you don’t talk to them, then all this will take on very wild forms. The only way to exist intelligently among people is to talk about everything.

- What is the involvement of parents in the life of your school?

Our community of parents is different, because they deliberately chose us, the school is paid, many transport their child 1.5 hours one way. I could end on a happy note that my parents and I are united. But this is a very difficult question. We have 400 students, and every parent is waiting for their own. But when I listen to the directors of other schools, even good private or public ones, I understand how very different our parents are. These are close people, intellectuals who forgive our mistakes, are ready for our daring projects, which are sometimes not entirely successful. It seems to me that it is very important to understand the problem of parents and teachers to understand that these are two different views of the child. A-priory.

Because parents, especially mothers, who are mainly represented in school, take a protective position, a position of stability, defense, protection, returning to their native bosom, so that everything is fine for the child, a good job, earnings. This is right. Parents should be like this. But the teacher’s position cannot be protective; it is a position of rupture, breakthrough, movement towards something new, unknown. Teachers must think about the life that these children will live in 10-20 years, they must foresee this and what qualities will be needed. Therefore, the teacher’s position is in many ways adventurous and radical. If these two points of view - the parent and the teacher - merge into one, the child is finished. They should be different, that's normal.

Natalia Fedorova, photo from the personal archive of Rustam Kurbatov

And she doesn’t need much for this - focus on living knowledge, reliance on children’s interest and rejection of the traditional idea of ​​a lesson.

The school is the only party that no one supports. Nobody is happy with her. Neither students, nor teachers, nor parents, nor officials... How then does this system exist without any support?
An experienced mystery. But there are times when quantity turns into quality and it becomes obvious that the school can become different. The possibility of a breakthrough appears.
Rustam Kurbatov, director of the Kovcheg-XXI school, sees three directions, three vectors of this breakthrough.

Living knowledge

The first vector of real changes in the school is the desire for living knowledge.
Who have we always called an educated person? Someone who has read many books, remembers many stories, and does quick math in his head? Someone who successfully solves crossword puzzles and answers brain-ring questions? You smile, and the school still strives for exactly this ideal of education. But don’t scold the school - it fulfills the order of a culture called the Culture of Enlightenment, which believes that knowing everything about everything is the point, this is the truth. Hence the main worries of the school teacher: “Did you understand everything that I explained? Did you remember everything?
Such a school actually produced brilliant scientists, famous artists, and simply well-educated people.
What is in doubt? The school gave out “ready-made knowledge” – conclusions, formulations, other people’s thoughts. Over the years, this knowledge became a “belief system”, “beliefs”. The man thought what he thought. If a thought squeezed through the lattice of “beliefs,” he nodded his head in agreement. If the caliber did not match, he argued and got irritated.
The fact that adults today have difficulty understanding each other is the fruit of traditional education. Understanding is actually not a search for “common positions”, but an expansion of one’s own. Not pushing other people's thoughts into the grid of consciousness, but the ability to change the matrix itself. This is precisely the quality I want to cultivate in children. Understanding your desk neighbor, your parents, a person from a different era, a different faith. Understanding of music, painting, literature...
Understanding the Other, flexibility, receptivity are the real goals of education. Of course, knowing a lot and always being confident that you are right is calmer and easier. And yet we have to admit that an educated person is not the one who knows the right answers, but the one who knows how to ask questions, search, wonder - and so on all his life.

What about testing?

