Teaching Is More Than Pedagogical Practice: Thirty-Three Strategies for Dealing with Contemporary Students

TEACHING IS MORE THAN PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICE Thirty-Three Strategies for Dealing with Contemporary Students

Il g hiz M. S in a ga t u llin

TEACHING IS MORE THAN PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICE Thirty-Three Strategies for Dealing with Contemporary Students

ILGHIZ M. SINAGATULLIN

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD EDUCATION Lanham • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Education A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmaneducation.com Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Ilghiz M. Sinagatullin All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sinagatullin, Ilghiz M., 1954– Teaching is more than pedagogical practice : thirty-three strategies for dealing with contemporary students / Ilghiz M. Sinagatullin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60709-130-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-131-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-132-5 (electronic) 1. Effective teaching. 2. Teachers—Conduct of life. 3. Teacher-student relationships. I. Title. LB1025.3.S565 2009 371.102—dc22 2009004256

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

CONTENTS

Foreword vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I Enhance Your Humanitarian and Global Scope 7 CHAPTER 1

Understand and Accept Important Humanistic Values 9 CHAPTER 2

Enhance Your Global Competency 15 CHAPTER 3

Get to Know the World’s Renowned Personalities 22 CHAPTER 4

Get to Know the Man-Made Wonders of the World 28 CHAPTER 5

Master Your English 35 CHAPTER 6

Make School a Holy Place 41 iii

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER 7

Avoid Corruption 47 CHAPTER 8

Cherish the Phenomenon of Time 53 CHAPTER 9

Listen to Your Inner Voice 59 CHAPTER 10

Take Care of Your Health 65 CHAPTER 11

Love and Treat Each Learner as Your Own Child 72 Part II Cope with the Diversity of Students 79 CHAPTER 12

Recognize and Accept the Diversity of Students 81 CHAPTER 13

Enhance Your Multicultural Competency 87 CHAPTER 14

Know Children’s Learning Styles 94 CHAPTER 15

Use Folk Pedagogy 101 CHAPTER 16

Promote Health Education 107 CHAPTER 17

Learn a Child’s Genealogy 114 CHAPTER 18

Love the Unloved 121

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 19

Organize Proper Gender Education 127 CHAPTER 20

Be Tolerant 134 CHAPTER 21

Be Careful Not to Lose Your Dignity 141 Part III Master Your Didactic Competency 147 CHAPTER 22

Use Proper Strategies to Motivate Children 149 CHAPTER 23

Be a Positive Role Model for Children and Parents 156 CHAPTER 24

Admit Your Own Mistakes 162 CHAPTER 25

Avoid Excessive Academic Pressure 168 CHAPTER 26

Train Your Memory 175 CHAPTER 27

Learn to Leave Your “Golden Knowledge and Wisdom” Unsaid 181 CHAPTER 28

Let Your Learners Do Most of the Talking 187 CHAPTER 29

Be a Competent Rural Teacher 193 CHAPTER 30

Teach Children to Protect the Environment 199

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CHAPTER 31

Empower Learners to Cognize the Unknown 205 CHAPTER 32

Provide Learners with a High-Quality and Strong Education 213 CHAPTER 33

Teach Children to Change the World 220 Conclusion 225 References 227 Index 233 About the Author 243

Foreword

S AN EDUCATOR, ARE YOU

preparing children to understand and be effective in the twenty-first century? As this book goes to press, the world remains in a precarious situation. Conflicts exist in many parts of the world, fueled for the most part by deep-seated ethnic tensions that lie within their own national borders. Major environmental concerns cross national borders, and we stand on the brink of major health catastrophes ranging from HIV/AIDS to the potential bird-flu pandemic. Indigenous people the world over struggle for recognition of their traditions, demanding redress for many ills that have befallen them for centuries. Educators play a critical role in facilitating a greater understanding of the conditions under which we all live. They also play a vital role in enhancing the skills of individuals so they are better prepared to collaborate with others in the resolution of our global problems. Tom Peters, noted business consultant, reportedly once said, “What gets measured, gets done.” This seems increasingly true in the field of education today in a growing number of countries around the world, as more and more are driven by assessment of both teachers and students. While most educators would agree that the development of the whole child is of utmost importance for society, it is ultimately the assessments that are used that determine what happens in schools and classrooms. What appears to be increasingly common in the assessment efforts of students is an overemphasis on demonstrating competence in the knowledge domains of the relatively standard academic disciplines that have served as the foundation of education worldwide for decades. Adding to this is the more recent tendency in attempts to professionalize the field that have resulted in licensing procedures

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FOREWORD

that similarly standardize the instructional behavior of teachers—again emphasizing the traditional knowledge domain and pedagogical practice. We must ask, are these the essential elements that define good teaching and learning for the twenty-first century? Do these efforts result in a more broadly educated student or teacher? A chasm exists between the traditional goals of education and the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that are required to function effectively in the twenty-first century. Are we effectively preparing the next generation to understand the intricacies of the global environment and how to modify our behavior in such a way that we can alter the course we seem to be following? Do teachers understand the life experiences of all children they are responsible to teach? Are they skilled and competent enough to integrate curriculum and pedagogy that speak to the needs of all their students? Do they themselves know what it means to be marginalized? Are educators prepared to explain to students what has not yet been explained and is poorly articulated in teacher education institutions and professional literature? Are they effective at communicating and building bridges across cultures, both in their classrooms as well as in their communities? Can they recall the difficulties they encountered in their own learning and relate this to students today? More important, how are we to help students develop the necessary critical, reflective, and inclusive thought processes and accommodate different points of view when they are asked to demonstrate all they know on single-answer multiple choice tests? Herein lies the conflict. These are many of the issues Professor Sinagatullin addresses in this sensitive publication. He confronts many of the underlying goals and objectives of teaching and learning and challenges educators to reflect and consider their own role and obligation to both understand as well as address some of these phenomena. He does this in a way that both honors the past and the traditions people exhibit in their schools and communities and links them to current issues and problems that need attention. From addressing the diversity of one’s students and enhancing one’s didactic skills to building a global perspective, Professor Sinagatullin challenges the reader to focus on that which is essential in the education of the whole being. Kenneth Cushner, EdD Professor of Education Kent State University

Acknowledgments

such as this has concerned me since the early years of my educational career. I have continually been thinking of various important issues in pedagogical theory and practice, which have been either ignored by educators or only vaguely explained to would-be teachers and educators. As I gained more experience, I ventured to express my innermost and most cherished thoughts on paper. Working on this publication has been one of the happiest and most exciting experiences in my life. I extend my gratitude to many policy makers, educators, university faculty members, students, and other people engaged in education on both sides of the Atlantic. I am especially thankful and indebted to Dr. Tom Koerner, vice president and editorial director of Rowman & Littlefield Education, for offering substantial encouragement and valuable feedback from an earlier draft of the book to its completion. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Kenneth Cushner, professor of education at the Department of Teaching, Leadership, and Curriculum Studies in the College of Education, Health and Human Services, Kent State University, Ohio, for providing me with considerable assistance, advice, and useful comments and for ensuring my understanding of various aspects of American education. I am thankful to Dr. Penelope Lisi, professor at the Department of Educational Leadership, Central Connecticut State University, for her invaluable remarks and suggestions, which have considerably ameliorated the content and structure of the book.

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HE IDEA OF WRITING A BOOK

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a great deal to Dr. Virginia Bailey, second-grade literacy teacher at Alamosa Elementary School, Albuquerque, New Mexico, without whose expertise I could not have properly developed some of my ideas on child rearing.

Introduction

of students, teachers and educators follow a variety of principles and strategies. Young educators may be knowledgeable in strategizing and implementing predominantly formal or technology-based tactics and strategies recommended by teacher education institutions and provided in educational literature. However, some of the important principles or simple strategies are often ignored. Often educators fail to apply their minds to them because they are simply unaware of the existence of such strategies, especially at the beginning of their careers. In other cases, educators do not know how to use these strategies in practice with young girls and boys. Therefore, in this work I explain some confusing and challenging situations that educators might notice but not quite understand. In still other cases, educators ignore certain techniques and strategies because of definite prejudiced and biased attitudes toward certain cultures. In addition, some suggestions and admonitions I propose are either poorly and fragmentarily explained or totally missing in contemporary educational journals, periodicals, teacher guidebooks, reference literature, and the mass media of television and the Internet. Thus, a prime objective of this study is voicing the truths and vital methodological and didactic strategies that have been unsaid or only vaguely articulated to preservice teachers in their educational institutions. This book offers thirty-three strategies, each of which incorporates a variety of suggestions and recommendations instrumental in classroom practice and in interacting with students on school grounds and elsewhere. Each suggestion provides and encourages educators with a specific insight

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ORKING WITH A DIVERSITY

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INTRODUCTION

on how to deal with a corresponding teaching/learning situation. Obviously, no single principle, strategy, or approach will work in all situations, all schools, all cultural settings, and all societies. I urge educators to look for and apply the best that each of these recommendations and suggestions can offer. The book may be a valuable supplementary source for prospective and working teachers and educators who are ignited by the ideas of ameliorating the teaching and child rearing processes and who are eager to expand their multicultural and global expertise, professional knowledge, and skills for interacting with children. This book will be a good source to teachers working at the graduate level. It may be also an invaluable source to preservice students during their student-teaching period. The text may be used both for teaching and for professional reference. Contemporary educators live and work in a turbulent, roaring epoch, characterized by unprecedented global changes and processes. Following are some of the challenges, which I mention here in brief and then revisit in corresponding chapters in more detail as they become relevant to our analysis of particular issues. Globalization is permeating the economic, sociocultural, and educational spheres of life and necessitating educational institutions to conceptualize and implement the ideas of global and multicultural education and to develop students’ global literacy and competency. Digitization of socioeconomic and educational spaces is making the entire world a small place and transforming the ways of learning. Owing to computers and related technology, students are tending to become self-sufficient in gaining knowledge and information. They are starting to perceive libraries and books as something that should be used only after finding the essence of a problem on the Internet. The influx of the English language is ousting other international languages from the global linguistic and educational space. Today, in a wide range of non-English-speaking countries, most of the students in educational institutions of different types are switching to learning English as a foreign language. Possessing this language places some people living in such countries in a more privileged position, helps advance their professional careers, and facilitates their attaining of world fame. Demographic metamorphoses are leading to huge population increases in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia and to a population decrease in some northern and eastern European countries. On the whole, the world population is on the rise and, as demographers predict, may reach 9.5 billion by 2050.

INTRODUCTION

3

The ecological worsening of the planet is likely to change some of the essential variables in the lives of human beings, animal species, and plants. For instance, increasing global warming may gradually change life both on the surface of our planet and in the ocean. Before it is too late, humanity should undertake decisive steps to reduce environmental pollution and protect biodiversity. The worsening of children’s health is an unprecedented phenomenon that will ultimately have a negative impact on the generations to come. Some diseases typical of people of middle and late adulthood have “rejuvenated” and now beset children and adolescents. For example, cardiovascular diseases and Type 2 diabetes, which twenty or thirty years ago used to affect people mostly in middle and old age, now cause problems among schoolchildren. In this study I base my assumptions on the educational experiences that have been garnered by humanity since ancient times, the results of theoretical and practical scientific research in the spheres of education and psychology, the ideas of celebrated thinkers and educators such as John Dewey, Leo Tolstoy, Maria Montessori, Lev Vygotsky, and others, and on my personal experience and observations while working as a teacher and teacher educator. Part I provides some suggestions on enhancing educators’ humanitarian and global competencies. Part II offers some specific guidelines on how to deal with the diversity of students. In part III, I call on educators to keep to a set of didactic precepts. Although the chapters within the sections look motley and varied, I have attempted to connect the main ideas depicted in the chapters into one logical chain so that the reader may read the book as an embodiment of one synthesized whole but, at the same time, may study each chapter as an autonomous topic because each is worthy of special attention in its own right. Throughout the book, I illustrate theoretical assumptions with examples and case studies, in which the names of some people have been changed. Even though I address the issues of education and recommend solving educational problems by educational means and within the academic environment, I am fully aware of the fact that a broad array of problems that education faces in many countries lie outside the sphere of education. Education is dependent on the overall economic and sociocultural development of a country. Child and personality development occurs not only in schools and families, but also through an individual’s interaction in the social milieu—that is, in a real process of socialization. If there is something wrong in the community a child lives in or in the larger society, then this

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INTRODUCTION

“wrong” may gradually make a negative impact on the development of the child. Education is also dependent on the way that state and government regard the issues of education and child development. Some governments tend to avoid dealing with the issues of education, culture, and science. They tend to consider these spheres as an unprofitable burden. Thus, contemporary schools depend on a great variety of external factors. Should we then sit and wait for governmental officials and affluent sponsors to come to schools and make them ideal places for gaining knowledge? If we wait, we may wait forever. Teachers and educators themselves are a strong force; they have been and always are at the forefront of educating the younger generations. In working with children, an educator always has to give up some of herself or himself. This is a great—if not the greatest— law in the science of education and child rearing. This law of education incorporates a sacrificial element. Unequivocally did Tolstoy (1989, 400) state that the “fruits of a veritable science and veritable arts are those of sacrifice, not the fruits of definite materialistic advantages.” An educator is like a wheat seed planted in a field. Even though the seed is small, it is strong enough to give rise to a dozen new and young seeds, which are first tightly gathered within a spike and then dispersed, each serving its purpose in feeding humans and other living creatures. This tiny and strong seed gives life to dozens of young seedlings, multiplying life. The meaning of this morality tale is as follows: The tiny seed is the educator who teaches and brings up students and does everything possible to teach them to achieve academically and to behave decently. The class of students the educator is working with represents the spike—that is, future young citizens of their own nation and the world. Upon gaining a decent and solid education and receiving the certificate (i.e., when the new and young seedlings become ripe and come off the spike), each schoolgirl and schoolboy finds her or his own professional and life paths. Following these paths, they are expected to do benevolent deeds and be useful to humanity. Thus, the educator works and then retires, but the “newly born” educated citizens continue and augment the educator’s legacy and increase the wealth of the nation. While writing this book, along with other inferences, I thought of two philosophical phenomena, probably applicable in a great variety of day-today situations, which helped me cool my ardor and grow wise in some educational issues. I sometimes thought about how whatever a human being is doing, for him or for her, every past and every future is not far off but

INTRODUCTION

5

quite near. At other times, I marvelled at the thought of how idyllic and heavenly it is to be engaged in educating young people, tomorrow’s builders of a new life on the planet. Author’s note: In the following chapters, a number of Wikipedia references are cited as sources for background material in this book.The validity of all such references has been confirmed by the author. However, readers would be well advised to remember that Wikipedia should always be treated with extreme caution in academic circles, as the online encyclopedia is occasionally subject to error.

ENHANCE YOUR HUMANITARIAN AND GLOBAL SCOPE

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N THIS SECTION, I CALL ON

educators to understand and accept important humanistic values and virtues, to gain global knowledge, to be knowledgeable about the world and its enigmas, to be competent in using the language of subject-area instruction, and to make the school a shrine of knowledge. Contemporary teachers and educators should take responsibility for the academic achievement of each learner and create a favorable democratic environment for children.

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Understand and Accept Important Humanistic Values

1

The important and decisive factor in life is not what happens to us, but the attitude we take toward what happens. CHARLES R. WOODSON

Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul. HONORÉ DE BALZAC

an educator to properly understand and internalize a set of humanistic values traditionally appreciated by a majority of people across the world, regardless of their cultural, linguistic, gender, and social class backgrounds. These are also called universal or fundamental values. Each succeeding epoch may add to and enrich such values with some new content, but the nature of universal humanistic values rests on the fundamental principles of human essence and human behavior. People do not need to “create” such values; they have long been established, though they are not yet fully appreciated by some educators. Owing to certain political and ideological changes, people’s attitudes toward specific humanistic values and virtues may change. Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers and wise men used to portray the ideal individual as possessing fundamental values, the nucleus of which are virtues or particularly good and special qualities of character. Confucius (551–479 BC), a great Chinese thinker, proposed the restoration of the harmonious social order of the past through proper conduct. He considered upbringing to be more important than lineage and social

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T BECOMES IMPORTANT FOR

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origin. Confucius acknowledged the existence of the millennia-old values such as unselfish love, all-forgiving sincerity, all-embracing kindness, and incorruptible honesty. Sadly, the contemporary epoch is characterized by a decrease of vital spiritual and humanistic values and an increase of materialistic principles and virtues (Sinagatullin, 2004). The withering of humanistic values such as tolerance, empathy, respect for the elderly and parents, and honesty is currently on the rise, both in metro centers and rural areas. Instead, young people have become devoted to money and technology. Devotion to money (“love of money” and the material things it can buy) is a strong trend in the ranks of contemporary young men and women. In the first place, a considerable number of school graduates look forward to choosing a job or profession that will promote material success. Second, some young females seek to marry a wealthy man who will be a good provider. There seems to be nothing wrong in doing so—except that some young women seek to marry any wealthy man, never mind his age or reputation. Marrying an affluent male becomes a major goal and a fashionable modern practice for such females. In fact, currently it is a worldwide trend. All this means that our global society is witnessing the desecration of two salient assets: love of profession and a real love of the marriage partner. Devotion to technology, especially to mobile phones, is another passion among the young. Elise Batista (2003) claims that in the twenty-first century, mobile phones tend to be a primary mode of socializing for teens in industrialized countries, and young girls and boys often avoid contact with peers who do not have a mobile phone. These examples give us reason to contend that the contemporary young generation has become too materialistic and ego-oriented, to the detriment of true humanistic values and civic virtues. Among all the possible consequences, a deviation from true values has a negative impact on education and child rearing. Some middle school and high school students begin seeing education as a burden and seek easier ways to realize success. They often come to the conclusion that it is possible to build a prosperous life without possessing a good education. Other students decide to enter college or university just for the sake of a diploma, which someday may serve to gain them prestige or help them to stand out in a crowd of their peers. Moreover, a great number of parents find it difficult to establish favorable relations with their own children, whose disposition, mode of behavior, and attitudes toward teachers, parents, and the elderly are rapidly changing for the worse.

UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT IMPORTANT HUMANISTIC VALUES

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A call for real values is currently being echoed with new force in each educational institution and each family involved in child rearing. The decrease of humanistic and spiritual values has led to an increase in a wide range of “sins” such as excessive sexual activity, drug and alcohol abuse, and tobacco smoking. The twenty-first century is witnessing an unprecedented increase in sexual activity among both the young and the old, which promotes a further growth in sexual degradation. Intimate relations between males and females are reaching down to middle school students and increasing the cases of teen pregnancy. The rapid increase in cases of sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, genital herpes, HIV/AIDS, and dozens of others is largely the result of sexual activity and how young people harness their sexual drives. The drug business directly involves children and teenagers, who begin to use and distribute these murderous substances among their counterparts. Drug use causes psychological damage to young people and leads to their sexual and moral decline. One of the most hazardous and most serious health and social problems the world over is alcohol abuse. Alcoholic beverages are considered to be softer substances, but getting used to alcohol is as easy as getting used to marijuana or cocaine. As alcoholic drinks are so common and some of them (especially beer) are rather cheap, people forget that alcohol is a drug, similar in its qualities to narcotics. Children’s health is enormously damaged by smoking. Smokers are also known to seriously intoxicate surrounding nonsmokers with secondhand smoke, to which children are especially sensitive. Investigations indicate that annually more people die from smoking-related diseases than from drug abuse and HIV/AIDS. Damaging for all people and bringing about a hastened death, smoking is twice as dangerous for young girls, who sooner or later will become mothers. According to surveys conducted in Russia, boys usually start smoking before the age of ten, whereas girls tend to start smoking between the ages of thirteen and fourteen (Akhiyarov, 2003; Sinagatullin, 2004). To prevent and uproot these and other sins and negative tendencies among children, educators need to build a proper environment. Initially, educators themselves should understand, cherish, and accept a set of humanistic values, which will inevitably enrich their humanitarian scope, largely facilitate their work in infusing and making the educational process more value-oriented and child-centered, and promote their interaction with students in class and elsewhere.

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The contemporary epoch necessitates that educators have a good understanding of a set of important values such as freedom, responsibility, democracy, honesty, respect for people, and good health. Most people in the world cherish the idea of freedom. To be free is one of the greatest aspirations of contemporary man. Tolstoy (1989, 69) might have been exaggerating by saying that the “criterion of pedagogy is just one: it is freedom,” but all his assumptions on the need for freedom in educational matters were sincere. By calling educators to stick to the principles of freedom, Tolstoy did not exclude educators’ responsibility and accountability for their instructional methods and strategies, nor did he diminish the role of strong education and a fundamental knowledge base. He advised teachers to continually enhance their knowledge and skills and to prepare well for lessons. Thus, freedom should border and be balanced with responsibility—otherwise all human society may turn into a chaotic mob, where choice will not be determined by decisions and where people will not be able to curb their emotions and instincts. Devoid of responsibility, freedom may well shatter the essence and fundamentals of morality and statehood. Without responsibility, a striving for freedom may overstep the boundaries of decency, and such sins as drug and alcohol abuse, corruption, dishonesty, and nepotism may reach unprecedented heights. To fight injustice, corruption, violence, and other negative manifestations in human culture, responsible people may work both individually and in collaboration. Another invaluable treasure is democracy. In Western cultures, the teaching process in educational institutions is considered democratic. At least, there is more democracy in Western than in authoritarian countries. For instance, American democracy is not only a form of rule but also a way of living everyday life. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, includes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from unreasonable arrest. In most American schools, students can voice their opinions about school regulations. Undoubtedly, only a democratic society can provide a proper democratic education for growing generations. What kind of society is democratic and what type of education should such a society have? Regarding this point, John Dewey (1996) writes: A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and

UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT IMPORTANT HUMANISTIC VALUES

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the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. (p. 42)

An English proverb says “Honesty is the best policy.” Honesty is ultimately the best way to deal with children. An honest educator cannot become a slave of his transgressions, has a clear conscience, sleeps well, and is likely to be spiritually and psychologically healthy. An honest educator or parent will hardly yield to corruption, hypocrisy, and lies. In this turbulent century, being honest may be considered a great heroic deed. Respect for people is exactly what many young school graduates lack today. Earning respect necessitates knowing one’s own worth and respecting and honoring the worth of other people, regardless of their ethnic and cultural background. It is especially important to have a respectful attitude to the elderly, to people with alternative mental and physical health, and to people in need. A special respect and love is needed for exceptional children and children with learning and behavior problems. Particular concern should be also shown for gifted students, who often remain unnoticed under the pretense that giftedness will, in any event, find its way out, and that a gifted and talented child will not be lost in human society. Gifted and talented children need an individual didactic approach; otherwise a gifted child may reach only the level of the mainstream majority or, worse, lose motivation for further cognitive activity. Good health is a key value in human life. A considerable number of people, including the teaching/learning public, do not want to or even do not know how to take good care of their health. Some teachers spoil their body and mind by health-compromising activities. Many people start thinking about their health only in middle adulthood or even later, when it is often already too late to prevent corresponding bodily or psychic disorders. As health issues merit special attention, I will take a more detailed look at them in a later chapter. I summarize this chapter by offering several implications for classroom practice: ■

■

Emphasize the fundamental humanistic values and learn to express them in relation to yourself, your students, and your colleagues. Learn more about and sincerely accept values such as freedom, responsibility, democracy, honesty, respect for people, and good health. Teach your students to cherish freedom, to respect their parents and the elderly, to be democratic-minded and responsible in all

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undertakings, and to be honest with peers and other people. They also need to take care of their health by exercising, doing sports, and spending time in the open air. Create a healthy environment and take measures to combat drug and alcohol abuse and smoking among your students. These substances destroy not only children’s physical heath but also the deeper aspects of soul and personality. Working with students from some Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries, delicately handle the notions of freedom and democracy. These terms may assume specific coloring and interpretations in their native regions.

I recommend that educators learn as much as possible about other values that are commonly held in certain societies. As I discuss further in the following chapter, this will inevitably deepen and expand their global competency and promote, in turn, a deeper understanding of their own culture and mentality.

Questions 1. What important values did the great Chinese thinker Confucius advocate? 2. Love of one’s profession and a real love of the marriage partner are two assets people are required to cherish. Why and how are these invaluable canons desecrated in contemporary society? 3. What harm does excessive and irresponsible sexual activity bring to young girls and boys? 4. How can you prove that freedom is closely linked with responsibility? 5. Why should an educator show a special concern not only for exceptional but also for gifted children? 6. The author has briefly examined values such as freedom, responsibility, democracy, honesty, respect for people, and good health. Can you mention and comment on some other values and virtues appreciated in human society?

Enhance Your Global Competency

2

The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. THOMAS PAINE

Our true nationality is mankind. H. G. WELLS

separating one country from another, the United States from Mexico, Venezuela from Brazil, Algeria from Niger, Malaysia from Indonesia, and Russia from Finland. If we close our eyes and forget all the borders, a globe with one human community but boasting a huge variety of cultural, racial, and ethnic groups comes into view. One such sociocultural and economic entity on the regional level, where the borders have been almost forgotten, is the European Union.

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ET US FORGET THE BORDERS

In 1999 I happened to travel from Emmen, a small town in Holland, to Germany. As we were driving, I was studying the fields and small farms on both sides of the road. “Is it far to the German border from the place we are now?” I asked our colleague who was driving the car. “We are already in Germany and have been driving on German territory for at least twenty minutes,” answered the driver in fluent English (most of the Dutch people, of every age, are proficient in English). No policeman stopped us on the border, and I did not notice any salient sign indicating that we were crossing the border. Later, a colleague of mine who was riding with me said

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that he had seen on the border, quite by chance, a small sign, only just visible, with the words Bundesrepublic Deutschland. At the very moment when I quite unexpectedly found myself in German territory, without having noticed any borders, I said to myself, “Look, this is a salient sign that globalization is near; it is not only knocking at the door but it has already opened this door for us.” By the time we crossed the border between Holland and Germany in 1999, the ideas of globalization, global education, and global competency already existed.

I cherish a hope that more countries may join the European Union and that other regional unions and confederacies may emerge in the world. I am now writing these lines and simultaneously looking at the map of the world hanging on the wall above my writing table. I visualize this world without borders between the countries and see people freely crossing the borders to visit other places in the world. What a good thing it would be! I am pleased to confess to the reader that frequent glances at a map of the world or a globe often help my thinking stay at an equilibrium between the global and the national. So far, despite the existence of some slight political, cultural, and linguistic differences between the member-states, the European Union shows humanity a good example of how people with varying cultural and ethnic traditions can coexist on a large sociogeographical scale. As the whole idea of global competency stems from globalization and global education, I will first comment on these latter phenomena. The phenomenon of globalization and its relation to education is being widely discussed among politicians, scholars, educators, and students throughout the world. Some people fully reject and refuse to accept this phenomenon; others try to understand and accept it; and still others, partisans of globalization, completely accept this idea and associate with it all progressive changes in the new century’s educational space. This is fundamentally the situation in the United States. There are a number of historical events and activities that have had a global impact on humanity and have covertly or overtly influenced educational issues. Here I present just a few such epoch-making breakthroughs: ■ ■ ■

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the rise and fall of the Roman Empire (753 BC–476 AD) the rise of Christianity in the first century the opening of the Americas (1492) and immigration to the American continent Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution

ENHANCE YOUR GLOBAL COMPETENCY ■

■ ■

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the spread of European languages in the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries the exploration of space (1960s) the humanitarian and educational ideas of Leo Tolstoy (1880–1910s), Sigmund Freud (1900–1930s), Lev Vygotsky (1920–1930s), Maria Montessori (1900–1950s), and John Dewey (1900–1950s) Beatlemania (1960–1970s), McDonaldization (1960s–present), jeansmania (1960s–present), and global mania (1990s–present) the arrival of the digital era (1990s–present)

The twenty-first century is witnessing a globalization radically different from other global changes and developments that have occurred in the world. Globalization has both positive and negative impact on conceptualizing and implementing the ideas surrounding education. Globalization promotes democratic reforms in educational systems, facilitates the integration of national systems of education into the global educational space, and necessitates the realization of the ideas of global education. At the same time, it often destroys steady national pedagogical traditions and canons and, under the growing pressure of English, ousts traditional foreign languages from school and university curricula in the non-Englishspeaking countries. The nature of global education can be described from several perspectives. Global education is (1) an integral part of the general education (global perspectives are important in all educational institutions, ranging from kindergartens to universities and to programs for educating adults); (2) a concept necessitating an unprejudiced and unbiased worldview; (3) a reform movement having emerged from the annals of the contemporary globalizing era; and (4) a new phase of the humanization and democratization of the educational process. The idea of global education is very close to that of multicultural education. I portray this interrelation as follows: When I speak about global education, I simultaneously and immediately implicate multicultural education and vice versa. The notion multicultural may be more local in meaning and content than that of global; however, the global inevitably encompasses the many “locals” that our human world is made of. Global education is related to the world, consisting of different nation-states and cultures, in the same way as multicultural education is associated with nation-states encompassing various ethnic, religious, and language groups. In a way, global

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education is an enlargement of multicultural education, when the latter is considered as a separate topic and in a smaller context. I assume that educators’ global competency should involve attitudes, global knowledge, and skills. Educators are expected to possess attitudes that enable them to participate in solving vital problems challenging education and to successfully develop students’ global competency. From a globally thinking teacher, the new century awaits the following dispositions, ways of thinking, and educational readiness in teaching and interacting with the diversity of students: 1. A positive and tolerant attitude to human diversity 2. A striving to enhance his or her global and multicultural horizons 3. A good understanding and acceptance of important humanistic and universal values and virtues 4. An understanding of the notion of globalization and its relation to education To enhance global competency, educators need to increase their global knowledge base. First of all, they are required to enrich their global knowledge in the subject areas that they are teaching. For instance, a history teacher inspired by global perspectives needs to learn more about world history. The teacher can then integrate this information into the teaching process, which may considerably motivate children’s cognitive processes. One such intriguing and difficult-to-explain historical issue worth knowing for globally thinking educators is the discovery of the Piri Reis map (“Piri Reis map,” 2004). This map, a genuine document, was drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a renowned Turkish general and passionate cartographer. In the notes depicted on the map, he acknowledges that he copied and compiled the data from a range of other maps, including those that date back to the fourth century BC and earlier. The map depicts the eastern coast of America, the western coast of Africa, and a perfectly detailed northern coastline of Antarctica—under the ice! It may mean that this part of the continent had been mapped before the ice covered it. Geological evidence hypothesizes that the latest date this land could have been charted in an ice-free state was approximately 4000 BC. Who mapped this coastline thousands of years ago? Teachers with a global perspective in mind should possess demographic knowledge. They are required to know that the world population is increasing rapidly. It is projected that by 2025 it may reach eight million people. By 2050 the population of the United States may number 420,081,000

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people; the population of India, 1,601,005,000; China, 1,424,162,000; Nigeria, 307,420,000; and Indonesia, 336,247,000 (McGeveran, 2005). By 2050 the number of people age sixty and older may increase to 2 billion. The number of people age eighty and older may increase from 66 million in 1998 to 370 million in 2050 (Galetsky, 2002). A globally and multiculturally minded educator will be enthralled to gain more knowledge and information about the natural wonders of the world. There are a lot of marvelous places in the world, such as the Amazon basin (South America), the Himalaya Mountains (Asia), the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), and the Sahara Desert (Africa). I have visited quite a lot of breathtaking places on earth, but what often lingers in my mind is the Grand Canyon. Upon seeing the canyon, I immediately fell in love with this deepest hole on Planet Earth. I wish all human beings could see this Colorado River–owned deep valley, with “high mountains” made of rock. If I only had sufficient financial means, I would take to its rims all the schoolteachers and children from all corners of the world. What an education it would be! The majesty and grandeur of the canyon, its entire spirit of mysteriousness, its being a world within earth, its reddish attire, its blue ribbon that is the great Colorado River— all these and other facets of this greatest creation inevitably inspire and educate people. As for me, I did grow in wisdom after seeing this spectacular valley and I began looking at some things in life from a wider perspective. Whatever the subject area one is teaching, the contemporary globalizing epoch necessitates that an educator possess some basic facts and knowledge of world geography, major issues of health and prevention of diseases, racial and ethnic groups inhabiting the world, world religions, major holidays regularly celebrated by various peoples, environmental problems and biodiversity, man-made wonders of the world, and different issues of the music, dance, and movie industry. In further chapters we will tackle some of these topics in more detail. If teachers walk in step with global changes and are equipped with basic and important information and knowledge on some of the main topics about the world, they will undoubtedly raise students’ curiosity to learn about the world. Even though modern digital technologies provide students with a wide range of the newest information about the world, the teacher’s role in providing students with global knowledge acts as an invaluable moving force in educating students and developing their personality characteristics. A teacher armed with a global and frontier spirit is obliged to possess and master specific skills enabling him or her to productively interact and

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function in an interdependent and multicultural world. It becomes necessary for the teacher to be skillful in interacting with colleagues and students from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds not only within the borders of his or her country but also in a more extended socioeducational space that surpasses national boundaries. Realizing this task is not an easy matter. Therefore, taking this opportunity, I address high governmental officials and school district authorities and call on them to raise more funds for teacher exchanges and for international teacher travel programs. A prime task of a teacher ignited by an explorative and global incentive is to assist students in becoming globally competent individuals. To address the challenges of the globalizing era, contemporary school graduates’ global competency should involve (1) understanding the concepts of globalization, democracy, and pluralism and possessing a tolerant and empathetic attitude toward other cultures and their ways of thinking; (2) acquiring basic, fundamental knowledge about the world as a springboard for further cognitive activity and development; (3) acquiring proper skills of accessing, selecting, and digesting information and knowledge about the world; (4) striving for lifelong self-education as a major challenge of the twenty-first century; (5) identifying oneself as a participant in solving vital global problems and as a member of the global community; and (6) understanding and accepting real universal values and virtues such as responsibility, freedom, democracy, compassion, empathy, tolerance, peace, generosity, honor, and respect for elders. Taking into account the topics analyzed above, I offer the following suggestions for educators: ■

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Strive to understand that this planet, with all the humans, animal species, and material things, is your enlarged residence. That is why, over your lifespan, you are required to be as useful to humanity as possible. Understandably, your contribution to the world should be largely realized through your being useful to your students, parents, local community, and your nation. However, enhancing global competency should be one of your prime goals. Expand and deepen your global and multicultural knowledge base and strengthen your impetus to cognizing the world. Teachers’ professional and humanitarian thoughts and plans cannot be restricted to a narrow range of interests. In other words, a teacher should not have a “sparrow’s view of life,” as was aptly noted by Lev Vygotsky.

