Leading Russian economic publicist, candidate of economic sciences, scientific editor and general director of the Expert magazine. Former host of the “However” program on Channel One, dean of the Higher School of Journalism.

Born on May 31, 1950 in Moscow. In 1971 he graduated from Moscow State University, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics.

In Soviet times, he was an employee of a research institute under the USSR State Planning Committee, choosing the topic of forecasting problems. He was engaged in teaching activities at the Higher Economic Courses of the USSR State Planning Committee. He completed his career at the research institute as the head of the management process modeling sector.

Since 1993, he took part in the activities of the business weekly Kommersant, where he later became editor of the department of property and privatization problems.

y, having left the Kommersant publication together with a significant part of the team, takes part in the creation of the Expert magazine.

Works

Lover of the Fatherland. - ISBN 5-367-00182-3 ISBN 978-5-367-00182-2

Skeleton of the attacker. The source and two components of bureaucratic capitalism in Russia

7 notes of management. Leader's handbook

Andrey Kolesnikov, Alexander Privalov. New Russian ideology. Chronicle of political myths. 1999-2000. - M.: Publishing house of the State University Higher School of Economics, 2001. - 364 p. - ISBN 5-7598-0098-

Great Patriotic. Alexander Privalov

Today, the legend of world and domestic biathlon, the first Soviet Olympic biathlon medalist, Alexander Privalov, celebrates his 80th birthday. On this day, world and Olympic champions, his students and close friends remember the most striking episodes of the extraordinary life of the great athlete, coach and just a person with a capital “P!”

Vladimir Barnashov, 1980 Olympic champion, Russian state biathlon coach

The name of Alexander Vasilyevich Privalov was constantly heard as soon as he began to engage in biathlon - in 1974. He was a guru, both as an athlete and as a coach. The first Olympic medalist in history, five-time USSR champion. I personally met him in 1976 in Murmansk at the “Festival of the North”. I won the race then, he came up to me, we talked a little. Then I was included in the national team, where we worked together for seven years.

The word “coach” does not quite suit Alexander Vasilyevich. For us athletes, he was a friend, comrade, father. He did not limit himself only to the coaching process, but delved into the lives of each of us, helped and supported. Incredible kindness always emanated from him, no matter whether he scolded or praised. There was never any negativity in him.

Before the relay at the Games in Lake Placid, when the lineup was being determined, he spoke separately with each athlete, and then with all of us together, where he outlined all the tasks for each stage. We then had, I say without exaggeration, an incredible team, united and friendly. We were all confident in ourselves and each other. Of course, this is the merit of our coach!

One of the highlights of our coaching work was the 1988 Calgary Olympics. The first two races, by those standards, were unsuccessful for our team - two silver and one bronze. And then the GDR team was very strong, whose representative, Frank-Peter Rech, won gold in the individual race and sprint. And before the relay race, the decisive start for us, Alexander Vasilyevich made a detailed analytical calculation, calculated something, estimated and said that we would defeat the Germans. In the end, this is what happened - our team won gold in the relay, ahead of the GDR by more than a minute. But in Calgary he had to work under the heaviest psychological pressure - after the individual race, where we had Valera Medvedtsev’s silver, there were conversations to remove Alexander Vasilyevich from the post of head coach. It is worth giving him credit that he never transferred these problems with management to us, his assistants.

Now Alexander Vasilyevich is a member of the expert council of the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, which includes specialists in various fields. Some are in charge of science, some are in charge of medicine. But there are almost no such specialists as Alexander Vasilyevich, Viktor Fedorovich Mamatov, who master everything in the complex. They make constructive suggestions, not criticism. Their experience still helps a lot in working with national teams.

On his birthday, I would like to wish our beloved biathlon guru, of course, health! Good, heroic health for many years to come!

Alexander Tikhonov, four-time Olympic champion (1968, 1972, 1976, 1980), 11-time world champion

Privalov came to his first training camp as a senior coach, exactly on the day when I came to my first training camp as an athlete. This is how the best coach of the 20th century and the best biathlete of the 20th century began working on the national team. I first saw him in 1966 at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR in Sverdlovsk. I noticed him immediately - he stood out very much from the rest. Tall, stately, prominent! The tallest biathlete. At that time, biathlon was an unpopular sport, but, of course, we knew about Privalov. I remember seeing him in a photograph where he was together with the 1964 Olympic champion Volodya Melanin at a reception in the Kremlin with Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. This photo is deeply etched in my memory.

In those years, the struggle was between Privalov and Melanin. In the USSR, Alexander Vasilyevich had no equal - he became the national champion five times, but he was unlucky at international competitions. Didn't win the World Championships or Olympic Games. In 1964, in Innsbruck, he was the main contender for gold at the Games, but he arrived there overloaded and, despite shooting zero, he only became a silver medalist. Melanin won the gold.

I consider myself a lucky person to have trained under the guidance of Privalov. We met at a training camp. I was included in the national ski team, but while playing football I injured my leg. I didn’t get to the skiers’ training camp; I decided to go to Otepää, where there were biathletes at that time. Alexander Vasilyevich saw me and said: “Why are you fooling around, let’s go shoot.” At the shooting range I knocked out five out of five, and he suggested seriously switching to biathlon. That’s how the best young skier, a Siberian from the Urals, as they called me, went into biathlon.

I always called him Sanya. In my family, my grandfather always said: “Don’t exaggerate!” And everyone else was wildly jealous, like, how can you treat him like that, he’s a great athlete. His nickname was Myakukha - he was gentle in character, always compromised, and did not push with authority. Alexander Vasilievich has always been the soul of our team.

I remember an incident: at a training camp I was going to break my sports regime - drink cognac and then go for a walk. Here I am lying in bed in a suit, covered with a blanket, a glass of cognac on the table. Privalov comes in and asks: “What is this?” I say it's tea. He takes the glass and drinks it in one gulp. Then he pulls the blanket, throws it away and silently leaves the room. I lie there as if stunned, but I still left the base that evening. Then we talked a lot about this topic. Once, after a collective violation of the regime, he wanted to kick some of the guys out of the team. But we talked, discussed everything, that it is not worth ruining the lives of the guys because of one offense. “The forbidden fruit is sweet, so let’s have holidays, it’s impossible to sit at the base all the time,” I said. We had everything - barbecue, going to the theater, cinema, reading poetry, books. Our generation was completely different - we were interested in a lot of things, we read something all the time, we were educated.

We had a special relationship. I often visited his house, helped him - once I assembled a wardrobe. First of all, he was always my friend, and then everything else.

It’s a pity that he and Viktor Fedorovich Mamatov were removed from the national team. They say that age is no longer the same. And I’ll say this: “You don’t become an academician or a Nobel Prize laureate at the age of 17.” Look at Zhores Alferov, he became a laureate at the age of 70.”

Alexander Vasilyevich was and remains my older brother, to whom I am always ready to help.