Of course, if we accept that the test is the only form of testing a student and a teacher, all our conversations are in vain. Moreover, the entire modern barracks school is test-oriented.
In some ways, a test is better than a nonsense and deceptive essay or an oral history report. He is objective. But everyone understands that the test is not knowledge, not skills, not creativity. As a complement to the school of “test”, it would be necessary to proclaim a school of “text”. “Test” and “text” are very similar words that differ in one letter, but have diametrically opposed meanings.
Text! This is where real knowledge ends, a text on any subject. The text is literally an expression of one’s own thoughts. Instead of the ability to conjugate and decline - the ability to write a few lines. Instead of filling out boxes, it’s the ability to solve a complex problem. The text is the slogan of another, non-barracks school.
Unfortunately, a creative product, no matter how banal the term may seem, cannot be measured objectively. Let's leave the test for objectivity. But with two caveats: let the test not be the only form of assessing the quality of education and let it only check the final result. And at the same time, no one will get involved in thematic planning, textbooks, programs.
The school writes a few lines of its pedagogical intentions. At the end, also in the amount of several lines, he reports.
Control is needed. But let it be control of the result, not the process, control of the output, and not a daily, hourly check of our work. We are already adults. We don't need micromanaging.

Teacher's area of ​​responsibility

The transition from “solid” knowledge to “living” knowledge is truly a difficult and slow matter. What should a teacher do today? Create a situation of uncertainty, understatement, and fermentation in the classroom. Give children the opportunity to read, observe, discuss, and share opinions. Provoke questions from children, accept their misunderstandings. The words “strange” and “surprising” are the most desired words in every lesson. They provide an opportunity to argue. From this polyphony and this uncertainty, the teacher builds understanding and certainty.
Easy to say, but difficult to do. Sometimes it is impossible to build any kind of coherent system in a lesson; it is not possible to get the “correct” words from the child. But the situation of reflection is more valuable than the right decision.
Unfortunately, the child himself often has no questions. They arise as a result of contact between teacher and student. Teacher, only he can strike a spark of misunderstanding. The best form of teaching a lesson is a conversation between the teacher and the child. Living knowledge is born in every lesson - otherwise it’s all the same scholasticism, medieval school, 13th century.

Freedom Sail

The second vector of changes in school is Freedom, or, to put it more accurately, the child’s interest. The content of education should be based on the interests of the child and his life experience. But without extremes. It is not always necessary to ask children what interests them now. A smart teacher already sees the child’s real interest and responds to it.
At the same time, modern programs, we admit, do not take into account the age interests of the child, his desires and needs.
This is a problem with any rigidly mandated program. It is enough to formulate a general direction, set principles, leaving “space for the child.” So that the teacher can ask and see whether the student needs or is interested in this or that topic or activity. Between “necessary” and “interesting” we put an equal sign.
To implement this requirement, teacher initiative is not enough. A managerial decision (at least at the level of the head teacher) is needed: to check only the result, and not the process. Do not interfere with what is happening in class. Then the teacher will let in as much interest and as much children’s will as he can. And of course, it is “managers” who must minimize the mandatory minimum, leaving the teacher and students the right to choose the most interesting and useful forms and topics for them.

Child's independence

The third vector of a possible “breakthrough” is Independence. Instead of a traditional lesson, various interaction situations: group work, game forms. The teacher is not the only source of knowledge. It – knowledge – circulates freely throughout the classroom in different directions. Some people work alone with different sources of information, with books, films, paintings, documents, while others, having already done the work themselves, help their neighbors. Independence does not lie in following momentary desires, but in the fact that the child is active in the lesson. He does most of the work himself, and does not watch from the outside, as others do.

Who will evaluate the quality of education?

Living knowledge, freedom and independence are not only three vectors of school development, but also the most important criteria for external assessment of its activities, an indicator of its development. If it is impossible to evaluate a school in any of the above areas, then no design methods or new technologies can be considered meaningful.
Who will appreciate the vitality of knowledge or the independence of a child? The teacher himself. But the main experts are parents. They are, first and foremost, customers of education. True, they need to be educated. And this is also part of the teacher’s job.
So we keep updating and updating the school - but it is not updated, cannot be modernized. It was as if they had drawn a chalk circle around the entire school area. We want to go out, but we can’t. And outside, in the outside world, as has become clear in the last 2-3 months, changes are really ripening... Orientation towards living, open knowledge; relying on children's interest and abandoning the traditional idea of ​​a lesson - this is how I see three possible vectors for modernizing a modern school. Three directions to exit the school chalk circle.

