On the So-Called “State
Standards of Education”
The recent legislative introduction of “State Standards of
Education” signifies bureaucratization of yet another sphere of our life. Standards
presuppose certain unified requirements for all learners in respect to the volume of the
material acquired and the depth of knowledge at each step of learning, and thus also –
equal speed of assimilation of knowledge by all students. However, it is common knowledge
that learners differ in their abilities, in the depth and speed of acquisition of subject
matter; that is why the main principle of education is to take into consideration the
nature of each particular learner, to estimate what is accessible, at a given stage,
personally to him, not to an “abstract” learner. It follows from this that only a
particular teacher, in a particular class is able to determine what to study, and when,
and for how long, and in what manner. Such an approach (the only one possible in
education) predetermines the inevitability of violating any “standards” – and if so,
what is the use of those “standards”? As for the content of subject matter and the
succession of its presentation specified in the “State Standards”, all that is
definitely known to the teacher irrespective of any “standards” – those are just the
things that were taught to him at university and that are available in the existing
curricula, in textbooks, methodological materials, etc.
However, the state standard does not just harmlessly duplicate all
those materials: it obliges the teacher to fulfill the legislatively adopted requirements,
and this will inevitably force teachers to ignore the individual peculiarities of the
learners, i.e. to violate the main didactic principles of conformity to the learner’s
nature and of accessibility to him of what is taught, because the teacher will have to
“push on” the material even though he may see that part of the class obviously fails
to assimilate it.
Is it really so important for school-students to acquire the entire
volume of knowledge? The goal of general (non-professional) education is different: it is
to promote the child’s development. Development undoubtedly requires the process of
gradual acquisition of knowledge, but its main purpose cannot be the achievement by
everyone of equal quantity and depth of knowledge. It is well known that, no matter how
hard the teachers may strive, children leave school with different levels of acquisition
of knowledge – and that is quite normal. But this being the norm, it follows that part
of the school-leavers will necessarily fail to conform to the “state standards”. Thus
the standard will prove to be, at best, a fiction (if taken no notice of) or, at worst, a
scourge for the learners and teachers (if taken notice of and strictly followed).
The danger of standardization of education is that it secures for
bureaucracy the right to interfere in the sphere of creative activity (to which
educational activity undoubtedly refers): it is the bureaucrat’s task to see that the
state standards be fulfilled: And such interference is already noticeable in university
education (which has also fallen under “state standards”). Over 300 lecturers from 26
universities have recently sent an Open Letter to the Minister of Education protesting
against the reduction of special education which has begun as a result of the introduction
of state standards. In particular, the standards for university language departments
introduce, as compulsory, such subjects as mathematics and natural sciences, which,
alongside with the equally compulsory courses of social-economic-political studies,
considerably reduce the time previously allotted to practical acquisition of the language
studied as the major subject: for the latter now remains only a quarter of the class hours
(about 2000 out of the total 9000) – as much as for the subjects in no way connected
with the main speciality.
Somebody has evidently decided to astound the wide world with
Russia’s “very highest” of higher education: language students will now have to
learn not only the humanities, but also exact and natural sciences. One of the results of
this “innocent innovation is that, by imposing the “state standards”, the Ministry
in fact gives directives to the teachers as to what and for how long (and thus, in what
way) to teach language students. It is hardly possible to learn to speak a foreign
language with only 4 hours a week of oral practice, or 1 hour of home-reading, or 3 hours
of practical grammar instead of the previous 6, etc. Figures may certainly differ at
different universities, but the tendency is the same everywhere, because the inevitable
reduction can only be applied to language classes, all the other subjects being “sacred
cows”. May I suggest that Education Ministry officials should first personally
demonstrate to the world how to teach anyone to speak a foreign language using their
“standards”?
By Valery Gurevitch,
Doctor of philology, professor at MPGU,
Chairman of University teachers’ Association September 2002
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