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Seek to prepare the younger generation for life, for work, and for cooperation with people from various sociocultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Capitalize on developing creative and reflective personalities, capable of making constructive decisions and taking responsibility for the present and the future of the home country and the world. Promote students’ global competency—their knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking—for them to favorably and productively function within their own microculture, mainstream culture, and global society.

Although the notion of global competency is a relatively new entity, it has already crept into the collective consciousness of humanity. This notion requires that educators know a wide range of other important issues, including the world’s history-making personalities, which I will discuss next.

Questions 1. What event from the author’s life demonstrates that there are no official borders between the countries of the European Union? 2. How does the teaching/learning public understand the phenomenon of globalization? Do you support this idea? 3. Which historical events and human activities have had a crucial impact on the development of human society? 4. How is the idea of global education related to that of multicultural education? 5. What components does an educator’s global competency encompass? 6. Why is it important to help students become globally competent individuals?

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No great man lives in vain.The history of the world is but the biography of great men. THOMAS CARLYLE

People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius. JERRY LEWIS

be molded by groups of people. For example, thousands of people participated in the building of the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. By collective effort people fought against fascism and other evils in the twentieth century. In addition to the great role played by the masses, the world is also largely influenced by separate personalities. Knowing famous and epoch-making men and women who have contributed and are contributing considerably to the betterment of humanity adds a lot to an educator’s professional expertise. When studying a corresponding theme or conducting an activity with children, the teacher can instill the educational process with knowledge and information about a noted personality and his or her contribution to human culture. Learning about the creative biographies and exploits of well-known people often empowers girls and boys into similar or even more heroic and daring achievements and positively impacts their personality development.

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There are many noted personalities in almost every domain of activity. Education. In this sphere the following history-making people immediately come to my mind: Jan Amos Komensky (1592–1670), a Czech pedagogue who designed and implemented important didactic principles; Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), a Swiss educator who influenced educational institutions in Europe and the United States with his emphasis on using active methods of teaching; Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), a Russian educator and psychologist who inspired educators across the world with his sociocultural cognitive theory of child development; and John Dewey (1859–1952), an American educator and philosopher who promoted the application of pragmatic principles in educational settings. One of the most significant contributions to the development of educational thinking was made by the Italian educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). She became a physician in 1896 and a professor of anthropology in 1904. She had a strong desire to work with children and help them. She founded the “Children’s House” in Rome where she developed her methods of education, which were based on the self-creating process of the child. She founded the Montessori Training Centers in Holland and Great Britain and conducted a series of teacher training courses in India (Rapogov, 2003). Composers. History is proud of a great number of renowned composers: the German Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who composed church, vocal, and instrumental music, including Goldberg Variations, Well-Tempered Clavier, and six Brandenburg Concertos; the German Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), who wrote concertos, the Moonlight and Pathetique sonatas, and symphonies; the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), who wrote Noah and the Flood, The Rake’s Progress, and The Rite of Spring; and the Russian Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), who wrote The Nutckracker, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty. The great American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) is known to the world by his best creations: Chichester Psalms and Jeremiah Symphony. Most brilliant of all was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), who wrote chamber music, concertos, and numerous symphonies. It was Mozart who wrote the operas The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro. Born in Salzburg, Austria, Mozart learned to play several melodies at the age of four. When I was in Salzburg with my wife, we visited the house in which Mozart was born and also the dancing master’s house where the Mozart family moved in 1773. The Austrians highly revere Mozart’s name, and many people call Salzburg “Mozart City.” In Austria Mozart is depicted on badges, pictures, postcards, and many other things. When we were

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standing near the Mozart memorial, my wife said with tears in her eyes: “How many other things he could have created if he had not died at such a young age.” (The genius died at thirty-five under mysterious circumstances.)

Artists. Among the famous artists we can name the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck (ca. 1395–1441), who developed original techniques of light and texture; the Spanish painter Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez (1599–1660), who was a master of color and psychological profundity; the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), who used broad and expressive brushwork; the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), who is considered the most influential artist of the twentieth century; and the Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900), a world-famous painter of seascapes, who possessed a phenomenal memory and painted his pictures not from life but in his studio. One of the greatest artists of all time was Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), who created two spectacular works in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican: the Last Judgment, a huge fresco on the wall behind the main altar, which depicts an apocalyptic event, and the Creation, numerous frescoes on the ceiling, which show the creation of the world. When I visited the Sistine Chapel in 2006, I was so moved by the beauty of the frescoes that I rose into spiritual ecstasy. I stood looking at the ceiling and did not notice when all the tourists in my group left the chapel. It then took me a long time to catch up with them in the other pavilions. Michelangelo was also a talented sculptor and architect. His well-known sculptures are the Pietà, David, and Moses. He also designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Among other noted personalities that are worth remembering, one can name: ■

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Writers: O. Henry and Mark Twain (United States); William Shakespeare and William Somerset Maugham (United Kingdom); Guy de Maupassant and Albert Camus (France); Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam (Russia); Rabindranath Tagore (India); and Alberto Moravia (Italy) Musicians and singers: Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Garth Brooks, and Alicia Keys (United States); Fiodor Shaliapin, Filip Kirkorov, Nikolay Baskov, and Anna Netrebko (Russia); Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour (France); Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney (United Kingdom)

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Movie stars: Charlie Chaplin, Theda Bara, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, and Julia Roberts (United States); Jean Marais, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, and Sophie Marceau (France); Barbara Brilska (Poland); and Sophia Loren (Italy) Sports figures: Joe DiMaggio (baseball), Jesse Owens (track and field), Phil Esposito and Wayne Gretzky (ice hockey), Bobby Fischer (chess), and Michael Jordan (basketball) (United States); Pelé (soccer, Brazil); Diego Maradona (soccer, Argentina); Yashiro Yamishita (judo, Japan); Lev Yashin (soccer), Boris Mikhailov and Evgeniy Firsov (ice hockey), and Gary Kasparov (chess) (Russia)

Now let us look in more detail at some of the above-mentioned wellknown personalities. As far as writers are concerned, I cannot avoid mentioning Mark Twain (pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910). Who does not know this celebrated writer? He is known to the public at large by his spectacular novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Many readers see themselves in these characters. Ernest Hemingway once wrote: “All American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn” (cited in Golitsinsky, 1999, p. 323). As for singers, Anna Netrebko can be placed in the ranks of the best and most exceptional opera singers of the world. In 1995 she graduated from the Saint Petersburg State Conservatory and is currently a soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Thanks to its director, Valery Gergiev, the theater has become one of the leading opera and ballet theaters in the world. The Mariinsky Theater is reviving the old and glorious traditions of the Russian imperial opera and ballet, hosting many stars from the world’s leading theaters and developing novel trends and approaches to opera and ballet. Anna Netrebko performs equally well both in classical and modern operas. She has performed on numerous stages all over the world and has won many international competitions. Educators will inevitably enrich their knowledge base by learning more information on the biographies and productive careers of famous Americans such as the first president, George Washington (1732–1799); author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826); scientist and public figure Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790); novelist James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851); poet and humanist Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882); writer Harriet

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Beecher Stowe (1811–1896); the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865); inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931); and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968). Most of the people around the world know of the thirty-second president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), who is considered one of the greatest leaders and men of the American nation. Overcoming poliomyelitis, he led the nation in times of economic depression and World War II. Roosevelt conferred with Allied heads of state at Casablanca, Quebec, Tehran, Cairo, and Yalta. Elected to a fourth term in 1944, he did not live to see the end of the war (Kashner, 2007). The discussion of noted personalities thus far leads to several implications for educators: ■

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Learn more about celebrated people, their creative biographies, and the contributions they have made to the amelioration of life on this planet. Whenever possible, relate information about eminent personalities to students’ existing knowledge base or to the material under study. Refer students to books and websites where biographies and exploits of certain world-famous people are depicted. It goes without saying that if you recommend such a book or website, you yourself should be knowledgeable about those people, their deeds, and their contributions to the development of mankind. Knowing the heroes of human history will undoubtedly enrich your multicultural and global expertise. You will feel more confident of being a knowledgeable educator and quite probably will imitate, to a certain extent, the endurance, industriousness, and exceptional exploits of some of these heroes. Acknowledge the fact that, among noted personalities, there are people whose careers are historically associated with revolution. For instance, in this category one may rank Spartacus, an insurrectionist who organized a revolt against the Roman Empire in 71 BC; Bar Kokhba, a Jewish leader who also led a revolt against Roman domination in 132–134 AD; and other revolutionaries as well as fighters for freedom and the welfare of humanity.

History also includes people with extremely rebellious characters such as gunfighters, outlaws, gangsters, and pirates. People all over the world have heard about Wild Bill Hickok (1837–1876), Jesse James (1847–1882), and Billy the Kid (1859–1881). These gunfighters were among the fastest

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on the draw. Many people also have heard about the exploits of Al Capone, or “Scarface” (1899–1947), Chicago’s most famous gangster in the 1920s, and José Gaspar (ca. 1756–1821), a pirate who terrorized merchant ships all over the Gulf of Mexico. Although they are well known, these and other similar personages brought sorrow to many innocent people. Therefore educators themselves should decide whether or not to acquaint students with such personalities. I mentioned the Great Wall of China and the Colosseum in Rome at the start of this chapter. They are great man-made wonders of the world. In the next chapter, the reader will learn about other spectacular human creations.

Questions 1. In what way does the knowledge of well-known personalities add to an educator’s professional competency? 2. The author has mentioned a long list of famous individuals and briefly characterized the creative careers of some of them. What else do you know about their biographies and professional careers? If you find time and have the will, you may begin with Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and go through all the names mentioned above. 3. Have you ever tried to imitate the heroic deeds or characteristic features of a noted personality? 4. Are there any renowned educators in your school (district, state)? What are they famous for? 5. It is entirely possible that you admire some noted people. How and why do they draw your attention? 6. Do you agree that history is being made and shaped by individual personalities?

Get to Know the Man-Made Wonders of the World

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It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. EDWARD GIBBON

The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

attention cannot and should not miss the man-made wonders of the world. Some of them are of historical importance, others have an aesthetic value. Today there are a myriad of interesting historical sites in the world. Some of them have been grouped as the New Seven Wonders of the World, the result of a popularity poll which was organized by the New Open World Corporation. The winners were announced on July 7, 2007, in Lisbon, Portugal. Descriptions of these “new” wonders follow (Tsirulnikov, 2000; Ivanova, 2003). The Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Standing 130 feet high, this statue is built at the summit of Corcovado mountain. Its construction, which cost $250,000, was completed in 1931. It can be seen

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from far away and attracts tourists who come to Rio, itself one of the most beautiful cities of the world, which is built on a spectacular bay. The natural beauty of the bay harmoniously matches the man-made beauties of Rio de Janeiro. The majestic statue of Christ the Redeemer incorporates these two types of beauty and endows the whole bay with a divine blessing. The Colosseum in Rome. Formerly the Flavian Amphitheater or Coliseum, this elliptical theater embodies the greatest creation of Roman engineering and architecture. Its construction began in 72 AD under Emperor Vespasian and was completed in 80 AD under Emperor Titus. The Colosseum is 615 feet long, 510 feet wide, and 157 feet high, and could accommodate over fifty thousand spectators for public spectacles and gladiatorial contests. It ceased to be used as an arena for entertainment in the early sixth century. Currently the Colosseum hosts some small events; larger events are held outside, with the building being used as a backdrop. Machu Picchu in Peru. Located 7,970 feet above sea level, this ancient city is an important symbol of the legendary Inca Empire. It is supposed to have been built around the year 1450. After a hundred years it was abandoned. Previously known only to some local people, this city was opened by the American historian Hiram Bingham in 1911. He conducted a series of excavations on the site and named the place “the lost city of the Incas.” The people who built the city used blocks of stone that were cut and perfectly polished to fit together. They had to raise the enormous blocks to the building site. How they did it is still a mystery. Petra in Southwestern Jordan. Renowned for its rock-cut architecture, this site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812. Petra is said to have been the capital and center of the caravan trade of the Nabataens, Aramaic-speaking Semites. Egyptian, Syrian, Greek, and Roman architectural elements can be found in various structures throughout Petra. Under Roman rule the settlement declined rapidly, and in 363 AD an earthquake destroyed some buildings. Today Petra attracts many tourists from all over the world. This popular site has been featured in movies such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Passion in the Desert, and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. The Taj Mahal in India. This “jewel of Muslim art” is an integrated complex of structures that was completed around 1648. The building of this monument was inspired by the great love of Emperor Shah Jahan for his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the birth of their fourteenth child. The construction of the Taj Mahal began soon after Mumtaz’s death. To build the monument, around twenty thousand workers were recruited

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in northern India. More than one thousand elephants were used to transport various building materials from different parts of India and other regions of Asia. The Great Wall of China. It is the world’s longest man-made structure, with its main section stretching for 2,150 miles. The wall was built to keep invading peoples from the northern regions. The wall had watchtowers and signal towers upon hilltops, which helped the military units communicate with each other and call for reinforcements in case of emergency. It is estimated that around two million people died during the building of this wall with its many miles of branches and spurs. In recent years some parts of this grandiose construction have been restored. However, it is not easy to say how much of the wall has survived. The Temple of Kukulcán in Chichén Itzá, Mexico. This historical monument is a step pyramid with staircases leading to the top from each of the four sides. During an excavation in the mid-1930s, archeologists found another temple buried beneath the original temple. In pre-Columbian America, Chichén Itzá was a major regional center of Mayan culture. In addition to the famous Temple of Kukulcán, the Chichén Itzá site contains other stone buildings such as the Great Ball Court and the High Priest’s Temple. During the lectures on global education that I deliver to preservice and practicing teachers, I often talk and show students films about “Seven Great Cities on Earth.” I have chosen these cities myself, from among those which I have visited over the years. Even though this choice has no scientific foundation, but rather reflects my personal interest, all types of audiences listen to this information with interest. These seven cities are Rome, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Saint Petersburg. Some of the major facts about these settlements follow. Rome. The cradle of Western civilization, this eternal city draws millions of tourists each year. A “smell of history” is felt all over Rome, but this smell becomes especially piquant when you step into the territory of the former Roman Forum or enter the Colosseum, the gigantic amphitheater of which I have already spoken. Founded on April 21, 753 BC, by Romulus (as the legend tells us), Rome gradually grew from city to republic and on to its imperial phase. The Roman Empire ceased to exist in 476 AD. While in Rome, a visitor can see the well-preserved Trajan’s Market, the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Arch of Constantine, the Pantheon (the only architecturally intact monument from ancient times), and the Appian Way, which offers some important evidence about early Christianity. There

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is the Chapel of Domine Quo Vadis along the Appian Way, built at the place where, according to legend, the apostle Peter had a vision of Jesus Christ. Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time.” The Vatican City with its world-famous St. Peter’s Basilica lends additional grandeur and holiness to Rome’s eternal aura. Further grandeur is embedded in numerous museums containing invaluable relics from ancient times. Venice. Another jewel of modern Italy and of the entire world is Venice, an insular city in the northeastern part of the country, founded in 810 AD both as a city and an independent state. Venice is a unique settlement: It is surrounded and saturated by water. Numerous canals pierce the city, with the Grand Canal, the city’s main water artery, transporting food and merchandise to different parts of the city. One more unusual feature comes to light when you see not a single means of transport, not even a bicycle, in the streets. To get to another point, people either go on foot or use various types of boats, which are plentiful on the archipelago. Some of the streets are so narrow that even two people experience difficulty passing each other. When one gets atop the Bell Tower on San Marco Square, one can see the coastline of Italy and, on the opposite side, the mirror-like surface of the Adriatic Sea. Amsterdam. Often referred to as a northern Venice, this Dutch city is famous for its canals and merchant’s spirit. First mentioned in 1275, Amsterdam now is an important sociocultural center of Holland. The people in this northern city and in Holland generally are obsessively fond of painting: They like modern styles but do not forget their classical heritage. I am proud of my visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. I so liked this museum and what it contained that I visited it twice within two days. My favorite painting by Van Gogh has always been The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing—and this picture was there, on the wall! I could not tear my eyes away from it! A boat trip on the famous canals of Amsterdam made a marvelous impression on me. What amazed me most were the numerous boathouses on the canals. Some people keep them as temporary houses, but some live there, on the water, permanently! Such dwellings have all the modern conveniences. And not a single tourist misses the flower market, one of the most exquisite points of interest in the city. I bought a dozen tulip rootstocks there and planted them in my summer garden. Every year they blossom profusely. I am proud that I brought them back from the country of tulips. Paris. This settlement became the capital of France in 987 AD. Since that time it has been increasing in beauty and become one of the most

