Current Russian education has come out from the “Great Soviet” education model. It has proposed a new Russian education philosophy after the 1980s’ and 1990s’ mode. Russia’s educational reform, of which the essence is a game between “Western oriented” education and the national educational traditions, explores the role that education plays in social development. The role of education in social development in Russia depends on the purpose of Russia’s transition to democratic and legal society, of entering the market economy, and of avoiding the danger of falling behind the global economic and social development trends. After several reforms, Russia is currently exploring an education model with Russian specialties, which can adapt to the social development of Russia. The exploration process is very meaningful.
1. Background of Russian Education Modernization
The current situation that the world faces is the acceleration of social, political, and economic development, the expansion of social and political democracy, the transition of all countries to a post-industrial society and information society as quickly as possible, the emergence and expansion of cross-cultural interaction and the appearance of new ideas of the international community to continue cooperation to solve the increasingly serious global problems. Russian education is to be reformed in such a situation. Its education policy should not only reflect the interests of the country in the field of education, but also show the general trend of the development of education in the current world, leading to major changes in the Russian education system.
The basic knowledge that traditional professional education provided for the students is out of date. However that knowledge is the basic component of school teaching. Here it implies two meanings. First, the professional school education can only provides basic knowledge for students. But due to new requirements for the skills of the workers with the modernization of the society, professional education can no longer fully solve these problems. Second, the traditional education can only provide the knowledge for the college students, the development of modern economic life makes it impossible for these students to adapt to the social work. The development of contemporary economy has also led to social stratification. Those children in low-income families are unable to obtain high quality education resources. Such education problems become the bottleneck to restrict the development of education in Russia. Then the rapid differentiation of senior middle schools may solve these pressing economic problems of society to a certain extent. In 2003, Zakharova discussed how high school education turned into general education and vocational and technical education. What’s more, he argued that from the psychological perspective, we should develop each student’s interest and ability, and provide the best for his development direction. From the perspective of teaching system, we should create new systems of teaching for each student’s personalized learning; and from the perspective of social position, we should enable each student to have information disclosure and management ability. From the above point of view, it is not difficult to find that the Russian education modernization must first solve the problem of personalization and differentiation.
The state budget is the main source of funding for general education. The Russian government guarantees the priority of the education budget and it has gradually increased the share of budget funds year by year. According to the resolution passed by the State Duma in 2003, investment in education is not less than 4% of the total budget before 2006. In 2001 funding for education in the state grew fastest. In 2002 education budget was over the national defense budget. In 2003 and 2004 the federal financial allocations grew by 19.5% and 20.6%, compared with that of the previous year. The Country continued to increase investment in general education according to demand, and the general education budget has gradually increased in recent years. The state allocated budget standards to general education institutions that made effective use of funds, while cleaning up debts because of unavailable budgetary funds and the lack of financial allocations for public service. Moreover, it developed general education subjects and federal financial support mechanisms at the municipal level. The regulation says that budgets from regional and local areas for general education should be to maintain a high growth rate in the last ten years. According to the Russo federal law No. 123 issued on July 7, 2003, the labor remuneration and funds for teaching process of the Municipal Common School should be charged by the federal body instead of by the municipal level. Central and local governments are studying ways to improve the relevant funding, program allocations and other issues. So far, seventy of the eighty nine Russian Federation have completed this transition.
While Russia increased the budget in general education, it ensured the rational allocation of the capital. Increasing budgetary funds share was used mainly for special planning of the development of education. These special planning includes the following items: adding teaching equipment and laboratory equipment in ordinary institutions; computer information technology; the development of library resources; improving teachers’ skills and reforming pilot fields etc. The central government made it a rule that general education institutions should make an efficient use of such resources as manpower, finance and so on, while the state increased general education budget. The State formulated the minimum requirements for the ordinary institutions on education methods, cadres, information, material, and technology. For those that are not eligible, they will be shall be ordered by the state to stop the education activities.
In 2010, the Russian educators advocated that education should not only focus on educating students to master certain knowledge, but also provide students with personality development and the development of students’ cognitive ability and creative ability. This defined the critical capability for modern quality education: middle school students should not only form integrated system of universal knowledge, skills and experience, self-employment and the attitude of being responsible for themselves is the key. Personalized and differentiated teaching reflects the aspirations of society, but also equips students with practical knowledge.
2. How Russian Education Modernization Faces the “Traditional” and “Reality”
Russia actively explored the modernization of the education system. The Russian State Council passed a report on “Contemporary Russian Education Policy” on August 29, 2001. This policy is the basic concept of Russian education modernization during 2010. 2010 was a year of special significance to Russia’s modernization of education. In this year, the policy not only focused on educating students to master certain knowledge, cognitive ability and personality, but also draw attention to the idea that in high school (here mainly refers to the senior secondary school level, middle school that plays a convergence of basic education and vocational and technical education), a system should be formed from a macro perspective. The education system should popularize universal basic knowledge, basic skills and experience, and pay attention to student’s individual experience and responsibility, which is the key to Russia’s modern education. I’d like to talk about the Russian basic skills and experience education in particular. Russia needed to restore and build the former Soviet Union after the founding of modern industry. In accordance with the guidance of Marxism educational ideology, education should be combined with productive labor, and integrated technical education thought occupies a very important position in the Marxist theory of education. The former Soviet Union made some mistakes in the implementation of combining education with productive labor, and in playing the role of comprehensive technical education in education. Comprehensive technical education in Marxism refers to technical education, or technology. It is the opposite of vocational education with a single concept, and it is education of the basic principles of the various production processes. It is an important part of a combination of education with production. The education mentioned in 2010 that transited from vocational and technical education to the basic skills and experience education is actually the transformation of vocational education to modern education of the former Soviet Union.
