Vladimir A Ruchin,Chair of Philosophy of Culture and Culturology, Department of Philosophy, Saratov State University,Room 212, st. Volskaya, 10 , Saratov, 413 028*
*E-mail：r-vl@yandex.ru
Forum of Educational Administration
December 2011, Volume 3 Number 2, pp. 179-210
Youth Socialization in Contemporary
Russia: Theory and Practice
Vladimir A. Ruchin
Saratov State University
Summary
Contemporary period of globalization gives evidence of appearance of a new humanity type, which birth is accompanied by the opposition of new universal values to the established styles of thinking. These changes are reflected in the language and are included by it in the educational sphere of a certain individual, as the language gives the primary schemes of the human orientation in the world. The article is devoted to theorizing notions, meaningful for creation of the optimal model of the youth socialization in the transitive period of the Russian society. The resemblance and differences of the process, aimed at the human development, are substantiated and the meaning of the notion education as a universal
phenomenon is defined. The specific aspects of the phenomenon education as well as the notions upbringing and socialization are taken into consideration on the basis of its interpretation of “wide” and “narrow” meanings of the phenomena education in frames of its functionality.
1. Social development and youth socialization
(Substantiation study)
One of the most important conditions for the successful social development is the constructive youth socialization, especially in the transitive period of society. In the Russian society, in fact the society of risk (Kerimova T.V., 2009; V.I. Chuprov, Y.A. Zubok, K.Williams (2003), this condition gets a peculiar meaning not only for present or future, but for existence of the country whose population is small
concerning its huge territory.
The modern period is the period of informational society, period of hyperreality: active virtual communication, multicultural society and molding of representation about the current events by Mass Media, period of the Internet resources domination (wciom, 2010). The Internet is a peculiar agent allowing influence directly on youth feelings, purposes and get to personal life without any obstacles. Moreover, pace and force, technical and material facilities of this influence on consciousness, life
purposes of a young man are far stronger than the influence of a local social surroundings. All this is emphasized by the fact that peers usually have an on-line dialogue all of a sudden, quickly and emotionally, which represents a powerful source of influence on the secret private values.
Along with traditional agents of political socialization nowadays, the Internet is based on the principle of uncertainty; it forms the simulative identity and mobile readiness of a personality for sudden actions, causes risks in political and religious aspects. Under these circumstances the political youth socialization is, in fact, the struggle for the political influence, balancing, as the recent events in the Arabic world show, on the edge of threshold of riskiness and approaching the ruling elite to the deadlock.
However, as we can see through the historical experience of the Russian development, society can overcome the deadlock situations if it is aimed at the cultural roots, it means resting on the best traditions of its culture (Belov V. N., 2005) finding out new meanings. It considers the youth politics too, its social maturing, which essence is the youth formation as a constructive component of the political life. Consequently, the main aim of the political socialization is evident – mastering of the modern political culture, harmonized with the values of the Russian folks. Evaluating the peculiarities of the current period we should remember that the last decade of the last century specified the political area: modern parties and social organizations grew up in the 90s.
society. The main problem of the research is the question of constructive and
deconstructive youth social adaptation. Recently created, the models of youth politics were not oriented at a man: their aim varied from economics to politics, but the values and world, where a personality exists, were taken into consideration only “in a formal way”, not in practice. Everything mentioned defined the object of the research: axiological aspects of the Russian society transformation. The subject of the research is the system of society values as the base of consolidation of the regional social medium. The aim is overcoming of tendencies of conflicts of values in different social groups of Saratov region via creation of the multidimensional model of socialization, the model of the youth politics in the region. Basing on the axiological approach, authors of the research define the following tasks:
• to formulate the main idea of individual formation, representing the phenomenon as tribute, true in the educational process;
• to define the level of the society solidarity, providing the constructive youth socialization;
•
to analyze the main contradictions of idea and practice of
education, upbringing and socialization;
• to define the correlation of peculiarities of individual formation and socio-cultural characteristics of a certain society;
• to characterize the state and main tendencies of the youth politics of Privolzhsky Federal region.
Theoretical base of the structuring principles of the effective model of state youth politics is the works of the Russian and foreign writers. There the problems of socialization, cultural adaptation of a personality in correlation with keeping of the personal integrity during the transitive period of society are regarded from the point of socio-cultural, philosophical and socio-psychological approaches. Methodology of the research is based on the ideas of cultural anthropology (M. Mid, R. Benedict), humanitarian philosophy and psychology (C. Rogers, A. Maslow, G. Allport); philosophy of life (A.Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, W. Dilthey); existential analysis (K.Jaspers, L. Binswanger, M. Boss, R. May) and transaction analysis (E. Berne, M.James, D. Johnguard); behaviorism (D. Watson, B. Skinner, K. Lashley); psychology of development (E. Ericsson, J. Piaget, G. Craig); socio-cognitive movement (A. Bandura, J. Rotter, D. Kelly); social movements (M. Weber, R. Dahrendorf, E. Durkheim, P. Sorokin).
of ideological processing of a personality in different periods of its development. It is important that such Soviet approach tightly combined patriotic and civil feelings and as a result the work with youth had plenty of dogmatism and formalism, which are the characteristics of the unformed society.
It is necessary to emphasize that at the same Soviet period there were a lot of works that contributed to the development of the theory of personal socialization, e. g L. Vygotsky, L. Leontiev, D. Elkonin, V. Yadova but unfortunately, as it is known, they could not influence the common situation in science and practice, that is why the valuable segment of private and public interrelation area was significantly deformed.
In the Post-Soviet period, the development of the theory of personal
socialization is characterized by the intensive mastering of the Western science ideas. It allowed the Russian authors (A. Bondarev, I. Kon, D. Leontiev, Y. Orlov, E. Orlova, V. Petrovsky, A. Rean, Y. Reznik, V. Chudnovsky, V. Yadov) to create the theoretical base of social adaptation of a personality.
2. Education, upbringing and socialization: resemblance
and differences of the notions
From our point of view, an important fact of problem solution of constructive and deconstructive socialization, including its political aspect, is a definite
differentiation of notions "education", "upbringing" and "socialization", search for difference and likeness of this notions, that are a kind of indicators in our research, and definition of education in a narrow and wide sense, demonstrating the essence of the educational process.
Even the monitoring of representations of education, upbringing and
socialization let us come to the conclusion that the definitions are appropriate for their functions: for example, education is the process of getting the professional knowledge by a man,upbringing is adoption of norms and ways of
behavior, socialization is getting of social experience. Thus, the traditional practice of use of these definitions centers around the only subject – the process of human development and the unique mechanism, based on the popular triad – "knowledge – abilities - skills".
theory and practice of upbringing (Golovanov N.F., 2004) adding to these notions the multifunctional character.