It can be useful

Seven ways to provoke children's questions

Invite the children to express their own ideas about the subject, assuming in advance that there are different points of view in the class. Or suggesting the internal inconsistency of a child's concept. And demonstrate contradictions, “inconsistencies.”
Offer an example, an experience that breaks the existing stereotypes in the mind, previously studied theories. Conduct an experiment with a completely unexpected, even illogical result.
Present to the class an obvious contradiction: facts, texts, collections of documents.
Make a riddle.
Offer a text (film, document) that touches the feelings of the children, their internal principles.
Make sure that the children discover a complete misunderstanding of the elementary fundamentals, which they thought they had long ago learned and understood. So that they suddenly cannot complete a task that seemed easy to them at first.
Point out an error in a magazine or textbook.

General idea of ​​the “live lesson”

The essence of the contradiction, the obstacle that must be overcome, should be completely obvious to the children. Clear wording is important. The obstacle should seem surmountable (at least it’s clear where to start). At the same time, the movement towards solving the problem is associated not with completing the teacher’s tasks, but with the search for answers to one’s own questions, with the choice of one’s own work strategy.
As a result of a radical change in the initial understanding of the subject, the children find an answer acceptable to them, a method of action in the proposed situation. By the way, it is not necessarily correct, from the point of view of a teacher or science. This means that the starting point for a new search has appeared.
An important point is the student’s awareness of his method of action, the place of new knowledge in the already existing picture of the world.
Sometimes children cannot cope with the problem themselves. The teacher can suggest a method of action, suggest a specific book, strategy. In difficult cases, an adult has to draw his own conclusion from everything he has seen and read. Sometimes, even before the students’ eyes, we go from a question, a hypothesis, a study to the formulation of an answer. The more often students have the opportunity to ask questions and look for answers, the less often the teacher will need to intervene in the process.

25 years ago, Rustam Kurbatov, a historian by training who worked at the school for seven years, created one of the first private schools in Russia. A fan of humanistic pedagogy, Frenet, blogger and experimenter, author of the books “School in Action Style”, “The Most Useless Subject”, “A School Where Children Can Go to Lessons” and “An Attempt at Another School” proves with his experience that “ There are no lazy students - there are boring schools" During this time, the Lyceum “Ark XXI” has graduated more than one generation of students. Its graduates are different from graduates of other schools - they know how to think independently and really know what they want to become. We talked with Rustam about what a modern school should be like.

— Recently on “Echo of Moscow” you said that neither renewal, nor reform, nor evolution will help the modern school; a very fundamental change is needed.

- Of course, we need another school. But it won’t happen in Belarus either, that’s understandable. Nevertheless, it is necessary to prepare some kind of ground for change. There is always hope. That's why we do the things we do. For example, our lyceum has 4 official partner schools. In addition, I write a blog, webinars, talk about everything, but schools absolutely do not need this. Although what I am talking about is applicable for public schools.

— Why don't schools need this?

— Schools don’t need it, because in Russia, like in Belarus, this is not required of teachers. Teachers are required to provide documentation and indicators. But a good school, where children will be interested and where they will think with their heads, is not a task for the teacher. But you can train people by simply talking about the experience of, I would say, a free school.

— You wrote in one of your books that when you explained to teachers that the main task of school is to teach them to think, they sometimes reacted like this: “Let us at least just teach them.”

- This is, of course, sarcasm. Conservatives are everywhere. Fortunately, there are almost no such people in the Lyceum. You see, school has always been focused on solid knowledge. But solid knowledge is always closed, without question, when it bounces off the teeth. And the whole system is built on this; for teachers this is the main value. We don’t have this at school, but when you say to an ordinary teacher: “We still need to teach how to think,” and he: “Where does the time come from, we should just teach our C students; Don’t forget, we have an exam there, we need to get it done!”, this is a problem.

- And what are you doing with her?