Viktor Mamatov, two-time Olympic champion (1968, 1972), four-time world champion

We can say that I met Alexander Vasilyevich twice. I first saw him in February 1960 at the USSR Championship, where he became the winner. Then everyone on the bus congratulated him on his success, and I congratulated him too. He always says that he didn’t succeed at competitions abroad, he only won at home. He became the champion of the USSR five times. And his eternal rival Volodya Melanin, on the contrary, won international competitions. He was a three-time world champion, in 1964 he became an Olympic champion, the first in domestic biathlon, but he had no luck at the USSR championships. At that championship I took 16th place, Melanin - 17th.

They didn’t take me to the national team for a long time, they said: “Why do we need a student from a technical university from Siberia? Yes, and we don’t need new people.” At the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, which became one of the last starts for Privalov as an athlete, he performed well - he took third place, despite the fact that he competed with an injured hand. Then they took me to the national team. Although I was already thinking about quitting sports. I studied in graduate school and worked.

The second acquaintance with Privalov, already real, happened later, at the national team meeting. At the first training camp there was neither Privalov nor Melanin, but at the second training camp Alexander Vasilyevich arrived as a senior coach. He always treated everything with humor and never boasted that he was a coach. We were very inspired by the atmosphere in the team. In any company, he has always been its center. He loved to sing, and not just to sing something, but to sing - well, soulfully.

I remember there was such a training: running 30 kilometers with shooting - who would beat whom. My eyes are burning, I’m eager to fight. Privalov says: “Isn’t it too early? The World Cup is still a long way off.” I answer: “Everything is fine, Alexander Vasilyevich.” After all, I joined the national team when I was 29 years old - no longer a boy, I understood what needed to be done. At that World Championships, I won the race, and our team came second in the relay. I remember Alexander Vasilyevich’s calculation was this: me and Kolya Puzanov should shoot well, and the light ones Alexander Tikhonov and Rinat Safin should run quickly.

When the decision was made to change the head coach in the early 80s, I received an offer to lead the team. I refused six times, but in the end the Central Committee of the CPSU appointed me to this position. Alexander Vasilyevich was not offended. On the contrary, he helped me a lot, supported me, knowing all the difficulties of this work. I can honestly say that my appointment did not affect our friendship in any way. There were no disagreements, no attempts to sit on the sidelines.

In 1987, when I was already deputy chairman of the USSR Sports Committee and it was necessary to change the head coach, I said that it was necessary to return Privalov. He is a very good methodologist, trainer with vast experience and knowledge.

At the Olympic Games in Calgary, the plan was for a gold medal in the individual race, but in the end we had silver. After the race he was immediately called to headquarters to report. They attacked him and wanted him to resign. I was the head of the sports delegation at those Games. I say that everything will be fine, our team has an excellent chance to win. And Vitaly Georgievich Smirnov, chairman of the USSR Committee on Physical Culture and Sports, said: “There are two more disciplines ahead. There is no need to remove anyone, let him justify his trust.”

In the sprint, the plan was to take one bronze, but our guys Valera Medvedtsev and Seryozha Chepikov won silver and bronze. And in the relay, the USSR team defeated the GDR team, the undisputed favorite of those Olympic Games.

In the mid-90s, the new president of the Russian Biathlon Union, Alexander Tikhonov, who was raised by Privalov, began to oppress his mentor. Apparently, he was offended at the 1980 Olympic Games, when Alexander Vasilyevich did not put him in the individual race. Privalov went to Poland, where he began coaching the women's team. He told me: “Why stay in such an environment when they don’t want to see me? I won’t impose myself.”

In Poland at that time, biathlon was almost undeveloped, but thanks to the talent and strength of Alexander Vasilyevich, he created a strong team that performed excellently at the European Championships in Izhevsk and won all the races. However, even after this he was not returned to the national team.

Alexander Vasilyevich is a man with a difficult, but interesting and bright destiny. In total, he led the USSR and Russian national teams for 18 years. We are still very friendly, now we are both members of the expert council of the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, and we continue to work for the benefit of our favorite cause.

Luiza Noskova, 1994 Olympic champion, world champion

Alexander Vasilyevich is a unique person, a master of domestic and world biathlon. In addition to the fact that he himself is a legendary athlete, the first Olympic medalist and an outstanding specialist, he is also a wonderful person in his own right. Such people are very rare in life. His distinctive feature is that he always listened to you. I never taught, but suggested. It's a big difference.

He led the women's team at the Lillehammer Olympics. Then I noted that he is a very simple person and does not try to impose authority. Those Games somehow didn’t work out for us - there were no medals in the individual race and sprint, and no one really counted on the relay race; they didn’t consider us as serious competitors. But Alexander Vasilyevich had amazing intuition - he knew what needed to be done for the team to win.

Choosing a relay team is always a difficult task. You include some on the team, and reject others. In our team, everything was built on trust. If you are on a team, it means that they trust you 100%. And it was with this thought that I went to the start line: they trust me, the coach trusted me! I rushed along the highway as if on wings.

I really want to wish Alexander Vasilyevich good health! And so that at the Olympic Games in Sochi our biathletes take medals and win on their native soil. I really want them to give such a gift to Alexander Vasilyevich!

Anfisa Reztsova, three-time Olympic champion (skiing - 1988, biathlon - 1992, 1994), three-time world champion

Alexander Vasilyevich is a very meticulous coach. I always started analyzing my mistakes in shooting from afar. He told me how to shoot correctly, told me the whole theory. Sometimes I even forgot where the analysis of my shooting began (laughs). He gave a lot of information, but little by little I got used to his system.

As a person, he is so vital, or something. And he could drink a glass and sing. The real soul of any company.

Before Lillehammer, I had an extremely unsuccessful season, and I didn’t approach the Olympic season in ideal condition. The question was whether to take me to the Games at all. But Alexander Vasilyevich stood up for me and believed in me. Although at the Games themselves they didn’t place any special bets on me. I performed very poorly in the individual race, but, to be honest, the whole team showed a low result. I didn’t succeed in the sprint because I was simply burned out the day before. I thought too much about the upcoming race, and nothing worked out at the competition itself.

There were many opinions about the relay race - who to run and who not to run. I was not even invited to the meeting where the composition was determined. And then I found out that Luiza Noskova was offered to run the fourth stage, but she honestly said that she was not ready for such responsibility and let Reztsova run. Alexander Vasilyevich agreed with this proposal and said: “She will not let you down.”

In the race itself, we all ran and shot well, I won’t say that anyone was a hero in the team. Our entire team was a hero! We used every chance, and our German rivals also failed the race.