Nowadays the notions of education, upbringing, socialization are widely used in Pedagogy, Sociology, Psychology and as a result there is a number of theoretical approaches and concepts within these sciences, as for the pedagogical practice, educational models of intellectual development and social adaptation of new generation are realized (Golovanov N.F., 2004). However, as a rule, main ideas of each of these educational models are based on the philosophical system of views and represent Weltanschauung of the authors.
On the way of understanding of various regarded notions, we define the task of finding out the essence of notion of the qualitative education or, in other words, education itself. Obviously, the qualitative education promotes the process of successful entrance of a young man in the society. The process, called the
constructive socialization, from the point of pedagogical and sociological aspects, as we see it, helps revel new aspects of the social youth adaptation in the society of risk and define the perspective of social changes.
The choice of the notion education, one of the three regarded, as base in the article, is motivated by the logics of our discussion, basing on the fact of a greater spread of this notion in Humanities in comparison with the notion upbringing and the latest notion socialization. Priority is defined by the fact that, in our opinion, the notion education is more universal because there are large-scale international projects on formation of the EHEA, such as the European programme TEMPUS.
It is obvious that the approach to the phenomenon of education existing in the world of Pedagogy, not only in our country, being researched with great attention, remains one-sided and to define the meaning of the phenomenon as a notion is possible only after its regarding from the point of the philosophical theory and methodology.
From our point of view, the approach to the notion education comes from the philosophical position and at the same time from the history of functioning of the phenomenon sense of existence. Education is the process, the result of a personality formation and the ascent from singular to universal (Heidegger M., 1959; Hehel G. W. F., 1959). Therefore, the notion education is the indication of the personal-social phenomenon and it is initial forupbringing and socialization, which characterize only the specific aspects of this phenomenon.
the real content of the educational fact, arranging it as a pattern. Here is the
combination of the human essence, his activity, practice on mastering and changing both nature and his own social surroundings. It is interesting to find the assertion of M. Scheller, that education is “not an educational preparation for anything”: to the occupation, speciality or different productivity. On the contrary, training of the appropriately formed man of “something” without any outer “aims” precedes education (Scheller M., 1992). Education, as Scheller announces, is the “mission”.
Education in its narrow meaning, from our point of view, is something linked with the subjective side of the process, where an individual with his qualities of Homo Sapiens acts. (This meaning shows that education is not identical to upbringing, as even some representatives of fauna can get it). An individual is the subject of education. It is defined by the ancestral essence of a man, his subjectivity: needs, interests, will, ability for thinking, making conclusions, notions, etc. Consequently, education is a philosophic category, giving the name of the matter, which finally makes education look like other two notions, but initial in comparison with them. It concludes that socialization is a sociological notion, reflecting human inclusion in the society and upbringing – a pedagogical notion, reflecting the aimed developing influence of the social surroundings on a personality. The sphere of educational interaction, in narrow and wide meanings, is the sphere of education but socialization and upbringing are the segments of this sphere or the sides of the educational process.
There is the combination of inner subjective and outer objective worlds in the sphere of education and it can be represented as a form of life, where the birth of a man’s personality happens or in other words, where the process of spiritual formation happens. The form of life has the cultural area, where there are favourable conditions for the birth of personality. In fact, the form of life is the element of the culture which the personality belongs to. The notion the form of life means the way of valuable orientation of a man in the process of world cognition. The most popular
interpretation of this notion is the philosophical conception of L. Wittgenstein, according to which each form of life has its criterion of “compliance with the rules” (Wittgenstein L.,1958, 1984, 1989). Consequently, the forms of life are the
proto-phenomena of any culture, so the national culture is important for the educational process i.e. for the personal socialization, and is inseparable from it.
«In education - K. Jaspers writes, - as in the form of life, his pivot is the
who “understands it”, - he mentions. «All great achievements of the human existence, - in Jasper’s point of view, - happened in the West through contact and delimitation with antiquity» (Jaspers K., 1991). But the most important for K. Jaspers is the subject of education, “the material” for which is the ability for contemplation, understanding of the world and other characteristics of the subject.
3. Idea and praxis of individual formation
Then we move from the theoretical aspect of education to the area of the definite expression of the educational act – praxiology [praxis]
(Old Greek –Russian dictionary, 1958), shown in various forms defining the specifics of the phenomenon. Actually, praxiology in this aspect is the method basical for the organization and implementation of the educational process from the point of its efficiency. In this connection, different points of view are realized in the
educational practice, which aim is to form a human image as the reveal of valuable ideals, inherent to certain socio-cultural surroundings.
All in all the interpretation of the notion education from praxiological point is the analysis of activity and methods, representing the socialized form of education, so the question is in the fact how to make education actual, without leaving its in the potential form, but to combine it with the movement and development of the social surroundings, realizing education in reality.
Regarding this question it should be marked that the specific sector of knowledge - Pedagogy as science about human education and
upbringing –represented and represents the pedagogical method based on the generalized empirism of the educational acts and experience of independent
pedagogues. The modern pedagogical practice, as a rule, is defined by the particular settings and rules, that makes it similar to the scientific knowledge. To compare these two areas of knowledge, the second one is based on the accuracy and the first one is an endless “project”. Mathematics is, for example, an exact science, its
calculations are really precise and, so to say, exact. However Humanities, or Pedagogy here, as any science connected to the human phenomenon and its life activity has no mathematical accuracy and exactness. As philosophers consider, (Husserl E., 1986; Heidegger M., 1993), Humanities are not exact, as it is impossible to represent any side of Homo Sapiens life activity as a constant within time and space here, but if one tries to make this operation mentally, then the suggested result will not be Humanites knowledge or science. In Humanities, we find only realization
of essential for such kind of researches of demand. It is known, that demands can be
methodology, which is based on empirism.
As a result, education will not be objective in the context of the philosophical idea, as the sphere of ideal, until it becomes a part of the practical sphere and practical incarnation into life. Thus, this experience, from our point of view, is repesented by:
• changeability of education, as there is the full comprehension of the phenomenon only in the constant changeability;
• historical experimentality as the activity of some personalities in the educational sphere.
Finally, the main point of the praxiology of the educational phenomenon is the knowledge of the subject, the analysis of utterances and authority opinions in the sphere and the analysis of those judgements where are the experiment and method and direction of the process, in other words goal-setting.
Consequently, there is an attempt to regard the practice of education to define the fundamental principles, inherent to the educational forms.