Russia attached great importance to individual differences and personality in the process of education modernization. The national education standards that they provided considered the various institutions of education and education program. The standards are designed to help students’ physical and mental health, to take general education quality through the experiment of some effective teaching methods. What’s more, in the process of modernization, the Russians are paying more and more attention to sports, which becomes the target detection of adolescent health. In fact, this shows that in high schools it is necessary to introduce flexible teaching and learning, including the cooperation between the senior secondary schools and the local companies, in order to ensure that students successfully learn society, history, the law, and languages in addition to the Russian language. They should improve the professional and vocational guidance, and help students to learn the general computer skills. This is one of Russia’s initiatives to transit to modern education.
Russia’s traditional education mainly focuses on culture, with a lack of occupation consciousness. The perfection of occupation education and life planning, which is promoted by education modernization of Russia, allows students to establish appropriate view of the world to reflect the society and the whole human labor. Therefore, according to the present situation of the modern high school students entering the labor market, a new education system is required. Our school should go from ‘traditional’ to ‘reality’. This is accepted by the education professionals, which is the recommendation based on personal experience and the nature of the profession. The process of Russian education modernization is not a total negation of the education of Soviet Union period. It is the integration of the current and social realities, on the basis of the former Soviet Union education reform inheritance. In separating from the modernization of education, the Russian general secondary education faced with problems of tradition and reality, such as education funding difficulties, the multifaceted impact of traditional society, culture and education. So many Russian scholars also believe that it is not quite useful to set up special mode of the senior high school education through the combination of tradition and reality.
Fundamentally speaking, the modernization of Russia’s general education is motivated by the need of social development. Education needs to respond to the changes in society. Russian scholars said that the process of Russia’s major development of modern society should be modernized. This also symbolized the gradual transition to an innovative development model, and the replacement of a set of effective, and more progressive social order patterns. Many Russian scholars believe that Russia is now back into the whirlpool of industrial society, not transiting to the second stage of industrialization. While for the developed countries into second stages of industrialization, the rapid growth of their wealth is basically due to the accelerated education of adults and young people. Human capital plays a more and more important role in social development. According to the statistics of Russian scholars, up to 70% – 80% of the surge in wealth in developed countries is caused by human capital. According to the study of the Russian scholars, education is not only the welfare of Russian citizens, complete science education will gradually become a powerful driving force of economic growth in Russia. But Russian scholars also find its limitations. As we can see, after the dramatic changes in the industrial age, the quality of citizens on the role of the development of human civilization has reached its peak. For example, with the rapid development of information, all types of industry technology and technical ability have reached its natural limit. More and more knowledge and intensive energy is required in order to maintain and improve the level of social production efficiency. The flexible automatic production facilities, workshops and factories, and machines produced automation mental workers, resulting in the disappearance of a number of industries and appearance of “universal workers”. The employment structure changes significantly, with the redistribution of workers from the field of automation production, including culture, health, education, service and other fields. Relevant studies show that the cost of working hours is limited in people’s self-development and self-improvement, while the individual’s free time is the most useful to the society in self-development and self-improvement. When the laborers can independently find the information and make an effective use of it, managers do not need to improve efficiency through information training. A variety of intelligent work will enable the individual workers and general staff to be successful. Deepening of scientific knowledge, along with the integration of humanity knowledge, hypertext database will be created to replace the two. If is so, for the vast majority of ordinary people, they will require the access to open the database. Intensive high tech and social large-scale production technology have been penetrating in the family and everyday life. The public scope of science is widening, which means that more and more people are involved in the implementation and efficient utilization of scientific research. People begin to focus on solving the practical problems. Information and science become one of the conditions of independence in some of the geopolitical countries, with more open borders.
The education modernization steering that has been discussed by Russian scholars is a matter of interface between the traditional education and the modern education, and it is a matter of steering from the former to the latter. This convergence and steering can also be cast in the development of education from “traditional” to “modern” in many other countries.
3. The Key of Modern Education in Russia
Why does education become an important factor in a country’s modernization? The modernization of the countries in the world does not occur in all fields of the society and economy, and it can only occur in individual departments. In other words, the individual department will become the leading force of the national economy. That is to say, the country needs to identify those social institutions with the greatest potential, innovation and development in modern growth. They first identify and enter the process of modernization. They then update, formulate strategies and then transfer these social policies into other aspects of social life. Education can be said to be the largest social institutions that has the potential and the innovation development. But there are many factors influencing the process of education modernization, such as social and political system, cultural tradition, religious belief, national characteristics and so on. Russian scholars demonstrated from the cohesion and expansion of the education system.