Alexander Vasilievich is a unique coach, although I did not manage to work with him for a long time. At one time he trained Poles, so they doted on him. All the time they shouted: “Sasha, Sasha!” He was a coach, a father, a friend, and a teacher for them. You know, he is one of those people who not only trains, but also wipes the snot after an unsuccessful performance. At the same time, he did not allow any liberties to the athletes - discipline was always at its best. He is a very good psychologist. And now he’ll sort everything out, as far as psychology and pedagogy are concerned. He will be happy to advise and help if necessary.

On Alexander Vasilyevich’s birthday, I wish him good health. Health, health, health! To live to be 100 years old and always have kind, decent, beloved and loving people nearby.

Anatoly Alyabyev, two-time Olympic champion (1980)

I met Alexander Vasilyevich in 1974, when I had just started doing biathlon. It happened in Murmansk. He is so tall and calm. He led slowly, clearly, clearly.

I joined the national team in 1978. I’m a calm person by nature, I didn’t do a lot of training like other guys. Barnashov, Alikin, Tikhonov - everyone did large volumes, but I couldn’t. The trainers accommodated me halfway, although I was a beginner and I performed smaller volumes. This is the kind of individual approach we had in the team. It means a lot in sports when a coach treats an athlete with understanding.

Privalov always exuded calm and confidence. At a common table he could joke and tell an anecdote. He's the greatest of the greats, an antiquarian, as I call him, and he doesn't take offense (laughs).

At the Olympic Games in Lake Placid, the situation was very tense - the height of the Cold War. There were posters everywhere with the slogans “Hands off Afghanistan”, “You are a trash heap”. A painted bear, behind which stands an American in a cowboy hat and points to him with his hand - “get out of America.” We were warned: beware of any provocations. But there were no incidents. We lived in the Olympic village, and the coaches lived in a house nearby, which we rented specifically for the Games. According to tradition, the day before the competition we drove into this house, slept there and started in the morning. I remember once the trainers fried potatoes and onions. We go into the house, and there is such a smell! This is the situation that Alexander Vasilyevich created.

The USSR national team failed the previous two world championships before the Games, and they thought that we would also perform poorly in the individual race at the Olympics. The race took place on Friday, February 13, and it was also the 13th Games (laughs). I didn’t feel very well before the start. Privalov told me: “Put emphasis on shooting.” He repeated this to me several times. I shot three marks to zero, and before the fourth one of our guys on the national team shouted to me: “If you shoot to zero now, you will become a champion.” When Privalov found out about this after the race, he was seriously angry. Under no circumstances should you do such things! Well, at the last line after the fourth shot my hands were shaking and I took 42 seconds to aim the fifth. My opponent, German Frank Ullrich, managed to reduce the gap, but I still retained the victory.

We had a very friendly team back then. They said that it was the most friendly team in the Union, the rest were even jealous of us. We had a Musketeer motto: one for all and all for one. On the eve of the race, we spent the night in a house and told jokes to defuse the situation. The next day they won the race - they brought almost a minute to the GDR team. And for Sasha Tikhonov this victory was the fourth at the Olympic Games.

I consider myself very lucky to have met Alexander Vasilyevich on my life’s path. Coaches are like second parents. We are still very friendly with Privalov. He is a very emotional person and takes everything to heart. Now, through the veteran line, we often go to the World Championships and Olympic Games and live in the same room. So after some race he wakes up in the middle of the night and walks and walks, then says: “Tolya, aren’t you sleeping? Now I’ll tell you why it didn’t work out today.” I take it more calmly, saying that it was bad luck, next time they will perform better. And he: “What bad luck!” We have to work and train.” He is a true patriot of biathlon and Russia.

Every medal in sports has two sides - on the one hand, achievement and victory, on the other - remaining human. It is coaches who make people out of us. I always tried to be like our coaches - Privalov, Pshenitsyn. I would like young coaches to be worthy of their predecessors.

I would like to wish Alexander Vasilyevich health, goodness and prosperity! Let him take care of himself and may he live to be 100 years old!

Tatyana Papova, SBR media service. Photo - from the archive of Alexander Privalov

Alexander Privalov, scientific editor of Expert magazine, has been closely monitoring the fate of domestic education for a long time. “Do you want to talk about school? Despondency is how school is described today!” This is Privalov’s first reaction to our request for an interview.

The expert told the Orthodoxy and Peace website who needed to kill school education and why, how to save what little was left of it, and who should do it.

Violation of principle

In everything that the government does with education, the main principle is violated. It is like this: at school, in school matters, exactly one person understands - the teacher. Anyone who does not go to class - and not sometimes, as a wedding general - but every day or at least several times a week, generally, in an amicable way, should remain silent about these matters. Be silent and politely listen to what the good teacher has to say. But it did exactly the opposite. The only one who did not receive any voice during the endless reform of education was the teacher. Actually, this is enough, this is a sentence.

About fifteen years ago, for the Expert magazine, I wanted to talk about humanitarian topics with the then still living academician Alexander Mikhailovich Panchenko. I call him, he answers the phone, and I introduce myself and say: “Tell me, Alexander Mikhailovich, what’s happening to us?” If you've ever seen him on TV, you'll remember his magnificent, powerful bass voice. And so he says to me on the phone: “Well,” in his powerful bass voice, drawing out his words. “We are dying.” I remember this for the rest of my life. It was memorable primarily because he turned out to be right.

In the case of education, we can state that it has died. Education as a single system, in my opinion, is beyond the point of no return. And it is probably impossible to restore it. If anyone ever gets around to it, education will have to be done all over again.

The fact is that if you look at education - primarily school education - it turns out that this is such a dual thing. It performs two key functions. On the one hand, education is a system of socialization of a particular individual. A little man goes to school. He is put through some gears there, he emerges as an individual, socialized in this particular society - ready for life, for further advancement in it.

On the other hand, the education system is, of course, a nation-forming institution. Bismarck's famous phrase that the battle of Sadovaya was won by a schoolteacher is said about this. Without the Prussian school there would have been no Prussian army, there would have been no Prussian state: the Prussian school created a nation that was capable of such and such acts. There is no such thing as a school that would be ready to reproduce a nation in Russia anymore.

The benefits of saving

I don’t have the feeling that the school didn’t exist by accident. I have a feeling that it was deliberately reformed in such a way that it ended up being destroyed. Because when Brownian motion occurs - purely random, whatever comes into our heads, then we turn it back, based on simple considerations of probability theory, there must be something for the benefit, and something for the harm. But here, in educational reform, if there are any advantages, then they must be looked for very specifically. And to be honest, I don’t see them.

I would be happy to join the fashionable conspiracy theorists today and say that the reform is a conspiracy of the world bourgeoisie or someone else. But the worst thing is that I can’t say that either. Because even a conspiracy is not visible there. The only thing that can be traced in this endless reform (in general, you need to have a conscience: they have been reforming continuously for more than ten years; it would be better if they took him and killed him right away!) - so, the only plan that can be traced from beginning to end is the plan of economy.

