Contemporary dimensions of a quality education

What criteria should be used in determining the quality of education? What are the requirements of our times and how do they influence the tasks of education? These and other questions are raised in the following interview with Academician Vasyl H. KREMEN, president of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Dr. Kremen, what are the modern requirements of a quality education?

Today Ukrainian society and the whole of modern civilization are imposing a number of relatively new demands on people. Education, as a sphere that primarily secures human progress and the development of the individual, should form individuals who will be adequate to these demands, so that they can be successful and competitive in life. I will mention several such things. First, considering that mankind is more actively entering the innovative phase of progress, modern education and society undoubtedly should prepare pioneering individuals — in other words, people with innovative ways of thinking, innovative types of culture, and an ability to conduct creative activities. Why is this necessary? Because today, like never before, knowledge, ideas, and technologies are changing faster than the generations. For an individual to be capable of acting in an innovative manner, s/he must learn to study new things.

HOW CAN LEARNING TO STUDY BE TAUGHT?

What should be changed in our schools and how?

First, we must take full advantage of the transition of secondary education to a 12-grade system, upgrade the curriculum and bring it into conformity with the modern development of scholarship in the content of school subjects, prepare truly modern textbooks, and supply teachers with comprehensive methodical recommendations.

We must keep consistently preparing for the introduction of specialized senior schools. Here there are a lot of problems, ranging from the preparation of special textbooks to practical aspects of such specialized training. Special difficulties will emerge in rural areas. It is important to upgrade the organization of secondary educational establishments. So far our secondary schools are inadequately differentiated as junior, basic, and senior. We know that instruction and upbringing in each of them must be essentially different, depending on the pupil’s age. When a child spends 11 years in the same classroom and with the same classmates, s/he gets used to the unchangeable conditions. In adulthood one’s milieu constantly changes, requiring people to assert themselves in the collective each time.

I’m certain that the word “school” should not apply to senior school. These have to be lycees, special educational establishments with strong teaching staffs oriented toward certain guidelines and a certain category of children.

Today there are big problems in realizing the classical function of education: acquiring knowledge. Regrettably, our programs are overburdened with ancillary material, and schoolchildren are often instructed to memorize this supplementary material. These programs should be eased, and I think (this is my suggestion) the time has come to form national subject commissions on every school subject, which would be composed of representatives of the National Academy of Sciences, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, Ministry of Education and Science, and associates in the sphere of education and culture to develop an optimum version of every subject, with an eye to the latest developments in a given sphere. This program should be adapted for schoolchildren of a certain age group, provide knowledge, and at the same time teach them to master knowledge in the future.

The world is moving toward a “knowledge” society. This most often implies the existence of increasingly powerful information flows. This, of course, is part of a knowledge society, but in my opinion it will be created only after people are duly prepared and capable of living and working on the basis of acquired knowledge. In other words, knowledge does not stand next to a person, knowledge is not for passing exams or tests; knowledge is the basis, methods of behavior, and professional and daily activities. Unfortunately, this aspect of our education is being realized in a markedly inadequate manner. Without introducing this type of instruction we will not be able to prepare competitive individuals.

If our schools will be able to produce knowledgeable individuals, will this be enough to form a contemporary individual?

We must prepare knowledgeable, advanced, and self-sufficient individuals. The modern world is so rich in communications that people increasingly often finds themselves exposed to controversial influences. For a person to remain true to himself or herself, moreover to be effective, it is necessary for the individual to be more self-sufficient than before, capable of working out a conscious position, and acting in a conscious manner. We must put an end to authoritarian, repressive pedagogy and make a transition to a tolerant one. If a child is raised in an authoritarian environment, s/he is formed on the basis of appropriate factors. In other words, the child does not become self-sufficient and will act as a yes- man. Unless we can democratize education, we won’t have a truly stable democratic system or an effective market because the former and the latter require an individual capable of acting on his/her own instead of being an obedient tool in someone else’s hands

THE GLOBALIST INDIVIDUAL AND LINGUISTIC BREAKTHROUGH

What else should be changed in our education?

Quality education means that schools, education, and society must prepare a globalist individual, one capable of living in the global space. This is increasingly necessary today and here we are faced with a great many tasks, starting with the formation of the child’s world outlook, so that s/he will understand the world — a global world, global environment, global contacts — and ending with learning languages. We must make a linguistic breakthrough in our education and then in society. We must not argue about who doesn’t want to study what language. We should aim for people who speak the most languages.