Under modern conditions, the individual must ensure an orderly system of lifelong learning in order to meet the professional needs of the community. A lifelong learning system requires more individual planning systems. Nowadays all the countries should consider the new goal of education, and transit to the system of lifelong education with the help of information technology modernization. Lifelong education system has two main connotations. First, there should be a reasonable convergence education system as an individual comes into the general education system. Second, in the whole social system of education there should be some training and reflection after the personal general education, which is quite crucial for the individual’s development.
The interface of Russia’s education system reflects the introduction of senior level into secondary education. Secondary education appealed to accelerating the development of education at all levels of training content and quality of vocational education. Many Russian studies reveal that in Russia, the continuity of secondary and higher education shows that the essence of higher education is a failure. The convergence of the gap between higher education and secondary education in Russia is very obvious because the general education and higher education are very inconsistent in terms of content, methods, early education and other means of university education. As we all know, students encountered the difficulties in graduate school at the University at the early stages of learning. That is precisely the lower grades in which students of the poor academic performance are. This conclusion has been accepted by most of the scholars. Of course, an important reason for this phenomenon is still a lack of continuity of general education and higher education. Normal school graduates are not fully developed in intelligence, skills, and cognitive activity methods. This is the problem of continuity of the Russian education system. The Russian scholars gave a variety of explanations to the “continuity” on the convergence of the education system in the process of finding the reason. So the Russian scholars summarized the continuity concept of the education system as a multilateral phenomenon. Its various aspects can be expressed in different ways. There are many interpretations of it. It can be a theoretical system, or a reflection of orderly training advanced systems. It can also be constructive learning conditions.
Through the above analysis we can see, in the process of the Russian Education modernization, the education system convergence has two meanings. First, general education plays a role in connecting education with Higher Education as it is cross-line education, throughout the whole process. Second, it is continuing education as people change their social functions. This includes professional education in the traditional sense, as well as worker training from of all sectors of society in more and more professional forms. The latter will significantly alter the continuity of the former system, which will be a new educational status both to society as a whole education system, or to the individual in terms of lifelong development.
Knowledge and the level of intellectual development of members of modern society has become a strategic resource for economic development, leading naturally to education boom in many nations. This boom is not only the behavior of the state, but also a manifestation of the pursuit of its own citizens. Russia updated its educational performance in accordance with the change of social economic conditions, which is the development trend of the world. In most cases, education should be developed in a leading position in the whole development of economy and society. Generally speaking, update of knowledge and the development of technology revolution lead social patterns. The changing social patterns will lead to changes in the content of education and the professional direction. In order to perform an increasingly complex social and professional task, it is necessary to determine the various types of continuing education to accomplish technical training and self- education. For this new education quality, an integrated system needs to be created with continuity. For society, this system expands production with a new intelligence and potential culture. It is an acceleration factor of the society, science and technology, to ensure the sustainable and stable development of production. For an individual, he can also meet with future changes in social and professional skills. Russian scholars made some comments on the system of education modernization. He particularly pointed out that education and training was not a sequence of alternating and different stages. In an individual life cycle they assume the role of a single education and continuous education, which are interdependent with each other. For the expansion of this system, there is a paradigm shift of the expansion principle.
On the continuity of time, it is a process in which education becomes a lifelong learning. On space, it’s a transformation from a specific limited place to education with broad space. On quantity, it is from the limited coverage of the population into all the population involving in the process of education.
The function of education changes from the ‘preparation for the life’ to lifelong learning. We should understand this concept from a broader point of view, so that the duration and the significance of such education in the whole social system of continuous education will increase. Russian education modernization aims to increase the role of education in society, with particular attention to the training of social and communication technologies. Members of the society should have a sense of self-renewal. They should understand that general education is not just knowledge learning, but also the development of learning style, cognitive and creative skills. It may also be said that basic general education, vocational and technical education, and higher education are all in need of personalized learning. The state has the obligation to enact a special education program for each student, which is the organizing principle of the education system. The current Russian scholars pay special attention to information and communication technology training. They think that information and communication technology will play a leading role in convergence of general education and the higher education system, and in the integration of general education, vocational education, and higher education. Russia’s potential in this area has not been fully explored, which will be a new opportunity.
To sum up, it can be seen that all kinds of education at all levels of the Russian education system is to achieve the vertical integration, to ensure the continuity of general education and vocational education, and ensure the consistency of the general education and higher education.
The essence of the modernization of education is to promote human modernity, and enhance the modernity of education subject. Of course, there are many solutions to modernity. However, the modern education is concerned with the subject, mainly referring to the main character and the difference that can be achieved at a high level of education status. The individual and the state as the dominant factors in education can play a guiding role in the whole education transformation of social culture, economy, politics and other social factors.
The modernization of education has a history of a century or so. Russian education system not only pays attention to the content of education, method, concept, but also pays attention to the introduction of information technology. Russian education modernization is the development mode that explores how the development of society adapts to the development of education. The process itself is worth pondering. The lessons that it has experienced can be learned by many other countries.
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