The government views education as a costly area. It does not consider education as a productive sphere, or even more - as the only productive sphere that is absolutely necessary for the country - after all, without it, no other productive spheres can exist. But for the government, education costs are just that: costs. For him, this is purely a loss of money.

Therefore, those eagles who won a monopoly on the management of this sphere, our dear education reformers, were given, as far as I understand, the following task: this means, guys, there is a lot of money going into this education, but in fact, it’s not that special to anyone need to. Therefore, please do it so that everything is decent - so that it is like people have, so that with modern words that this is education on the verge of science fiction, according to the latest word of science of the twenty-first century - but at the same time, so that it is cheaper.

And they took it up a notch: “No question! Let’s make it both cheap and 21st century!” Moreover, note that it is very important that the reformers received quite good money for this work. Our state, which does not see any particular benefit in education, nevertheless increased allocations for it for several years in a row. It was assumed something like this: we are now giving you money, and with this money, please, ensure further “efficiency”. Or, in simple accounting language, make sure that less money goes to you later. Actually, this is exactly what was done.

There will be less money. Federal budget spending on education will decrease every year quite quickly - they are already decreasing. We are told that this is because changes were adopted in the budget code and other such legal provisions, which transfer a huge part of the costs of general education to the regions. On paper, this is certainly true.

On paper, it turns out that the costs of education of the federal center, plus the costs of the regions, plus everything else - that is, what businesses, private individuals spend on these purposes, it doesn’t matter, all together - the total costs of education will increase. But the regions rightly note that they have no money. Not only for education - not at all. Therefore, starting from this year, and even more so from the future, every governor will rack his brain every day about what to underfund. Road construction? Labor exchange? Should he underfund the heating program for poor areas, the gasification program, or should he underfund education?

This choice is deadly. Nothing can be underfunded, but there is no money. Therefore, when we are told that the total cost of education will increase, we are simply being lied to. They do not make mistakes in good faith, but lie. Because reformers know better than I how things stand with finances in the regions.

Flatness and tightness

Why was it necessary to make education cheaper? In my opinion, the thought behind this may be as follows. These people gathered in their circle, looked each other in the eyes and honestly admitted: the country is deteriorating. Over the nineties, dozens of industries died out, and dozens more are dying out right now. The country is shrinking, the country's economy is flattening. There are exceptions, of course. But speaking in general, the number of industries, sub-sectors, and still active areas of scientific research is decreasing all the time. This means that the amount of knowledge required for the functioning of this mechanism decreases.

And so these people asked themselves: who are we going to deceive, continuing with our last strength to support a system that teaches the basics of nuclear physics to every punk? Why are we doing this, who are we fooling? There was no “Arab Spring” then, but even before Tunisia it was not difficult to guess that if you prepare a surge of overly well-educated young people, then these young people, upon leaving educational institutions, will understand that there is absolutely nothing for them to do in their country. And then they will organize some kind of revolution. “Do we want this?” we asked ourselves. “We probably don’t want to.” What should you do? Since we cannot and do not know how to stop the flattening of the country, it means that the education system must be brought into line with reality.

You can disagree with this line of thought - I, for example, do not completely agree with it. But it cannot be denied that there is logic in it. But even if so, it would still be possible to deal with education more gently. One could sit down and think: how can we use diminishing funds to create an education system that will, nevertheless, retain the possibility of recovery? Maintain opportunities to restore the country's self-sufficiency.

It is clear that in the modern world no one has complete self-sufficiency. Everyone depends on each other, everyone buys something from each other, delegates to each other. But if a country does not preserve some piece in which it is its own mistress, it is in a hopeless situation. Either we retain the opportunity to make some pieces ourselves, but in the future, perhaps, we will degrade some pieces to this or that. Moreover, if we degrade faster in the education system than in other areas, then that’s it. The question has been removed. In the next four to five thousand years, nothing will happen here.

It would be necessary to call smart people, sit down and come up with something less catastrophic. But this is exactly what did not happen. The exact opposite was done. A phenomenally hermetic system of decision-making in education was created.

Probably, even decisions on the deployment of strategic nuclear forces are made less secretly than decisions on education reform were made all these years. Every time the public was called upon to participate in the discussion, it was done purely mockingly. A brilliant example of this is the large education law that was adopted in December.

On the one hand, it was posted on sites specially prepared for discussion, to accept comments from citizens. It hung there for almost two years - you don’t need that much, it’s crazy. Because everyone who had something to say said it in the first weeks. But how was this discussion organized? Firstly, they made it so that when people left comments they did not have the opportunity to see what had already been said. Therefore, it was not possible to create public pressure at specific points. Secondly, the authors of the bill themselves summed up the results of the discussion. Whatever comments they wanted to accept, they accepted. Those who didn't want to were left out. And most importantly, there was nothing to object to. "Guys! - the authors of the law could ask. - We submitted the project for public discussion? They took it out. Have you discussed? We discussed it. What else do you want?

In the end it turned out bad. Indeed, it was possible to create all the foundations for reducing the cost of school. But, I repeat, I consider this task to be false. I really like the favorite phrase of my constant interlocutor Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Yamburg, a well-known school director not only in Moscow: “Save on schools - go broke on prisons.” This is obvious to me. For Yamburg it is obvious. This is obvious to anyone on the street. For reformers - no.

Standards and guarantees

So, a basic condition has been created - it has been decided to save on schools. What's next? According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, universal secondary education in our country is free. But the Constitution is a general document. It does not say what exactly is called secondary education, which is guaranteed to be free. And as a result of gigantic efforts, in this very hermetic booth where reform is being done, new state standards for school education are adopted. And they, in fact, say nothing.

They only say that a graduate of, say, high school should have such and such competencies. Moreover, they are registered with a large margin. For example, a high school graduate, after taking a literature course, is supposed to have a linguistic sense, editorial skills, and some other skills... Yes, such people cannot be found in the editorial offices of Moscow magazines! And this is supposedly required of every graduate of every class of every school. The trick here is that the requirements are as vague as possible.

If the standard said that a school graduate, having taken a course, for example, in geography, should know the main objects of the Northern Sea Route and be able to explain its economic, political, military significance - this would be verifiable. But when the standard says that after a geography course a person should be able to think geographically, what can I check? Should he know the Northern Sea Route or should he not? Not written. Should be able to show it on a map? Not said.

It has become completely unknown - from the moment the standards were adopted - what the state actually guarantees by guaranteeing a child a free secondary education? He guarantees what he wants. Whatever he gives, thank you for that.

Teacher, official and pedagogical dimensions

The country's leadership says: the status of teachers must be raised. This means that his wages need to be increased. But the main idea is to save on everything. So what needs to be done? Right! Reduce the number of teachers.