To realize it we study the works of Aristotle, J. Komensky, K. Ushinsky and other philosophers, devoted their activity to education (Aristotle, 1984; Komensky J., 1939; Ushinsky K., 1990). Basing on their own ideas and experience, as a rule, they come to the conclusion that there is a method which represents education as a subject area. The character of education here is the explanation of known through unknown, not studies, not realized in life. Establishment through realization can be gained in practice. The practice of education is possible, for the first time, where the idea of the process is defined and the study of educational nature turns into the fact of
understanding through practice.
To abstract from the details, the method of education bases on the following parts as ideals:
• ideal representation about an educated man;
• ideal conditions of human education;
• basic principle of education in its ideal dimension.
Initial premises for ideal we find at Aristotle. That was he, as we consider, who understood and proved first the idea of “ideal”. According to Aristotle, a man
In that way, an educated [ideal] man, according to Aristotle, -is the centre of good thoughts, defining his good actions. The philosopher also considered that there are two types of virtue: “ethical” and “dianoethical”. The first one help get rid of negative actions and direct human activity into the right way, the second – make virtue of the higher rank: just as our intellect is our highest ability, and the highest objects of cognition are those that deal with intellect (Aristotle, 1984).
Thus, the logic of Aristotle leads us to the conclusion that the highest ability of a man is gained through virtue. We come to the idea that knowledge of the highest rank is the cherished level of the human education. That is why we should tend to it via virtue as a norm, without which education will not exist. It should be emphasized that neither age nor social status are a guarantee of virtue and intellect, and on the contrary, education is capable to give a man both intellect and virtue at any age and at any social position (Aristotle, 1984). At the same time nothing can reveal a man so well, including its representation about the happy life: the happy life is the life according to virtue, and such life is connected to virtuous diligence [spoyde] and does not consists of entertainment. And we affirm that diligence and virtue [ta spoydaia] are better than fun with entertainment and that activity of the best part of soul and of the best man is always far more virtuous and diligent (Aristotle, 1984). Happiness cannot be reached neither by pleasure nor by the material welfare; it cannot be gained by utilitarian knowledge or with the help of upbringing. Happiness, also as universal good, can be got…by introduction of good temper, philosophy and laws (Aristotle, 1984).
But we know that “an ideal man” does not exist. That is why our conclusion is the following: proceeding from everything mentioned, we can say that Aristotle represents the biggest mistake or “inaccuracy” of educational idea. However, the philosopher “worked” in the context of these settings and many other teachers also worked following his ideas. Moreover, the high efficiency of such activity is noted. In the place, where the ideal settings and the phenomenon “an ideal man” do not exist, “vandalism appears” as the modern philosophers point out (Jaspers K., 1991).
That is why the antique experience is the real experience, regarded in the considerable limits, but not the result of the idle imagination. On the one hand, if education is an idea and an image formation in this dimension, then a teacher must use the regulation “virtue is happiness” as a rule.
On the other hand, the importance of formulation “an ideal man” is expressed not by the momentary, final and every time recommenced but by the intentional endless phenomenon. Hence, as we have already mentioned, education is “the quantity of movement” consisting in the facts of education as the forms of the whole life.
love. For a philosopher – this is the law, following which soul changes and becomes extremely sensible, spreading not only for its master but for others. “Not in vain if we have a friend, every time as we want to tell about him as about a great friend, we say “we have the one soul”. As soul consists of several parts, “one soul” appears when intellect and feelings are in consent [in this way it becomes unique]; and if there is unity in soul friendship with oneself occurs. A virtuous man has such friendship with himself: only the separate parts of his soul are in good state and do not counteract each other” (Aristotle, 1984). As for Aristotle, harmony of intellect and feelings bears the inner friendship of the parts of soul and love is the base of friendship.
Thus, an educated [ideal], free and perfect man, from our point of view, there is love and soul. Love is a peculiar state of soul, which a virtuous and rational man seeks for. The combination of rationality and divinity, virtue and love is one of the most important Aristotle’s representations about the education of an ideal man.
Ideas of harmony and human perfection, peculiar to Aristotle, are seen at J. Komensky in his notions of the harmony of “both body and soul”, as “a man in his essence is really nothing more but harmony” (Komensky J., 1939) That is why not only sciences, but “faith, hope, love should be studied for their use in the real life” (Komensky J., 1939). It leads to the idea that, the image of an ideal man (an ideal) is, according to Komensky, the harmony of virtue. “Although a man, as any other being, gets its image himself, he cannot become a being reasonable, wise, moral and pious without the preliminary engrafting of wisdom, morality and piety” (Komensky J., 1939).
Thinking about the conditions of upbringing and meaning those giving rescue in the religious aspect, J. Komensky speaks, first of all, about kind examples for
children. “As, taking your children away from the society of wicked people,
patriarchs showed the light with their good example of virtues, simple edification and persuasion and where it was necessary – with reproach” (Komensky J., 1939).
According to J. Komensky, it is necessary to reorganize a man, a family and a state on base of Christian values. His appeal is addressed to “all communities, cities and villages of Christian state”, but there is no neglect to other folks. Here, as in other Aristotle’s views, a man is not separated from his sociocultural surroundings. The great pedagogue complains only that people have “common hate, hostility, wars and murders” (Komensky J., 1939) instead of common love and justice. According to Komensky, the ideal surroundings consist of virtuous people, virtuous power, combined as a whole by the unique method: the feeling of love and justice.
question of the special science of upbringing, he defines the meaning of ideal so that education is the practical activity, “striving for satisfaction of higher moral and spiritual needs of a man” Ushinsky K. 1990). Giving to Pedagogy the title of the highest art, K. Ushinsky describes its main task as “perfection of the human nature” (Ushinsky K. 1990).
The philosopher is bothered by the fact that the ideal form often goes out of the praxiology limits. That is why the pedagogue gives a peculiar attention to moral and spiritual questions, connected to the settings of the teacher training. He hopes that “mankind, finally, will be tired of pursuing the outer life conveniences and will create a far more stable comfort inside the man (Ushinsky K. 1990).
From our point of view, traditions of the Russian school of education, regarding the high ideal, were ancestors ofV. Soroka-Rosinsky, A. Makarenko, V. Sukhomlinsky, I. Ivanov and other. Their methods and actions (it means practice) are the educational surroundings, moral in its essence, where a man takes the first place, not ideology or politics.
Each child is a peculiar world of thoughts, views, feelings, emotions, interests, joy and anxiety, grief, troubles. A teacher should see and know this spiritual world of his pupils” (Sukhomlinsky V., 1979) - so the inner world of a child and the task of a teacher were estimated by V. Sukhomlinsky. He considers that “spiritual and moral-aesthetic wealth of the family life is the most important condition of upbringing…” (Sukhomlinsky V., 1979). From our point of view, such the
atmosphere of V. Sukhomlinsky is mistaken and it led to contradictions of his points of view during the last period if his life. However, the fact that, first of all, the principle of love and humane attitude towards youth were reborn and explained clear enough by V. Sukhomlinsky, keeps constant interest to the pedagogue and his ideas.
