On August 31 Vasily Davydov, a well-known teacher and psychologist, the successor of the tradition of cultural-historical theory of Lev Vygotsky, was born.
August is the “Davydov” month. It ends with the birthday of Vasilyevich Davydov. And then – to school. His friend Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko joked: it seems that, having been born, he already went to school the next day. My Teacher was such a wonderful student – both in an ordinary school and in the ShRM – a school for working youth, which he graduated with a gold medal.
In ShRM, familiar to us from the film “Big Break,” he ended up, like most students: he had to earn extra money. And he worked part-time as a laboratory assistant for Academician Ivan Pavlovich Bardin, a classic of the applied science of ferrous metallurgy. And so academician Bardin, recognizing in the future academician Davydov, the makings of a metallurgical scientist, urged him to enter the Institute of Steel and Alloys. There is almost no doubt that Davydov would have entered and, most likely, would have become a classic of metallurgy. But in the summer before entering the country, when he was preparing with might and main, his family rested nearby. Having learned about Davydov’s plans, the adults exclaimed with one voice: “Vasya, what kind of metallurgy? You are a humanitarian! So Vasily Davydov ended up at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. V.P. Zinchenko, being his classmate, recalled many years later: “I don’t remember a case when Vasya was not ready for something ,be it seminars on philosophy or the history of the party.” A phenomenal readiness for any work distinguished V.V. Davydov and later. As well as the ability to turn any work into an occasion for reflection and a form of creativity.
Undoubtedly, although he himself considered himself a specialist in thinking, which he said in a personal conversation with his student from Riga, Bronislav Zeltserman, who continued the work of RO (developing education) in Latvia. Yes, he tirelessly devoted himself to changing the image of the school, but proceeding from the fact that “the school should teach to think” (E.V. Ilyenkov). Any, not special, experimental, developing. Otherwise, this is not a school. This means that it is the school, and not children or adults individually, that needs to be taught to think. And the main “smart home” is a thinking school. Who to teach?
The qualification of “teacher” is narrow here. The outdated word “educator” is the most accurate here (it is remarkable that it has taken root in the lexicon of the Vesti Obrazovanie newspaper and the Evrika Educational Policy Institute and, thus, has been preserved for wide use). V.V. Davydov was the educator – the “educator” of the mind and heart “(N.G. Chernyshevsky).
This word simultaneously denotes both a creator and an educator. Enlightener – in the original sense, which was introduced by the Enlightenment. Enlightenment is not propaedeutics, not instilling and bringing into the system elementary knowledge and skills from different fields of science. It is for this, by the way, that V.V. Davydov criticized the traditional elementary school, the aged but still powerful brainchild of Jan Amos Comenius.
According to the philosopher M.K. Mamardashvili, another student friend of V.V. Davydova, enlightenment in the enlightened sense is the formation, maturity, adulthood of the mind. When he becomes “his own mind,” dispensing with external authorities in the search for and making important decisions. In a word, enlightenment is a self-conscious, reflective mind, i.e. intelligence.
The adulthood of the mind may not coincide with the passport adulthood. Among the adults of the 21st century, there are many well-trained and versatile, but completely unenlightened people, whose thoughts are easy to take possession of any outside authority. Conversely, it is possible and necessary to create conditions for the maturation of the mind in elementary school. But not in exchange for a full-fledged childhood of the child, but in order to enrich the mind with new opportunities, in accordance with age. V.V. stood on that. Davydov, together with his senior colleague, in many ways, teacher D.B. Elkonin. One of the first generalizing works of their team, which was published 55 years ago, in 1967, was called “Age-Related Opportunities for Assimilation of Knowledge (Primary Grades of School).” They say that in bookstores, older people showed up for publication without understanding the subtitle ...
