History occupies a special position among the other Sciences of society and man, because this science, like no other, offers the choice of strategy of development of the state and forms the necessary qualities of a personality, allowing to support the political body formed within certain boundaries of patriotism and citizenship.
Realizing this, in the period of the Soviet Union, the government has made history as a science and as a school discipline in “the servant” ideology. It caused irritation, especially among the intelligentsia, calling not hesitate to tell the youth “historic truth” without diluting the facts.
In the 90-ies on the wave of democratization of public life and the fight against totalitarian past history as a school subject has ceased to perform its traditional role of education of patriotism among the younger generation. In the organizational-methodological terms, this has led to the emergence of many textbooks, the authors outline the history as they understand themselves, adhering to one or another scientific concept, a historical event, or fulfilled the order. For example, the support Fund of the notorious D. Soros was issued a huge quantity of literature, which gradually but insistently, taught the younger generation the idea of Russia as a despotic state, the vast freedom of the person, and only with the coming to power of the B.N. Yeltsin the country has the opportunity to build democracy and to converge with the leading countries of the world, so to say “join the family of civilized Nations”.
In the end, society is faced with a situation where the school has been unable to respond to the challenges of the social environment, which should be understood as a set of institutions such as the media, youth and andegraudnym flow. The result was a change in the consciousness of young people associated with the loss of social ideals and focus purely on customer value, and formed the so-called “lost generation”, not remembering the great deeds of their ancestors and not reading the great works of A.S. Pushkin, L.N. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. To break this trend of leveling of values in the minds of the youth is possible if they are clearly formulated at the national level. But this is impossible with a fragmented view of a civilizational identity (as, in fact, where is our place in the West, in the East, or somewhere in between), understanding the prospects for further development.
In this environment, President Vladimir Putin instructed to develop the Concept of a new educational-methodical complex on national history. Its main task is to unify the representation of the historical process in the educational literature and to give a balanced, if possible unbiased, estimates passed, the historical path of Russia. Thus, on the one hand, at the level of government realized the need to return to history as a school subject its educational function, and promote clearly articulated at the national level, the principles of understanding your place in the world and its historical path, and on the other, to preserve the variety of views about certain historical events, which there are discussions of historical scholarship. Consider some of the provisions of this document.
From a methodological point of view, not to mention the attempted universalization approach to the development of educational materials on the history including educational syllabus, textbook, teaching AIDS, books for teachers, a set of cards, electronic applications. Implementing this approach will avoid dissonance between the textbook, as a rule, a small number of tasks to educational material (paragraph text), and other teaching materials. Notes an attempt to solve this problem currently, the development of materials to the textbook written by a particular author. However, it can be called insufficient, because teaching materials to the textbook are presented, as a rule, different authors and do not represent a single educational-methodical complex (for example, to the textbook can be added developed a guide for teachers, other educational materials do not exist, or, conversely, presents the tasks to the textbook in the absence of other components of educational and methodical material).
The course of history in schools must implement the competence approach, in accordance with which the study of the subject, in addition to the aspect of socialization, intended to form and develop such skills in students how to analyze contained in the various sources of information about events and phenomena of past and present, to review developments in accordance with the principle of historicism, in their dynamics, interrelationship and interdependence, to apply historical knowledge in academic and extracurricular activities, in a modern, multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious society [Concept]. A key strategy of learning the Concept developers identified individualized learning and differentiated approach. In this Concept the authors follow the innovations of the 90-ies of the last century when educational theory was developed, and in teaching practice implemented various training technologies. These include: personality-oriented technologies, focuses on the subjectivity of the student into account his age and individual abilities; modular technology, promoting the development of students ‘independence, their ability to work with individual ways of development of educational material; – level of technology, orienting the learning process to individual students’ ability, etc. In the Concept we are talking about differentiation of tasks by level of difficulty, which allows you to organize educational-cognitive activity of students based on their real ability, which creates favorable conditions for the development of children through education. The differentiation of tasks can be as “wide”, aimed at the potential of the selected group, and “narrow”, focusing attention on the potential of the individual student. Multilevel job can be additional, beyond the lesson topics (report, summary, message, answer to a difficult question or solving the problem) and fixed (this job is on the cards, and differentiated survey of independent and control work, etc.). Criteria for different levels of tasks may be not only the complexity, but focus. Namely: for those students who like to think, it is possible to propose a theoretical task; for those students who are not interested in the subject, such as history, but on math it is possible to find jobs where the need to attract knowledge interesting discipline; for those students who are not interested in any subject is to find a job savvy, puzzles, crosswords, etc.