Taking into consideration everything mentioned above, we can say that the assessment of education from the point of an ideal is absolutely positive. Such approach gets the meaning of “basis”, “foothold” of all points of view on education. If there is the loose of contact from these settings, there happens the decline of education, in other words destruction of its sphere. In this way antiquity is the first to give the factual explanation for the idea, what a man represents as a man and what role education play for him. This is the real setting.
The setting is understood as a common stable style of life with the defined aspiration, interests, final goals and conditions of creativity, which common style is also defined (Husserl E., 1986). It is obvious that the essence of such education is not only in scholarship, on the one hand, and not in the productive character, on the other hand, but in creativity in general meaning of this word.
ground for any life development. Mankind (including its close societies such as nation, folk and so on) always lives in some setting in its historical situation. People’s life is characterized by some norms, on base of which constancy of these or those events, public processes (not only education but, unfortunately, wars) occurs. However, this distinctive peculiarity of setting in the sphere of education is its
ideality. Despite its permanent “new start”, it develops inside this phenomenon,
which was formed as the valuable ideal in the antiquity period.
It goes without saying that new settings in comparison with the preceding and the antique period offer some reorientation according to the new cultural
surroundings and historical period. Deployment of education in its
historicity shows that the phenomenon seek for keeping the main point inherent in it – the sphere of ideal – on all its stages or levels of social development. That is why education within its own “style” is always only education, as it appeared in
its existence and meaningfulness at any style of the culture creativity, at its decline, ascent or stagnation. That is why we speak about the existing setting as a natural, characterizing the nature of the educational process as a whole, not in particular.
Private settings of education (for example one or another system), in relation to the whole as a natural thing, offer the change of educational vector of education and upbringing. It is supposed that this is the first contradiction, which the educational process faces. Talking about it in more detail, changes happen in one of the
historically actual human cultural society developing and evolutioning because of the definite circumstances (change of one public system into another and so on). These are the private representations of the universal integral logical historical process.
Private is represented in the society as deployment and performance of some part, more detailed performance of the unique thing; here can be mentioned untypical, accidental acts, leaving the trace in history. In such situations of different time periods, there are motives impelling to revision of the educational process.
Therefore, education can function:
1) within the natural setting, defined by the things, a man is initially intended to: to develop human traits by oneself;
2) on the base that is not defined in details as for natural aspect and has a situational character.
Of course, human life is always aimed at something specific (private). Owing to this, “something” becomes dominating or secondary, interesting or indifferent, private or socially important. However one needs a peculiar motive, to turn the private, caught in a certain moment, into the phenomenon attracting special attention.
it to find its place into the historical humankind (Heidegger M., 1993). Thus, education regarded from the point of its being essence fulfils its
destination and this shows the value of the phenomenon. Philosophers were the first to regard the fact of education as aim. Naturally, if there is no “aim”, “value” loses its “importance”. Besides, it should be mentioned that, in relation to the human nature, “aim” is the provision of the objective approach to the surroundings. At the same time, the individual led by the purposefulness believes in his importance. However, the essence of human being includes the fact that every private, although substantial, aim is insignificant and always just casual means.
At the same time, educational process is connected to the notion “need” in the praxiological comprehension. Usually, the latter means a social need, but private, personal needs are not less important. That is why education cannot be “individual, separated from other” or “pure” sphere of ideal. Demanded by a need, it goes through many interests, where the interests of a state, a family, separate estates and classes, one can mention even the interests of the independent personalities (scholars, philosophers, pedagogues and other) are included.
That is why from the practical point, it is logical to represent education as a
form of a volitional decision, representing the meanswhich has to settle the current
problem. From this point of view, the phenomenon of education is the way, as it is
represented by the participants and participators, and individuals themselves are means.
So who can reject the right formulation of the question? Only now-and-here we can definitely see, what is associated with the process of education. Moreover, such views on the phenomenon are connected to the actions, that leads to the opposition of “the new” education and “the old” education, which is treated in practice as archaic one, it means old, old-fashioned.
Contemporary education is also education, but it is education as means of the achievement of certain results, such as, for example, mine working and use of mineral resources, expansion and complication of production technologies, creation of
machines and many other processes, but not integrity in its ideal sphere.
Contemporary education is realized with the setting: the more educated man, the more competencies he has in some or other questions, separated from general picture. According to this approach everything is aimed at the creation of the necessary system of the educational management. This aspiration for governing of the
educational process becomes more and more persistent, as it becomes more important in the social surroundings in terms of practice.
official or military man –so to say fulfill the practical settings, which solution are naturally challenged in the process of education and upbringing. However, if we assert that education was never means but only aim, why educational mastering and management happens?
We understand the reasons for it as following:
- firstly, education, as it was mentioned above, is included into some productive system and is specific production (dealing with the alive “thing”), creating “an educated man” from “an uneducated one”; this “production” is even materialized in some things (buildings, school articles, salary for the pedagogical work and so on), and this concentration of attention at the material aspect is the most important evidence of the process mastering;
- secondly, when it is necessary, education uses the scientific and cultural potential and those methods, in other words the “instruments” that the society has in the certain historical periods. We consider the Revelation of God one of such instruments (as a notion), as all educational system of the Medieval age based on it;
-but the main thing is the third one, the result, as result is something
planned from the very beginning: it gives to an individual some social completeness (a clerk, a teacher, finally a man with a certain level of education). Completeness in the mentioned sense can be interpreted as “aim”, moreover as “destination”, which is defined by the surroundings, time and some other conditions. It concludes by the fact that a man is just a participator of the process. He participates in it and is one of the reasons of the common causality frame. Thus, the most significant essence of the produced stuff is the actions, represented by the formation of literate and
well-brought people, foreseen by the society, not
education. Setting-management-instrumentality – man – everything is the means. And a man in this structure loses his self-sufficiency and liberty; he is not independent (both as a teacher and as a student), oriented to represent only somebody “in
presence” when the phenomenon functions and practically some “thing” like a vessel. Consequently, the subject is not the aim but the means in this system.
Categorical imperative of I. Kant, which played a great role in the development of the humanitarian thought of philosophy, runs “…behave so that you always treat mankind as an aim and never treat it as just means” (Kant I., 1966).
