How specifically can children's education in Russia be made better (and the first practical step)?

We have 41-43 places out of 65 by education in the study of the OECD and 49 places in the United Nations Education Index.

After receiving three higher, 13 years, I was engaged in teaching IT specialists, scientists and other strange people, the last project is Curser in Russia. A year ago, began to study children's education. Below is my IMHO, but I think you know a lot. In my opinion, in children's education in Russia there are several important areas for development.
')
Here from a children's position:

1. Children do not see the practical application of the knowledge gained.
2. There are no mechanisms for choosing a profession. Children can, for example, choose their future for the kindest teacher (favorite subject - desired profession - specialty in university - sailed).
3. Children in general are eager for knowledge, but they really want to diversify the process of obtaining them in school.
4. Well, they almost never go anywhere, but they should be taken on various interesting excursions and met with interesting people.

From the perspective of parents and teachers:

1. Children are underloaded: knowledge is given far less than in the USSR, for example. On the other hand, at the end of training, they are overloaded with preparation for the GIA, EGE.
2. Children initially live in a new information environment that is comfortable for them, but not very comfortable for teachers.
3. Additional education in large cities is, at times, the wildest logistics, for example, you need to take your child to the other end of the city in the middle of the day.
4. Problems with personnel: you need to be really cool motivated in order to fully and efficiently work with children.

Little more detail

1. Children do not see the practical application of the knowledge gained.
The knowledge that is given in the school, in general, is pushed into the head of the student "to be." The child does not understand why this is necessary, since there is no connection with the practice or demonstration of any results at the stage of learning.

Take, for example, programming in an arbitrary language. For an adult, it is assumed that it will take somewhere 20-30 lessons with a theory like the definition of what a variable is, writing the simplest choices, cycles, philosophy of structural and object-oriented programming, and so on.

Only after a sufficiently large interval will it be possible to write the first program, understanding what each part of it does. Child learning can look like this: a framework is put in place that provides care for all the “boring” things, and in the first lesson basic operators are given to control a funny robot that saves a kitten or collect apples. Children are not particularly important what and how they are doing - it is important for them to play and bring the robot to a funny cat.

If you don’t explain (more precisely, if you don’t show it) to the children what knowledge is needed for — they will cram them in to pass the exam - and forget.

2. Children choose their future according to the kindest teacher.
The chain is formed as follows: first, children associate the subject with their favorite teacher; then they realize that they get the item best; then he becomes the focus of the desired profession; determines profiling to the university - and life goes on. The problem is not that there is a favorite teacher, but that children simply do not see other options for what to become.

The future can be chosen according to the parent, comparing the salaries of the professions of interest for 5-6 years before entering the university and so on. At the same time, children do not see the real practical aspects of the work and do not understand exactly whether this suits them. Previously, this task was partially solved by television: they showed various heroes of labor, outstanding scientists, and so on. Now we need to give more concrete examples and show the prospects of various professions. Again, in practice. We, in general, figured out how to do this, but more on that below.

3. At the same time, children want to receive the knowledge they choose themselves.
Starting somewhere from grade 8-9, children begin to take an active part in the formation of their own educational process. They have at hand a lot of sources in the network (which we did not have), and they gather information as best they can. Now there are all conditions for changing the approach in teaching - the teacher is not a source of information, but a navigator, but this transition still needs to be made, the whole system is sharpened under a different paradigm.

4. No practice and excursions.
The educational process in an ordinary school is quite monotonous, there is no possibility, again, to link information from lessons to something vital. If there were “interactive” lessons every week, like visiting a production, going to a simulator of a spaceship, etc., it would be much more interesting. Partly now this issue is solved by various additional education sites, for example, children's cities of professions.

In Moscow and other large cities there are a lot of everything, in all areas, from quantum physics to rabbit breeding. But all this is non-systemic. The effectiveness of training is reduced to a systematic approach; it is often absent from additional training.

Now look at what parents and faculty see.

1. Children are underloaded.
This is a fact, for example, a first-class program can often be shrunk to 2-3 months. Most of the children know that there, since kindergarten, but the school does not load them to correspond with the “slowest” one. The problem is not in the program itself (although it was also relieved several times), but in the fact that we do not have a progressive system of education, when a child can finish school in, say, 12 years. Or “close” your favorite subjects at the same age and start getting a university program on them, and at the same time go to work, physical education, get general knowledge of Russian, biology and so on.

