Читать книгу Позитивные изменения. Образование. Школа будущего (Тематический выпуск, 2022)/Positive changes. Education. The school of the future (Special issue, 2022) - Редакция журнала «Позитивные изменения» - Страница 5

Every parent wants the best for their child, including a good education. According to a study by Skysmart, an online school for kids and teens, only 55 % of parents surveyed are generally satisfied with their children's schooling. The main reason for dissatisfaction is the lack of a personalized approach to the child. Educational consultants and coaches are there to help parents in choosing the best school. The editors of Positive Changes Journal talked to Anna Vysotskaya, a neuropsychologist and education expert who consults over 1,000 parents a year on choosing a school for their children.

Anna Vysotskaya

Natalia Gladkikh

PhD in Psychology, Leading Expert, Centre for Technological Innovations, а Institute of Social and Economic Design at the Higher School of Economics

Ivan Smekalin

Analyst, Positive Changes Factory

What are the most common requests parents ask you as a consultant?

I can quote the most popular query: "Help me find a school that will help my child get into a prestigious university on his/her own.” Few parents actually come in asking for "a school that will develop a personality." This is mentioned sometimes, but this is not really a popular demand. In short, most parents are just focused on academic knowledge. I think we are observing a substantial shift of our value system towards academic skills. I attribute this primarily to the fact that free education is currently leaving the market. Applicants have to compete hard to get a state-funded place at the university. We are not yet ready to accept this future expense as inevitable and to plan this as part of the process of raising a child. Accordingly, parents have a great deal of anxiety about whether they will be able to provide their children with a decent higher education.

In your opinion, what knowledge, skills, and abilities does a student need to develop now, because they will be needed in the near future?

In my opinion, the School of the Future should take care of the child’s health first and foremost. This is something today’s system misses altogether – a culture of mental and physical health. I’ve only seen one school that at least had an articulated approach to managing the students’ health resources.

Physical health is the place to start, obviously: who you are, what you are, how your body functions, what healthy sleeping, eating and socializing is. In some schools, this comes in the early forms of some emotional intelligence courses or communication workshops. I mean, some schools are doing this, but we cannot talk about widespread implementation. Because it is closely tied to the infrastructure.

What kind of infrastructure should be created for a health school?

The school should have exciting recreational areas, sports halls, 3D physical education equipment, and sensory rooms. Too many children today are susceptible to sensory overload, children with ASD, who need these spaces. It is a story about a child being able to learn whether or not he or she wants to be friends with their body.

I am not just talking about physical culture, I am talking about a culture of health. It is great when kids can learn to cook in school, for example. And not just to cook, but also can learn about the peculiarities of cooking. But then again, I have not seen this as an integral element anywhere. Some schools have workshops, kitchens, children learning to cook, but, for example, they do not understand why they do it, what it is about, they do not learn the chemical composition of food. In general, school should be about life.

What can you say about the teachers of the future and the role of the school in general? The teacher is no longer the sole source of knowledge. A good teacher must constantly change in a positive way. But often teachers do not have the time to do that. That is, they just keep replaying some experience that they have accumulated. So often a child can get knowledge faster and more effectively in extended education. And most importantly, at their own pace.

Then what is the school supposed to do? All it can do is to make sense of things. Because life is full of actions these days. The parents objectively have little time to invest in their children, to pass on their experiences, to nurture and to pass on culture. It is great if the school can share the family values. So the main block is what I call "health school”, i.e. everything that has to do with culture. This includes everything: physical culture, communication culture or emotional intelligence, mental hygiene and mindfulness.

The School of the Future should take care of the child’s health first and foremost. This is something today’s system misses altogether – a culture of mental and physical health.

What else do modern schools lack?

Oddly enough, creativity, which we understand in a broad sense – painting, music, sculpture, architecture. What our compatriots always talk about when they go, for example, to study in a British school: "I couldn’t make my kid draw, and now he is producing masterpieces.” Because first of all, they have the equipment for this and, secondly, they have great teachers who can teach anyone. Also, a good school should be technological, hands-on. The child should be able to translate his ideas into reality. And, of course, we are not talking about aprons and oven mitts. If what you can do is strictly regulated, it gets too far from reality.

