Human personality can develop only in a collective, which is one of the most important patterns of upbringing. The existing scientific concepts and theories of collectives and the role of individuals within them, as well as the collective influence on the individual´s development are currently regarded by pedagogics as contradictory, unstable and conditional.
One of the most important conditions of personality influence on group objectification is, that upbringing cannot be limited by teacher´s personal influence on every student. It must be supported by the diverse influence of the collective, which provides freedom and security to an individual, as well as bears positive morals and accumulates moral and artistic values in all there richness. That is why it is necessary to build a solid educational team and wisely use it for an all-round personality development. Without such collective, highly effective upbringing is hardly to be expected.
The main hallmarks of collectives are their well organized, stable and effective relations and responsibility sharing among the students. Frankpledge and indiscriminate forgiveness, often based on personal likes and dislikes, are regarded as an antipode of the collective and collectivism.
Sharing common goals and activities, group members build some interdependent relations of subordination, maintaining at the same time equal status and responsibility of all its members. This shows the main principles of the collective: common objectives and their gradual development as a condition of a constant onward progress; regular participation in different social activities; well-organized common activities. Not less important are good traditions and exciting perspectives; mutual support, trust and requirements; criticism and self-criticism, discipline and others.
Collective is a group of people, whose life and activities are motivated by positive social goals. It is effective in its self-administration and has well-organized and interdependent interpersonal relations; it aims at a common success, rich moral relations and interests, providing freedom and protection for every personality.
Creation of such collective requires time. Due to that fact, one can distinguish three stages of the collective development. A criterion of the development is the group´s attitude to the educational requirements.
Each collective is, on one hand, an organization, on the other hand, a psychological group with individual influences. This let apply the regularities of a group behavior to collectives, turning them into living organisms.
Reality makes essential corrections to this model. A solid school collective originates, when the gender differences are taken into account. Gender is regarded in psychology as a social biological characteristics, which people use to define the notions «man» and «woman». As sex is a biological category, social psychologists often refer to the biologically determined differences as to «sexual». Individual socialization, including this of a child, is closely connected with the gender differences. Limitations or difficulties during joining the collective by a child are often determined by whether it corresponds with the gender norms.
Individual peculiarities of an each particular child are obviously a priority. Bur it is also obvious, that the gender differences are also important for the development of a child collective: «Gender differences cause gender separation in relations between the children, assuming, that there is and should always remain a barrier between boys and girls. Parents and teachers often contribute to the gender separation at school and at home». But there is also the following problem: trying to break the barrier between boys and girls and ease contacts with the opposite sex, young people begin to smoke, consume alcohol and drugs.
Today, more and more attention is being drawn to informal youth groups, in attempt to understand the reasons of their aggressive and nearly uncontrollable behavior. A teacher needs to invest a lot of efforts in order to create a child collective, while asocial groups originate and unite quickly, though not always spontaneous, often under control of organized criminality. What do these groups offer to the youth, what the school cannot give them? Among the reasons, experts and teenagers themselves often mention family problems, in the first place, followed by poor possibilities for leisure activities, disappointment in adult ideals, social injustice, bureaucratic and too formal work style of state, youth and social organizations.
Besides, young people find asocial groups attractive because of their freedom and unlimited activities, wish for confidential and personal communication, no tiring adult control. These social and psychological factors of attractiveness of informal asocial groups should be considered by teachers when building teenager and youth collectives.
It is well known, how important sensual and emotional perception of the collective by its members is. That is why it is essential to create collective subculture, and no element is minor here. Everything is important: life norms in form of «code of conduct», «laws», «pledges»; rituals, membership symbols such as uniform, pins and others. By the way, such system of attributes is extremely developed in the subculture of young criminals, which is nowadays trendy and being actively popularized by mass media.
Definitely, in every school class, there are children who are hardly influenced by the collective. The number of such children usually increases with their age. It has been traditionally accepted, that the collective has a positive influence on the children, who have a favorable status in the group. Of course, when a child has a rather high status, when the collective accepts him as a bright and interesting personality, respects his right to be independent and original, it provides a favorable climate for the child´s development. But the results of our study let say, that the collective influence mostly depends on the individual psychological characteristics of a child. It is not an exception, when children without a high status in a collective, enjoy its positive influence. Collective is a kind of a minor group. Minor groups differ in size and relations between its members, individual structure, values, norms and rules, interpersonal relations, aims and activities. Quantitative structure of a group is called its size, personal structure - composition. The system of interpersonal communication or, in other words, exchange of information, form communication channels, moral and emotional background of interpersonal relations provide a psychological climate in the group. Common behavior rules, which all members are to follow, are called group norms. All mentioned characteristics are the main parameters of minor groups.
A special place among highly developed minor groups take the collectives. Psychology of a developed collective is characterized by the fact ,that its target and real activity is important for a great number of people, and not only for its members. Interpersonal relations in the collective are based on mutual trust, transparency, honesty, respect and etc. In order to be called a collective, a minor group should meet a number of strict requirements: successfully meet the goals, be of a high morals, provide good human relations, give its every member a chance for a personal development, be creative, i.e., as a group, offer people more than an the same number of individuals can give them, acting separately.
A psychologically developed minor group is a collective, when it positively influences on personality objectification and its differentiated system of functional and personal relations is based on high morals. Such relations can be called collective. Collectivism means, that the group members always care about its success and try to oppose everything that disintegrates and destroys the collective. Collectivism also means good traditions and security for its members. Collectivism feeling does not let the members remain indifferent, if collective interests are hurt. In such collective all important questions are solved together and possibly with a general consent.
To sum up, minor groups, which fully meet the above mentioned requirements of a collective, do not exist in the reality. The majority of the existing minor groups lay somewhere between poorly developed groups and highly developed collectives. Some of the social and psychological parameters let call these groups collectives, but others fail. The described model should be regarded as an ideal for every developing collective, rather than a reality of the minor groups. So, collective is a highly developed minor group of people, whose relations are based on positive moral norms and which works effectively, producing a superadditive effect.
The work was submitted to international scientific conference «Modern education. Problems and solutions», Thailand, December, 20-30, 2009. Came to the editorial office 02.09.2009.