“My grandfather in the gymnasium studied in that still pre-revolutionary, he was 87 years old, he read Greek verses to me, and he knew Latin perfectly well, that is, he was a very educated person, interesting, original, we talked about school, he saw how I study, how my brother studies, and as I understood, he was very mocking about the knowledge that we received, if he were not, if it were not for the grandmother, probably, we would have received less of something. ”- Nina Aleksandrovna Blokh, teacher, gymnasium No. 1540

2. Children initially live in a new information environment, and all who are over 25 are already “digital immigrants”.
50 thousand schools are connected to the Internet, but only one tenth of it is used for education. Let's just give a couple of quotes from our polls:


Old experienced engineer got a 3D printer to school


“I saved up half of my life, for example, cut out material from lights, from other magazines, writers' portraits, and even didn’t sell them, because I was not here, not in Moscow, in the province”

Children have access to any information on the Internet, and their main skill is not the accumulation of knowledge (as was the case with a lack of information), but their application. Remember the fracture in the interviews for the position of developer, when massively began to allow Google to solve the problem? The important thing is not that you remember any specific things, but that you can achieve a result.

3. Additional education in large cities is the wildest logistics, you need to take your child to the other end of the city in the middle of the day.
There is no comment here: if you live in Moscow, you know how difficult it is to choose a school so that it fits into standard routes from home to some clubs or clubs, or a music school, or an artist, and so on. For example, in the US, many parents in such cases move when a child needs a new school. And in Moscow in recent years, too, moving.

For us, this means two problems. The first is that additional education is sometimes given to a child based not on real need, but for reasons of accessibility (including price) or proximity. The second is that extra classes are simply canceled because it is easier to take the child to the grandmother, for example. And all the circles where you want to take the child can start working at the same time.

4. Problems with personnel.
I will give very accurately describing quotes from one of the school directors (from our survey):


They are not afraid to ask the student a question: “Listen, I don’t know this, tell me how to do it?” ... After-school guys began to enroll in pedagogical universities, but they simply couldn’t enroll in any other universities, but parents dreamed that they had a treasured crust about higher education.

At the same time, I believe that the profession of a teacher is just beginning to get out of oblivion. But we need time to change the situation with gender and age composition in an acceptable direction. Much needs to be done to attract proper attention to the profession. Plus, it is ridiculous to work on university training programs, it is more ridiculous to use student interns in the educational process at school (not a couple of months in five years of training). Future teachers should not get out of school from the first year - but this process is not adjusted, trainees are more often perceived as a burden. An example of a bundle is for each teacher (who is in 80% of cases of digital immigrant) for a digital native intern, whose job would be to look for new technologies and methods of digital pedagogy.

How is this solved in other countries?

Not by individual efforts, but by joint efforts, and from three different, but no less equal, equal stakeholders:

1) Support educational programs from the state. For an example, the same anime is, in fact, educational films that explain the most important things to Japanese people of different ages. First - that you can achieve results, but you have to work. Next is a discussion of egoism, details, how to talk with the opposite sex, and so on, basic socialization skills. Then - that you need to work in a team, a loner can do nothing at all. In the USSR, there were excellent educational media ranging from subject journals for any age and ending with TV shows that put the necessary ideals. Recall the relatively recent books of Perelman, Oster, all sorts of "Entertaining Experiences", "Technique of the Youth", "Know and Be able" - this is what it is. And in Finland, the acclaimed Minecraft, which by this time has already bought more than 18 million people, including Microsoft guys for $ 2.5 billion, is completely included in the school curriculum throughout the country. And you know what? Children are delighted.

2) The activity of the educational community. Let us say, did you know that teachers and people who are not indifferent to the education of children created the first democratic democracy at the Summerhill school in the UK? All issues relating to school management are decided at school meetings, in which all students and school employees are present, with everyone having an equal voice, and the students themselves choose which lessons to attend. At the same time, in 2011, the school was recognized as outstanding in all respects except for teaching. And that is only because it completely lacks any rating system.