It is thought that a man as the aim is a subject in the meaning of spirituality, virtue to the endless aspiration for justice, and consequently for happiness. Great philosophers-pedagogues became popular thanks to the attempt to solve in
practice the accumulated idea “a man - an aim”. F. Nietzsche asserts that: “a child is
game” as creation demanding a word of consolidation, so to say the consolidation of
spirit as his will, his world and finally his person.
Taking into consideration everything mentioned above, everything promotes us not to “fence off” the essence of education from its specifics: theoretical part and practical one and in this way to separate the phenomenon into components (theory and practice), what means impossibility to connect the theory of education with its practice. Here the synthesis of two parts should exist, such synthesis that would express the interests of both the first and the second components.
However, the synthesis does not happen due to another important contradiction: between the ideal sphere of education and its bringing down to the level of the manageable organization. Such approach puts forward the narrow practicalness and aspiration to get the material profit out of education.
Thus it results into: the principle of evaluation of such phenomenon as education is realized from the point of utility and possibility to work for the society, classes, state and other interests, taking into account the position “profitable – not profitable”. Here everything that is profitable takes the form of “useful” itself. That is why not an individual decides as in the Evangel: “everything is permissible for me, but not everything is useful…” but the idea “useful - useless”, as the leading and guiding idea and actions born in its context. In this interpretation knowledge is use, and use is knowledge in all varieties. Such “inversion” is the conscious implementation of the role, which is finally played by education.
Consequently, objective reality of education becomes an object opposition to its real sense (the ideal sphere). Besides, education in its representation becomes the object of its interpretation, or its cognition. In this relation, from our point of view, there is an interesting fact that the contemporary education makes itself unseen for the philosopher due to its essential simplicity (thinking – objective reality of the educational process). However, when one finds its completeness (in the abstract meaning), there appears the danger of arbitrariness of idea, fatality of knowledge and so on, which do not consider things in existence.
M. Foucault interprets knowledge as one of the variants of “the genealogy of power” (Foucault M. 1975; Avtonomova N. S. 1978). Defining the task of this power, the philosopher sees it as functions of “repression”, “compulsion” and so on.
control” (panoptism) and also discipline and standardization.
Another important question is how knowledge-power is realized in the social “physics” (management), in the social “optics” (supervision), social “physiology” (regrouping and isolation of knowledge from each other). Such relationship of power goes through the whole society: it can be found at school and barracks, in family and in productive team.
Coming from this statement, it should be supposed that “a child” which Nietzsche mentions, his body and soul come under not the assertion
but standardization. M. Foucault mentions that “penitentiary” contemporary époque is the époque of discipline of body and soul, their manipulation and training. Here is the main principle – “overall being under control”, which is naturally revealed into various establishments: from school to jail.
Thus, the new style of power is the knowledge transition into relationship with the political power. The whole set of “physics of power”, “Physiology of power”, “mechanics of power” – is “the punishment” and “the disciplinary” for a
man. According to M. Foucault, there is an individual into each man, who should be conquered (a student-by a teacher, a prisoner-by a warder, an average citizen by a bureaucrat and so on). There is always subordination of some variety of compulsion in social structures.
A body of an individual is taught the right manners, acts and also can be destroyed, using the power represented by the society laws. Soul is manipulated, demonstrating the main privilege of not “adroitness of hands” but the same management in the form of the educational system (Foucault M., 1975).
Paradox of the thought of M. Foucault is in the fact that school (along with jail) can mostly correspond to the mechanism of discipline mentioned above. We repeat one more time that such development of power mechanisms is closely connected to the mechanism of the human knowledge as an object of the whole complex of sciences. «Jails and schools constantly have the procedures and techniques, allowing individual to get into the sphere of analytical, it means estimated and measurable»42. Such human sciences as Pedagogy, Psychology and other humanitarian cycles of knowledge demands two, as if absolutely opposite and exclusive conditions: simultaneous standardization and individualization of an individual. But standardization was always simpler than individualization.
become more and more anonymous and functional, and its objects are more
individualized for a better control and subordination. Thus, a child is more individual than an adult, and a student – than a teacher. A student is analyzed as an object of cognition. He is classified, compared, described and standardized by the mechanisms of power-knowledge in the family, at school, social organizations.
In such a way reality changes ideal: a man is systematically and permanently formed by the disciplinary mechanisms of power. The human soul is defined as “an element, where the results of a certain type of power are different from knowledge; it (soul), - as M. Foucault thinks, - is the cohesion due to which relations of power give a possibility of knowledge and knowledge is the guide and intensifier of power (Foucault M. 1975).
That is why R. Descartes’ thesis “knowledge is force” actually has the meaning of “real force”, although is interpreted by M. Foucault as
“power-knowledge”. “Power-knowledge ” can be interpreted in a more wide meaning. It includes:
1. being-in-the-world as the essence of the human existence; 2. all that is represented by a man in practice, cognition and simple
contemplation;
3. science development and its into transformation into the leading role for education.
From our point of view, science can be interpreted as in Plato’s idea, however, not like a pretersensual essence of real things, but conscious and checked on practice theories, using the language of M. Heidegger, represented in “the image of Kehre”. Kehre as the theoretical knowledge organizes being-in-the-world, giving things the meaning and appointment. Science is the idea how to capture reality and here soul plays a considerable role.
That is how the new methods and new results, sensible and clear from the point of their rationality, appear in the educational spheres. That is why education appears as a historical fact in its historicity. Although any historical presence of education is only an attempt of the realization of this or that idea and the corresponding practice, in other words is just anticipation of the full realization of education.
dictionary of V. Dal is “the condition or the property of a ready one; a ready one (gotovtshik-male and gotivusha-female) – is a cheerful, quick, not sluggish, ready and always in time person” (Dal V.I., 1994).
The real education must do a man self-sufficient, in other words a personality, but not a standard individual via the inner content of its ideal sphere, not the knowledge roughly brought by “power” from without. However the organization of the contemporary education bears the most significant, that can be designated as the contradiction between “outer” and “inner”. The notions “outer” and “inner” are well revealed in the first part of this work. This contradiction should be analyzed as the organization of education (a separate one) and education (a universal one).
The organization of education is the method of education, conditionality of the image essence. But in this case it is not less important that every organization
represents a self-represented essence. This happened because it provides the austerity of the purposefulness, its sequence. But the main thing is the objectification of the educational process. The research of the history of education clears this out.
Thus, if education is something displayed (in other words it is the phenomenon of the society), then “inner” in this content is something coming from the subject, its intellect, mental activity, feelings, contemplation. Despite the strength of the “outer” settings, they are always “relative” when we speak about an individual.
“The principle of individualization is the principle of difference. If two individuals – G. W. Leibniz considers, - were absolutely alike and similar, in one word, indiscernible, there would be no the principle of individualization…there would not be an individual difference and different individuals” (Leibniz G. W., 1983). In relation to the fact that the real world – the world of monads – is an original world, acting on its own, an individual is also an acting monad. His soul has the supremacy over body.