- What can you do here? After all, it is clear that both in Russia and in Belarus the school is wildly medieval. As an institution, it will generally die; it is not needed like that. In the era of gadgets and computers, a child does not receive information from school; it is an illusion that he is learning something here. There are 1000 options where to get this information and solid knowledge. And the task of the school is to question all this knowledge, to teach independence and criticality. Gadgets won’t teach you this. And this is the new place and role of the school.

— There has been a lot of talk lately about the development of entrepreneurial thinking. In the States, for example, they teach this from the 1st grade - children make projects: they draw up business plans, attract investments, calculate profits...

- Well, I don’t know, maybe. I don't argue with that. In this regard, I am more conservative. I believe that school should teach fundamental things that will always be applicable in such a practical area as business, for example.

— So, culture is important, and then specific knowledge and skills?

— Who really does business? These are either mathematicians and physicists, or philosophers. You need some fundamentality, but you will always make soda. Another thing is that the Soviet school was excommunicated from all this, and now I want something specific. But, to be honest, I am afraid of the pragmatic school, which is built on the Anglo-Saxon model. School should shape the worldview. Now people face more serious questions. I would say philosophy is the main subject now. And then you can start doing business.

- But the question is about the applicability of knowledge. If children think independently and critically, and know how to make decisions, it’s time to face reality. Introduce them to real businessmen, cultural experts, or some specialized specialists?

- Yes. Lecturers, musicians, and journalists come once a week. From the latest: they talked about bitcoins, Byzantium, the history of bricks, astronomy. In this sense, the school should be open to the world.

“The departure of a person from the team would be a personal tragedy for me”

— Do you have high staff turnover?

- They only go on maternity leave. I want to pose the question differently: where to find teachers? It's really difficult. Because those people who work at school for a long time know how to work with people, but they remained in the system for a long time. And those who seem to be on fire have not seen the children, do not know them and are afraid of them. Or children are afraid of them, which is even worse. The departure of almost everyone from the team of 110 people would be a personal tragedy for me. Because these are unique people who create the face of the school and have already become part of it all. And if new ones come now, they are no longer from schools. From real professions. Some did a little science, some are writers, our physicist is truly a physicist. And the story is told by a girl who herself once studied at the Kovcheg Lyceum.

— Those people who once came to you also want to develop further. How does this development occur?

— In a school that operates in a stable mode, there is one teachers’ council per quarter. We have a teachers' meeting once a week. I have 5-6 meetings, because these are different groups. It is important that we talk through and discuss everything together. I really like the French experience, in particular Frenet’s pedagogy. As they say, there are only two questions at these meetings: what goes and what doesn't go. This is a normal, democratic way of life. Here's the system: I come to a meeting of school directors. There, the directors don’t say anything, they write everything down, write it down. And then they come to the teachers and dictate... Everything is the same. And if we want a different school, then it must function differently, and not just proclaim principles. There must be some other information structure and culture. Objectives should be very clear. It’s not easy - we want to do something beautiful, good. Specifically: we want every day a high school student to do one hour of self-study, sit in the computer lab and do good things. By the way, there is such a task.

— Where did this task come from?

“It’s still spinning, spinning in the air.” We need people who want something. When Bill Gates was asked: “How do you motivate people?”, he replied: “I don’t motivate them in any way, I hire motivated people.”

— You experiment a lot, your projects are already included in the standard Russian school education curriculum. You started calling them Interesting Cases. How does your approach to projects differ from the generally accepted one?

- First. This is a very short job. This is not a job for six months or a year. I don’t believe in working for a year and that children can be interested in it for so long. For us it’s 8 lessons (usually one topic) - no more. That is, this is work that fits into two weeks or a month.

Second. This is work not after school, but instead of lessons.

Third. This is not work under a government program. These are not projects made up by a teacher. If possible, these are still those topics that are more or less interesting to children, that arise somewhere at the intersection of children's and adult interests.

Fourth. In our projects, the main work is in teams. The work that is most organic for students. That is, the entire class works on one common project or is divided into several teams.

Fifth. These projects are completely different from lessons or activities. Often we watch a movie, work in a reading room or library, or work with computers.