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spectacularly preserved cities in the world. A most important monument in Paris is Notre Dame (“Our Lady”), a cathedral built in Gothic style. Another monument is the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur (“Holy Heart”), erected on the Montmartre hill. Touring this city one cannot miss the Eiffel Tower, the highest monument in the historical center. In Europe there is a popular saying: “You cannot say that you have been in Paris until you have climbed the Eiffel Tower.” I knew this; therefore, upon my first arrival in Paris, I climbed the tower’s second section and made a good video of the city from the height of a bird’s flight. The Parisian authorities give prime attention to education. With its seventeen public universities, the Paris region has the largest concentration of university students in the European Union. In addition, there are a lot of prestigious grandes écoles (“large schools”), specialized centers also providing higher education. Washington, D.C. This settlement has been the capital of the United States since 1800. A most impressive building in Washington is the Capitol, surrounded by a sixty-eight-acre park. Close to it are the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor. Right behind the Capitol is the Library of Congress, of which I also wrote in a previous book (Sinagatullin, 2006). It is the world’s largest repository of knowledge and information, including more than twenty-eight million books and other materials in more than 450 languages. I was especially fascinated by the Great Hall, its staircases, and by the main reading room. Other important and famous points of interest are the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument (the most prominent structure in the capital), and the Smithsonian Institution’s buildings. Each time I happen to be in Washington I visit at least two “new” museums, and each time I open a new world for myself. Georgetown is an exclusive part of the capital, famous for its Washington National Cathedral (the world’s sixth-largest ecclesiastical building), the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Georgetown University. Los Angeles. Founded in 1781 as the Pueblo of Los Angeles, this settlement currently is a huge sprawl on the U.S. Pacific Coast. Even though this city can represent different things to different people, it always confirms its main status as the Entertainment Capital of the World. Since my childhood I have associated this city with the movie industry often collectively referred to as Hollywood, and with good reason. For many people coming to Los Angeles, Hollywood remains the major attraction. There is also the Universal Studios Hollywood, located to the north of the main Hollywood area. It is the world’s largest movie studio and theme park, a part of which

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is located in Florida. Curious tourists can visit the Civic Center, Little Japan, Chinatown, El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park, the Farmer’s Market, Melrose Avenue, Marina del Rey, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Saint Petersburg, the Northern Capital of Russia. Founded in 1703 on the banks of the Neva River, the city grew and now is unanimously recognized as one of the most beautiful cities of the world. The most impressive architectural landmarks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are located along the Neva. While taking a boat trip along the river, one can marvel at the Menshikov Palace, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Academy of Arts, and the Winter Palace, which houses the world-famous Hermitage Museum. One of the greatest architectural masterpieces of the city is St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a 101.5-meter-high edifice. It is the fifth-largest domed church in Europe. Started in 1818, the cathedral took forty years to build. The Yusupov Palace on the Moika River is another rare work of architecture. There are a great variety of higher educational institutions in the northern capital. One of them is the Russian Pedagogical University named after A. Gertsen, which annually prepares thousands of specialists who work in all the corners of a multicultural Russia. There are numerous interesting places on the surface of this planet. With this in mind, I formulate a few suggestions for educators: ■

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Enhance your global competency, as we have already suggested. One way to enrich your knowledge about the world is by making use of the mass media. Another, more interesting way of expanding one’s scope is by traveling. Allocate your priorities wisely when it comes to spending your income. Try not to begrudge money for two things: education (in a generalized sense of the world) and cognizing the world by traveling. Of the many educators whom I know, almost all of them admit that they return as new people after seeing a new place either in their own country or abroad. Ignite children’s motivation and introduce them to the world of historical wonders and enigmas. Elicit their impetus to getting interested in opening and discovering wondrous locales in the world. Keep in mind that being physically present at a historical site or an interesting settlement is just a small part of the whole story. If you really intend to learn more about a place and use your knowledge

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to enhance your students’ global scope, you should collect additional materials from that place. Videos, albums, postcards, souvenirs, books, and other artifacts will be useful for you to further expand and solidify your knowledge about the place. For example, I visited Cleveland, Ohio, several times. If my complete knowledge base concerning Cleveland can be symbolically measured as 100 percent, I gained only 10 percent of this knowledge during my physical visit to this city! The rest of it—that is, 90 percent out of that 100 percent—I received by learning about Cleveland from the printed and video materials that I obtained in this northern city, as well as from other sources. Educators may get to know different historical and wondrous places in the world by working on the Internet and by traveling. However, above all, they must be able to communicate all this in a way that is understandable and accessible to the majority of people. Today, such a tool for speech is the English language, which originated on the British Isles.

Questions 1. What other information can you add to what the author has provided about the newly selected historical wonders of the world? 2. Do you know any other interesting historical sites? 3. Can you name the traditional or “old” Seven Wonders of the World? 4. What popular saying about Paris do people often remember while visiting this magnificent city? 5. What points of interest does your city (village, region) have? 6. Undoubtedly, you have already visited some interesting places in your country and/or abroad. Have you shared your reflections about your travels with your students, and how?

Master Your English

5

Talking and eloquence are not the same:To speak, and to speak well, are two things. BEN JONSON

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing. ROBERT CHARLES BENCHLEY

ALLING ON AMERICAN EDUCATORS to master their native or principal language is an intriguing enterprise. However, I put forward two reasons why this epoch necessitates that educators be proficient in English. The first reason is that not all educators in the United States are fully proficient in English, even if it is their native language. Similarly, not all teachers in Brazil are completely fluent in Portuguese, not all people who teach in Spain are totally proficient in Spanish, and not all individuals involved in teaching in Finland skillfully possess Finnish. The realms of each known language on earth are equally rich and infinite. English is no exception. English-language teachers find themselves in an even more prestigious position. Teaching English is their qualification. For them, English is both a tool and an aim of instruction. It is easier for them to cope with English. For teachers of other subject areas it is often difficult to fluently interact with, and express some ideas in English to, students and colleagues, even though English is the teachers’ native language.

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Language is our major means of communication and our most important instrument for interaction with people. Language is deeply intertwined with our thinking. Moreover, human thinking is speech thinking (Vygotsky, 1991). A teacher must be fluent in the language of instruction. In this context it is hardly possible to require that teachers possess a language with an absolutely perfect proficiency, which, as seen from the prior discussion, hardly exists in human culture if one comes to discussing the phenomenon of language. However, teachers should seriously and continually work at the language which they use for instruction and interaction with students, colleagues, and parents. I recall one interesting conversation with my Russian-language teacher during a lesson in the eighth grade. During the lesson I answered all the required questions (at least I was sure I did) and was expecting the highest grade, which is a “five,” according to the Russian system of evaluating students’ knowledge and skills. Previously I used to receive both fours and fives. I was looking straight at the teacher’s mouth and waiting. After some thought, the teacher pronounced, “Your mark is four.” Stunned, I did not listen to the teacher’s explanation for the grade, and contradicted her decision. I said, “I deserve a five because I speak and write in Russian proficiently. I answered all the questions in this exercise. I know grammar well and I know everything about the Russian language. After all, my overall knowledge and speech skills fit in with a five.” This is what the teacher told me after a short pause. “My young friend, you say that you know all about the Russian language. But it is impossible for a human being to know all about a language, its grammar, vocabulary, and syntax. Language is a very complex phenomenon; even the greatest writers use a relatively small number of lexical units in their books. Listen to me, and I will tell you this. Only God knows all about the Russian language, therefore only God deserves a five. As for me, a teacher, I know a little bit less about this language than God does, so I deserve a four. You, my young gentleman, deserve only a three, because you know less about it than I do. You deserve a three from the philosophical perspective, but from an educational point of view, for this concrete task I will give you a four.” Whether these were the teacher’s own wise conclusions or someone else’s, I was unable to guess at that time. Several days later, I fully understood the underlying wisdom that was embedded in the teacher’s words, and I learned one crucial lesson: It is unrealistic to expect to become fully proficient in a language at some concrete moment; one can only continue to master the language.

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Since the time of my conversation with my teacher, I have seriously been learning and mastering my Russian by referring to various types of vocabulary and grammar books. I have conversed in it a lot and I have learned so much about the language that each time I open a vocabulary of synonyms, a grammar book, or a book on Russian stylistics, I immediately come to the conclusion that I deserve only a three for my knowledge and language skills: So rich and infinite are the realms of Russian that “getting a four,” which means knowing it as well as my former Russian-language teacher does, is virtually impossible to me. The second reason why teachers should be proficient in English is that it is an internationally acclaimed language spoken not only in Englishspeaking countries but also by a considerable majority of people in other countries. The present epoch is witnessing the international exchange of teachers, school and university students, and university faculties all over the world. Even in the countries where English is not official, most international seminars, conferences, and exchange programs involve using English as a working language in addition to the official language of the host country. English is widely used and highly regarded in educated circles worldwide, and it is the high status of this language that requires American educators and, of course, other citizens of the United States to be competent in English and to show the rest of the world the best standards of both oral and written English. In this context, by the “rest of the world” I mean the part of the world that visits the United States and converses in English with American people, and also those people who live outside the U.S. borders and speak with American people when the latter visit other countries. English has penetrated into the educational institutions, the professional activities, and the mentality of millions of earthlings. It has grown into a language of global communication. These processes have been triggered by objective factors. The encroaching of English upon our planet has been ignited by three historical prerequisites: geopolitical, economic, and sociocultural. From a geopolitical perspective, English started its world crusade in the 1600s. The colonial policy of the British Empire exported English into the modern territories of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and the Caribbean. In the late nineteenth century, English began to spread to Southeast Asia and Oceania. Economically, English has gained an international status owing to the economic growth of Great Britain, the United States, and other English-speaking countries (Crystal, 1997).

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Socioculturally, English has won its global status through cultural assets such as the music and movie industries. In the 1920s–1940s and later years, numerous musical events occurred in Great Britain and the United States. Young people and adults throughout the world listened to Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Pete Seeger, Cliff Richard, and Elton John, and to pop groups such as the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Smokie, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. A wide range of singers and groups outside the English-speaking countries performed in English. Among them were the Jamaican group Boney M., the Swedish group ABBA, the German group Modern Talking, the Jamaican singer Bob Marley, and hundreds of other creative collectives and individual performers. Their global popularity rose partly due to performing in English. Cinematography has also largely promoted the spreading of English and Anglo-American culture across the world. Since the 1920s–1940s, a lot of movies have been released in English and shown in most of the cinemas of the world. People outside the English-speaking countries used to watch not only the translated versions but also the original versions of movies with subtitles, which were written either in English or in the native language of the moviegoers. In both cases, viewers were motivated to listen to and understand the original English speech. The current global status of English can be substantiated by several signs (Sinagatullin, 2006). First, English is the most widely distributed language in the world and has an official legal status in more than fifty countries. Besides, a considerable number of people in countries where English is not official can speak it with a reasonable degree of proficiency. Second, there is a growing tendency among young people in the world to learn English. For example, in many non-English-speaking countries, educational institutions ranging from kindergartens to schools and universities have switched to teaching English. Third, the current popularity of English has increased owing to the development of the Internet and other means of high-speed communication. The Internet contains tons of knowledge and information, a high percentage of which is continually being constructed in English. Fourth, English is the working language of researchers, scholars, scientists, and academics who want to share their insights and achievements with the educated public throughout the world. English is the global language of science. And fifth, English has made its way into the active vocabulary of many peoples. Undergoing corresponding pronunciation changes or coloring, words and phrases such as hi, wow, hello, baby, music, no problem,

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money, bucks, and many others are often used on a daily basis among children and adolescents across the world. Proficiency in English opens to any educator in any country—not only to educators natively speaking English—new avenues of global and multicultural knowledge, wide possibilities for participating in international events in the sphere of education and child development, and novel opportunities for getting acquainted with their peers working in other countries. English helps educators build bridges of international friendship with colleagues across the continents. Will English repeat the fate of Latin, now extinct in its oral form, or will it merge with some other languages to form various creole languages? To these and other similar questions it is difficult to find any plausible answer. For the time being, I see no ample evidence to suggest that English will lose its position as a global language in the years to come. Because English is not my native language, it only remains to me to be grateful to God and fate for providing me with the ability to write in English the notes you are now reading. It is time to summarize the above analysis with several implications for educators: ■

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Keep in mind that you cannot be fully proficient in using a language even if it is your native tongue. At any given moment during your life, you can only ever say that you are becoming proficient, even though your intention may be continually to better your language skills and gain more knowledge of its grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and style. Encourage yourself to consult dictionaries and other reference literature any time you are in doubt about using a given grammatical pattern, lexical unit, syntactic structure, or punctuation rule. Such seemingly tedious but productive self-control will help you develop such personal qualities as order and industriousness. Keep in mind that reading educational literature has a positive impact not only on your skills of reading and your knowledge arsenal but also on fostering your writing and speech skills. All four speech activities—listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing—are closely interconnected. At the heart of all this is inner speech, which, along with other psycholinguistic mechanisms, regulates most of the speech processes. Encourage yourself with the thought that English is currently the number one international language. If you go to any other country,

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you will probably not need to learn the national or principal language spoken in that country, because a considerable number of people across the world, including many teachers, can speak English with a certain degree of proficiency. It is worth knowing that many people in science and show business (whose native language is other than English) become world-famous due to the fact that they themselves or through translators disseminate their knowledge and creative potential across the world by means of the English language.

The English language is continuing to spread across the continents. Schools in non-English-speaking countries are switching to learning English to the neglect of learning other overseas languages. But schools are changing not only in their attitude to which foreign languages students should learn but also in many other ways. These changes are both positive and negative. Most schools, especially in Western cultures, are no longer tranquil and idyllic places. What should we do to change the general atmosphere in schools? The reader may find some of the answers to this question on the next pages.

Questions 1. Why is it important for an educator to be proficient in the language of instruction? 2. Is it possible to be completely proficient in a language? 3. What historical prerequisites have raised the English language onto the highest pedestal among other languages? 4. Can you name any other languages that play an important role in international communication? 5. What contemporary factors corroborate the global status of English? 6. Why do researchers and scientists prefer writing and propagating their scientific ideas in English?

6

Make School a Holy Place

The teacher is like the candle which lights others in consuming itself. GIOVANNI RUFFINI

Sharing one’s own grief with others means diminishing this grief; and sharing one’s joy with someone means augmenting this very joy. GRAND DUCHESS ELIZAVETA FEODOROVNA OF RUSSIA

in recent decades. One can notice a range of progressive advancements in school life. Most of the schools I have recently visited in different countries are equipped with computers and other modern means of teaching. The classrooms in most of the elementary, middle, and high schools are spacious and have essential teaching aids. On the whole, educators tend to treat children loyally and democratically. Public schools are normally supported by taxes and enroll all students living within the district. As they are secular, children of different religious backgrounds enjoy equal treatment and feel comfortable in class and school. Schools tend to sustain close linkages with parents who, in turn, are concerned about their children’s academic achievements. Some parents choose for their children a private school, which is not directly controlled by the public. These are positive traits. Regrettably, regressive manifestations are equally great in number.

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CHOOLS HAVE CHANGED A LOT

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Schools have become too noisy. Everybody understands that young kids should be engaged in play and physical activities, and evidence suggests that children and adolescents move a lot and often make a lot of noise both during lessons and breaks as well as in school canteens. But this is only the tip of an iceberg. Some students behave aggressively within the school premises, abuse their younger peers, threaten to beat them up if the latter do not obey them, and rob them of some of their belongings. Some students resort to writing unjustified complaints about their teachers and peers. Children from impoverished, one-parent, and “difficult” families often miss classes, come to school ill-prepared, disturb the class, and place the class and school discipline in peril. In fact, today, any child may sooner or later join the list of ill-behaving students owing to various circumstances, especially when a child finds himself or herself under the influence of a certain informal group or gang. Drug use, alcohol consumption, and overuse of computer sites packed with sex and violence considerably add to the worsening of children’s behavior inside and outside school. There are cases where children bring, sell, and use drugs and alcoholic beverages inside the school’s territory and use vile language in the presence of teachers and other school personnel. The worst cases occur when youngsters bring weapons and guns to threaten their schoolmates and even use such weapons, wounding or killing peers, teachers, and passers-by. In America such cases are not uncommon. With schools changing and children becoming more riotous, the psychological climate between teachers and students has also changed. Some teachers have grown indifferent to their students, permitting them to wreak havoc throughout the classroom, on the school grounds, and within the adjoining territory. Others, on the contrary, tend not to listen to children’s needs and stick to formal methods of interpersonal relations with the kids. Still others pay attention to their favorite students and give less affection to those with alternative behavior and health. From the perspectives of teacher-student, administration-teacher, and teacher-teacher relations, contemporary schools represent institutions where something has gone wrong and something should be done to put it right. Schools lack a holiness of the inner atmosphere. The notion of holiness, in the sense it is used here, also contains a sense of pacification. School is not only a part of social life, but also a place where young generations should learn how to make this larger social world better. We educators must envy churchgoers who consider their church a holy shrine. Through small changes, schools must also become holy places— shrines of knowledge, wisdom, and decent manners. In a sense, it is not

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that a school should prepare a graduate for life in the local community, but that community members should strive to learn from the good attitudes, habits, and skills that should be developed at the school. In passing I recollect one episode from my trip to Italy. While in Rome or, to be exact, in the Vatican, I visited St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest domed Christian church in the world. I entered this edifice, looked around, walked around inside, marveled at Michelangelo’s Pietà, approached the Tomb of St. Peter, came up to his bronze statue, and lastly looked up to see the inside of the dome, painted by the talented Michelangelo. Suddenly I felt as if I was flying: I became a light, happy, and omnipresent being. It was so quiet and idyllic in this edifice! I have experienced a similar feeling in other religious shrines which I have visited and marveled at, never mind whether it was a Christian church, a Muslim mosque, or a Jewish synagogue. Standing near the papal altar and stunned by its beauty, I suddenly remembered the typical secondary schools numbering thousands throughout the world. In an average secondary school, especially in the northern hemisphere, the educational atmosphere is not that idyllic; the relations between the administration and some teachers as well as between teachers themselves are not always very favorable; the discipline in classrooms, corridors, and the schoolyard often leaves much to be desired; and teachers often gladly leave the school building after classes and often reluctantly return to school next morning. Why do things stand like this?