The most common meaning of the word “individual” is the peculiar treat of a person, inherent in only him among others and making him what he is – unique among other people. This cannot be overcome even in the overcontroled educational process; a man isalways on the first place. That is why, when the contradictions happen, the existence of education in its essential representation is:
- first, Homo Sapiens, oriented at his own subjectiveness, defined as conscietia («consciousness»); understanding himself and accomplishing the acts of will, he forms and realizes his subjectiveness in all the spheres, including education; - second, action, in other words, educational activity, is connected to the man as
a creator and bearer of this type of culture, represented by organizations and institutes, leading and organizing the educational structures.
in the subjective but in the objective form too, when the differences between them are inevitable.
It should be noted that this topic, the topic of “subject” and “object” is rather polyhedral in Philosophy. It was begun by R. Descartes (Descartes R., 1950) and is not over until now (Kant I., 1966, 1993; Fichte J. G., 1914, 1935; Hehel G. W. F., 1958; Schelling, 1989; Heidegger M., 1993; Berdyaev A. 1989; Lectorsky V., 1980; Sukhomlinsky V., 1990).
We don’t aim at the wide analysis of the mentioned categories. However, we should underline the fact that in the question of contradictions “subject” is not single-valued, it can be in the channel of “power-knowledge” another is not included into any channel at all. That is why a man played and will play the leading role in the educational process making it perfect and subordinating the act of education and upbringing to his interests. This activity is the source of the
educational objectification that is considered a common phenomenon.
Objectification is concealed in the essence of the organizational fact, turning
education into a unit of the social object, then education is regarded as
existential-historical phenomenon in its essence. It is known now as the objective one.
Thanks to this, the positive effect happens: education bases on the concrete setting in accordance with the social life, level of the scientific and knowledge
development, culture on the whole of this or that society. Instead of this, the more it is isolated and concentrated on itself, the more this sphere is singled out as “production”, turned into the special establishments and institutions. Thisobjectification, not an idea, represents phenomenon.
Consequently, education is based and specialized as the productive activity. All educational establishments make easy the ordering of the subjective aspect, for example, to regulate the contingents of students. In this relation Academy of Plato and Lyceum of Aristotle are two different educational systems.
Such differences show the fact that the educational forms are separate and different according to the subjective characteristics of the phenomenon. But they correspond to each other as something common as for their existence, from the point of their peculiarities formed in a special way. Form is just the narrow meaning of the notion “education”. Educational form can be interpreted as the organized human activity on the knowledge acquisition with the aim of some problems solution in the material and spiritual spheres. What put education to the position, when it was the means not the aim?
special system, as the fact of life activity – sign system. Here various standards of behavior and relationship with each other are fixed. As a result, the great area of symbols, fixing the ability of material things, events and even the perceived images, is formed. It represents the ability to reveal the ideal content different from the spontaneous, corporal-perceptual objective reality.
On the whole, gnoseology of the sign-symbolic system is, first, opinions and ideas, aimed at the interpretation of “something”, second, the analogy of “something” that should be treated as the governing body. Consequently, a sign of a notion, the notion, is expressed by a word and is the guidance for action. That is why the system of symbols is the surroundings beyond nature for a man and also outside a man and he has to consider this, when the idea of “necessity” is particularly expressed. Necessity gets deep into reality and becomes its second nature.
Such ideas of “necessity” are present, which mothers and fathers are guided in relation to their children, chief of the tribe their kinsmen, power representatives o citizens and so on. According to V. Sukhomlinsky, “all the essence of our life is what we must and are obliged to” (Sukhomlinsky V 1990). It does not have to have only positive character, as a duty can be expressed as a negative act in relation to reality.
School punishments are necessity, coming from the idea of “improvement” and
“perfection” of the process of education. Punishment in this way is the struggle against the personal inclinations of an individual, his will, mental “retardation” or consciousness and behavior.
Ancient people understood better the problem of the spiritual world, as due to the nature of this world, an individual was notmeans. Moreover, thanks to ideal he can run out of the frames of reality, realize his own aims, express his destination and appointment, which is education. That is why school is the establishment with “the scientific games”.
However, from the antique, Pedagogy implants the act of management and subordination into education which initially existed as a teacher and a student,
according to its own strategy. Then the deep socialization of this relationship happens: public control for everything connected to education. It includes politics, religion, “power-knowledge”, “power-power” and so on. As a result a man seems the passive element of the educational and upbringing system.
Here the main problem of education arises – the problem of social and personal, interdependence of object and human aspects, their unity but at the same time their insolubility into each other. One cannot make a conclusion that an individual belongs to the society with his body and soul. This seems wrong at several points.
outward aspects, but on the contrary, influences it in different ways, as creating and sometimes destroying power.
Second, the correlation of individual and social (outer and inner) always has the field of freedom. Here an individual is not the means for the achievement of the foreign aim. If the social interests are the denial of the personal freedom, then essence of the spiritual aspect provides development of this freedom in the human history as the overcoming of necessity.
That is why a man presents not only a passive element, as they say, but an object in the world of objects. But he is always a subject and lives not only for somebody or something but for himself. As a result “I” is not less important and meaningful than all things in existence. This is caused not only by instincts (satisfying of hunger and libido) but the aspiration for self-contemplation, self-cognition, self-perfection and so on, on other words, representation of himself. “I am” is the acquisition of the present objective reality, when a man, realizing his finiteness, measures it with the scales that are not governed by finiteness, “I” is unconditional and endless.
Absoluteness of education concludes at its presence that a full-blooded human
being is impossible without (as it is, moreover, curious by nature).
4. Established educational practice and its perspectives in
the contemporary Russia
In the XVII century, J. Komensky noted that all people had such a strong aspiration to open schools, which the history of the previous époques does not show. Thanks to this, all the languages and all folks gained so many books, that they got into the hands of peasants, women, when earlier they could be seen only by the educated people (Komensky J., 1997). In fact it should be mentioned that that time was brightly designated by the tendency to the universal
education, mankind aspiration to education.
The question arises what “mankind” is. To answer it, nobody of the
contemporary philosophers unites the notion “mankind” with the category “subject”, so to say mankind is an object, related to the objective world as the secondary phenomenon in the social world.
allowed at the proscenium of history to the apparent active role in the past. But history was always created from within, meaning mass or what I call the social routine, history was always based on the great number, on groups” (Berdyaev N., 1994). Consequently, “revealing” of the treats of “mankind” is possible in the historical process, its deeds and their results.