There are many more examples of successful schools with a flexible education system, where each student passes an individually selected (and not pre-established by the government) program for his strengths and weaknesses, with different methods and approaches that are needed by him, and everything is monitored and adjusted in real life. time based on student success. These include the School of One Mathematics and the world-famous Big Picture, which was founded by a couple of enthusiasts, and by 2015 opened 90 schools around the world with an average graduation rate of 92%, using the same philosophy - to teach not a faceless mass of children, but each separately.

3) The initiative of private companies. And here it’s not just the high-profile online start-ups that collect millions of dollars in investment for the development of education on the Internet and no less than the audience. Modern online courses provide an opportunity to teach at home almost anything. Minus - desocialization. The last time the study was in 2012, 100,000 children studied at home. For comparison, in 2008 there were only 10 thousand.

Even quite “ordinary” companies that have access to a children's audience are trying to use their products to help the educational system. Lego, for years, has been actively promoting its plastic parts for, in general, quite compatible with the game stuff. For example, the teacher of the month in January 2015 uses Lego kits for teaching mathematics, critical thinking and modeling. But there are still kits for teaching reading and writing, mechanics, design skills, teamwork and much more . And for children (and adults) of any age.

What are we doing?

Having looked at all this from inside and outside, we decided to get together with a small team and correct the situation a little. Not tinkering with current systems and processes, but complementing them. On a non-commercial basis (no profit for us).

But for starters, who am I at all to talk about it. I am 13 years old I am engaged in education. Perhaps you know me from Digital October projects - this is the Knowledge Stream with guys like Stephen Wolfram (you don’t even have to submit it), Perry Barlow (founder of the declaration of independence of cyberspace), Jeremy Beylenson (Standford psychologist who studies the impact of the Internet on society), Kevin Verbach (gamification, Digital Toronto project), Ken Goldberg (robotics, robotic psychologist), Michel Maharbiz ( insect-based IT platforms ), slightly insane Jacques Fresco and focused on Enry Ng (co-founder Cursers). And there were many, many economists, psychologists, and so on.

Then, a couple of years ago, on the basis of the same site, we then tried to launch a children's project. The idea was as follows: small interesting lectures-space bridges with leading scientists, examining different objects. In the first lesson about the human skeleton, for example, there was a doctor of medical sciences, a robot designer, a real cosmonaut and an anthropologist. But then, for several reasons, including commercial, “large” adult education was more important.

The idea is very simple. These are bright lectures on the subject with the most interesting and vivid representatives of their professions, who in a cheerful manner tell about themselves, their work. We dilute events with games and interactive tasks, let us experience the profession through them. Well, for the most interested children, we offer a set of programs, schools and initiatives that will help to start collecting the necessary knowledge right now so that children can become what they really want to be. For example, our first lesson will be about programming, and guys from Yandex, a few people with Habra, a psychologist and career counselor, will fit into the TV. Grigory Bakunov from Yandex (@bobuk), Konstantin Kondratyuk from ITrening.rf and Dmitry Lokhansky from Kodabra have already been confirmed. Their task is not to transfer knowledge, but:
- Show the kids what is the coolest thing about their work and how they like it.
- Tell how they became developers.
- Explain how to understand that you have an inclination for this profession.
- And to give some funny-interesting-surprising facts or experiences, for example, to tell some beautiful algorithmic solution in a language understandable to children (in the spirit of an anecdote, "so why do they not play at night?"), Or something magical at the forefront technologies.
- Explain to the parents why the child needs this in the future, and what this profession will look like in 7-10 years in society.

That is, the goal is to interest the child and give the parent a little motivation to move.

The main information package comes after the lesson - this is a list of all objects where you can get knowledge on the topic (“And you have a Lego Robotics Circle after two quarters”), plus give links to existing books, online courses, cool apps, projects, and so on . Everything so that a child with parents can study the subject more deeply.

It's free. It gives motivation and perspectives. It gives knowledge. There is a lot of beauty in our existing education system, and we just need to work a little better so that it again becomes one of the strongest in the world. A new generation of young professionals is coming to all industries now and turning them around. The role of knowledge is growing. In the end, large companies need all this in perspective too.

Do not need huge budgets. You just need to take and make.

We have already taken the first step. January 25 will be the first lesson in programming and about programmers for schoolchildren (grades 5-11). About what work was done to prepare it (and in general, what are the wonderful additional educational tools in IT), I will talk closer to the event.