V.V. Davydov created a new approach to building school education, schools as a form of social and individual life in general. In the Davydov school, the student has the right to demand evidence from the teacher, and the teacher – to answer him with a similar request. School V.V. Davydov, in addition to everything else, is also a school of MUTUAL EVIDENCE. Science is built on this, where people prove the truth not to things – it is already in them, has been formed or is being formed (we will not delve into the classical philosophical Kantian-Husserl plots). The truth is proved to other people who are just approaching it. As a result, to ourselves, who are on the outskirts. Davydov said that this also applies to adults, teachers, who cannot know how the “general relation of the task,” that is, the “essence of things,” will appear in the thinking of the child. And what facets of the “essence” canunexpectedly (one of Davydov’s favorite words) to open slightly. This is the basis of teaching the basics of science – i.e. “thinking by profession.” Not only “according to Davydov.”
In the mass school, we observe only an imitation of the proof of scientific knowledge. And the insidious but inevitable question arises: are the “fundamentals of science” studied in the mass school?
We like to be proud of the “scientific nature of Soviet education” in hindsight. Not without reason: Vasily Vasilyevich never denied this. Undoubtedly, the methodological training was very thorough, the then “subject teachers” knew their “subject” more deeply, which they studied in pedagogical universities under the guidance of outstanding scientists – physicists, mathematicians, biologists, philologists (just one example: A.F. Losev served as a professor at the Moscow State Pedagogical University named after V. I. Lenin, where there were excellent physical, mathematical, and other scientific schools), some of the world-famous scientists, such as Academician A.N. Kolmogorov, had a hand in writing school textbooks, even initiated school reforms, but...
“Everything has been proven before us” – it is enough to repeat. So at school, we all repeated that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not vice versa, not at the behest of the “stubborn Galileo.” His “stubbornness” was based on evidence. But what about the 35% of Russians who adhere to “domestic” geocentrism. The survey was conducted quite recently by VTsIOM, which regularly asks respondents about what revolves around what. The number of spontaneous “opponents” of Galileo has been growing over the years. Yes, the level of education is going downhill, yes, the notorious TV shrinks, flattens the picture of what is happening around “to the panel” (before it was something more voluminous – “box”), yes, the small-town archaic darkness was replaced by the global nebula of the picture of the world. But after all, respondents also once “repeated” something, perhaps even with “evidence” from a textbook or a teacher’s presentation. However, according to the philosopher E.V. Ilyenkov, associate and friend of V.V. Davydov, repetition is often not the “mother,” but the “stepmother” of the doctrine. And “a haven of donkeys,” if we continue the “politically correct” omitted ending of the saying.
And at Davydov’s school, YOU, dear student or respected teacher, must prove it yourself! And not to “report” in what has already been proven by others. Pride? No. Pride is when they broadcast on behalf of science, which has ready-made evidence for everything.
V.V. It is no coincidence that Davydov loved and strongly recommended reading the book of the mathematician, logician and historian of science Imre Lakatos with the telling title “Proofs and Refutations” (M., 1967). There, the history and logic of the development of mathematics unfolds in the form of an imaginary discussion, the participants of which are a school teacher and his students. Here, for example, the theorem on the sum of the angles of a polygon was proved (Vasily Vasilyevich liked to give this example). And here the teacher suggests mentally drilling a tunnel in the polygon: will the theorem work? Students enter into a real intellectual battle, which ends with the conclusion of peace at a heavy price: the theorem works! And the teacher provokes further ...
At the school of V.V. Davydov’s teacher also provokes:
- Children, how do you spell the word snow? I think it should be written like this: snack.
- Why do you think so? Prove it! (chorus of children’s voices)
The well-known German psychologist, Professor Joachim Lompscher studied at Moscow State University in the same graduate school with V.V. Davydov, their supervisor was Pyotr Yakovlevich Galperin. He was aware of the searches being conducted by Soviet colleagues. But some time later, when I visited the 91st Moscow school for the first time, the first school that started working “according to Elkonin-Davydov” (at that time no one was talking about the “system”), I was surprised. Surprised not by new programs, not by algebra in the first grade. I was surprised that the first-grader argues with the teacher, requires sufficient justification for the teacher’s words. What’s more, it’s the norm.
Education is a proof to the growing generations of the viability of those who have grown up.
Tomorrow is September 1st. Prepare your evidence! Although who knows what we will be required to prove?