5 challenges to which the new secondary education strategy must respond. Paradigmatic dimension

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When the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Culture began to discuss the strategy of restoring education and science in the expert community, I rushed to participate in this process with joy and inspiration. But he immediately stumbled and stumbled on differences in ways of structuring the problem field among the various participants in the process. This is quite normal – people think in different paradigms of thinking, which is due to different experiences, different education, different social status, etc. It’s okay to be aware of it. But if, in the same context, the same words are given significantly different meanings by different participants in the process, confusion arises. In order to avoid this confusion, I propose a certain paradigmatic framework that can become a support for all experts, participants in the process and, above all, for the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Culture – to understand in which paradigm of thinking at each specific moment of the process problems are formulated, questions are asked, decision. And the main thing that, in my opinion, the project group needs to understand is that there cannot be a single correct strategy for education and science! The “correctness” of this and other project documents can be determined only from the point of view of one or another paradigm of thinking. The paradigm of a person’s thinking is determined by those tasks, the solution of which he is mainly engaged in his social and individual life. The one for whom it is important to follow the rules, follow the procedures and algorithms, and the one for whom it is most important to establish relations, dialogue, harmony of everyone with everyone, consensus, as well as the one for whom it is important to always look for the most optimal solutions – of course, think in different paradigms. They have different values, principles, priorities, criteria for the correctness of decisions. It turns out that all paradigms of thinking can be arranged in a single consistent hierarchy. More precisely, in a spiral. From this point of view, the entire process of education can be interpreted as the student’s solution of the life tasks of the current level and his transition to the paradigm of the next level. It also turns out that it is impossible to move to the paradigm of the next level without solving the tasks of the previous levels! Hence the first conclusion – when building or rebuilding a system of secondary education, one must be aware of one’s own paradigm of thinking – once, and take into account the paradigms of thinking of teachers who will implement this education system – two! The second conclusion. Children come to school from different families in which different paradigms of thinking prevail. Therefore, the first task of the school should be to identify in which basic paradigm the child thinks, and to help him solve the tasks of this level, gradually transferring him to the thinking paradigms of the next levels. Hence the third conclusion. The concept and strategy of education, first of all school education, should be multi-layered, that is, they should solve tasks that correspond to all paradigms of thinking. And it really doesn’t matter through the prism of which concept we see this evolutionary spiral – whether through Claire Graves’ Spiral Dynamics, or through Suzanne Cook-Greuter’s concept, or through Ken Wilber’s Integral Dynamics! You can see the evolutionary spiral of thinking paradigms in application to school education here. These theses are also based on a certain paradigm of thinking – a paradigm in which the main values ​​are freedom, creativity, authorship (in Spiral Dynamics it is conventionally called “yellow”). It is in this framework paradigm, I believe, that the project group of the Ministry of Education and Culture should think. If only because it is the first paradigm in the spiral, in which all other paradigms are “visible” and understandable. This is a map-scheme of the educational process as it is built in the “yellow” paradigm. Developed in the educational center “Zhyttia” in 2017-19. It is within this paradigm that I offer my vision of the basic challenges to which, in my opinion, the new strategy of secondary education should respond. Challenge 1. Acceptance that education, like science, is a part of culture, and not a separate branch. This thesis is based on a deeper understanding – the understanding that culture should have priority in the construction/reconstruction of society. Culture comes first in society. All socio-economic and political relations take place in the space of culture. Even if it is not realized. By culture here I understand the totality of all the tools of emotional life through which the common Intention of the community is formed and maintained. Namely, customs, art, cultural practices, work with heritage, etc. Therefore, in the conscious construction of social relations at all levels of society, priority should be given to culture. In this sense, education as one of the tools of culture has a special function of restoring and maintaining in the next generations the common Intent of society. Challenge 2. Accepting that education is, first of all, formation and development, and not the acquisition of knowledge and competences. With regard to the current situation in education, a unique challenge now arises – not to try to return children to the old school, and for this to rebuild the old destroyed school premises, to return to the class and lesson system, to return to the single program, which, as is known, manages to become outdated already at the stage of approval – and to change the meaning of education. Namely, to realize that at the current stage of the development of society, the goal of education should not be the acquisition of knowledge, but the formation and development of personality, in particular, the ability to choose the most effective, safest, and most ecological models from the proposed models of behavior. Knowledge, if needed, can now be obtained at the fingertips, paper textbooks and reading lectures by teachers are becoming irrelevant. And now artificial intelligence is added. It is enough to teach a child to search for the necessary information and to use AI to understand and master any field of knowledge that is interesting to the child! The main thing is to create a new communication system for children, in which they will spend time in joint creative activities, primarily