Sixth. Each project ends with us going out to some class, usually a junior class, and talking about it. Even this suggests that our projects are more organic and more interesting for children.

— What projects are interesting to children now?

“We have already gone through the period when we tried to come to the children and simply ask: “What are you interested in?” I'm not saying that the entire program should be based solely on children's interest. All our work is a kind of force field, where on one side there is a child, on the other side there is an adult. And the task of an adult is to predict, to catch the wind with a sail, what is coming from the child, what is interesting to him. And then direct this wind. Here are the latest topics we did. We read with them “Utopia” by Thomas More. There is a problem: what is a free society? What is individual freedom? why did Thomas More write that physical labor is necessary for everyone? That is, on the one hand, it is a cultural text, on the other, it is a child’s idea of ​​certain things and phenomena.

Or we read Francois Rabelais in the 7th grade, a month ago, about school. What should a school be like? Is it possible for a school to be absolutely free, where play turns into learning imperceptibly? On the one hand, we again see a cultural text written 500 years ago. And on the other hand, there is this particular school, with its stupid idiotic questions: “no, that’s impossible,” “study won’t go anywhere like that.” And at the junction this spark appears.

— Over so many years of work, do you see how children change - their relationships, their questions, their interests?

- They change, they change in different ways. Complex issue. When we started, we took children from strict army barracks public schools, they were well trained, and our task was to liberate them. Children are very different now. Now in public schools there is no strict discipline, everything is loose. On the other hand, they also come from non-state schools - they are generally undisciplined. That's why sometimes there are children... quite loose. That is, now we do not have the task of how to liberate, sometimes even vice versa - to mobilize.

— What about gadgets? They now live in a completely different world.

— This is where the school’s task is to “knock out”, to become cooler than a computer. By and large, all this departure into the virtual world is precisely because of the emptiness of school life. Because at school there is no sense of reality, that we are doing something that makes sense. Therefore, the school must change a lot. Hence all our attempts to make school more exciting.

— More interesting?

- Yes. For example, the same projects that we talked about. Now we’ve finished 8 lessons on one topic - and we’re shooting a film - either based on it, or based on our own script written by the students. Children get adrenaline, they should have it at school. If school is boring, tedious, monotonous, then the solution will be in gadgets. We're trying, but I'm not saying we're knocking it out completely. All the same, gadgets are cooler in some places. But our task is to make the school cooler. This works partly.

“The child must understand what he wants”

— Nowadays, the question of career guidance is quite acute: are gymnasiums needed, from what period is vocational training needed, etc. Do you think that children can generally understand for themselves what they are interested in and what they are good at? Is it necessary to create specializations or is a broad education more important?

— The idea of ​​specialization has become a very stable trend. The whole world has gone crazy with specialization. And teachers, and parents, and children, and the state - everyone talks about specialization. And this is generally understandable, because specialization is kind of like freedom. It's kind of like an element of choice. But what about freedom, what are the arguments? For children, specialization is an opportunity not to do some tedious work, something that you cannot pass on a state exam, for example. For parents, it’s a kind of inspiration when they see their children doing something themselves. For teachers, this is also an opportunity for some kind of segregation - to select those who want, it’s easier with them. For the state here in Russia, this was a reform to diversify schools. And so humanities classes, mathematics classes, and so on appeared. The inevitable downside of such specialization is that it is a class for fools. The second point is that specialization itself is an emptiness, it means nothing, it is a great visibility. I will give an example of how in some countries of Central Asia, parents still force 16-18-year-old boys and girls into marriage without asking their opinion. It's almost the same here. A fourteen-year-old parent does not ask much; he actually determines his fate by sending him to a specialized class. That is, freedom of choice turns out to be an appearance.

— So this is the choice of the parents.