It is like IKEA: you can read the instructions first, or you can just start assembling the stool and see what happens. I think that today’s children do not concentrate on the material as well, if they have not done anything with their own hands. Therefore, the school should be more practice-oriented in this regard, in my opinion. In principle, this isn’t something new. Because it is already there in an ordinary Western school, it just takes time to appear in our country.

Today's kids use apps extensively, where you can skip something quickly, move to other levels, go at your own pace. Can the School of the Future work as a learning app?

It seems to me that there should be some kind of variability, so that the child can study at his or her own pace and depth of learning the disciplines. Some schools already have this.

Now because all children have very different preschool experiences, they start school with very different levels of preparation. Some kids are cognitively overwhelmed, their heads already "bursting." Some children have just learned the alphabet. Plus, there are children with dysgraphia, dyslexia. There are a lot of children who have learning difficulties, who have a hard time working with text information. In this regard, the perfect school for me is not one that selects the best kids by giving them a bunch of tests at the entrance, but a school that will tell them: "Okay, come in." Just "come in," that’s all. And then, after testing the child, after working with him/her, they will build a certain learning path.

What does it look like in practice?

Let’s suppose there is a cohort of students. The children are divided into two subgroups, or even three, if the school can afford maintaining that much staff. That is, instead of three small classes of 12 people, we have one class, but with subgroups of 12. One subgroup consists of children that are ahead of the curriculum, the second group has students of average performance, and the last subgroup has children that have, for example, difficulty mastering spatial concepts and mathematics, in particular. In the last subgroup, we introduce correctional initiatives: we work with didactic material, use game aids, give visual supports.

Or, for example, the Russian language. There are kids who have a knack for the languages, then we just go with them through a good program at a fast pace. There are children with dysgraphia, with dyslexia, these are curated by a speech therapist. Also, a child can be in an advanced math group, but as regards the Russian language, he/she can be in a group of children with dysgraphia and dyslexia. And some kid can be in the top group in all disciplines.

This way, all children learn together. That is, in fact, instead of three classes there are several levels for each core subject. For some lessons, the children get together in one big classroom, do some projects together, communicate together. But I did not see that in elementary school, only in middle school. Yet things are not exactly implemented like that in practice. I believe that education should become fully personalized (and in fact, it already is, if you look at the rise of the tutoring institution). But how do you reconcile the personalized track with the need to socialize and interact with children? Probably, the School of the Future is an attempt to combine collective activity with an individual academic route.

You described three big blocks in the educational program of the school of the future: academics, creativity, and health. And you spoke in sufficient detail about the academic part – the educational process happening at different levels. What would be the characteristics of the other two components, health and creativity?

The perfect school for me is not one that selects the best kids by giving them a bunch of tests at the entrance, but a school that will tell them: “Okay, come in.” And then they will build a certain learning path.

Here, again, variability is the only option. For example, in the Health block, different types of sports are needed, so that children can take two or three lessons of each type during the first trimester, getting to know all the options available. For example, yoga, soccer, gymnastics and acrobatics for both boys and girls. Later on, the children would also divide into subgroups, depending on who wants to do what. In other words, there is variability: try different things, choose something to your liking. Children should be able to ask themselves a question: "What do I want?” Of course, at this stage parents and tutors should help if the child cannot make the choice, or does not want to.

The own resources management block is a kind of story in the form of workshops, internships. A mix of humanities: ethics, practical psychology, mindfulness. In order to be effective, we need to understand our psycho-emotional sphere, to manage it.

Parents come in and say: "How do I tell a child to take it easy?" A few meditation practices for children have long been described and practiced in some Western schools.

Then there is also the topic of creativity. Here I would also give them the opportunity to try different things, then choose what they want to do, what workshop and what project they want to work on.

Anna, why do you think there are no models coming to us from abroad, other than the International Baccalaureate?

It’s all coming, it has just started to appear. But it all boils down to the lack of sufficient sites to implement this. And there probably aren’t any managers who are good at it. We think of it this way: we are going to just find some good experienced teachers, «headhunt» them from public or private schools, borrow a stronger curriculum, and everything will be cool. But any good teachers can only exist along the lines of a concept that has been developing here for some time. For example, there is a concept of developmental learning, which appeared in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It is now experiencing its second birth.

It seems to me that every parent wants something more, but in fact everyone only cares about passing the USE. The child has to enter a University (especially a boy).

When I talk to school principals, they all say that teachers who know how to deliver this curriculum are nowhere to be found. It turns out that it all comes down to the fact that you can create a school, design an interesting space, but who will come to teach there?