The process of instruction must be technologized, and we must prepare technological individuals capable of using effective modern technologies, like computers and so on. Also, I would like to point out that it is necessary to restore the traditional technologies that we use to study in school. I believe that every school leaver must know how to drive a car and pass a driving test. One must receive the kind of qualification in school one will need in daily life.

What about the schoolchildren’s orientation in terms of values? What is the school’s role?

Modern education must prepare an individual with a modern system of values. Unfortunately, due to certain inertial processes, there are frequent cases when the child is instilled with a system of obsolete values. This holds back the individual, makes it impossible for him to reveal himself the way he would on the basis of modern values. For example, the younger generation has a different attitude to patriotic education from mine. Sometimes you hear that there is no sense in talking about patriotism in conditions of globalization, that all people are brothers. This is not exactly so because globalization means not only international rapprochement and the creation of an increasingly united economic space. Globalization also means a sharpening of competition and its extension to all spheres of life in society. This contest will be won by countries and nations that show the strongest unity and the best understanding of their national interests. This is impossible without doing proper work in school, within the educational system, without forming patriotic feelings, without a sense of national unity.

TESTING AND MEDAL WINNERS

What kind of knowledge assessment system should our schools practice?

External testing is being practiced on an increasing scale, but this testing should not be reduced to the senior grades, where schoolchildren first encounter this. Testing should be practiced for the duration of study in school — and not only according to the results of the year but, for example, the results of several subjects. By the way, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, on its own initiative and in collaboration with the Ukrainian Independent Testing Center and a number of publishing companies, is preparing collections of tests for every subject. These collections will be published during this academic year.

Dr. Kremen, in your public appearances you constantly mention child-centrism in education. Would you please explain what this is?

Child-centrism in education means that instruction and upbringing are based on the development of the child’s inborn abilities. In order to help assert child-centrism in education and restructure the educational system on the basis of the child’s abilities, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine is working to establish the Institute for Gifted Children. For some time scientists have been discussing the creation of an infrastructure that would carry out comprehensive studies of gifted children and children in general; until now there has been no such structure in Ukraine. The Academy of Pedagogical Sciences turned to the government about setting this up, and on Aug. 8 a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers created the Institute for Gifted Children as part of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.

It is hard to imagine a child that is equally talented in all respects or equally untalented. This never happens. In view of this, I would welcome a debate on the ongoing practice of awarding gold medals. I sincerely respect medal winners; I too was a gold medalist and so is my daughter. However, are such awards expedient, especially in modern conditions? As a rule, everyone knows that this boy or girl will receive a medal one or two years before graduation. All their classmates have seen teachers give these virtual medal winners — good boys and girls, as a rule — higher marks than they deserve. This is how the double standard and injustice were created. Now that testing is being introduced (it will be compulsory), can a medal winner show worse results than a non-medalist? Logic says that medals must be awarded proceeding from the results of tests that are taken in the last weeks of school. I know that during this short period medals cannot even be made and properly issued. But this is not the main point.

The child’s — and especially the parents’ — desire to win a medal is damaging to the child because s/he has to pay maximum attention to all subjects, particularly those that are especially difficult; you have to get an A. As a result, not enough attention is paid to the subjects where this child shows talent because most of his or her energy is being spent on non-favorite subjects. This is why such an approach impedes the child’s development on the basis of talent. I believe changes are in order here and emphasis must be placed not on the general assessment of knowledge of all subjects but the pupil’s best performance in some of them. Not coincidentally, there was once the practice of attaching more importance to marks received during exams for specialist subjects; some importance was attached to the “honor rolls” that were received for such disciplines. Therefore, I would introduce (or preserve) such a system of incentives for school graduates, proceeding from test results; I would determine their places by test results

APROPOS OF UNNECESSARY KNOWLEDGE

In other words, you are proposing other criteria for assessing school leavers’ merits?

In some countries a separate assessment system is applied to every subject. There are various grading systems, highest grades, and a different grading scale. This is useful because the child should learn to act in various systems of coordinates. Various joint commissions on every subject should be formed in Ukraine, consisting for example, of the ministry, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, National Academy, so as to carefully study the content of instruction, the relationship between this content and the contemporary development of scholarship; how much attention is being paid to basic knowledge, whether the program is overburdened with information that is not necessary to memorize. Our schoolchildren are overworked because we are giving them unnecessary knowledge that is not basic. I won’t even mention the fact that we must, of course, teach in such a way that children will instantly see the practical significance of new knowledge while they are mastering it. Naturally, to a person knowledge as such is not as important as knowledge as the foundation of activity and life. I am certain that the goal of education is to help people realize themselves, and thus create happy people.