Child´s social environment, where he grows up and develops, is full of things that a preschool age child is eager and able to learn and understand. A child perceives himself as a representative of the humanity, learns people and relations between them, their activities, life style, material and natural world. Social life, being diverse and complex, contradictory and ambiguous, help a child develop his activity while he learns to understand the world. Teacher chooses material that let children establish and reveal cause-effect relations between the social occurrences and facts, find the common and differences, analyze and compare, be creative in learning. Analyzing the examples of different content, one can observe how children perceive it.
Society sees childhood only as a time of «preparation», i.e. it denies the value of childhood for a child. Meanwhile, continuous educational process, which links the preschool and school years, does not mean to estimate the present from the viewpoint of the future. Only if childhood is seen as a valuable lifetime, can children become adequate schoolchildren in the future, and develop personal traits that let them step across the limits of the childhood.
Demands of children and adults for developing their personal, non-utilitarian relations are being sacrificed to education. Due to this sacrifice, education loses its "human radical" and suffers from dehumanization. Child should live the world of art, enjoying all its diversity and richness. Nothing compares to art in its powerful effect on a child. Art is a unique mean of psychological development - emotions, creative thinking, artistic and creative skills. Preschool age is the time, when children develop aesthetic perception, attitude to culture and a need for art activities. That is why is it necessary to introduce art into a child´s life, show him the world of music, fantasies, theater and dance. It is important to offer a child diverse possibilities to get acquainted with art, include it into everyday life, create conditions for child´s art activities. Rich child´s inner world bases on newly acquired knowledge, skills and activities that reveal him the horizons of new knowledge and activities, prompt him to speculate, set up hypotheses, activate demand for more knowledge. Learning the variety of a native language is one of the main conditions of personality formation and learning the values of a national culture; it is closely connected with mental, moral, aesthetic development, and is a priority issue in the speech development in preschool children. Furthering speech development in preschool children should include special communication situations (individual and in group), when a child can communicate freely. Such situations help enrich the vocabulary, learn the ways to express ideas, improve speech understanding. In special group plays child can choose linguistic means, make a personal «linguistic contribution» to solving a common task. In these activities children develop an ability to express their thoughts, intentions and emotions under condition of constantly changing situation.
The described conditions create a favorable climate for internationalism, which means communication between the children of different nationalities in the modern society, as well as learning the life of other nationalities. In child years, internationalism is formed through finding a common human ground in different national environments: the main direction here is to help a child understand the universal human values, which can be revealed through learning the own national culture - its dances, songs, tales, proverbs and sayings. Children should get an idea of a diversity of human languages and develop a positive attitude towards them. The process of formation of child´s inner world involves the development of imagination and creativity, ability to act independently, child´s demand for an active position in life. They become a part of the initial format of thinking and interpersonal relations. Well developed imagination let a child overcome stereotypes of their own behavior, roles, enable to build new game scenarios. Basing on imagination, children show the first signs of creative attitude to reality.
Creative process is a qualitative transformation from the already known to the unknown. Children are highly dynamic and flexible in search, which let them achieve individual results in their activities. Independence widens child´s ability to conform his behavior with his own motives and those of the others. Particularly important here is not only to accept the existing rules, but also to set up new ones, be ready to accept the adult goals and set their own. All this develops a demand to be active, perceive and change the world, influence himself and the others. Children express their need to feel themselves as active personalities by desire to be different, act independent and in their own way, be important for other people.
To sum up, child develops his individuality and relations with adults, which are not aimed at some educational tasks or didactic goals; learns to communicate as a full-fledged partner. Development of child´s personality and his emotional contacts with adults, as well as with other children requires a considerably new organization of a child´s life in kindergarten, creation of conditions for free communication without instructions and child´s emancipation. In the new century, every grown-up and child will understand the meaning of life. It should become inseparable from upbringing and education. Without understanding the meaning of life, the whole pedagogy risks to become groundless. Perhaps in the new century, science together with art, religion and philosophy will contribute to that a lot. Maybe, the will manage to do together what each of them did not manage to do alone in the past. The most important in education and upbringing of children in the new century, is to create conditions for communication on the basis of understanding of the meaning of life and place of a child in the modern society. Another important aspect of this concept is an idea about a more perfect human, creator of a new life. On this basis it will be possible to build a new system of upbringing and education, create different programs and methods.
References
- Ashikov V. Preschool education in the new century // Preschool education.-2000. № 1.
- Intellectual development and education of preschool children / Edited by L.G. Niskanen. - Moscow, 2002.
- Mikhailov F.T. Philosophy of education: reality and perspectives // Questions of philosophy. - 1999. № 8.
- Dobrenkov V.I., Nechaev V.Y. Society and education. - Moscow, 2003.
The work was submitted to international scientific conference «Modern education. Problems and solutions», Thailand - Cambodia, February 18-28, 2009. Came to the editorial office on 24.05.2009.