By referring to my visit to St. Peter’s, where I was amazed at the general atmosphere reigning inside, I have no intention of comparing this religious shrine with a typical school in order to summon education policy makers to turn all secular educational institutions into edifices resembling religious ones. My concern is based instead on the question of why we are unable to make the school a holy place too—of course, based on pedagogical principles and canons. Creating a favorable psychological climate in schools depends not only on the ways teachers interact with students but also on how teachers and other adults interact among themselves. Evidence indicates that teacherteacher relations have begun to cause concern in contemporary educational institutions. Absorbed in child rearing processes and the routine of day-today work, some teachers have begun to bury in oblivion the fact that the successful functioning of any educational institution is largely dependent on the collective work of the teaching personnel and on the overall positive educational atmosphere, based on the principles of mutual help and mutual understanding.

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Teachers are subjected to numerous stressful and frustrating situations, which arise in the classroom and school environment. In addition, some educators often experience personal problems that may take a toll on the quality of their work and on the state of their health. When a teacher finds himself or herself in such a predicament, the best remedy is a colleague’s support and aid. Therefore, the teaching profession necessitates that teachers help each other. A teacher is not a single-handed specialist: He or she works as a member of a team of educators. Collectively, such a team can solve a lot of problems facing an educational institution. A teacher may be of didactic help to other teachers. More experienced teachers may aid younger colleagues in unpacking some complicated theoretical ideas, implementing practical strategies of teaching, and organizing the procedures of a lesson or extracurricular activity. Less experienced teachers may consult their older counterparts about how to solve the various educational problems that constantly arise in the teaching/learning process. Teachers may help each other in solving some psychologically and pedagogically difficult dilemmas. I remember receiving my first and unconditional didactic aid from my school supervisor Irina Khaimovna and other teachers when I was preparing to conduct my first open lesson as a student teacher at the secondary school no. 39 in Ufa, Central Russia. It seemed to me as if all the school staff were helping me, including the school’s vice principal. Now I do not remember the names of most of those people. However, I remember well their friendly disposition to me and how they were worrying about how I would endure my first experience as a teacher. It seemed that everyone was eager to lend a helping hand. A dozen teachers were assisting me, and all of them were present at my first lesson. When it was over, they drew my attention to the positive sides of the lesson and, then, for about one hour, criticized my strategies and techniques. I was on the point of crying. At the end my university supervisor announced the outcome of my first open lesson: I received the highest grade! Closer to the end of my student teaching period, the school principal had a heartfelt talk with me and said he would be glad if I applied for a job in his school as an English-language teacher as soon as I received my diploma. Soon I began teaching at that school and worked in it for some time. Today I am still grateful to those teachers and the university supervisor for opening the door to the teaching profession for me.

In other cases, teachers need to help and support their colleagues when the latter feel sick or physically unwell. People are known to be exposed to

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various diseases. With age, ailments have a tendency to increase in number and can emerge at most inappropriate moments. A teacher may suddenly feel pain in the chest, or a strong headache out of a leap of blood pressure, or just feel unwell due to unknown causes. A sick educator needs immediate assistance and support. If, in case of emergency, the sick educator’s colleagues happen to be near, the very fact that they are close to, and worried about, the health of their fellow staff member is a great relief for the sufferer. As in most human activities, educators need to strive for the golden mean: They need to be careful not to overdo in rendering as well as in asking for help. Continual requests for aid may bother wiser and more experienced colleagues and distract them from their main professional activity. Constant attempts to help younger or less skillful colleagues may challenge and jeopardize the latter’s growing professionalism and self-respect. Based on the given discussion, I formulate the following suggestions for educators: ■

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Try to build an atmosphere of holiness in the classroom and on school premises. Help make your classroom a shrine of knowledge where your students will feel wanted and favored. Do not be too quick to find fault over some nonsense or trivial thing. Create a favorable democratic environment for children. The spirit of democracy is almost synonymous with the notion of responsibility. Therefore, a democratic environment is not one that permits learners to behave in an absolutely free and irresponsible manner. Keep in mind that schools need a psychologically warm and favorable climate not only between educators and students but also among the staff members. Try to notice the positive in your colleagues’ professional activity. Share your concerns and your joys with a teacher working in a neighboring classroom or with your administrator. Help your colleagues. In the teaching profession, situations causing concern emerge often and quite unexpectedly. Mutual support makes the school’s pedagogical team more consolidated and collectivistic. But when you aid your colleague, do not immediately expect or ask for a return of aid from that colleague. In due time, when you find yourself in a predicament, your colleague will inevitably return his or her gratitude. Compliment your colleagues’ work. Each human being honestly earning bread deserves compliments. Some other day, often

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unexpectedly, the colleague you once paid special attention to will return and support you twofold. Complimenting pays—if your compliments are honest and are delivered heartily and sincerely. Take a sincere interest in the work of your colleagues. Attentively listen to them, try to instill into them a feeling of their significance, talk about them and their progress and successes, understand and consider the surrounding reality from their viewpoint, support and share the values they cherish, and compliment their educational strategies and innovative approaches. This is a right course to building psychologically favorable relationships with your colleagues and to instilling an atmosphere of holiness into the school.

In creating a humanistic and sacred atmosphere in the entire academic milieu, much depends on the school administrative personnel. It becomes necessary for the school administration to build an academic environment devoid of bureaucratic surveillance, to render assistance and advice when an educator experiences difficulty coping with a misbehaving child or is struggling with a personal problem, and to help build a tightly knit staff. When people, especially in the teaching profession, come together, they can move mountains. However, nothing will help to build a pedagogically favorable environment at school unless we eradicate the illegal practices still existing in the sphere of education.

Questions 1. What progressive traits are noticeable in contemporary schools? 2. Can you name any regressive manifestations in school life? 3. What does the author mean by saying “We educators must envy churchgoers”? 4. In what ways can teachers help each other at school? 5. What should the school administration do to help create favorable humanistic conditions and an atmosphere of holiness at school? 6. What educational meaning does the notion “school as a holy place” incorporate?

7

Avoid Corruption

The most terrible of lies is not that which is uttered but that which is lived. W. G. CLARKE

From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

is intricate and seems to be unnatural and even otherworldly as far as the noble teaching profession is concerned, because, most often, corruption is associated with government, business, courts, and the police. But sadly, corruption exits in virtually all domains of human activity and in all cultures; only various aspects of it are exposed differently, from minor forms in one country to devastating scales in another. It is difficult to say, “This evil deed can be classified as corruption and that deed cannot.” Corruption is related to very many unlawful human deeds: In one case, corruption may be a starting point of some big illegal enterprise; in another case, it may come out as only a subsidiary tool in a larger illegal affair; in still another case, corruption may itself represent an enormous prohibited affair. Corruption is usually associated with dishonest or illegal behavior, especially when people accept money in exchange for some favor. Joseph S. Nye (2002, p. 284) contends that “corruption is behavior which deviates from the formal duties of a public role.” It involves such behaviors as bribery, nepotism (bestowal of patronage by reason of an ascriptive relationship rather

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HE VERY NOTION OF CORRUPTION

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than merit), and misappropriation (i.e., illegal appropriation) of public resources for private use. Forms and types of corruption may exist in different degrees of manifestation across countries and sociogeographical regions. For example, in Latin America there are many cases of corruption in law enforcement and justice administration (Bailey, 2006). People working in these spheres should be examples of justice, but often they themselves break the law. Referring to the work of police, Bailey generalizes his assumptions regarding Latin America, but his postulation may be further generalized and applied to other continents as well. He claims that in Latin countries, police officers may ask for bribes if a motorist breaks the law. Other types of police are notorious throughout the region for engaging in violent abusive activities with complete impunity. Also, active or retired police officers are routinely found to be involved in racketeering, drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping. Corruption shatters the moral and juridical foundations of statehood and citizenship, slackens and ultimately destroys society’s healthy organism, and demoralizes the favorable development of sociocultural and educational links at the regional and global levels. As a mercurial and mobile process, corruption tends to quickly move from one place to another and to frequently change its attire in cases where it exists too long in one place. In this chapter I intentionally minimize the references to the location of corruption. Unfortunately, dishonest actions often occur within our immediate surroundings, just a stone’s throw from us. While it takes many forms across cultures, corruption in education includes the following practices. Giving Bribes for Grades and Exams. This unfair practice is widespread in a vast majority of countries. Bribery is known to embody two sides of one coin: If there is a bribe giver on one side, there must be a bribe taker on the other. Both commit corruption, with a consequent share of the responsibility for the illegal deed. This unfair practice, in my opinion, can also be called “paid favoritism.” When a teacher takes money or material presents for higher grades or exams, sooner or later it becomes known to students and other teachers. The sinners are usually the last to hear about their transgressions, after everyone on the school premises and in the local community has already heard about, digested, and even forgotten the sinners’ deeds. Another type of illegal practice can be referred to as “teacher’s favoritism.” It occurs when a teacher voluntarily gives some students advantages or help that other students do not receive. A teacher’s taking a liking

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to certain privileged students may be linked to some special qualities these students possess: obedience to the teacher’s instructions, academic achievement, physical attractiveness, or high social or administrative position of parents. Treating some children more favorably than others is a corrupt practice that spoils the harmoniously developing tissue of teacher-student and student-student relationships in class. Avoiding favoritism represents a decisive step in the humanization and democratization of the educational process. Writing Complaints. To get rid of objectionable educators and teachers, some administrators encourage a student or a group of students to write a complaint to the administrator or higher authorities about the truth-seeking educator. After such a wicked deed, the “unwanted” educator often receives a big psychological injury. Some educators “voluntarily” leave the school or even the teaching profession. A similar fate may await disagreeable college and university faculty members. Using Students as Labor. Some school administrators and teachers use students as laborers on their own farms, gardens, or households. In return, the “exploiters” may favor the “laborers” with higher grades or shut their eyes to the latter’s misbehavior. Other educators punish children and adolescents with labor. Whatever motives educators pursue in making students engage in labor—status, power, or punishment—using students as laborers must be strictly forbidden on and off school premises. In reflecting on this, we should differentiate between the notions of using students as labor versus engaging students in minor physical activity as required by the general atmosphere of school life. Light physical activities may involve tidying the classroom after an extracurricular activity; preparing classrooms, corridors, and school premises for a national holiday; or engaging in any other physical or social activity (at the students’ own will). Embezzling School Funds. Some school administrators and other personnel steal money that is allocated to improve the school and to purchase teaching materials—and spend it on their own needs. As a result students lack textbooks, computers, sports facilities, and other necessary assets. Using School Resources for Private Affairs. School administrators and teachers may resort to (1) using the school building and premises for storing or keeping all sorts of personally owned materials (construction materials, cars, agricultural produce, or domestic animals); (2) using school buses and other vehicles for the transportation of family or extended family members as well as community members, and for carrying different materials or agricultural products; and (3) using school computers and related educational technology for private purposes.

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Discrediting the Educator by “Examining” Documentation. Some administrators intending to get rid of “rebellious” and truth-seeking educators resort to paper-checking activity: “scrupulously” examining the educator’s professional papers and documentation (all the papers and documents that a teacher is allegedly required to have) rather than visiting and seeing lessons and extracurricular activities, or seeing how the teacher manages to cope with children in a daily routine. Administrators resort to such shameful checking because they are unable to discredit an educator by considering his or her real work. By digging into documentation, it is always easy to find various faults. Sometimes even wrong punctuation marks—such as, for instance, an incorrectly used comma in a lesson plan—may be equated to a “serious misdeed.” Similar tendentious and shameful control is also often conducted by school district officials to discredit the quality of education in certain schools or the quality of work of a particular educator. Requiring Payments. In this context I mean payments that central ministries or school district authorities may require for services that in reality should be free of charge. They may require payments for textbooks, programs, and materials for testing. In other cases ministry staff or other academics have themselves coauthored required textbooks or reference books, so they will receive royalties on sales. “Helping” to Accredit an Educational Institution. Some secondary and higher school administrators resort to bribery or other illegal measures to bypass the high criteria for the approval of school establishment and accreditation. Private Tutoring. This is a type of additional and paid assistance rendered by an educator to a learner. There are at least two types of private tutoring in education. Private tutoring may be rendered by a schoolteacher to a student. In some cases a teacher just provides some additional assistance for pay to a student or a group of students. Such a practice is often tolerated, but some observers and pedagogues recognize it as corruption. In other cases private tutoring becomes a quest for easy profit, when a student receiving assistance becomes a teacher’s favorite and starts enjoying special privileges. Private tutoring may also be rendered by a higher school faculty member to a school graduate who intends to enter the same institution where this faculty member works. It often happens that the same faculty member comes to terms in advance with the student’s parents about possible assistance in settling the school graduate’s future. A scenario may unfold as follows: A corrupted faculty member “helps” a student enter the university, provides him with academic support throughout the years of study, and

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eventually “assists” the student in finding a good job after his graduation from the university. Other unfair practices in the system of education include (1) cronyism and nepotism in procurement and teacher appointment, (2) paying bribes for teacher promotion, (3) buying college and university diplomas, and (4) imposition of unauthorized fees. The ideas and issues that have just been presented yield the following suggestions for humanistically minded educators: ■

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Avoid doing anything illegal in your profession. You should always remember that engaging in the education of younger generations is a noble profession, despite its continual and unpredictable difficulties. Nothing illegal and unfair should blacken and slander your work. Encourage your students to learn more about the law and about which human deeds are considered morally forbidden and prohibited by law. A lot of young people commit unfair activities just because they do not know simple and fundamental laws about what is and is not an illegal deed. You and your students are expected to know that an individual ignorant of the criminal code is not exempted from responsibility. Encourage students to respect the laws of your country, its symbols, its anthem, and its heroes. For a corrupted person, these and other sacred assets are often relegated to the background. Combat any attempts of your students or colleagues to commit unfair deeds in school and elsewhere.

Corruption is a “spectacular” sign and cause of low-quality democracy inside the entire educational system in general and within a definite educational institution or definite person engaged in educating children in particular. An important task of each administrator and each teacher is creating awareness about the need to cleanse the teaching/learning process from illegal practices. Even the slightest forms of corruption among teachers should be considered a most serious form of vice, because teachers and educators take a prime part in child and adolescent development and because they are always in the most conspicuous place and at the forefront of child and adolescent development. Whatever professional obligations we discharge, we obey the secrets of time. How and why should we schedule time? I intend to discuss this and some related questions next.

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Questions 1. How can you define the phenomenon of corruption? 2. Why is corruption considered the most serious form of vice in the teaching profession? 3. In what spheres of human activity does corruption manifest itself most? 4. What forms of corruption in education can you name? 5. Why are there always two guilty sides in bribery? 6. What measures should be undertaken to eradicate or at least to minimize the cases of corruption in the sphere of education?

8

Cherish the Phenomenon of Time

The great rule of moral conduct is, next to God, to respect time. JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER

No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed. LORD BYRON

I AM INTERESTED mainly in one small part of the entire phenomenon of time: physical time that is related to a human being’s life-span development. Even more concretely, I share my insights on how one socioeconomic group that we call educators should manage physical time to productively work and function in human society. However, time is a grand entity; therefore, I am going to show that this omnipresent entity can be viewed from different angles. Theorists claim that the time that clocks are designed to measure is physical or public time. There is also psychological or private time, best understood as awareness of physical time. For example, psychological time passes fast for us if we are reading an interesting book. It slows considerably if we are waiting anxiously for a bus to come. To save life in an extreme situation, an individual can perform a series of complicated actions within a second. During World War II, some soldiers felt that bombs were exploding very slowly. Some dreams people have in a sleep state last less than a second, but they may encompass myriad activities and events. When people are in a depressed state, time flows slower for them, whereas in a

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manic phase it flows very fast, almost unnoticeably. If an individual’s body temperature is two to three degrees higher than normal, the sufferer conceives time twice as fast. In discussing these issues, I would like to share my insight with the reader on one whimsical phenomenon concerning a hobby of mine. I love cooking and do it in different ways. Sometimes I spend most of the time in the kitchen watching the contents of a saucepan or a frying pan cooking. At these moments time flows slowly, but meals become more delicious, as if confirming the essence of the proverb “The more time you spend in the kitchen while cooking, the less time you will spend to finish your meal.” As the food becomes delicious, you will like it and eat faster. At other times, when preparing meals, I spend less time in the kitchen (because I am busy with some other job), and the time flies fast. In such circumstances, my meal is not so delicious and I spend more time consuming it.