First there is a simple fraud. Instead of talking about the size of the teacher's salary, they talk about his salary. Nobody asks how much money a teacher needs to take on his chest in order to at least wear his pants intact sometimes. They tell him: your salary will be the same as the average for the region, but be kind, go ahead... According to the “road map” for the development of education, which was published at the beginning of this year - in fact, it was published on December 30, under the Christmas tree, but they read it at the beginning of January - it is directly written: how much the number of teachers will decrease, how much the average workload for the remaining teacher will increase.

If the reformers had a goal - to save money today, but give the school a chance to recover in the future, they would preserve pockets of “living” schools where distinguished teachers work, and would not interfere with them. Even Prince Kropotkin wisely noted: people are better than institutions. The education system in the Russian Federation is, in my opinion, very bad, but individuals are still very good in it. And, in principle, it would be possible to let them move - which, in fact, was the case in the nineties.

The nineties were, on the one hand, a terrible time for education, because there was no money at all. But on the other hand, they remained a time that many remember with delight, because people were not touched. Yes, they paid practically no money, but they didn’t interfere either. The teachers could do what they could. Many brilliant schools that have survived to this day are from there, from the nineties. When people whose eyes lit up, no one bothered them. They worked. They were writing something. Someone was consulted. They did. But now this will not work, because the educational branch of the vertical of power has proliferated.

There are a lot of these educational bureaucrats. In my opinion, if not more than the teachers themselves, then a comparable number. And they have to prove all the time that it’s not for nothing that they eat their bread. And so they come to schools and naturally interfere with teachers’ lives. “But show us the lesson plan you developed in August.” “Why did you write that in lesson 42 in March you will talk about this and that, but you didn’t talk about this, but talked about it in lesson 41?” “Would you like to get out and never work in any school again?”

This is all bitter madness, but it is understandable. These officials - apparently often looking in the mirror - do not trust anyone. No one. And they believe exclusively in what they themselves call “pedagogical dimensions.” Recently the Higher School of Economics celebrated its twenty anniversary. This is the main ideological center of the entire education reform. And in a ceremonial interview, the rector of this school, Yaroslav Ivanovich Kuzminov, called the development of these very pedagogical dimensions the second most important achievement of the university he heads. What is it? In my opinion, their essence is explained very simply. Pedagogical measurements are the art of judging the quality of education without looking at either the student or the teacher, but looking solely at the pieces of paper.

Officials don't trust people. Well, how can I ask you if the school in the next block is good? Who are you? Who am I? I don't believe myself either. Therefore, let's create such a pile of pieces of paper so that the quality of the school in the next block can be judged, supposedly, dispassionately and objectively. And this mountain of papers at school grows every year. And the phrase that school is the place where children prevent teachers from filling out papers for the Department of Education has long ceased to be a joke.

Of course, there have always been officials - no less arrogant and no more competent. The Bolshevik officials of the first years of the revolution were a joke, and they also destroyed the tsarist education system then. But there is one “but”: in tsarist Russia, although there was a very good education for those times, it was, in fact, elitist. Not even fifty, but at most fifteen to twenty percent of youth were trained within its framework. That is, compared to the Soviet system of universal education, the remnants of which are now dying, the coverage was much less.

Problems to increase complexity

For all its disadvantages, the Soviet school was a functioning system that provided a certain basic level of education to almost everyone. Of course, towards the end of the Soviet Union, this system was already slipping a lot. But, nevertheless, it passed the majority of the population through its gears, and a lot of things followed from this.

For example, it followed that people - our, Soviet generations - have a common canon. A considerable amount of general knowledge was drilled into us. We have common quotes from Griboyedov and Ostrovsky, general knowledge about “War and Peace.” In modern schools, less and less of this canon remains. In general, it is incomparably more difficult for her today than it was for school in Soviet times. The tasks that it faces are increasingly different from Soviet tasks and are becoming more complex.

The first is the children themselves. The stuff that's coming into school today, these kids, is more unhealthy. They have a lot of congenital ailments that limit their capabilities in a variety of ways.

Secondly, social stratification has grown incredibly compared to Soviet times, and continues to grow. This is a scourge for the school. It’s one thing, an established pattern, when people of one social class live in the West End of London, and people of a different class live in the East End. This is not the case in modern Moscow. Social stratification runs through most school classrooms, and it makes the job of a teacher more difficult. Then, the national composition changes catastrophically quickly. In many schools in Moscow, the majority of children entering first grade speak Russian poorly or not at all.

The Unified State Exam has radically changed the approach to school education. He flattened school education. In recent years, children have not been taught, but trained to do meaningless work. Well, this test is pointless! It may be good in itself: when a child studies diligently, he will fill out any such piece of paper between times, put a tick in it and will not even remember about it the next day. And when all the studying comes down to filling out this piece of paper, it quickly becomes clear: no one has time to have any meaningful conversations with the child, and no one wants to.

When children are taught to check boxes, it is a disaster. Because the main function of school is completely different - to instill in the child the ability to learn. And the children who leave most schools today are not educated in the future. These are humanly lost people, I feel incredibly sorry for them. This is why the classical gymnasium in Tsarist Russia, with a tenacity that seemed wild to many, continued to force children to learn not only Latin, but also ancient Greek. Because the school urgently needs work that is obviously difficult. A man with brilliant natural abilities read a textbook on physics and remembered - there is no need to study it. But Ancient Greek should be learned at any ability. Moreover: the higher your abilities, the more difficult it is to force yourself to sit upright and work.

And when we are told today that schools should teach based on the interests of children, that we cannot give the same homework to children, I am not against it. But then say it openly, out loud: guys, school is a place like a storage room. You drop off your child there in the morning. It does not run through the streets, does not sniff glue in basements, does not attack its own kind with a knife. It sits quietly until the evening. That's all. And don't ask us anything else. If you don't know anything else, say it out loud. And maybe you will be replaced in your positions sooner.

These tasks are becoming more complex in waves, and the freedom of hands and financial opportunities to solve them are becoming less and less. This is very, very bad. What should I say to any normal person? I must tell every normal person the old maxim: saving drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves. Living people on their own, without a state, cannot save a unified education system. But they can and should save the individual schools their children attend.

Path of Salvation

How can parents save the school? There are some formal grounds. The fact is that in schools there are so-called boards of trustees - they have some powers, and if they don’t have them, they can seize them. Come to the school where your children go, where your children should go, talk to the teacher, talk to the director. They are real people, they love it when people communicate with them normally, and not yell at each other. Ask how to help. They really need help. Moreover, it is often necessary to help not only and not always necessarily with money. There are plenty of other ways.

If you can tell the kids something as a specialist, tell them. If you can bring someone who can tell you, bring it. If you can “cover” them from the Department of Education with your connections, do it. If you have found a school for your children that suits you in principle, do everything you can for it.

Before the final stages of the reform, I literally talked about it every week with a variety of people. And they all gave me the same assessment. According to experts, at the end of the 2000s, every seventh person in Russia was in school. Or every sixth, seventh, eighth. This figure depended on the optimism of the speaker, but they all highlighted some percentage of schools where they actually taught. And the education of children is increasingly becoming the responsibility of parents.