- This is the choice of the parents, because a child of 14-15 years old cannot do much... that is, he can, but will not argue much with his parents. Because the choice of parents is pragmatic. This is not a choice in favor of goodness and truth. This is a choice in favor of a bank or jurisprudence. And here the children do not argue with this. This is a kind of illusion of freedom. Specialization is good, but specialization requires a thousand discussions about what we are doing, what meaning there is in it. That is, the child must be able to think for himself, understand what he wants and why.

— How do you implement this?

— We implement this in a gentle way. We do not have specialist classes, but we do have a stratum or level group system that has been in place for 4 years. At the beginning there were bloody battles: children slammed the door and shouted “let us finish our studies,” “leave us alone,” “stop experimenting.” Now they believe that this is the No. 1 most popular item, with a 100% rating. The idea is this: there is a class of 30 people, but it’s as if it doesn’t exist, because in five different areas the class is divided into different levels - levels (from English level - level. - Note TUT.BY). In mathematics they are divided this way, in Russian differently, in English again differently, and so on - in history, in physics, in chemistry...

— That is, the child is not generally assigned as average or best in the class, but in each subject he can be at different levels.

- Yes. In each subject he is either at the 1st or 2nd level. The idea is very popular among children. And it really invigorates, relieves the general stress that you have to comply in all subjects. By the way, the idea is very simple to implement in different schools: it does not complicate the schedule too much, and there is no need to create specialized humanities or mathematics classes. In my opinion, this is not a revolutionary thing, there is nothing new here, but it is justified. This works very well.

“We just need to give them the opportunity to speak”

— If you were starting all over again now, would you do anything differently, would you change anything?

- Yes. First of all, I wouldn't argue with school conservative people, I wouldn't get into a discussion... I just wouldn't hire them. It is impossible to retrain them. Secondly, I believe that after all, many years were spent on port tack, when we still thought that at school children could do whatever they wanted in its purest form. I don't know if I could have avoided this. Because without this, probably, there would have been the usual path, they say, here, guys, there are programs, let’s do it. With this multi-year tack, we also broke a lot of wood. There was an attempt that children come to a class where there are always a lot of books or there are computers with different programs, everyone chooses a topic for work - and they sit and play Monopoly, and so on for hours, and I sit and wait. This, of course, was a mistake. This was an attempt to resuscitate the children, as if to get them away from that school where everything is programmed, rigidly, without their interest, but, probably, it was wrong. I think a lot of effort went into this.

— What did you dream about as a child?

“I didn’t dream of it at all... I was an excellent student at school, I could have done a more respectable job.”

— Then why school?

— I don’t know, because at the history department I noticed (this was the 90s) that children were being deceived at school. And I wanted to change the school. School is a place of confinement. I wanted to make another school. And I believe that we have partially succeeded in changing the school.

— Give advice on what a simple teacher can do in this direction?

— There are some things that can be done under any system, after which the class will be different. How to make a revolution in 40 minutes? Start by working in groups. There are 30 people in the class. Do not call to the board, because it is indecent, do not ask from the seat, because it is stupid. When asking any question, we say: “First, discuss it with your neighbor.” 3 minutes. Any question other than the question: “Where is the chalk rag?” Anything you want. If you want a complex question, you want the date of the Battle of Kulikovo. We need to start with something simple. You can just tell me, read it and answer the questions. Here is the whole text, even if you don’t want to retell it, here are the questions for this text. Let it be according to the textbook. But you are not telling the teacher, but your neighbor. We ensure that all 30 people speak within 10 minutes. To avoid talking nonsense, the teacher walks around, listens, and then goes to the board and makes a control call. The class changes immediately. Why? Because especially boys can’t just sit there - it’s worse than the army. We just need to give them the opportunity to speak. And that’s all - they will thank the teacher on the way out.

- Rustam, why do you need all this? What does all this give you?

- How for what? Why do artists need theater? School is like a drug, an endorphin that feeds the brain. As an artist on stage, this is the first thing. And secondly, after school you can’t work anywhere at all. This is not in a depressive way, because school squeezes and exhausts a person. But in a positive way. Children say what they think, so go ahead and try to get a job if you are used to people saying what they think.