Psychological time is important for understanding many human thought processes. Can we speed up our minds relative to physical time? If we can, we may become intellectually and mentally more productive and learn more per minute (“Time,” 2007). Plunged into productive activity, some people first invent and build up their future creations within seconds: They first see their future creations as a whole image, and then they just add a little bit of flavor to prolong this image in time. For instance, Mozart needed only several seconds to hear his future musical creation, which then lasted for thirty minutes after being composed (Saks, 2006). There is also geological time. Fifty million years is a fantastically huge period of time for an educator. For a geologist studying the history of Earth, such a time period is just an instant. For example, dinosaurs roamed the earth during the Mesozoic Era, lasting from 245 to 65 million years ago. From an average individual’s perspective, this is a colossal period! But from the perspective of the formation of life on the Earth, which began approximately 25 billion years ago, the dinosaur era looks like just a small time span. In a way, time is related to distance. We may say, “It took me four hours to get to New York, and I got very tired.” In this case, the four-hour drive seems to be quite a boring trip for us. But for an astronomer, such a time span and the distance that we covered may look like an instantaneous action, because scientists studying the stars, the sun, and the universe make use of other measures to show the distance to various objects in space. One

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such measure is the light-year, which denotes the distance light travels in a year going 186,000 miles a second. The nearest star one can see in the sky, Alpha Centauri, is a little more than four light-years away. Amazingly, when one notices Alpha Centauri in the sky at night, the light one sees is from four years ago (Seabrooke, 2003). In recorded history, educated people have given a variety of answers to the question of whether time is a linear or cyclical process. The concept of linear time appeared in the writings of the Hebrews, of Zoroastrian Iranians, and of Seneca. Greeks and Romans believed in cyclical time. In nineteenth-century Europe, the idea of linear time became dominant in both science and philosophy. Later, other theories of time emerged, including the solutions to the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. What sort of ontological differences there are among the present, past, and future is another controversial issue about time. Presentists contend that necessarily only present experiences are real, and people recognize this truth in the special “vividness” of their present experience. Another theory recognizes the past and present and negates the future as unexisting. Still another theory claims that the differences among the past, present, and future are not ontological but merely subjective. This approach is called “eternalism” (“Time,” 2007). After “traveling” in the space-time continuum, let us return to a sinful Earth. Thinking logically, one may easily come to the conclusion that approximately one third of an average teacher’s weekly time is spent sleeping (about 56 hours out of a week’s 168 hours); about one third (around 40 hours) of the remaining 112 hours are spent on professional activity (mainly outside the domestic environment). What is left (totaling approximately 70 hours) constitutes the precious quota that we need to efficiently schedule. Evidence suggests that it is not always easy to harness time. Following are a range of difficulties and obstacles that people experience in managing this asset. Underestimation of the Importance of the Phenomenon of Time. Most young educators seldom realize that time is a most precious treasure in life. It is only in middle and old age that people start realizing that time passes fast. “Time is money” is another illustrative inference worth recollecting. Do all people rate time highly and use it rationally in ordinary life and professional activity? I assume that some educators and students do not fully understand the essential and intrinsic values of this entity and are reluctant to properly design daily schedules not to lose time in vain.

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Absence of Habits of Scheduling Time. Some people never schedule anything. They know when they should go to the workplace and when to go back home. They seldom think of exactly when and for how long they will be occupied with their future activities. Other people tend to rely on the off-chance and often let matters take care of themselves. In the educators’ ranks certain people behave similarly. Procrastination. A considerable number of people tend to delay doing something until later at one time or another, hoping that they, in any event, will manage to fulfill their tasks. In my view, the younger people are, the more often they put off their plans until later. Piling up a huge amount of work, procrastinators frequently find themselves in a frustrated state. When their moral conscience does not allow them to procrastinate any more, they courageously rush into discharging their obligations, unjustifiably “squeezing the timetable.” Procrastinators may have their “favorite mode of procrastination.” Some put off housekeeping, others do not like to immediately respond to e-mails, still others are too reluctant in their professional obligations, especially in preparing for classes. Distractibility. In our daily lives we have to react to a variety of stimuli that often make it difficult to concentrate on one task. Some tasks are extremely urgent, whereas others are less important. People tend to focus greater attention on more important tasks, but sometimes many tasks emerge at once and all of them appear to be important. An ability to manage time depends not only on a human being’s individual characteristics but also on cultural patterns. As Hall and Hall (1990) maintain, there are two kinds of time systems operating in human cultures: monochronic and polychronic. In monochronic cultures, people tend to do one activity at a time, stress a high degree of scheduling, and concentrate on an elaborate code of behavior. In polychronic cultures, individuals may be involved with several activities at once; in such cultures, human relationships and interactions are valued over strict appointments and schedules. For example, highly monochronic cultures are the United States, Germany, and Switzerland; Latin Americans and Arabs are highly polychromic people. Indisputably, there may be polychronic people in monochronic cultures and vice versa. Understanding the differences between these cultural patterns helps educators in dealing with the diversity of students. Generally, students from monochronic cultures tend to focus on one academic task at a time, emphasize promptness, and are likely not to disturb their peers. Polychronic students are inclined to do more than one task at once, are highly distractible, and consider time commitments an objective not to be achieved promptly.

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Lack of Due Knowledge of Oneself. Look into yourself and learn more of your inner self. Who are you in reality? Are you an organized person or not? Has it ever occurred to you to think of time as being an invaluable possession of yours? Some people are perfectionists and try to do everything without committing mistakes and flaws. Some things are important enough to be done perfectly, but other things can be done with just an average effort. Other people often find themselves in a frustrated or depressed state, which hinders their daily and weekly schedules. Knowing yourself, your inner psychological characteristics, and your ability to overcome frustration, fear of failure, and different types of depression may provide you with an inner force to better manage time and to effectively organize your daily and professional duties and obligations. With this caveat in mind, I offer the following suggestions for educators: ■

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Learn to plan your time properly and try not to lose this invaluable “property” for frivolous things. Scheduling will help you keep from wasting time. If you use your time more efficiently, you will have more time at your disposal. It is worthwhile to remember that it is never too late to start scheduling time. Match your personality with your schedule. What is your life’s rhythm? Do you value time? Are you a procrastinator? Answering these and other related questions will help you understand your inner self and your attitude about the phenomenon of time. Use a planner or yearbook that will allow you to look at the next day, the next week, and the whole year. If needed, use a professional planner to schedule your plans and chronicle the results of your interactions with children and their parents. Prepare for your classes and extracurricular activities at the same time and in the same place (but do not follow this principle blindly, for we are often on the go and under pressure to do urgent jobs). Teach your students to scrupulously schedule each day and each week in order to be involved in useful cognitive and productive activity. Make sure students understand how to rationally combine cognitive and recreational activity. While admonishing children to schedule and cherish their time, teach and help them allot time both for after-school cognitive activities and for health-promoting exercises in the open air. Make your next “to-do list” in the evening and analyze how well you have coped with your previous schedule. Ask yourself, “What

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have I managed to do well today? Is there anything that I have failed to fulfill?” Time is not only an important part of our lives; we spend our lives within time. Time is a precious gift to us. Let us spend it productively. Shakespeare wrote the great phrase: the “inaudible and noiseless foot of Time.” This is one of the spectacular characteristic features of what time really is. The older one gets, the oftener one will be hearing this noiseless foot of Time. Time may be a great healer, time may plot against us, and time may help us listen to what our inner voice whispers to us.

Questions 1. What is the difference between physical and psychological time? 2. What difficulties do people commonly experience in managing time? 3. Most people tend to delay doing things until later. Does this often happen to you? 4. What measure do astronomers use to show the distance to various celestial objects? What star is the nearest to Earth and how far away is it? 5. How do people from monochronic and polychronic cultures differ in their attitude to time commitments? 6. Can you manage time and plan your daily activities accurately? Do any external or internal factors hinder your efforts in realizing these tasks?

Listen to Your Inner Voice

9

Thought is the seed of action. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

I wish I could travel by the road that crosses baby’s mind . . . where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them. RABINDRANATH TAGORE

and their behaviors; their interactions with peers; seeing how they grow and mature physically, intellectually, and cognitively; and interacting with their parents, relatives, and community members, who usually know the children living in the neighborhood—an educator gradually acquires capabilities to see and hear what other people are not able to, that is, to predict a child’s behavior and intentions, to know what the child is thinking at a given moment, and to recognize and foretell a joy or a trouble by looking in the child’s eyes. In a sense, pedagogical activity, like no other state-sponsored occupation, slowly but effectively approximates the teacher’s abilities to those of a clairvoyant. An experienced educator can often guess what is happening to a child at first glance or by a side glance. The very essence and nature of the teaching profession—tending and supervising children and adolescents—make the teacher cultivate and develop the faculties of seeing what is hidden inside a child. It is my opinion that some experienced pedagogues are, at the same time, practical psychologists, even though they may have no formal psychological education.

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The sixth sense or intuition is shaped gradually, but sometimes even some young college and university graduates can boast the ability to know and understand something through their feelings rather than considering material facts or human evidence. I have been working with children and adolescents, preservice and inservice teachers, and postgraduate students. I have never formally attended any courses of psychology or parapsychology, nor have I studied the essence of hypnosis. But with the years, like many other educators seriously involved in the business of child rearing, I also seem to have been acquiring some minor abilities to listen and to believe in my inner self while making some important decisions in interacting with children, their parents, and their other relatives. These days I keep noticing that my intuition often provides me with support and information, so that I often come out of a difficult educational situation more easily. At least intuition helps me to look into the deeper layers of a child’s soul, predict his future intentions, and see sorrow or happiness in his eyes and lips. Sometimes it is important to pay attention and listen to the signs we are always surrounded by. Denise Linn (1996, p. 3) contends that we “are surrounded by personal messages from the world” around us. Signs are powerful indicators that can ensure our understanding of ourselves and other people. They can reflect what is occurring in our subconscious mind. She states: In times past, people understood and knew how to interpret these portents and omens. In fact, the entire destiny of a tribe or even a nation was often decoded by signs. However, as technology expanded, people became more and more isolated from their connection to the earth and their inner wisdom. Most lost their ability to listen to the secret messages around them and to see the signposts giving personal guidance at every moment. It is now time to regain this lost ability. (pp. 3–4) The study of signs spans the ages; therefore, signs are best understood in the context of religious, cultural, and historical backgrounds from which they arose, as well as how they operate in our life. Fundamentally signs have two functions. They serve as messengers of important information about your present circumstances and even about your future and they act as reflections of where you are in your life. (p. 6)

Since primeval times, people have received various signs regarding the future. Some ancient predictions have been fulfilled, and some dreams have correctly foretold the future. How does all this occur? Questions like this

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have fascinated scientists and theorists for centuries. To understand these and related issues, Linn examines the phenomenon of time. She postulates that the space around us is measured by length, breadth, and height. However, Albert Einstein took space and time as being inseparable entities that form the space-time continuum. Einstein declared that both space and time are elastic; they expand, contract, and warp themselves into fourdimensional curves. It means that time can loop back upon itself. Although this seems strange, in Linn’s view, it is according to the laws of mathematics and sounds logical. She also compares the fatal voyage of the Titanic in 1912 with the sinking of the fictional ship Titan, which was chronicled in the novel Futility by Morgan Robertson in 1898. The similarities are breathtaking. The Titan was an unsinkable ship and could carry three thousand passengers. It collided with an iceberg in April 1912. A lot of passengers drowned because the ship did not have enough lifeboats. What happened with the Titan is almost the exact scenario of what actually occurred fourteen years later with the real Titanic. Linn assumes that Morgan Robertson was a person who received signs prior to the real tragedy with the Titanic in the waters of the Atlantic. Signs may come from the collective unconscious, our cultural heritage, memories from the past, and other sources (Linn, 1996). Collective Unconscious. Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychoanalyst, believed that the collective unconscious houses certain primordial images or archetypes that take the form of intuitive knowledge. These archetypal images are likely to occur if one has a sincere will to see or hear them (cited in Linn, 1996). Strange as it may seem, I myself often have dreams about roaming in a large city that is sometimes known and sometimes unknown to me. While staying at an urban settlement, I enjoy seeing places of interest and meeting people whom I already know. I also meet with people unknown to me. I assume that all these dreams associated with city life embody universal and archetypal images of a place where people have lived since ancient times. The ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley, the peoples of Mesopotamia, the Etruscans, the Romans, and many other cultures used to build and live in fortified cities, with the exception of those who used to cultivate the land and raise domestic animals. As many people have historically been concentrated in cities, cities are embedded in the collective unconscious of humanity. I am inclined to thinking that these images and scenes of city life appear for me from the collective unconscious.

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Cultural Heritage. The signs and beliefs ingrained in the indigenous culture can provide teachers with clues in other situations. Vivid in my mind is one interesting episode from my life. There is a lovely birch tree outside the window of my office at the Academy. It is near that tree that students usually stand discussing dayto-day problems. Once I started noticing that during breaks one Mari girl, in her twenties, used to touch the tree with her palms. A couple of times I saw her leaning on it. As I knew well the Mari cultural and religious traditions and knew that they believed in the power that trees can give people, I guessed immediately why she attached herself closely to that tree. During a later conversation with her I clarified the authenticity of her culture-related behavior. She said that touching or leaning on a tree provides her with extra power and energy for studying and secures her health. At least, she heartily believed in it.

Memories From the Past. The experiences people had in previous periods of life are kept in their subconscious mind. People can subconsciously recollect those experiences, especially in cases of emergency. When I was an elementary school student, I used to go to a small pond with my friend Sasha, where we used to fish and swim. One sunny summer day, we went to the pond with the intention of catching a lot of fish. Sasha threw out his feeler. As for me, first I decided to take a swim, because the day was hot. I undressed and immediately dived into the water near the place where Sasha was fishing. In the water I accidentally caught my forefinger in Sasha’s hook, and I got rid of the hook only after swimming back to the shore. My finger bled profusely, and the accident scared me. Years passed. Then one day, in a circle of several families, we were picnicking on the shore of a lake on a warm summer day. Some people were fishing nearby, and a group of small boys and girls were splashing in the water. Suddenly, by peripheral vision, I noticed how one boy was choosing a good position to dive into the water exactly at the place where a middleaged man was fishing, intensively studying the bob. Immediately, like lightning, my childhood memories about my badly wounded finger surfaced in my mind. I rushed to the boy and caught him by his leg, as he was already in the process of flying headfirst into the water. If I had not appeared in time to save him from diving in a dangerous place, he might have been caught by the fishing hook. Worse still, when the man took his fishing line out of water in order to change his position, I saw not one but three hooks fixed to it.

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Calling upon my readers to be extremely cautious in the water, I simultaneously end this chapter with thoughts about what educators can do to better use their intuition when working with children: ■

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Awaken your personal intuitive awareness and integrate intuition, whenever appropriate, when working with the diversity of students. Rely on your inner abilities so that you can make decisions regarding certain situations in the educational process. Intuition is a powerful tool for conceptualizing ideas and making decisions. But this method of investigation and cognition requires delicate handling. Use it only when you are quite sure that your inner sense and surrounding circumstances are on your side. Consider an intuitive system that best works for you. In one case, you may rely on your feelings or a good idea that comes to your mind; in other cases, you may trust your past experience or a student’s religious or cultural heritage. Now and then, capitalize on signs surrounding you. Some of them may encompass important messages that have been sent directly for your consideration. Listen attentively to a message being sent to you or a sign being opened in front of you. Learn to “read” your children. A child’s eyes, lips, face, behavior, or manner of talking with classmates—all these and other facial expressions and manners of behavior—may immediately tell you whether the child is in a normal, healthy state or has got a cold, whether the child received an excellent grade at a previous lesson or received a bad grade, or whether the child has done the homework or not. By exerting more intuitive powers you will undoubtedly learn to look deeper into a child’s inner world.

Intuition or the sixth sense is inherent, with different degrees of exposure, in any person. Within each of us is the inner ability to hear the “talkings” of the objective reality and to see what is not seen by our eyes. By the very nature of their profession, educators have to know everything and to notice everything; they are required to possess a higher level of intuition than the average individual involved in other domains of activity. It only remains for educators to expand and sharpen their intuitive awareness and possibilities. There is a belief that certain dreams can foretell people’s health. Whether it is so or not, health is not only physical or psychic but also a huge humanitarian phenomenon requiring special consideration.