Meaning modern times, P. Teilhard de Chardin wrote about “Movement of mass”. They are not hordes, coming out of the northern forests and Asian steppes. This is the scientifically collected “a human billion”. The human billion standardized at the factory, motorized human billion. All this leads only to the awful slavery. A crystal substitutes a cage. We see an anthill instead of brotherhood and mechanization, which as if inevitably comes out of totalization instead of the expected change of consciousness” (Teilhard de Chardin P., 1987).
As a result, P. Teilhard de Chardin regards this process in relation to the notion «materialization», when, despite its concealed final aim, there is the subordination of the newly formed multitude, according to the law of large numbers. And “material” is not just a number, mass, but force. That is why it is quite logical to define mankind as force. “Mankind”, - as P. Sorokin considers, - is the new force of the world. This force is growing more and more; it defines the area of its existence and more and more extends this area” (Sorokin P. 521).
All this is justified merely by the fact of historicity. As philosophers consider, the foreseen mankind has no future, developing as the result of evolution, becoming alive outside the human community. All this is regarded as “the space roots”, “special physical substrate” and, finally, the specific human nature. But the fact is that people unite. Something that was demanded by the human nature was brought into the social surroundings and really materialized as some physical factor – the power of mass. P. Teilhard de Chardin attaches importance to this fact, discharging “mankind” with the following words: “Forces, coming outside or appearing from within more and more bring us together, lose any visibility of randomness and danger of inconstancy for us, who know the sizes and the structure of the world” (Teilhard de Chardin P., 1987).
Consequently, “humanity” is a logical objective phenomenon in its essence, as only in the individual limits, the subject, represented by a man, cannot develop: first, in this case he faces randomness, second – inconstancy.
“other-worldly”, “heavens” is a peculiar power, not accessible for him, but constantly worrying.
As a result, mankind simply leaves a man of the previous values, it outbids him. However, here the note of M. Heidegger is more appropriate, that mankind is even more than the aim; “…mankind is just the experimental material, awful excess of failures… (Heidegger M., 1993).
Provision of higher and unconditional self-development of all mankind abilities for its unconditional domination over the Earth is the stimulus that moves all people and supposedly guarantees the reliability of their methods in the achievement of the defined aims. The binding law set on purpose, naturally works in various relations. Human intellect and its law (the Enlightenment) or the factual reality, arranged and ordered according to the norms of such intellect (positivism), can be binding. The harmonic development of a personality can be binding (on the example of socialism) or upbringing on the ideals of humanity (on the example of the Western Europe). Ideas can also be binding: nation flourishing, basing on itself; “proletarian of all countries” and so on, that is finally the creation of such “types” of mankind, which find its essential image not in “an individual” but “in the mass”.
As a result of this, the human being is in interpretation of the idea where the objective starts: “in power”, “in the mass”, where the course of the whole historical process changes. Here can be logically noted the fact that this transformation is the turn: subjectiveness is not just unlimited; it now manages different limits and
non-limits (Heidegger M., 1993). Not the subjectiveness of the subject firstly changes the human essence and position among the objective reality, but the new power.
World discovery, exploration, depiction, predominance – everything, the man ventures, just levels his essence, dissolving him in the abstract mankind. However, just “mankind”, as it is represented by various types, reveals the fully organized order and ensuring of every possible planning in its sphere. These spheres turn into
“systems”, “departments”, and “sectors”. The educational “system” is just a plan, an organized part of the oriented “leading activity”. At the same time, state and social institutions were always created for the masses, and quantity always presses quality.
Thus, “the mass” is represented by “crowd”, “society” and so on. As a result, mankind is the sum of people, not divided by their belonging to different layers of society, activities or other qualities. The characteristic of the mass is its force, expressed by a bigger or a smaller number. However we should remember that the
quantity measures both material and spiritual “base” of society. In this sense “a
Humanity as historically present actually chooses its way to education. In
the XVII century, J. Komensky writes a wise book, where he describes “Treatise on the Universal Improvement of Human Affairs” (Komensky J., 1997). The scientist, pedagogue, philosopher asks: “What are the human cares, that the world (so to say mankind) spends its best forces? The answer is the pursuit of the wealthfare, honor and enjoy. Who is it not clear for that the crowd puts here the basement of its
happiness” (Komensky J., 1997). According to J. Komensky, intellect of most people (as well as feelings) is full of dark illiteracy, “will does not aspire for welfare, but is attached to evil and the abilities of many people vegetate in inertness, making them the useless and onerous burden for earth” (Komensky J., 1997). Wisdom should be looked for in education and upbringing first of all. But this task is not obligatory and beyond the power of mankind (crowd, mass etc.).
Providing objective reality to mankind, as some mass, it is necessary to orient at the properties of involvement. J. Komensky also noted in his “Pansophiæ Prodromus” that education does not correspond to the high aim, high spirituality, and high
aspiration. Education is built on the principle: «Art is long, but life is short» (Komensky J., 1997). At the same time the premises for education “the will for knowledge” and “the will for the eternal welfare” were changed by the “common human cares” (Komensky J., 1997).
Not to make a wrong interpretation according to such approaches, we should confess that mankind is the event in the human existentiality as a subject. And this “event” manifest itself different from another, we mean a man. Due to this,
“mankind” enters the objective reality as something opposite to individual and at the sometime as comprehensive in a man. That is why mankind representing the objective reality is the expression of the things in existence. A man, in his turn, comes out to be “captured” by it and “involved” into these things in existence. This means that many things are already not in existence and do not function in the way they used to. However, despite this fact, education does not fall out of life, as the past, it is the presence in its inherent way, it is the ideal sphere, but it does not suit mankind due to this fact of being an ideal.
It concludes that the contemporary education and upbringing achieves a lot, but people are not satisfied by it, as it comes in for the overall criticism (Ortega y Gasset J., 1988; Pechchen A., 1985; Sorokin P., 1992; Scheller M., 1992; Jaspers K., 1991; Lacroix J., 1971).
As we see, philosophers and scientists are interested in the factual absence of past and not existing present in the approaches to the notions of “man” and
accept the differences, rolling between “culture” and “civilization”, between spiritual and material, between dead tools of labor and theoretical expression of thoughts and so on. «We also clearly found - S. Frank writes –the difference and even opposition between the depth and intensivity of the spiritual life, on the one hand, and the extensive prevalence of its outer results and bearings on the other hand; between the real enlightenment and the burlesque of the outer scholarship; between the inner moral grounds of life and the officially declared mottos or the outwardly standardized legal and political relations; between the culture of spirit and the culture of body. We note that weakness of the spiritual activity often happens when there is the supremacy of the intensive economic, technical, political activity, inner emptiness and misery, among the realms of the material welfare and abundance of the outer interests, absence of the real intelligence of life when there is the strong rationality of its outer organization and the high level of the mental development (Frank S., 1990).