Implementation of the competence model of building the educational process in the school also contributes to the reduction in the number of paragraphs (about a third) compared to the number of hours allotted for the course. From the point of view of the authors of the Concept this will allow time for other activities and not only on the tutorial (expansion – implementation of the activity approach in education that was widely used in 90-e years in school).
A significant innovation will be the transition from the concentric system of the study of history, when at the stage of basic education completed the process of mastering new material, and in high school on a deeper level mastered difficult concepts and phenomena of history, such as “feudalism“, the “Asiatic mode of production, Oriental despotism”, etc., have formed a holistic view of the laws of historical development, to linear: the study of the history will be from 5 to 10 class and 11 class may be offered system course “History of Russia in the global context”. The implementation of this approach may contribute to a more coherent study of historical events, but violate well-established principles and approaches to the teaching of history in school.
The greatest interest in the Concept is the last section called “Hard questions”. It presents a list of topics on which science and society debate. These included all the key events of the 20th century. It and is clear: the past century was a turning point in our history. Two times we changed the vector of its development: in 1917 and in 1991. Russia participated in the two world wars. For a short period became a superpower. But the UPS was accompanied by unprecedented sacrifices for our country. Of course, to give an unambiguous assessment of such events, especially due to the fact that time was not so much impossible.
Revealing from our point of view is the fact that inclusion in the “tough issues” of the era of Peter the Great, during the 19th and 20th centuries, valued primarily from the standpoint of the Westerners, i.e. as a time of modernization breakthrough, carried out by the genius and perseverance of one man, who managed to break the resistance of the narrow, superstitious and lazy citizens. Modernization of Peter, its apparent success was correlated in the Soviet era with the transformation of the Bolsheviks, especially the so-called “Stalin’s modernization”, also estimated an unqualified success brilliant policy leader. In the 90-ies the era of Peter the Great was assessed as definitely positive phenomenon primarily as a time of rapprochement with Europe, which is clearly associated with politics young reformers surrounding President Boris N. Yeltsin. The authors of the Concept propose to compare and evaluate the success and cost of these successes and on the basis of this comparison, draw your own conclusions.
“Tough question” № 1 is “the formation of Ancient States and the role of the Varagis in this process”. The authors of the Concept refer to Soviet historiography, the so-called “Varangian question”, whose decision was limited to the identification taking the reasons for the formation of the state among the Eastern Slavs, namely external (the influence of the Varagis) or internal (processes of social differentiation (class formation) and the emergence of the ruling elite, gradually separated from freemen and seeking to maintain its position among the tribesmen). The ethnicity of the Varagis was defined by far for sure: the Varagis – it Scandinavians, the Vikings. Meanwhile, the preservation of this issue misleads students, creates a distorted view they have about the process of formation of their own state, because it is well known that the question about the ethnic origin of Varagis in science is not settled. In this regard, the formulation of the question in the textbooks should guide students not primarily on defining the role of the Varagis in the process of politogenesis among the Eastern Slavs, and to the discussion of Normanists and antinormanists, the arguments of both. You need to show alternative solutions of the Varangian question, and challenge students to decide for themselves the conclusions. Otherwise we risk to face with an endless stream of myths Normanists in the history books, leading to the emergence of such interpretations, which are represented, for example, in the manual for students of humanitarian universities and high school students, authored by R.G. Skrynnikov. According to his views, Ancient Rus, in the usual sense, did not exist, and instead it was the so-called Eastern European Normandy.
New methodological approaches to understanding the historical process in our country the Concept interlinked with the revival of conservative ideological dominants to ideological consciousness among students in terms of the perception of native history as a succession of great victories, and the heroic deeds of their ancestors, worthy of love and imitation. History, as in the Soviet textbooks (remember, especially the coverage of events of the great October revolution, for example in the textbook under the editorship of A.M. Pankratova, 1952), have once again become the “pathos” of [Concept]. The authors urge not to gloss over the tragedy of our history. However, it is necessary to emphasize that Russian and other peoples of our country found the strength together to overcome fell to their share of the ordeal [the Concept].
Thus, the Concept summarizes those methodological principles that have been actively used in educational process at schools, since the 90-ies of the last century, maintaining the principle of variability in the assessment of certain historical events, but on the other hand there is a clear tendency to the glorification of the historical past of Russia. The latter circumstance can not but rejoice.