games, without coercion and only in their own interest. Another important priority is the creation and maintenance of a space in which behavior models are born, formed, tested and spread. Because the first thing a child reads and learns in an educational environment is not knowledge and skills, but rather models/patterns of perception and response. And here we return to the thesis about the primacy of culture in society as an environment in which behavior patterns are created and transmitted. With the conscious positioning of culture, behavioral models are supported and broadcast, which form and maintain the common intention of society. Challenge 3. Awareness that in order to meet the stated requirements, the main task is to promote the development of the student’s subjectivity. . That knowledge is something that is transmitted. The student didn’t have it, the teacher gave it to him, the student got it, and he already has it. And the role of the student is simply to obediently accept what is put into him. An alternative to this approach is the idea that the child is the subject of education. That is, those who make the choice themselves. And not just choosing from the options provided by teachers. And the choice, what to strive for, what knowledge and skills are needed for this, how to acquire them. Only a society with a high level of subjectivity is able to form and maintain a common intention until the desired results occur. And this subjectivity should be formed from school, and even from kindergarten. The key to the formation of students’ subjectivity is the use of individual trajectories. We are not talking here about an individual training program developed by teachers and psychologists on the basis of professional orientation testing once and for all, but about a unique life trajectory that he himself (with the help of teachers) has to discover or refine all the time. Challenge 4. Liberation from outdated ideas in society about controlling the level of acquired knowledge and competences. Traditionally, it is believed that the criterion for the level of knowledge and/or advancement of a child along a certain educational path should be a certain test/exam with formal criteria at the end of the educational process. Unfortunately, more often than not, transformation, namely the real transformation is formation/development, is not always visible on tests, because its trajectory is unpredictable (by the way, it is the unpredictability of the educational trajectory that is the key to the real development of society). Moreover, we often observe that control over the result not only harms the process, but also injures the child. And the only way to observe the transformation of a child is to constantly monitor and record the process, and not once at the end of the result. It’s like a block chain – we work not only with the result, but also track and store the entire process. Through a certain mechanism of recording the individual educational trajectory and accumulation of the student’s portfolio. Challenge 5. Overcoming the outdated motivational orientation of the educational process False value orientation of parents, teachers, students, society in general – on external things, namely: compliance with the program, assessment, DPA, certificate, admission to higher education, diploma, service in a state institution, and state service is the only more or less reliable social guarantee, the main thing is not to make sudden movements, and not to fall for a bribe… – such a valuable orientation kills the child’s natural motivation. It is natural for children to absorb everything new and interesting. If you do not force children to study according to the program, but create an environment where you can follow the child’s interest, then he will be able to absorb hundreds of times more information, and not as a data store, but by forming a structured system of skills and competencies. Therefore, children should be motivated by play/creative activity and voluntary participation. Parents need to be given the opportunity to choose different forms of education. In particular, forms of family education, when parents study together with their children. With the development of joint creativity. The founders of secondary education institutions need to be given the freedom to search for innovative formats of education. Teachers need to be given the freedom to choose and/or develop different educational models. Everyone – children, parents, teachers – have a great resource by nature. It is also necessary to provide freedom and opportunities to apply it in education, because this is the best investment in the future. I repeat, the main values ​​in this paradigm of thinking (which is “yellow” according to Spiral dynamics) are freedom, creativity, authorship. A school graduate must be the author of his own and a co-author of social life. But without taking the student through all the previous paradigms of thinking, it cannot be done! *** What is happening now, in my opinion? The MES presented the Vision of the future of education and science, which was not discussed in a wide circle of experts. The presented Vision is paradigmatically somewhat contradictory. And this is not scary in principle – it can be brought to a paradigmatically balanced form. It is unfortunate that the process of discussing strategic goals and options for solving problems that prevent their achievement is built in one of the most archaic paradigms of thinking – the whole is divided into parts and it is proposed to “treat” each part separately. For each part, there is a separate council of experts who must submit their proposals only for this part. Most experts, who in fact all have a more or less coherent vision in the fields under consideration, are simply confused. Any proposal considered out of context with others in a single package (which almost every expert has) loses its meaning. I, for one, simply did not see a place where my proposals, separated from each other, would be appropriate. Therefore, he deliberately did not participate in this stage of the process. I hope all is not lost yet! That at the next stages, the expert community will be forced to return to reanimation of the broken whole. But this is a waste of time, energy and motivation of the participants. Will the community then have a precise definition of the paradigm of thinking? The question is rhetorical. Evgeny Lapin, Educational Center “Life”, NGO “Institute of Civil Society”, especially for UP. Life Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view

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