soft skills, because, for example, teachers and parents lack the skill to take care of themselves, and a lot of them experience burnout. As an Italian acquaintance of mine used to say: "How are you going to work if you’re not rested?”
These skills help us relate objects to real life. To be honest, I’m a big fan of phenomenon-based learning[3], where you learn one global topic through different disciplines, and you tie all the subjects together in that way.
You mentioned the Finnish model of education. What is its main difference from the Russian model?
We visited Finnish schools together with teachers from Russian schools. One day we came to a school that had just introduced education via VR technologies. They taught biology, geography, and anatomy lessons using VR glasses. What our teachers were most concerned about was who paid for these glasses. The Finnish teachers had no idea what they were talking about. I explained that we couldn’t have teachers spending budgets. And at some point it became clear that the key word for Finnish education is "trust," the trust of the state in teachers. The teacher can change the curriculum to suit the students as he or she sees fit. If they think VR glasses are needed, then so be it.
One Finnish teacher told us: "Historically, we have three categories of professionals in our society, the specialists who are more trusted by the country. It’s teachers, doctors, and the police." And we all went: "Oh, I see." Therein lies the difference between Finnish education and Russian education.
In Finland, teachers are legally obliged to try new methodological findings and techniques, that is, they are obliged to follow everything that is new. And I think that’s a very big difference.
I think we need to get off teachers’ back and let them live outside the box at least a little bit. When you have every other teacher complaining that everything is too hard, that makes it impossible for them to get creative.
I think we need to get off teachers’ back and let them live outside the box at least a little bit. Because when you have every other teacher complaining that they find themselves stuck and everything is too hard and they have to find ways around, that makes it impossible for them to get creative. We all like to work in a free atmosphere, without being disturbed by various issues.
Can the School of the Future be available to any child without any admission screening? What does it take?
It’s my dream, to be honest. In fact, that’s what a lot of private schools are scolded for – selectivity, when you select the most talented people to go to school. I don’t really believe in this model because bullying tends to flourish in such schools. The harshest emotional and physical violence happens in those schools where everyone tries to outdo each other, and where there is incredible rivalry, unfortunately. That’s when, in principle, a lot of people give up and get off the finish line, because it’s impossible to study in that rivalry for too long.
I think that non-selective school access is definitely not an issue for the next 10–15 years, unfortunately.
If you were creating the School of the Future today, what do you think is the best way to do it?
Any good project starts with defining your target audience. I always divide my projects into "whats” and "hows.” It’s the same here: what we want from the school, and how we want to do it. These are two related things.
Next we need the recipient to find the sender, that is, for the parent request to match what the school has to offer. This, by the way, is the advantage of private schools. When people come there, it’s because they already have a good idea of what they want.
Next comes the most important stage – finding staff. I don’t support the view that the situation with teachers in regular public schools is very bad. There are a lot of good teachers out there, you just have to look for them and get them out of the schools where they feel bad.
Which of the existing schools in Russia, in your opinion, are closest to the School of the Future? Oddly enough, I think it was the Tubelsky School under Alexander Naumovich himself. It was a school that was way ahead of its time. Maybe also Dima Zitser’s Orange School in St. Petersburg, because, indeed, it has a model of learning that is built on absolute freedom. Frankly, I haven’t seen anything like that anywhere else.
This may sound surprising, but this is also School No. 42 in Belgorod. It struck me that you can put together a community of teachers with the right attitudes and teaching humanity, 4C skills[4] in a perfectly ordinary municipal school. I wouldn’t call it the School of the Future outright, but it’s a very valuable example to me.
What about foreign schools?
I won’t be original here, I really like the Finnish schools. For example, Saunalahti and Ressu. Or the Swedish Kunskapsskolan School, which I mentioned earlier. There is also La Source School, which is the last one I describe in my book "The Other School.”
And another school that I remember for its views on teachers and for what our Western colleagues call forward thinking is Ørestad, a "gymnasium without walls” in Denmark, which makes an honest attempt at open space, where you learn to interact with other kids, even through space, from high school on. That is, you are forced to learn with others side by side. From the perspective of the director of this school, empathy is one of the main skills of the 21st century. We often talk about personality, but we don’t support this idea in any way. And that school is built around the idea of the child being at the center of the educational process.
Let's talk about humane pedagogy. In my opinion, this is a somewhat strange phenomenon, because everyone knows about Shalva Amonashvili and his followers, yet there are fewer than ten accredited schools on the Center for Humane Pedagogy website. Is humane pedagogy worth taking into the future, and if so, how shall it be done?
I love Shalva Aleksandrovich very much, especially after he called "The Other School” his Bible. After those words, I can basically call my career completed (smiles). But I think the packaging is the issue. Behind such a beautiful name is a very simple thing. It’s a love for children. Any teacher who treats his or her students humanely is, in my opinion, a humane pedagogue.
Any teacher who treats his or her students humanely is, in my opinion, a humane pedagogue. It takes a person who has the talent to repackage the ideas of humane pedagogy, to make them mainstream.
I would act on the methodology of the Finnish director Lina Liusvaara, which at one time struck me very much. When she and I walked around the Ressu school, I saw that for all its innovative approach, there were a lot of classes with the classical seating arrangement of students. I told her: "It’s so unlike the image of the Finnish school that we know." The principal told me: "Because we think it’s wrong to break everything that’s been done before us."
Right now, for example, I’m making a big film about Lev Vygotsky. In fact, it is amazing how much we use Vygotsky's works without even realizing it. In the U. S. I will be in touch with two people who worked with Vygotsky and Lurie. They are James Werche and Michael Cole – people who still remember that Soviet model. It’s very important for me to show in this film a person who had a great influence on all of us, and we don’t even realize it.
I will also be talking to Elena Bodrova, who lives in America. She wrote the book "Tools of the Mind" together with Deborah Leong. She took Vygotsky's teachings and everything he said about children and repackaged those ideas. Now she is taking American schools and kindergartens by storm. The book became a bestseller,
Phenomenon-based learning (PhBL or PhenoBL), is a form of learning where students learn a topic or concept as a whole. PhBL emerged as a response to the idea that traditional subject-oriented learning is outdated and removed from the real world.
The 4C model includes four basic skills that can and should be developed from an early age: Communication, Cooperation, Critical thinking, and Creativity.