As regards the concept of developmental learning, how do you rate it now, in light of what is happening?

I find it interesting. It must also be developed, reworked. There are many complaints about it. There it all rests on the fact that the concept of developmental learning can only be implemented well by someone who understands what developmental learning actually is. That is, it is not just a technique that you can simply give and a person will start teaching. It turns out that people are few and far between. Because, first of all, initially it was to be subject education, actually, what I was talking about, different teachers for the Russian language and math, each working with their own stream. Where do we get them from?

We have almost no separate philologists and separate mathematicians. It all comes down to the lack of people.

It is clear that if there is no supply, there is no demand, but does it work the other way around? If such a school were is to be opened, based on the Finnish model, for example, how popular will it be if it is implemented in Russia the way it is in Finland?

If it is implemented competently, then it all comes down to price. Most of my clients, perhaps I do not have such a representative sample, but in general people say the cost of education they find comfortable is up to 100,000 rubles. 100,000 is some kind of watershed. This is now, given the current exchange rate. Once upon a time, two or three years ago, people were saying: "50 at best.”

To what extent are parents ready to understand that the Unified State Exam is not the only benchmark for the quality of a child's education at school?

A very small group. This is what needs to be investigated. It seems to me that everyone wants something more, but in fact everyone only cares about passing the USE. The child has to enter a University (especially a boy).

What do parents of preschoolers say most often, what is their request?

More often than not, they say: "We want to make sure that the child’s motivation to study is not destroyed." Or even better: they want the child to be motivated to study, to be eager, ready and excited to learn new things and develop. But at the same time, he or she needs to be able to enter a good, solid school. It is also about the USE, so the child does not lose his or her academic skills. I keep explaining and telling them: "You see, getting into a good school in the form that exists in our reality is just a sports competition. That is why you have to prepare for it." Everything here is like sports competitions. The child may not have outstanding cognitive abilities, and it is hard for parents to accept that. Perhaps the child simply does not need to go to such a school, instead he or she would learn happily at the right level.

We recently spoke with a mother who returned from Ireland, she wanted to find a primary school here for her children, grades 1–2. She said: "Look, when we came to Ireland, we were told to just go to school. They just sign you up and you start going there. It is okay, they will learn the language, they will study." This is it. And the kids are somehow studying. She said: "Here we came to a school with an English focus, an old private school, and they told us: your Russian is not very good, you should work with tutors at home for now, improve your language skills, then come to us in three months for testing." The point here is that our school believes it does not exist for the person, but the person exists for the school. So as soon as a child has some peculiarities, the school gets nervous.

So we can say that the School of the Future is an inclusive school?

In principle, yes, an inclusive school. If the school has its own resource department – that would be great. The resource department is a staff of neuropsychologists and speech therapists. For example, a child with ASD comes to school, he or she can study individually. They make up a schedule for him/her, for example, his/her first two lessons are individual. Then he/she joins the class for more lessons. That is, the resource department is just a kind of team of specialists, several rooms in a separate block where children can work individually or in a mini group of two or three people.

The point here is that our school believes it does not exist for the person, but the person exists for the school. So as soon as a child has some peculiarities, the school gets nervous.

Comparing different educational models, what criteria can you use to judge them? The content of education, that is, the blocks from which it is built. Knowledge, abilities, skills, subject content. Probably a description of the staff, that is, who works at the school, how they get there. What kind of corporate culture it has? Democratic, or authoritarian? Are the communication styles between students and teachers more of a coaching position or a talking head? The coaching position, of course, is preferable here, when all the teachers somehow still support the children, motivate them.

Probably styles of interaction with parents, feedback, communication. There are schools where none of this is practiced at all.

The grading system – what kind of grading is there? Variability is also one of the aspects. That is, how flexible the school can be, how much it can adapt to the child.

What educational model is the School of the Future closer to – Finnish, Asian, International Baccalaureate?

I think it is closer to some Scandinavian model, particularly Finnish one. That is solely based on what I know about it from down here; I have not been inside a school like that. That is, it is the model of the European school that says: "Here is an environment full of opportunities, but there are multiple ways to grab these opportunities within the same school. If you are gifted, okay, we will build you a track. If you have any difficulties, that’s all right.” To me, this is probably such a humane European school.