Home school is underground. Paid school is inevitable

The role of home education today is becoming hypertrophied, and this is not good. It has its advantages, of course, but overall its popularity is due to misfortune. Something bad must happen to the country for home education to become widespread.

In recent years, the best Moscow teachers have tried to crawl away from school. They took minimal workloads and went into tutoring, where in one day they earned more than in a month of school work. And those parents who still wanted to teach their children, and not train them for the Unified State Exam, also involuntarily moved to tutors.

But, alas, parents are also different. To say that they all equally understand the value of education for their children would be to greatly embellish the reality. Don’t fool your child, don’t burden him with homework. Keep him to sit quietly in class, and then give him a certificate and leave forever - unfortunately, this is what so many adults think. And therefore I am a supporter of collecting all the forces that exist. An advocate for parents who really want an education for their children not to go underground at home, but to unite efforts around surviving schools. This must be done. Schools will die without you, and you without them, so it's a mutual interest.

We must be aware that secondary education will increasingly become paid - this is inevitable. There is no need to be too sad about this. Remember? Even in Soviet times they said: “He who is treated for nothing is treated for nothing.” Or: “He who learns for nothing, learns for nothing.” It is necessary to create civilized tools for working in new conditions. We need educational loans, we need philanthropists, we need funds to support talented children.

In general, we need things that are non-state, but capable of mitigating gaps in state policy. It should not be mitigated frontally, but in specific areas, for a specific capable child, in a specific neighborhood, where there are two dozen not just smart, but active smart fathers and mothers who have huddled together and are keeping the local school afloat.

In 1981 I had the opportunity to travel to Poland. There was a terrible crisis there at that time; in Warsaw there were two items on free sale: from non-food products - flowers, from food products - vinegar. And the Poles told me a wonderful joke: “What is the way out of this situation? There are two ways out - one more probable, the other less probable. The more likely possibility is that angels will come down from heaven and arrange everything for us. Less likely is that we will do something ourselves.” This joke is about our school today and about us.

The publicist, scientific editor of the Expert magazine, did not leave anyone indifferent and was continually interrupted by applause from the audience.

Your Holiness, dear Lyudmila Alekseevna, dear colleagues, I will spend a few seconds not on business.

Our congress began yesterday, when Philologist's Day was celebrated. Being a philologist is a worthy fate. Philologist is an enviable title. Congratulations, colleagues!

The Ministry of Education is not so much interested in education as in the control of education

Many important things have been said here, but some things are no longer talked about: I’m tired of talking. But we indirectly learned that, after all, at one of the sections a standard topic was discussed about how bureaucratic pressure prevents good teachers at school, including literature teachers, from living and working. The section even managed to laugh at this - I don’t really understand how you can laugh here. I am the son of a wordsmith, I remember that my mother was forced to write some pieces of paper that were not relevant. But what tormented her then, 30-40 years ago, and what her unfortunate colleagues are doing now, are earth and sky. What is happening is terrible. The most interesting thing is that it is very easy to stop. The powers of one of the speakers at today's congress, Minister Livanov, are absolutely sufficient to stop this Tomorrow. But he does not and will not do this, because the Ministry of Education, for natural reasons, is interested not so much in education as in control of education. And they will not sacrifice a single grain, a single molecule of this constantly increasing senseless control.

I allowed myself to talk about this hackneyed topic, because in our case it is essential. It is directly related to the root of the problems encountered in teaching Russian literature at school. Because Russian literature in school - both the Russian language and literature - must urgently be turned in the direction directly opposite to where the educational authorities are leading with their control. We need to change the emphasis. From the fact that it is so easy and pleasant to control in the usual ways (through the same Unified State Exam or in any other way) - to the fact that it is much worse to control externally, but is much more necessary for every living person. Enough with morphological analysis, enough with stories about how many digits of an adjective, how many digits of a numeral (especially in high school! It’s just crazy)... People need to be taught speak And write. Learn expound And prove your thoughts. This is practically not done now.

Essay has returned to school. You and I know that the essays were returned to school by direct order of the President of the Russian Federation. They returned it as best they could. This was difficult to do because the return of composition to today's school goes directly against everything that has been done in it for the last 15 years. Well, they somehow stuck him at an angle, sideways, somehow sourly, on some idiotic bird's license: not an exam, but a test, some kind of admission to the Unified State Exam. As if you can not be allowed to take the Unified State Exam... How?!

There is no need to talk long about today's essay. In my opinion, this is a small but clear portion of national shame. If anyone is interested, he can easily find on the Internet some topics for final essays in the Tsar’s gymnasium, topics for final essays in the Brezhnev era, for example, and what happened last year. When it is considered a great achievement that a person wrote 250 words (that’s less than half a page) on the topic “ House" or " Love"... Such an essay in Russian is called “He’s already holding his head.” But, gentlemen, we are talking about school graduates - adults!

His Holiness the Patriarch rightly noted that we very often hear, constantly hear: today’s children don’t read, don’t like to read - well, yes, that’s right. A lot of people don't like it. It's so tricky to love what you don't know how to love. Reading must be taught, just as people are taught to swim, just as people are taught to listen to classical music. The best teachers in Russia (there are many of them, thank God!) know how to do this, they know how to motivate and teach children to read. Most teachers need to be able to do this. Then they like to say (and they say correctly) that modern children, when faced with classical Russian literature, do not understand the words and experience all sorts of difficulties. In fact, these difficulties are mainly not lexical, but cultural, but that’s not the point. We must be able to predict these difficulties and help children overcome them. Good teachers do this - and brilliantly. Most teachers should be able to do this. And here we come to a fundamental question. For everything that I just briefly said, you need time- in two very important, equally important aspects.

Firstly, you need time. There are few lessons in Russian literature. The Concept for Teaching Russian Language and Literature, just approved by the Government, proudly states (unfortunately, I didn’t remember it by heart, but, in my opinion, “ideal” is not a bureaucratic word): the optimal number of hours. Optimal! Here Mr. Livanov spoke to us. He also really likes it: “A magnificent number of hours - nothing like this has ever happened before!” There was, there was much more - and there was also little. What we have now is not enough at all.

Well, when the minister speaks, we heard: everything is fine. Just All Fine. Everything is already good, but today is better than it was yesterday, and tomorrow will be even better. If you and I here didn’t firmly know that everything is so good that the President of the Russian Federation considered it necessary to turn to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' with a request to organize and lead the Society of Russian Literature in order to try at least do something; If we didn’t know this for sure, we would believe the minister that everything is just wonderful.