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Questions 1. How does an educator acquire the abilities to predict and foretell a child’s behavior? 2. How do you understand the phenomenon of intuition or the sixth sense? 3. Do you happen to know any other examples similar to the fatal voyage of the real Titanic in 1912 and the fictional voyage of the Titan in 1898? 4. Have any signs ever appeared in your life? In what way did they appear (in conversations with people, in the form of some object or animal, through some song or movie, in dreams, etc.)? 5. Have you ever used your intuition in working with students? If you have, how did it work? 6. Why do educators traditionally possess a higher level of intuitive awareness and intuitive capabilities than representatives of other professions?

10

Take Care of Your Health

We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence. CHARLES DARWIN

I am dying with the help of too many physicians. ALEXANDER THE GREAT

health has been considered one of the major priorities of human society. When one is unhealthy, one tends to lose heart, one’s capacity for work is reduced, and often one begins to lose hope for returning to the former, healthy state. It is not without reason that an Arabian proverb says “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.” There are tens of thousands of educators and teachers throughout the world who have a rather strong immune system and rarely fall ill. Let them be as healthy as they are and let them never experience any pain and fatigue. But a considerable number of educators, nevertheless, tend to frequently contract various diseases. The causal factors of bodily disturbances and imbalances include, but are not limited to, the following. Ignoring Elementary Knowledge About One’s Own Body and How It Functions. A lot of people have a good understanding about how, for example, a car functions. They can easily find the cause of any breakage and repair it in no time. The same people may not know how their various body

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systems function and what the body consists of. Knowing one’s car is important; any machine carrying people must be in good working order. But knowing one’s body and its working is a much more important matter. You may replace a broken or old car with a new one, but you cannot replace your unhealthy body with a completely new constitution. You can only embark on the tedious and long process of healing “broken parts.” You will be a lucky person, if all goes well, but sometimes things take a turn for the worse. Neglecting the Role of Exercise. I again start with the notion of a car and will not be mistaken to say that the car has penetrated so closely into our lives that a car has become a member of our family. Some educators are reluctant to go on foot just to their neighbors who live next door. They walk—“put their feet on the ground”—only inside their houses and yards. How is it possible for a person to be healthy if all his muscles and bodily parts do not experience any physical shake-up? It is known that a prime cause of obesity is lack of exercise. In this context, by exercise we mean not only organized exercising in a fitness center or elsewhere, but any active moving of the body, as in walking to the place of work and back, doing some useful job around the house, roaming in a forest or mountains for pleasure, or just in taking a dog or other pet for a walk. By the way, repairing a car also represents a physical activity. A spectacular form of keeping oneself physically healthy and, in consequence, mentally healthy is using a bicycle. In most European countries, Vietnam, China, and some other countries of Southeast Asia, people of all ages like to ride bicycles—but no nation is as bicycle-crazy as the Dutch. In reality, in the Netherlands bicycles practically outnumber people (Slütter, 2000). People tend not to discuss the fact that bicycling embodies a healthy style of living. They have already discovered and know this fact well. Instead, they relate other things to their liking of bicycling. This is how Rita van Dooren (cited in Slütter, 2000), a teacher at a Dutch secondary school, explains her fondness for the bicycle: I don’t understand why people who live close to their workplaces use their cars to get back and forth. Every day I ride my bicycle twenty kilometers to work and another twenty kilometers back home. My body is used to the exercise, so when I arrive I’m not sweaty or tired. I appreciate the scenery along the way. I can see corn and wheat growing, geese flying overhead, I know where the buzzards make their nests, and early in the morning, I see deer. Sometimes I ride a few extra kilometers so that I can pass through nature areas, and what’s more, I enjoy doing it. There’s plenty to admire. I have a recumbent bicycle, a beautiful, streamlined M5. My stu-

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dents think it’s great. Sometimes I hear them saying how “cool” or “phat” it is. (p. 11)

Wrong Approaches to Satisfying Gastronomic Needs. Roughly speaking, in everyday life people consume meals that represent a solid mass in which most of the vitamins and other useful components are, to a great extent, destroyed. By boiling, frying, or stewing, we “kill” vitamins and, most important, live cells that natural food consists of. Nevertheless, by saying so, I do not intend to persuade the reader that, for example, a boiled egg or a stewed piece of turkey becomes completely devoid of all useful ingredients. Contemporary human beings cannot eat raw beef and raw pork nor can they consume raw fish or raw potato, unless some of them are gourmets who prefer rare steak or a live octopus dipped into pungent ketchup. But people can wisely build their daily menus and reorganize their eating habits in such a manner that their daily meals may contain both “prepared” and natural food in useful and required proportions. People can compensate for the lack of natural food by enriching their daily prepared food ration with vegetables, fruit, and pure spring water, all of which consist of live cells and contain lots of various minerals and vitamins. The proportions of prepared and natural food on one’s plate may vary depending on various conditions. Some specialists are inclined to assume that an ideal ratio of prepared and natural food should be 50:50. For instance, if a person consumes two pounds of solid meals daily, then he needs to divide this daily ration into two parts. One part (one pound) should consist of hot or prepared food and the other, equal part (also one pound) should be natural food—that is, food whose vital ingredients have not been destroyed by human intervention. For example, if your slice of beef and rice that you eat for dinner weighs half a pound, eat the same amount of vegetables and/or fruit along with the beef and rice. Neglecting the Magnificent Capabilities of the Energy of Water. Each school graduate and each adult knows that water is—next to the air we breathe— the most vital ingredient that a human being’s body needs. Moreover, around 80 percent of the body consists of water! Why do we then neglect this important truth? We often overlook the fact that water is good for our bodies and overall health and that water is throughout our bodies. We often refuse to fully understand that water—or “blue gold”—is an essential thing in our lives. It is worthwhile to remember that our ancestors needed less water, because in the past, the air was not so badly polluted, people experienced less stress, and meals contained more natural products. Today the situation has

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changed for the worse. We have a great amount of environmental toxins in our bodies. It is water that plays a prime role in detoxifying our organs. Water helps break down and remove wastes. During detoxification, wastes are dumped into the bloodstream and lymph and then sent to the liver and kidneys for processing and elimination. Therefore, today we need more water. The powers of water optimize the natural space between red blood cells, which reduces the risk of heart disease by helping to avoid clotting and allows the fat cells to detoxify by off-loading wastes and toxins into the bloodstream for elimination. Such processes also promote weight loss and the reduction of water retention (“Water,” 2007). F. Batmanghelidj (cited in “Water,” 2007) indicates that much inside our body depends on water. Water wets all parts of our body. If its amount is not sufficient, our body’s drought-management system kicks into action. The histamine-directed chemical messenger systems are activated to arrange a new portion of water for the drought-stricken areas. As soon as histamine and drought “managers” come across pain-sensing nerves, a person feels pain. So the first alarm of dehydration manifests itself in pain. Christopher Vasey (cited in “Water,” 2007) goes further in his appraisal of water’s powers. In his view, drinking sufficient quantities of water can also play an important role in the prevention and treatment of a range of diseases. These diseases, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, eczema, rheumatism, gastric disorders, high or low blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, and urinary infections, can result from lack of water in the body. These and many other disorders can be treated by raising our intake of natural and pure water. I would like to finish the discussion about the blue gold with a story from my life. In the early summer of 2004 I began to experience pains in the left kidney. The computer analysis showed a round form in the renal pelvis, and the urologists assumed it might be a cyst. They recommended rechecking the kidney regularly to see if the supposed cyst grew or not. They appointed the first rechecking for the upcoming October. After consulting medical literature, I came to learn that cysts may grow, but they may also stop growing at some point and stay as they are for a long time without troubling the patient. In the meantime, I intuitively guessed that pure spring water could help me in some way. My logical thinking was based on the following premise: If water cannot help wash out the cyst, then it might at least not let it grow larger. For four months I drank pure water taken from a local mountain spring. Earlier analysis of water patterns had confirmed that this water is especially

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clean and has a small amount of silver in it. All in all, I drank four to five glasses of this spring water in addition to the average amount of liquid that I had previously consumed daily. My entire liquid ration consisted of this water. I drank it, prepared food in it, and boiled it for making tea and coffee. I acquired a habit of carrying a bottle of water with me and sipping it when a chance permitted. In early October of 2004, I underwent another computer screening, which showed no traces of any dark form in the kidney. By the month of October I had also lost four kilos of my weight, become twice as energetic, and felt a surge of cognitive and creative ability. Comparing the two pictures with a cyst-like formation in the kidney and without it, I do not stop wondering at the abilities of natural spring water, which I am still drinking and using to prepare meals. At the back of my mind, I sometimes permit a weakness not to believe in this miraculous incident. I am almost ready to refer the melting away of the cyst to some other cause. I have even yielded to the thought that there was no cyst at all, that the first screening showed just an evidence of some inflammatory process. But what happened, happened.

Overusing the “Brilliant Possibilities” of Modern Technology. Computer, television, and mobile phone make life and communication easier. The Internet and a range of various television channels provide the teaching/ learning public with a large amount of knowledge and information, making the book and the periodical look like the dinosaurs and pterodactyls. However, this coin has a reverse side. Excessive use of the computer and the inordinate watching of television have a negative impact on the nervous system with all the resultant consequences. There should be a golden mean in using existing and emerging technology. Asking educators to stick to the golden mean in using the possibilities of digital technology, I simultaneously suggest that they should remember the following precepts: ■

Learn as much as possible about your body and how it functions. Where does the water you consume go and how is it distributed in your physical structure? What happens to the air we breathe? What happens to a chewed piece of bread that passes through your esophagus and on into your stomach? What is the role of the liver or the kidneys in your organism? We all studied biology at school, but much of it must have been forgotten. Dig into a medical encyclopedia or a good brochure and restore in your memory the knowledge and the role of the cardiovascular, skeletal, muscular, and gastrointestinal systems in the human body.

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Refresh your knowledge about the nervous system and about the important role it plays in human life. It should be borne in mind that nervous complications and nervous exhaustion lie at the root and facilitate the emergence of a wide range of other diseases. Consume healthy food. Add fruits, vegetables, and natural water to your daily diet. Decrease fat in your overall calorie intake; increase the intake of food rich in fiber, beta-carotene, and vitamins. Exercise regularly. A good way to shape up physically is walking and jogging. If conditions and distance permit, walk to your educational institution and back, or use a bicycle for this purpose. In other cases, exercise your body in the way that suits you best. Maintain a healthy body weight. Rethink your attitude to the phenomenon of water. By water, I mean pure, natural water, or water that has been effectively and properly cleaned and filtrated. Drink a sufficient amount of this colorless liquid. Our bodies often cry for water. The first symptoms of such cries may be fatigue, pains, and even hunger. Also, add to your daily ration of meals a sufficient quantity of sea salt. Total abstinence from salt, as some medical sources recommend, is unwise, even in old age (Batmanghelidj, 1995; Vasey, 2006). Equally unwise is overusing salt. Salt is a vital bodily component. In fact, water and salt are an inseparable whole that is often called “salty bullion.” Taste a drop of your sweat, and you will realize that this salty bullion is in you. Ration your daily intake of pure water and your intake of natural, unrefined salt. Refresh your knowledge about water by looking through Batmanghelidj’s book Your Body’s Many Cries for Water:You Are Not Sick,You Are Thirsty! Don’t Treat Thirst with Medications, Vasey’s book The Water Prescription: For Health,Vitality, and Rejuvenation, and other sources on this subject.

I have named only a few causes hindering educators’ health and have provided only a few recommendations issuing from the discussion. Space does not allow me to provide a more detailed investigation of these and other related issues. I again address educators and also parents, who are also educators but on another front, with the following appeal: “Take good care of your health.” I also call on educators to listen to another request: “Build a healthy environment for children,” which I will discuss in a separate section.

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Indisputably, your healthy body and healthy mind will help you refine your general attitude to children by providing them with more love and empathy.

Questions 1. Why is it important to take care of your health? 2. Do you know how the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems function in your body? If you know, describe the mechanisms of their work. 3. What are optimal ways of exercising your body? 4. In one European country people obsessively use bicycles. Can you name this country? 5. What are sensible ways of feeding yourself? Why is it important to increase the intake of fruits and vegetables? 6. Why is pure, natural water exceptionally useful for our health? With the exception of water’s ability to quench thirst, have you ever had personal experience of water’s positive influence on some definite pain or illness in your body or on the overall state of your health?

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To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity. SØREN KIERKEGAARD

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. THORNTON WILDER

pleasantly disposed to his or her own offspring. Such an inclination is largely driven by natural biological causes. In an average human society, apart from a school milieu, an adult’s love of children tends to evoke admiration on the part of surrounding people. Innumerable novels and poems are devoted to the phenomenon of love, including also a love of one’s own offspring. But little is written and said about the sincere and unconditional love that an educator should render to pupils, a love that equals the love the educator feels for his or her own biological children. To more fully explain the point I am driving at, I will first remind the reader about some of the types of organization of education. Educational Progressivism. Such an education is based on a pedagogical movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century and has persisted to the present in various forms. Most progressive educators believe that students learn most effectively by following a five-step model of learning (a process similar to John Dewey’s idea of learning): becoming aware of the

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problem, defining the problem, proposing hypotheses to solve it, evaluating the consequences of the hypotheses, and testing the most likely solution. Most progressive education programs center on the following objectives: concentration on learning by doing, focus on thematic units, strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking, group work and development of social skills, education for social responsibility and democracy, emphasis on lifelong learning, and assessment by evaluation of learners’ projects and productions. The earliest enthusiast of progressive education was Francis Parker, and its best-known spokesperson was John Dewey (“Educational progressivism,” 2007). Democratic Education. It is based on democratic principles and participatory democracy, in which both students and teachers become equal participants in the pedagogical process. Students are invited to engage in every possible activity ranging from teaching to leadership roles and voting. Schools identifying themselves as democratic today exist in many parts of the world. Democratic schools maintain close links with each other. Each year, in a different country, the adherents of democratic education hold an International Democratic Education Conference. A problem with democratic education is that not all educators fully understand the real nature of democratic principles and how to realize them in educating children. Moreover, as Ron Miller (2007) asserts, human society is not yet prepared for so much democracy. Nonviolence Education. We can regard such an education as a type of democratic education that rejects aggression and violence and appeals to pedagogues to resolve in a constructive and humane way whatever difficulties and conflicts arise in the educational process. Educators in democratic schools report that such schools promote students’ problem-solving and social-action skills and develop their intellectual abilities. The ideas of nonviolence education are rooted in the founding principles proposed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, and Mahatma Gandhi. I fully support the ideas of nonviolence education and participated in a number of international nonviolence conferences. There educators from different countries complained about how difficult it has become to monitor children’s and adolescents’ behavior on school grounds and elsewhere and were unanimous that violent and aggressive behaviors are triggered by multiple factors. Authoritarian Education. It is premised on strict rules and principles of learning and strict discipline and obedience in the class and the school environment. Forms of assessment may vary and include both standardized

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testing and traditional forms of assessing children’s knowledge base and skills. Authoritarian educators tend to require children to follow their instructions and strive to show themselves as authority figures in every way. Teachers and representatives of the school administration often use threats and raised voices in dealing with children’s behavior. When a child comes to school without his homework, the teacher may start lecturing him in front of the class and, by so doing, may spoil the general psychological atmosphere in class. Educators “infected” by the spirit of the authoritarian style of teaching and child rearing cannot tolerate any form of interruption and challenging questions from students. Under the influence of such educators, some parents and relatives also start using commanding, structured, and control-based ways of interacting with their own children. An authoritarian style of educating the young is characteristic of countries that pursue a similar style of governing their citizens and adhere to one dominant ideology. In addition to the commanding, teacher-centered style of interaction with children, teachers in autocratic cultures require children to stick to the canons of the dominant ideology and the ruling line of the government. In such cultures, knowledge and information are also constructed in favor of the sociopolitical and ideological platform of the ruling circle. Any deviations from the subsequent strict methodological foundations are prohibited, and the “violators,” in most cases, are punished verbally or even juridically. However, in reflecting on this topic, it is necessary to distinguish between an authoritarian education that is characteristic of a certain society, and an authoritarian style of teaching that may be peculiar to a certain teacher in any country and in any type of educational institution. Religious Education. In Western and secular cultures, religious education implies the teaching of a particular religion and its various aspects such as rituals, beliefs, and customs. In the United States, religious education is often provided through Sunday school, Hebrew school, catechism classes, and so forth. Religious education is forbidden in public schools. Endorsing a religion at a school is considered an infringement of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The secular concept of religious education differs from the concepts adopted in societies adhering to religious law. In such societies and cultures, religious education connotes the dominant academic study (“Religious education,” 2007). All religions have one common hallmark: Their tenets are based on faith and the belief in a supernatural force (God) or a multitude of forces (gods). Each religion is based on a set of rituals. Even within one religion there may be several denominations, each of which may pursue varying

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rituals and rites—that is, different forms of religious life and different ways of showing love and respect to the Almighty. The largest world religion is Christianity. In the United States, the largest Christian branches are Baptist churches, churches of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Catholic Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon), and Lutheran churches. Islam, the second largest world religion, encompasses two groups of adherents: the Sunni Muslims and the Shiite Muslims. Other world religions are Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Sikhism. Thus, an education based on progressive ideas focuses on developing children’s creativity, democratic education concentrates on the idea of full and equal participation by both teachers and students in the cognitive process, nonviolent education summons educators to realize humanistic principles of child rearing, and an education centering on religious tenets calls students’ attention to pursue corresponding spiritual canons of life. None of the above-mentioned types of education exclude the phenomenon of love of children. I assume there will never emerge a form of education that could drop this issue. In fact, this is the cornerstone of all forms of education. Nevertheless, even though an education focusing on authoritarian principles uses the commanding style of teaching and upbringing, such teachers try, in their own way, to love and forgive their pupils. All types and subtypes of education and teacher-student interaction contain both positive and negative characteristics. Humanity has not yet designed a completely ideal strategy of educating the young. The main thing is that all types of education, mentioned here and yet unmentioned, lack one important asset: the mutual sense of kinship of a teacher to a child and a child to a teacher. Such a sense of pedagogical kinship may emerge and grow only in cases where the teacher crosses the psychological barrier between the notions of “my own child” and “someone else’s child,” rethinks the very notion “other people’s children,” and loves and treats, sincerely and heartily, each child as his or her own offspring and the school as a continuation of his or her own home. Whatever type of education and instructional style is used in a school and whatever types of learning styles and learning preferences children bring to the school, if a teacher loves and treats each student as his or her own child, most of the educational and child-nurturing problems may be solved positively. Not a single internal or external factor dictated by sociopolitical circumstances, various economic reorganizations, and educational reform movements will be able to challenge and seriously hinder such teacher-student relations.

