about, it is about motivating each other and enjoying each other’s company.
You talk about community, but when I come to school, unlike some hobby group or family class, I don't know who is waiting for me there, and I don't get to choose whom I will study with.
Absolutely, yes. But I believe that gradually it comes down to a backbone of people who are blazing for what they want. I asked the principals outright: "But surely you must have teachers who are not like you, whose idea of education is banging the students on their heads with a ruler." – "Of course we do." – "And what do you do about them?" – "Nothing, really. It is just that once they find themselves around us, they either fit in with the team or realize it is not their thing."
When you find yourself in a good school, you identify yourself and search for your kind. Ideally, the school is a community. The school is about motivating each other and enjoying each other’s company.
It’s like any workplace. You come in, everyone there is different. Some people really want to work, while others just want to sit through the office hours and go home in the evening. The principal’s role then is to assemble a team of people who will not sit through their hours but who will blaze for their work.
Do you think it is normal to have teachers migrate from one school to another?
I often get letters from teachers: "I work hard, but other than me, there are just one or two committed individuals in the entire staff, and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to be creative in the classroom." In cases like this, of course, people would leave to other schools, just to find what is right for them. I don’t really believe in being a "lone warrior." In teaching, you won’t go far on enthusiasm alone.
Then where do we look for good teachers?
As my latest filming trip shows, regular municipal schools tend to hire people who have not graduated from pedagogical universities and are therefore not trained to be teachers. Instead, they opt for specialists in various areas. For example, a person is very passionate about geography, and goes to teach this subject in school. Roughly speaking, the Asya Kazantseva or Alexander Panchin type of people (science journalists and popularizers of science – editor's note). And this sounds like a feasible option, because such people really enjoy talking about their subject. We pay them for their lectures, without realizing it is just as much teaching work, instead we give them a beautiful name like «popularizers» or “researchers." However, in fact, these are ready-made teachers – just take them, lure them into school, and that’s it, they are ready to teach the kids.
It is nice to have such science celebrities, committed individuals with their own views, but what about the Federal State Education Standards (FGOS) and other mandatory requirements to the curriculum? How do you accommodate this alliance?
It is possible on one condition, when you don’t have ego competition in school. I’ve often seen the “celebs" being in confrontation with the school administration. I think this kind of conflict can often be relieved by having good communication between the principal and the teachers. If you have a dialogue, I don’t see any problem with making it FGOS compliant.
Going back to the generalized image of the good school we want to see in the future, how different do you think it is from the typical school of today? There is one trend I noticed back in 2015–2016 in European schools, and it seems to me that it is now rolling over to us quite successfully, including through our joint efforts – books, lectures, education. At the center of the educational process is a person, a child. It seems to me that until recently we were like cab drivers at the exit from the airport, when the arriving passenger was shocked at what was going on. Ideally, the school is like a navigator. You say: “I need to get there and there," and the navigator tells you: “Okay, I’ll take you there using the most scenic route while avoiding congestion. Trust me, I am your guide."
A famous person once gave me a good metaphor. This metaphor applies to journalists and to psychologists, but I think it is equally applicable to teachers, because we all deal with people. When you do something, you have to remember that you are like a guide in the mountains, you’re leading people. If you keep picking paths that are only comfortable for you, at the end of the road there may be no one left behind you. You have to remember that people are following you, and you have to choose the road for them, not for yourself.
The School of the Future the ideal school is built on the fact that first you help the child to decide where he or she needs to go, you build a route, and then you help them along this route.
I think we’re just moving from a school of equalization to a school of personalized routing, trying to proceed from the child’s interests. This brings us back to the original meaning of the word "pedagogue,” which, as you may recall, is translated as "a child guide”.
The ideal school is built on the fact that first you help the child to decide where he or she needs to go, you build a route, and then you help them along this route.
Have you encountered any schools that have built a truly personalized trajectory for children, a format where the child's interests actually count?
The only perfect example I have found so far is the school I describe in "The Other School” book. That’s Kunskapsskolan in Finland, where the general school curriculum for the whole country is shaped for each individual student. This model is highly scalable, and they have patented it and have been using it successfully in England and in India. It really impressed me a lot that you could do that.
I think we had such attempts in Russia at the A. N. Tubelsky school. At least I heard a lot about it from alumni and teachers who worked there. The teachers agreed they would use their disciplines to develop certain skills in children: the skill of logical thinking, critical perception of information. Each instructor was hitting a different aspect of that goal from his or her discipline.
One of the teachers at the New School was doing a personalized route in his history classes. He was building a system where students could read more, do more work to get the next level, like in a game. At the highest level, they could deliver a lesson, like teachers.
This personalization of education, from what age it is appropriate, do you think? From age seven, middle school or high school?
That’s a good question. Psychologists now say that the age of adolescent crisis in children is shifting. If it used to be at 13–14, 15–16 years old, now it starts with children as young as 10. I guess it makes sense to say that the earlier you try different things, the better. At the very least, I’m absolutely convinced that getting experience at an early age really shapes you in the future. I can see it in my loved ones and in the children I am in contact with. And I’ve done three or four thousand interviews with children in the last three years. Those who have had an experience are very different from their peers.
Tatyana Kovaleva, professor at the Moscow State Pedagogical University, believes that the time has come for self skills, the skills needed to take care of oneself. Psychologist and professor Alexander Asmolov speaks of soft skills as a set of competencies that a person must possess in a changing world. In what proportion do you think the School of the Future can and should teach soft, hard, and self skills?
First of all, big thanks to Alexander Grigorievich Asmolov, with whom we have a very warm and close relationship; it is his merit that it is said about these skills so much.
As is often the case with social change, there can be a strong bias at first. Now some private schools are positioning themselves exclusively as soft skills schools, the preparation for the business