Reaction of those gathered to the speech of A.N. Privalova. Photo: A. Pospelov / Pravoslavie.Ru

Well, okay: that means they have enough hours. In fact, there are not enough of them. More hours are needed: in order to teach reading, to teach understanding, to teach speaking, to fill cultural gaps, time is needed. We are not talking about “one of” school subjects - we are talking about the main thing: students who cannot read will not be able to master no item. And people literally don’t know how to read now. Ask any active teacher, any editor: not only do they not catch intonation - let’s say, they don’t catch irony in the text - that’s okay: “What tenderness in our poverty.” But almost no one knows how to catch, say, a logical glitch in a text. People don't see logical failures. All this needs to be taught. When? Give it time.

This is in the first sense.

It is impossible to prepare a quality teacher in four years

In the second: in order for the majority of teachers to have a chance to join those who already know how to do all this, they also need to be taught. This also takes time. And a lot of time. Teacher education must produce language specialists who are better prepared than previous ones, simply because today’s ones face more difficult tasks than those of yesterday. The tasks will only become more difficult. Meanwhile, the reform of teacher education is going in exactly the opposite direction. They tell us about the “applied”, God forgive me, bachelor’s degree, that is, the vast majority of students will study not five or six, but four years. I did not have to (well, apparently, I was unlucky) to talk with a single serious teacher who would disagree with the obvious fact: it is impossible to prepare a quality teacher in four years. Don't make it in time. Just don't have time. Pedagogy is, in addition to, and perhaps above all, other things, a gigantic volume of methods, techniques - a whole arsenal of tools. It cannot be transmitted on the run. It takes time. Four years is funny. But strength is not only in four years.

The concept of reforming teacher education is that it is necessary to reduce the volume of teaching theoretical disciplines as much as possible, replacing them with practice, and reduce the number of theoretical disciplines so that there are fewer in number. This is what, for example, is being done very close by, here at the Moscow State Pedagogical University. And note to yourself: all this hits the wordsmiths much harder than everyone else. Well, maybe according to historians it’s just as strong. It's a little easier for everyone else. But with the wordsmiths. I quote: “Courses such as the Old Church Slavonic language, historical grammar of the Russian language, stylistics, course modern Russian language shortened by several semesters." Students of teachers trained this way - I don't know what they will be. How can a person who doesn’t know much more than his future graduate teach anything? And if you look closely at how they are prepared now, sometimes it seems that he is even more like a mass entertainer than a philologist. Maybe this has a meaning, I don’t know; but it is obviously impossible to push through the wall that we are now facing, the wall of poor language proficiency and poor language teaching.

Just because it is called reform does not cease to be degradation

And here’s another wonderful thing. In addition to the fact that hours are being cut and disciplines are being cut, teachers at pedagogical universities are very diligently assured that their main occupation is not teaching teachers at all. This is nothing. This is wrong. Here's what's right. A professor at a pedagogical university writes on a blog. I quote literally: “They sent time standards for extracurricular work of teaching staff (faculty). Numbers can say a lot about the people who determined them. For example, checking, consultations, accepting tests and assignments, essays and other homework - zero point five hours per student per semester. Preparation and publication of articles in leading licensed publications according to the RSCI - fourty hours per article, filing patent applications - 400 hours per patent.” Gentlemen, the professor is right A . This says a lot about the people who wrote such norms. Equating writing one scientific article to teaching 80 students is a very strong move. Perhaps a stronger move would be to only assign half an hour of time per student per semester. This is a fact. I didn't write anything. This is the kind of teacher education reform that is taking place now. And just because it is called reform, it does not cease to be degradation.

I will say very little in conclusion, because many good and useful recommendations have already been made. But I would like to draw your attention to this. A huge part of these recommendations, as we have heard now, comes down to ensuring that teachers, philologists, and parents participate in the discussion of this, in the development of this, in the examination of this. Gentlemen, you might think that you don’t know how officials arrange discussions. That is, not only the Ministry of Defense, but especially the Ministry of Defense. If we are talking about discussing anything seriously, then we must discuss idea. That is, we are going to make this kind of material - such a concept, a program, something else, we want to put such and such basic ideas into it. Let's discuss the main ideas! And then the discussion really makes some sense. But in reality, they write a project there, post it on the website and say: “Let’s discuss, guys: should I correct the comma here or here?” They are told: “You wrote everything wrong. in principle" They answer: “That’s not what we’re talking about. Should I correct the comma here or here?” Have we rarely seen this? Do we want to watch more? Let's watch some more. No, I mean nothing contrary to the verb: it is necessary to participate in examinations, in discussions, everything is correct. But I would still say this:

Colleagues, you and I seem to have some kind of capital: we were personally supported by the President of Russia, our Society is personally headed by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. Maybe let's ask for something that will test whether we have capital or not? Maybe let's ask not to participate in the next discussion, after which Livanov's deputy who conducted the discussion will say: “Thank you, everyone is free, and we will do as we planned”? Maybe, in addition to participating in discussions, we will demand something tangible? So I would suggest two simple things. Very simple things. I would suggest requiring it. Not to recommend, God forgive me, but demand immediate elimination of 99 percent of bureaucratic requirements and checks that fall on the head of every teacher in the country - immediate. This can be done in a week. And I don’t know of a single argument against that could be said out loud.

Second: we need to require more hours of language arts. I have already heard that there are our colleagues, there are philologists, there are literature experts who say: “We don’t need more hours - we teach poorly anyway. Why do we need more hours? With the same success you can say: “This patient is very bad. Let’s not feed him - let him die better.” A philologist, a literature scholar, who is against increasing the hours for literature, is a fish who is against water.

The publicist, scientific editor of the Expert magazine, did not leave any of those gathered indifferent and was continually interrupted by applause from the audience.

Your Holiness, dear Lyudmila Alekseevna, dear colleagues, I will spend a few seconds not on business.

Our congress began yesterday, when Philologist's Day was celebrated. Being a philologist is a worthy fate. Philologist is an enviable title. Congratulations, colleagues!

The Ministry of Education is not so much interested in education as in the control of education

Many important things have been said here, but some things are no longer talked about: I’m tired of talking. But we indirectly learned that, after all, at one of the sections a standard topic was discussed about how bureaucratic pressure prevents good teachers at school, including literature teachers, from living and working. The section even managed to laugh at this - I don’t really understand how you can laugh here. I am the son of a wordsmith, I remember that my mother was forced to write some pieces of paper that were not relevant. But what tormented her then, 30-40 years ago, and what her unfortunate colleagues are doing now are earth and sky. What is happening is terrible. The most interesting thing is that it is very easy to stop. The powers of one of the speakers at today's congress, Minister Livanov, are absolutely sufficient to stop this Tomorrow. But he does not and will not do this, because the Ministry of Education, for natural reasons, is interested not so much in education as in control of education. And they will not sacrifice a single grain, a single molecule of this constantly increasing senseless control.