It should be noted that such a point of view unites practically all the
philosophers, who are connected to the analysis of education and the evaluation of its functions in the social life. The contemporary education is represented from the point of the role; it either plays or should play in relation to the needs of the social system.
In the society, there are open functions of this or that institution, when its aims and tasks are known. Education in its essence is represented at any social system as an open function: it can be connected to the conscious activity, which characterizes anticipation, premeditation of results and the way of its realization with the help of definite means.
We consider that an act of education and upbringing was initially like that, when the active essence represented the relationship of a teacher and a student, and the family was only a statistician.
Latent functions of education are connected to mankind, as mankind
is inexhaustible. Its aims and tasks always correspond to the époque and area, where history develops. Mankind is not concrete; it is the mental distraction from the line of processual properties: its essence is one of the designations of the human objective reality. The results of education are hidden (latent) in such a situation; they can be somehow foreseen, forecast, but not more than that, as everything is connected not to a definite thing – a man, but to an abstract, which the phenomenon “education” is.
Educational functioning in the frames of humankind is its orientation at the functioning of the whole (both in narrow and wide meanings). However elucidation of its mechanism and way of reproduction in the meaning of causality was not
activity is represented as the social “stairs”, “lift” or “way”, where individuals move “up” or “down”, so to say move from one layer of society to another (Sorokin P., 1992). School, along with army, church, governmental and political organizations, as well as professional communities are called among the channels of the social
circulation. “Institutes of education and upbringing, no matter what form they get, were the means of the vertical social circulation for the centuries “(Sorokin P., 1992).
As a result of this “mankind and education” is something different from “a man and education”. In the first case, “the vertical circulation” is an endless orientation, not limited by anybody or anything superior that is why the effectiveness has here the relative character. But here we assign primary importance to an individual that as a rule represents transparent settings and quite definite results.At the same time they are close to everyone as current questions and just questions “as the topics of the day”. These questions are often under the research of scientists and philosophers, when we speak about the essence of education and upbringing and their results. But being is not the thing in presence, but just as M. Heidegger mentions, - “quiet power of Possible”, and the consequent essence of possibility that can not only produce one thing or another, but realize something in the primary stage, that is to present the objective reality (Heidegger M., 1993).
As a result, we tried to perform with the current analysis that:
1) the idea of education is understood as the system of views, representing the phenomenon as tribute, veritable in the process of education;
2) on representing value and unconditional ideal, contemporary education however (as “the productive sphere”) demonstrates the strong opposition to the idea;
3) the representation of the social phenomenon is “captured” by the social needs and is volitionally held on as the base for deployment and realization of those aims and tasks, which serve to this or that society;
4) the oppositions of practice and idea are represented by the relationship of: a) ideal and rational, b) subjective and objective, c) freedom and necessity of an individual, d) subordination of education “power-knowledge”,
“power-power”, e) existence in frames of violence and management;
5) the achievement of the quality education and constructive socialization in the modern conditions demand for the change of the subject of education both in theory and practice;
6) the peculiarity of the contemporary purposes in the educational systems is the choice limit of not only means, but thinking process;
regarded by us as the aspiration for creation of a peculiar human sphere and
development in various areas, where the statements of praxiology would be pierced by the highest ideals and values.
Each historical period has its pivotal problem, performing the main contradiction. The main problem of the beginning of the third generation, from our point of view, is the active interaction of civilizations in the process of the world society globalization and reconsideration of the traditional values and the transition of the society into а new stage of its development. Today, modernization becomes the imperative of the development of the Russian civilization, which is impossible without the constructive socialization of the Russian youth. The paradoxical combination of disproportions into the Russian multilayered society in the end of the XXth century leads to the criticism of the classical theories and the schemes of the linear development, making actual the work on their reconsideration and development of the interpreting models of the evolutional transformations in the XXIst century. Complex and contradictory processes, happening into the contemporary Russia and the whole world, provide the set of methodological and practical questions for researchers, which are linked to the consideration of the new phenomena, to the modeling and prediction of the
consequences of the global transformations and finally, creation of the socio-cultural paradigm of the Russian society.
There are some qualitative changes in the contemporary Russian society: standards and values, referring to the inner personal characteristics of an individual, dominate over those, directed to the outer ones, to the interaction with other people, - they can be regarded as the increase of the individualistic subsidiary tendencies that correspond to the main strategic tendencies of the society development. But at the same time they are opposed to the low level of the communicative values, that proves its insufficiently formulated guidelines for the constructive interaction within our civil society.
Actually, that is youth that is the group of the social tensions in Saratov region. Mainly it is connected to fact that youth is the active and creative part of the society. And taking into consideration the constantly changing situation on the labour market, when some specialties lose their topicality, and their place is taken by the others, so that the market is filled by labour force either not in demand or unable to be
competitive – the most important socio-economical factors are decline and changes of the production structure, shortage of the systematical youth politics. Young specialists, graduating from universities and colleges – young specialists, looking for a job
labour sources. That is why the question of the youth employment is very topical to decrease social tensions.
The topicality of the problem “Youth socialization in contemporary Russia” is defined by the necessity to perfect the theoretical researches in the sphere of the system transformation of the contemporary society during globalization process; by the creation of the Russian doctrine of the modernization in the XXI century; by the conceptual reconsideration of the contemporary stage of the Russian modernization taking into consideration risks, that are typical of the realization of the “pursuing” model of development; by the search of the methodological approaches to the further theoretical researches in the sphere of education, upbringing, socialization,
considering socio-cultural reasons and of identification of the main directions of the social modernization in the context of transition to the stable development.
Creation of the model of the effective youth politics is first of all the formation of the optimal conditions for the constructive personal socialization, which we understand as the successful inclusion of a young man into the society forming freely and independently the base of values of his inner world in the process of socialization. The optimal conditions are treated as the integral socio-cultural surroundings, it means such a social area, where morality and universally recognized the unity of life values dominates, where the inner (personal) and outer (social) worlds interact in a harmonical way and vectors of upbringing and self-education of a personality operate in a singular direction.
Such a model is important for the modern Russian society from the point of the permanent Humanities crisis connected with the consequences of the cultural shift, experienced by the Russian society in the XXth century. It should be taken into consideration that the overcoming of the crisis phenomena happens at the time of contention of “imperatives of neo-liberalism and traditionalism” (Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill, 2008). There is an urgent but very difficult problem to harmonize them in the country, where the public consciousness has recently been violated by the totalitarian ideology and its cultural tradition was under the powerful cover of the Soviet ideas.
