On the eve of December 14, the Day of Naum Gramotnik, celebrated as the Teacher's Day according to the old Russian tradition, the results of the Program for International Student Assessment PISA-2012 were announced. The study encompassed 110 countries and, judging by its results, for the first time since 1999 Russia returned to the club of elite nations with most educated schoolchildren.
There's one thing in common between the Day of Naum Gramotnik and the modern rating of school education PISA, however paradoxical this may seem. According to the old Russian tradition, children were taught reading and writing starting on Naum's Day (December 1 according to the old style). But how! The first class would begin with three whips, surely symbolical. On the first day of meeting with kids the teacher must have awarded each of his students with three "incentive" flogs. Meanwhile father, holding his son by the hand, encouraged the teacher: "Father Naum, make them think and study and punish the indolence with flogging."
Sounds like Old Testament? As the PISA studies suggest, only at first glance PISA is an international program under UNESCO for assessing the progress of kids in studies. This is also the test assessing the literacy of boys and girls in different countries and their ability to apply their knowledge in practice. The research is done once in three years with support of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The test is conducted along three lines: literate reading, mathematical literacy and knowledge of natural sciences.
So for the first time the PISA test revealed that the emphasis on entertainment and external studies in education during the 1990s led to a lower level of knowledge, infantilism, deterioration of skills and even the inability of students to apply their knowledge in practice. The reorientation of education since 2001 towards traditional diligence, commitment and compulsion (whips used under Naum Gramotnik, only liberal ones) to learning, surely coupled with the encouragement of curiosity, leads to higher levels of knowledge and education and, what's most important, to the ability to apply these in practice.
Thus the schoolchildren of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea are the world leaders, as per the data of PISA-2012, by the growth of their level of knowledge. This happens thanks to commitment or a return to the traditional system of education, staking on hard work. On the contrary, the traditional leaders with their emphasis on innovative "pedagogics of freedom" – Switzerland, Finland, Canada, USA and UK – somewhat lost their ground. Russia, which got stuck in between reformers and tradition, is gradually reclaiming the positions it once lost, having risen from the 61st place in the world to the honorable 27th.
It turns out that the ancient maxim of Naum Gramotnik "learning (patience) and hard work will overcome every obstacle" proves true. In that epoch parents after the prayer service asked to bless their child and invited a teacher to their home as an honored guest. They welcomed the teacher with the following traditional greeting: "The bright mind feeds 100 other people, whereas the poor mind won't be able to make his own living." Or "whoever is eager to learn will never fail." Our contemporaries can hardly understand this tradition, but a toddler's mother... was to weep at the first meeting with the child's teacher. If there were no tears this was thought to be a harbinger of "ill rumors" about the child's education, since learning was always accompanied by little ones being whipped "to wisdom". No tears meant no knowledge, no chance to use the knowledge in everyday life and to become a self-sufficient person: there would only be cuffs on the nape. Only on the next day after the ritual meeting would a child go to the teacher with a pointer, which could turn into a flog at any moment.
One sort of modern-day flogs to inspire an aspiration for knowledge is the competition for a prestigious place based on the PISA tables. Alas, the results of 2012 were not wholly encouraging, since Russian schoolchildren did not show a high scoring in terms of their capability to apply their school knowledge in practical life. Yet their functional literacy – in mathematics, reading and natural sciences – is growing for the first time since 1999.
Compared to the previous cycle of PISA research conducted in 2009, the average score of Russian students grew – by 14 points in mathematics (from 468 to 482 points), by 16 points in reading (from 459 to 475 points), and by 8 points in natural sciences (from 478 to 486 points).
When in 2000 Russia for the first time participated in the studies, it took the second to last place out of 64 nations. Now it ranks 27th out of 117. The leaders in terms of mathematical literacy are Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, as in the previous cycle, all of them scoring 494 points. It's pleasant to note that Russia has drawn nearer to them (482 points), joining the world's leaders in terms of mathematical literacy. Leading in terms of reading are the schoolchildren of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea (the average scoring is 493). As for literacy in natural sciences, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan are again among the leaders, although they are slightly behind Finland (501 points), Sweden (502) and Germany (502).
What is most important, students of Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany and South Korea demonstrate the highest scores in terms of their ability to use their knowledge in practical life and convert it to a successful career. Except for Germany, all leading nations adhere to conservative pedagogics staking on patience and hard work. And even the German school, while paying tribute to "the pedagogy of freedom" and external studies, still prefers the classic school.
Russia, keen on private pedagogics in the 1990s along with home tuition and "free lyceums" promoting innovative teaching methods, was notably disappointed in them after 2001 as the level of knowledge possessed by schoolchildren sank. The emphasis on the proven but upgraded state-run schools in recent years has proven justified, as was corroborated by the PISA-2012 research.
True, as everywhere else in the world, the search of the most balanced learning model continues. But while earlier the world was ready to dismiss the classical school with its emphasis on patience and work as desperately antiquated, now the wisdom of the ancestors is valued again. Thus it was earlier forbidden to eat during the classes, chat or laugh, not to destroy the knowledge with your mouth, or to wander over the classroom during the lesson lest "ye stray from the path of knowledge". Now these old truths that may seem naive and absurd to many of our emancipated contemporaries are again taught as the ABCs of any effective educational system. Most likely, we cannot fully dispense with whips, even if only virtual.
Vladimir Emelyanenko