I allowed myself to talk about this hackneyed topic, because in our case it is essential. It is directly related to the root of the problems encountered in teaching Russian literature at school. Because Russian literature in school - both the Russian language and literature - urgently needs to be turned in the direction directly opposite to where the educational authorities are leading with their control. We need to change the emphasis. From the fact that it is so easy and pleasant to control in the usual ways (through the same Unified State Exam or in any other way) - to the fact that it is much worse to control externally, but is much more necessary for every living person. Enough with morphological analysis, enough with stories about how many digits of an adjective, how many digits of a numeral (especially in high school! It’s just crazy)... People need to be taught speak And write. Learn expound And prove your thoughts. This is practically not done now.

Essay has returned to school. You and I know that the essays were returned to school by direct order. They returned it as best they could. This was difficult to do, because the return of composition to today's school goes directly against everything that has been done in it for the last 15 years. Well, they somehow stuck him at an angle, sideways, somehow sourly, on some idiotic bird license: not an exam, but a test, some kind of admission to the Unified State Exam. As if you can not be allowed to take the Unified State Exam... How?!

There is no need to talk long about today's essay. In my opinion, this is a small but clear portion of national shame. If anyone is interested, he can easily find on the Internet some topics for final essays in the Tsar’s gymnasium, topics for final essays in the Brezhnev era, for example, and what happened last year. When it is considered a great achievement that a person wrote 250 words (that’s less than half a page) on the topic “ House" or " Love... Such an essay in Russian is called “he’s already holding his head.” But, gentlemen, we are talking about school graduates - adults!

Well, when the minister speaks, we heard: everything is fine. Just All Fine. Everything is already good, but today is better than it was yesterday, and tomorrow will be even better. If you and I here didn’t firmly know that everything is so good that the President of the Russian Federation considered it necessary to ask him to organize and lead the Society of Russian Literature in order to try at least do something; If we didn’t know this for sure, we would believe the minister that everything is just wonderful.

This is in the first sense.

It is impossible to prepare a quality teacher in four years

In the second: in order for the majority of teachers to have a chance to join those who already know how to do all this, they also need to be taught. This also takes time. And a lot of time. Teacher education must produce language specialists who are better prepared than previous ones, simply because today’s ones face more difficult tasks than those of yesterday. The tasks will only become more difficult. Meanwhile, the reform of teacher education is going in exactly the opposite direction. We are told about the “applied”, God forgive me, bachelor’s degree, that is, the vast majority of students will study not five or six, but four years. I did not have to (well, apparently, I was unlucky) to talk with a single serious teacher who would disagree with the obvious fact: it is impossible to prepare a quality teacher in four years. Don't make it in time. Just don't have time. Pedagogy is, in addition to, and perhaps above all, other things, a gigantic volume of methods, techniques - a whole arsenal of tools. It cannot be transmitted on the run. It takes time. Four years is funny. But strength is not only in four years.

The concept of reforming teacher education is that it is necessary to reduce the volume of teaching theoretical disciplines as much as possible, replacing them with practice, and reduce the number of theoretical disciplines so that there are fewer in number. This is what, for example, is being done very close by, here at the Moscow State Pedagogical University. And note to yourself: all this hits the wordsmiths much harder than everyone else. Well, maybe according to historians it’s just as strong. For everyone else, it’s a little easier. But with the wordsmiths. I quote: “Courses such as the Old Church Slavonic language, historical grammar of the Russian language, stylistics, course modern Russian language shortened by several semesters." The students of teachers trained in this way - I don't know what they will be. How can a person who doesn’t know much more than his future graduate teach anything? And if you look closely at how they are prepared now, sometimes it seems that he is even more like a mass entertainer than a philologist. Maybe this has a meaning, I don’t know; but it is obviously impossible to push through the wall that we are now facing, the wall of poor language proficiency and poor language teaching.

Just because it is called reform does not cease to be degradation

And here's another wonderful thing. In addition to the fact that hours are being cut and disciplines are being cut, teachers at pedagogical universities are very diligently assured that their main occupation is not teaching teachers at all. This is nothing. This is wrong. Here's what's right. A professor at a pedagogical university writes on a blog. I quote literally: “They sent time standards for extracurricular work of teaching staff (faculty). Numbers can say a lot about the people who determined them. For example, checking, consultations, accepting tests and assignments, essays and other homework - zero point five hours per student per semester. Preparation and publication of articles in leading licensed publications according to the RSCI - fourty hours per article, filing patent applications - 400 hours per patent.” Gentlemen, the professor is right A . This says a lot about the people who wrote such norms. Equating writing one scientific article to teaching 80 students is a very strong move. Perhaps a stronger move would be to only assign half an hour of time per student per semester. This is a fact. I didn't write anything. This is the kind of teacher education reform that is taking place now. And just because it is called reform, it does not cease to be degradation.

I will say very little in conclusion, because many good and useful recommendations have already been made. But I would like to draw your attention to this. A huge part of these recommendations, as we have heard now, comes down to ensuring that teachers, philologists, and parents participate in the discussion of this, in the development of this, in the examination of this. Gentlemen, you might think that you don’t know how officials arrange discussions. That is, not only those from the Minobrov, but especially those from the Minobrov. If we are talking about discussing anything seriously, then we must discuss idea. That is, we are going to make this kind of material - such a concept, a program, something else, we want to put such and such basic ideas into it. Let's discuss the main ideas! And then the discussion really makes some sense. But in reality, they write a project there, post it on the website and say: “Let’s discuss, guys: should I correct the comma here or here?” They are told: “You wrote everything wrong. in principle" They answer: “That’s not what we’re talking about. Should I correct the comma here or here?” Have we rarely seen this? Do we want to watch more? Let's watch some more. No, I don’t say anything contrary to the verb: it is necessary to participate in examinations, in discussions, everything is correct. But I would still say this:

— Colleagues, you and I seem to have some kind of capital: we were personally supported by the President of Russia, our Society is personally headed by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. Maybe let's ask for something that will test whether we have capital or not? Maybe let's ask not to participate in the next discussion, after which Livanov's deputy who conducted the discussion will say: “Thank you, everyone is free, and we will do as we planned”? Maybe, in addition to participating in discussions, we will demand something tangible? So I would suggest two simple things. Very simple things. I would suggest requiring it. Not to recommend, God forgive me, but demand immediate elimination of 99 percent of bureaucratic requirements and checks that fall on the head of every teacher in the country - immediate. This can be done in a week. And I don’t know of a single argument against that could be said out loud.

Second: we need to require more hours of language arts. I have already heard that there are our colleagues, there are philologists, there are literature specialists who say: “We don’t need more hours - we teach poorly anyway. Why do we need more hours? With the same success you can say: “This patient is very bad. Let’s not feed him - let him die better.” A philologist, a literature scholar, who is against increasing the hours for literature, is a fish who is against water.

Privalov Alexander Nikolaevich family life. Alexander Privalov: The dark future of the Russian economy

Works

Great Patriotic. Alexander Privalov