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

It’s like any workplace. You come in, everyone there is different. Some people really want to work, while others just want to sit through the office hours and go home in the evening. The principal’s role then is to assemble a team of people who will not sit through their hours but who will blaze for their work.

Do you think it is normal to have teachers migrate from one school to another?

I often get letters from teachers: "I work hard, but other than me, there are just one or two committed individuals in the entire staff, and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to be creative in the classroom." In cases like this, of course, people would leave to other schools, just to find what is right for them. I don’t really believe in being a "lone warrior." In teaching, you won’t go far on enthusiasm alone.

Then where do we look for good teachers?

As my latest filming trip shows, regular municipal schools tend to hire people who have not graduated from pedagogical universities and are therefore not trained to be teachers. Instead, they opt for specialists in various areas. For example, a person is very passionate about geography, and goes to teach this subject in school. Roughly speaking, the Asya Kazantseva or Alexander Panchin type of people (science journalists and popularizers of science – editor's note). And this sounds like a feasible option, because such people really enjoy talking about their subject. We pay them for their lectures, without realizing it is just as much teaching work, instead we give them a beautiful name like «popularizers» or “researchers." However, in fact, these are ready-made teachers – just take them, lure them into school, and that’s it, they are ready to teach the kids.

It is nice to have such science celebrities, committed individuals with their own views, but what about the Federal State Education Standards (FGOS) and other mandatory requirements to the curriculum? How do you accommodate this alliance?

It is possible on one condition, when you don’t have ego competition in school. I’ve often seen the “celebs" being in confrontation with the school administration. I think this kind of conflict can often be relieved by having good communication between the principal and the teachers. If you have a dialogue, I don’t see any problem with making it FGOS compliant.

THE SCHOOL IS YOUR NAVIGATOR AND GUIDE

Going back to the generalized image of the good school we want to see in the future, how different do you think it is from the typical school of today? There is one trend I noticed back in 2015–2016 in European schools, and it seems to me that it is now rolling over to us quite successfully, including through our joint efforts – books, lectures, education. At the center of the educational process is a person, a child. It seems to me that until recently we were like cab drivers at the exit from the airport, when the arriving passenger was shocked at what was going on. Ideally, the school is like a navigator. You say: “I need to get there and there," and the navigator tells you: “Okay, I’ll take you there using the most scenic route while avoiding congestion. Trust me, I am your guide."

A famous person once gave me a good metaphor. This metaphor applies to journalists and to psychologists, but I think it is equally applicable to teachers, because we all deal with people. When you do something, you have to remember that you are like a guide in the mountains, you’re leading people. If you keep picking paths that are only comfortable for you, at the end of the road there may be no one left behind you. You have to remember that people are following you, and you have to choose the road for them, not for yourself.

The School of the Future the ideal school is built on the fact that first you help the child to decide where he or she needs to go, you build a route, and then you help them along this route.

I think we’re just moving from a school of equalization to a school of personalized routing, trying to proceed from the child’s interests. This brings us back to the original meaning of the word "pedagogue,” which, as you may recall, is translated as "a child guide”.

The ideal school is built on the fact that first you help the child to decide where he or she needs to go, you build a route, and then you help them along this route.

Have you encountered any schools that have built a truly personalized trajectory for children, a format where the child's interests actually count?

The only perfect example I have found so far is the school I describe in "The Other School” book. That’s Kunskapsskolan in Finland, where the general school curriculum for the whole country is shaped for each individual student. This model is highly scalable, and they have patented it and have been using it successfully in England and in India. It really impressed me a lot that you could do that.

I think we had such attempts in Russia at the A. N. Tubelsky school. At least I heard a lot about it from alumni and teachers who worked there. The teachers agreed they would use their disciplines to develop certain skills in children: the skill of logical thinking, critical perception of information. Each instructor was hitting a different aspect of that goal from his or her discipline.

One of the teachers at the New School was doing a personalized route in his history classes. He was building a system where students could read more, do more work to get the next level, like in a game. At the highest level, they could deliver a lesson, like teachers.

This personalization of education, from what age it is appropriate, do you think? From age seven, middle school or high school?

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

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

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

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

These skills help us relate objects to real life. To be honest, I’m a big fan of phenomenon-based learning[3 - Phenomenon-based learning (PhBL or PhenoBL), is a form of learning where students learn a topic or concept as a whole. PhBL emerged as a response to the idea that traditional subject-oriented learning is outdated and removed from the real world.], where you learn one global topic through different disciplines, and you tie all the subjects together in that way.

TRUST AND OPENNESS TO THE NEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s my dream, to be honest. In fact, that’s what a lot of private schools are scolded for – selectivity, when you select the most talented people to go to school. I don’t really believe in this model because bullying tends to flourish in such schools. The harshest emotional and physical violence happens in those schools where everyone tries to outdo each other, and where there is incredible rivalry, unfortunately. That’s when, in principle, a lot of people give up and get off the finish line, because it’s impossible to study in that rivalry for too long.

I think that non-selective school access is definitely not an issue for the next 10–15 years, unfortunately.

If you were creating the School of the Future today, what do you think is the best way to do it?

Any good project starts with defining your target audience. I always divide my projects into "whats” and "hows.” It’s the same here: what we want from the school, and how we want to do it. These are two related things.

Next we need the recipient to find the sender, that is, for the parent request to match what the school has to offer. This, by the way, is the advantage of private schools. When people come there, it’s because they already have a good idea of what they want.

Next comes the most important stage – finding staff. I don’t support the view that the situation with teachers in regular public schools is very bad. There are a lot of good teachers out there, you just have to look for them and get them out of the schools where they feel bad.

Which of the existing schools in Russia, in your opinion, are closest to the School of the Future? Oddly enough, I think it was the Tubelsky School under Alexander Naumovich himself. It was a school that was way ahead of its time. Maybe also Dima Zitser’s Orange School in St. Petersburg, because, indeed, it has a model of learning that is built on absolute freedom. Frankly, I haven’t seen anything like that anywhere else.

This may sound surprising, but this is also School No. 42 in Belgorod. It struck me that you can put together a community of teachers with the right attitudes and teaching humanity, 4C skills[4 - The 4C model includes four basic skills that can and should be developed from an early age: Communication, Cooperation, Critical thinking, and Creativity.] in a perfectly ordinary municipal school. I wouldn’t call it the School of the Future outright, but it’s a very valuable example to me.

What about foreign schools?

I won’t be original here, I really like the Finnish schools. For example, Saunalahti and Ressu. Or the Swedish Kunskapsskolan School, which I mentioned earlier. There is also La Source School, which is the last one I describe in my book "The Other School.”

And another school that I remember for its views on teachers and for what our Western colleagues call forward thinking is ?restad, a "gymnasium without walls” in Denmark, which makes an honest attempt at open space, where you learn to interact with other kids, even through space, from high school on. That is, you are forced to learn with others side by side. From the perspective of the director of this school, empathy is one of the main skills of the 21st century. We often talk about personality, but we don’t support this idea in any way. And that school is built around the idea of the child being at the center of the educational process.

WE NEED A REPACKAGING OF MEANINGS

Let's talk about humane pedagogy. In my opinion, this is a somewhat strange phenomenon, because everyone knows about Shalva Amonashvili and his followers, yet there are fewer than ten accredited schools on the Center for Humane Pedagogy website. Is humane pedagogy worth taking into the future, and if so, how shall it be done?

I love Shalva Aleksandrovich very much, especially after he called "The Other School” his Bible. After those words, I can basically call my career completed (smiles). But I think the packaging is the issue. Behind such a beautiful name is a very simple thing. It’s a love for children. Any teacher who treats his or her students humanely is, in my opinion, a humane pedagogue.

Any teacher who treats his or her students humanely is, in my opinion, a humane pedagogue. It takes a person who has the talent to repackage the ideas of humane pedagogy, to make them mainstream.

I would act on the methodology of the Finnish director Lina Liusvaara, which at one time struck me very much. When she and I walked around the Ressu school, I saw that for all its innovative approach, there were a lot of classes with the classical seating arrangement of students. I told her: "It’s so unlike the image of the Finnish school that we know." The principal told me: "Because we think it’s wrong to break everything that’s been done before us."

Right now, for example, I’m making a big film about Lev Vygotsky. In fact, it is amazing how much we use Vygotsky's works without even realizing it. In the U. S. I will be in touch with two people who worked with Vygotsky and Lurie. They are James Werche and Michael Cole – people who still remember that Soviet model. It’s very important for me to show in this film a person who had a great influence on all of us, and we don’t even realize it.

I will also be talking to Elena Bodrova, who lives in America. She wrote the book "Tools of the Mind" together with Deborah Leong. She took Vygotsky's teachings and everything he said about children and repackaged those ideas. Now she is taking American schools and kindergartens by storm. The book became a bestseller, and it rediscovered Lev Vygotsky for the Americans.

We can do the same with humane pedagogues. When we open their writings, we realize that it is all written in very outdated language for the modern reader. It takes a person who has the talent to repackage their ideas, to make them mainstream.