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Following are several key recommendations for teachers at all grade levels: ■

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Love and treat each student in your class as your own child. For a genuine teacher who is destined to fulfill a divine mission, there cannot exist other people’s children. Take responsibility for the academic achievement of each learner in the same manner as an educatorparent cares for the academic success of his or her own child. Make and treat school as part of your own home. On occasion, take a glance at the flowers on the windowsills. In one of the pots, a flower may be fading due to lack of water. Do not wait for a school employee to water the withering plant or wipe the dust off the windowsills in your classroom. Pour some fresh water into the flowerpot, “voice a compliment” to the green creation, and this forgotten and neglected piece of flora will come back to life in an hour. Regard all material assets, such as the school building, the classrooms, various teaching aids, educational literature, computers and related technology, and the entire school premises with sports recreation utilities, as belonging to you. Come to school a little bit earlier than the accepted standards require. Eagerly wait for your children to enter the classroom. Meet each child as if you are meeting your guests who were invited to your birthday party. Consider yourself as the parent of this large group of children. Do not rush to leave the school right after lessons. Sit for several minutes in the classroom, relax, and collect your thoughts. Pick up a notebook that might have been left by a student of yours or a button that could have been torn out of a student’s coat. Gladden yourself with the thought that you will soon get to your smaller home and your smaller family in order to return, the next day, to a larger part of your home and to a larger part of your family.

Love is a learned phenomenon. We all learn to be a human being; we learn to be so throughout our lives. In other words, we continually strengthen our skills of learning to be a human being. In the same way, teachers need to learn to love their students as their own children. It will be a hard but sacred and noble way. We all live in a culturally diverse society. Why is it necessary for an educator to recognize the diversity of students? Why is it important for edu-

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cators to take into consideration students’ learning preferences and organize proper gender education? In the next section of the book, I will embark on an explanation of these and some other issues.

Questions 1. What is the nature of progressive education and what are its characteristic features? 2. What other types of education do you know? 3. What kind of psychological barrier should a teacher cross? 4. Why is it necessary for an educator to love and treat each learner in class as his or her own child? 5. If you already treat your students in the way you treat your own children, how does your educational approach differ from those of other teachers? 6. How do you understand the essence and nature of the phenomenon of love?

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the issues of diversity and offers a range of suggestions about how to effectively work in a classroom that includes students from different ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender backgrounds. Among other important objectives, contemporary educators are required to develop students’ multicultural competency, consider their learning preferences and strive for a balance of instructional styles, learn about their family backgrounds, and have a special affection for those who are less loved.

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We are of course a nation of differences.Those differences don’t make us weak.They are the source of our strength. . . .The question is not when we came here . . . but why our families came here. And what we did after we arrived. JIMMY CARTER

Our creator rejoices in diversity and variety. Any observation of our abundant earth and its incredible life-forms proves this. ROBYN KNIBBE

throughout recorded history, ranging from the first hominid species that began to produce elaborate stone tools in Africa to the peoples of Mesopotamia and Phoenicia, to the Roman Empire and the ancient civilizations of the Americas, and on to the contemporary globalizing and digital era. Human diversity incorporates a whole plethora of cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, language, and gender issues intertwined in different societies. Diversity also includes sociopolitical, socioeconomic, rural/urban, ecological, intellectual, psychological, and educational variables. On a smaller scale, it embraces human attitudes, age, value systems, styles of clothing, customs and traditions, cuisine, and many other overt and covert aspects of human behavior and existence. If we, just for a moment, allow ourselves to visualize the existence of some prehistoric civilizations, those societies might also have been diverse in terms of ethnicity, culture, and social class.

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Human diversity is not a static phenomenon; it is continually changing. People change their residences and get married in a foreign country, thus increasing the number of ethnically and racially mixed families. At the same time such migrants acquire new languages. Other people change their religion—and interestingly, a considerable number of atheists become religiously minded. Still others join various political parties and social organizations and become involved in different types of group activities. The increasing and changing diversity makes a tremendous impact on educational matters across cultures and challenges educators and education policy makers to design and implement educational strategies responsive to children’s learning styles and cognitive preferences. The contemporary epoch is witnessing a growth of racial and ethnic diversity. Such a natural process is especially noticeable in northern American and European countries. It is predicted that by 2050 over 40 percent of U.S. school-age children and adolescents will be from minority ethnic and cultural groups. France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands now boast an immigration influx from the southern countries. Interestingly, when I visited Paris in 2005 with my wife, she insisted on going to a French eatery to taste a real French meal. There were a lot of different cafés and restaurants on our way and near the points of interest, but they were all owned by people of non-French descent and specializing in cuisine other than French. Finally we managed to buy a couple of croissants at a kiosk owned by a middle-aged Algerian man. We sighed with relief and enjoyed a French national meal from the hands of an overseas individual. Today this is a typical picture in most European capital cities and other places to which tourists are attracted.

The world around us is rich in linguistic diversity. For example, in Russia there exist over 130 living languages. Language is known to have a strong effect on human lives, human interactions, and, of course, on education. It promotes students’ cognitive development and “can open or close the door to academic achievement” (Ovando, 1997, p. 272). Language is a salient element of human culture. Language and ethnic affiliations stand close to each other but do not always coincide. For instance, some Native American and Hispanic children who live in U.S. urban centers do not use their native languages and speak exclusively English. The majority of native people in Latin America speak exclusively Spanish, even though, ethnically, they have nothing to do with Spain or with the notion “Hispanic.”

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The language arsenal of the world is under continuous change. Over time a language undergoes phonetic, lexical, and grammatical alterations. One language can displace another language or several languages, as Spanish and Portuguese have displaced the native languages in Latin America. New languages, like creoles, are formed. Tragically, some languages die, owing to different reasons. Some dead languages play a significant role in historical investigation and linguistic research. Latin is one such language. It becomes important for governments and subsequent structures to design and realize equitable language policies for educational purposes. In bilingual settings, language policy makers should address the needs of children by empowering them to learn and converse in two languages; in multiethnic regions, it becomes incumbent on them to meet the needs of several ethnic groups. Another type of diversity worth concentrating on relates to religion, which considerably influences education even though religion is separated from school in most countries. Religious diversity is primarily represented by world religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. Different religions have different beliefs: Christians, Muslims, and Jews believe in one God, whereas Hindus believe in many gods. Christianity is subdivided into Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Religion can have a considerable impact on the development of national character and way of life. For example, Protestantism has had a great influence on American life and the American character. The philosophy of Protestantism appreciates the value of hard work, personal responsibility, discipline, and honesty. If one does not sin and works hard, getting rich is not considered evil. Religions have always addressed the meaning of life, the issues of salvation, and the phenomenon of love; therefore, religion as a system of beliefs and rituals is important to most people. No child should be persecuted for religious beliefs. Being religious or not is an individual’s personal matter. As religion is separated from school, ambivalence permeates the overall process of schooling in Western societies. Students visiting Sunday schools and reading the Holy Bible gain a knowledge base that is often diametrically opposed to that of the school curriculum. For instance, at school children are instructed to be good citizens of their country, to stand for peace, and to help build a future without military conflicts and war. Children learn that it is quite possible to live without war if people exert global efforts to prevent it. Conversely, the Bible teaches that global

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history is unfolding according to the plan that God outlined thousands of years ago. Humanity is speedily approaching the end times, which will imminently culminate in the Battle of Armageddon, the greatest battle ever fought on the globe. God and his heavenly forces, as the Bible predicts, will be victorious in this war, and one thousand years after this cataclysmic event Satan will be cast into hell forever. A salient form of diversity is defined by the distinction between urban and rural life. In 2003 the proportion of urban and rural populations in the United States was 80.1 percent to 19.9 percent; in the United Kingdom, 89.1 percent to 10.9 percent; in China, 38.6 percent to 61.4 percent; in Russia, 73.3 percent to 26.7 percent; and in India, 28.3 percent to 71.7 percent (Kashner, 2007). Most of the documents released by education policy makers throughout the world concern schools in general. In such documents, little is said (if any at all!) about rural schools and rural education. For countries in which there are no noticeable differences between urban and rural lifestyles, such generalized decisions may be the norm. For other countries, where urban-rural differences are marked, education authorities should take into account the specific conditions of rural schools and rural lifestyles. One more type of diversity relates to how people from different ethnic groups categorize some objects and activities and what meanings they attach to them. Diversity of categorization of reality is a fascinating phenomenon. Cushner and Trifonovitch (1989) provide several cogent examples of how differently people organize their world into smaller groups of things and how they then respond according to that category. They write: In traditional Japanese language the term “aoi” refers to colors that span blue and green wavelengths. When asked the color of the sky, the response would be aoi. When asked the color of grass, the response, too, would be aoi. How would you explain this? Certainly the entire Japanese population is not color-blind nor are they unable to think abstractly. Rather, whereas Euro-Americans have learned to place these particular stimuli into different categories (blue and green), the Japanese group them together. A similar example can be made using the stimulus word “dog.” Most Westerners consider dogs to be pets, “man’s best friend,” a companion, and in some cases, an important member of the family. A Muslim, however, confronted by the same stimulus, would consider the dog a filthy, lowly animal, something to avoid at all costs—similar to an American’s reaction to a pig. Some Filipinos or Pacific Islanders on the other hand would place the dog in the food category. It is not uncommon to find dog meat as part of the diet in many homes in that part of the world. (p. 321)

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In the given context it would also be worthwhile to draw a distinction between the notions “education,” “upbringing,” and “pedagogy” and see how they are perceived in two cultures: the United States and Russia. In the American educational tradition, the notion of education, tangibly and intangibly, encompasses at least five variables: (1) the process and result of teaching; (2) the process and result of learning; (3) any growth from prolonged learning, for instance, at an educational institution; (4) any growth of an individual in knowledge, attitudes, and skills; and (5) an entity symbolizing one wholeness, similar to that of politics, medicine, agriculture, or economy. As any activity of educating entails discipline, education implicitly embodies the idea of child rearing or upbringing. To denote a process of teaching, the notion of pedagogy is occasionally used. In the Russian educational tradition, the notion of education has historically encompassed the same features, but the idea of upbringing has received greater emphasis in the whole system of national education. Along with the development of the general notion of education, another huge category called “pedagogics” (as a science) and “pedagogy” (as both a science and a process) has emerged. Currently, pedagogy contains two salient ideas: didactics (teaching) and upbringing. Unlike in the United States, where the notion of education has survived and now represents a very grandiose and multidimensional category, in Russia the notion of pedagogy with its twofold subdivision has taken a deeper root. Moreover, in recent Russian educational revival, pedagogy encompasses an even more pronounced idea of upbringing. One of the main textbooks in the teacher education colleges and universities of Russia is called “Pedagogy.” All such textbooks contain two salient parts: the theory of teaching and the theory of upbringing. In the United States and most of the Western countries, such an approach is almost unknown. The limited space of this chapter has allowed the brief analysis of only a few types of diversity. Traditionally, until the 1960s, schools focused mostly on racial, ethnic, and language diversity. When the ideas of multicultural education began to unfold in the United States and other countries, educational institutions started reflecting on religious, gender, and social class diversity to address all the possible needs of individual students and groups. Teachers and education policy makers began to understand more deeply that not all members of a class or group have the same cultural and indigenous customs and traditions, value systems, behavior patterns, and modes of interaction with people.

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The following suggestions are applicable to educators working with the diversity of contemporary students: ■

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Recognize and accept the fact that the human world around us is diverse and that we should be tolerant of alien cultures and other viewpoints, even though this “alien” may seem strange and unusual to us. Take students’ cultural, ethnic, linguistic, gender, and religious differences into consideration in the classroom and on school grounds. Recognize diversity both on the individual level and on the level of different groups. Remember that human diversity is under constant change. Today some categories of diversity—such as, for instance, gender, social class, and ability—cannot be measured by the variables that were applied in the late twentieth century. Understanding and accepting diversity should not hinder you from recognizing the fact that ultimately we—teachers, students, and all people worldwide—are one flock fundamentally.

Remembering, once in a while, the American slogan E Pluribus Unum will be useful and not superfluous in your profession. Diversity is known to be a key ingredient of multicultural education, which will be the focus of investigation in the next chapter.

Questions 1. What issues does human diversity incorporate? 2. Is human diversity a static or changing phenomenon? How do you know? 3. What changes may take place in the ethnic and cultural makeup of the United States by 2050? 4. As religion is separated from school, what sort of ambivalence pervades the entire process of schooling in the Western hemisphere? 5. How are the notions of education, upbringing, and pedagogy perceived in the United States and in Russia? 6. Have you ever experienced any difficulty working in an ethnically and culturally pluralistic classroom? Comment on some of the difficulties.

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Enhance Your Multicultural Competency

We are 90 percent alike, all we peoples, and 10 percent different.The trouble is that we forget the 90 percent and remember the 10 percent when we criticize others. SIR CHARLES HIGHAM

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

of a teacher’s multicultural competency, I will briefly concentrate on the history and nature of multicultural education. The ideas of multicultural education were largely triggered by the civil rights movement in the United States, led by African Americans. Inspired by this movement, a cultural and ethnic revitalization upsurge began among minority groups in Western European countries and Australia. For example, in the United Kingdom multicultural education proved as difficult in terms of theoretical exploration as in practical policies. The integration of cultural and ethnic issues into school curricula traveled a painstaking road from assimilation to cultural pluralism. From a methodological perspective, multicultural education is determined by the principles of freedom, democracy, and human rights. All children and adolescents should have access to quality education, regardless of their ethnic, racial, language, social class, religious, and gender backgrounds. The ideas and fundamentals of multicultural education are very

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close to those of global education, as I postulated in an earlier analysis. I am of the strong opinion that “it is of little benefit to multiculturalize the educational process without providing a global context; it is equally useless to globalize education while ignoring a multicultural context” (Sinagatullin, 2003, p. 2). Multicultural education is characterized by several dimensions (Banks, 2001). The first dimension is content integration, necessitating the infusion of cultural and ethnic content into subject-area instruction. The second dimension, the knowledge construction process, relates to the extent to which teachers help students understand and determine the impact of cultural assumptions and biases on knowledge construction within a subject area. The third dimension, prejudice reduction, encompasses the idea that educators must help learners develop tolerant and positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. The fourth dimension, equity pedagogy, is aimed at facilitating the academic progress of children. An empowering school culture and social structure, the fifth dimension, necessitates that all members of the school staff participate in creating a school culture that empowers learners from different backgrounds and promotes racial, ethnic, and social class equity. In practice, multicultural education is often perceived not as an ongoing process but as an add-on subject. James A. Banks’s (2001) assumptions are very interesting in this respect. He maintains: When I asked one school administrator what efforts were being taken to implement multicultural education in his school district, he told me that the district had “done” multicultural education last year and that it was now initiating other reforms such as the empowering of the students’ reading scores. This administrator not only misunderstood the nature of multicultural education, but he also did not understand that it could help raise the students’ reading scores. (p. 4)

Even though some basic content and fundamental strategies of multicultural education may be used to a certain extent in most of the educational institutions across the world, it is impossible to design a multicultural approach that could perfectly fit every school. There are two major and widely known ways of thinking about, and dealing with, multicultural education: the universalistic or multicultural-education-for-all approach, and the particularistic approach. The former seeks to find better ways to address members of all ethnic and cultural groups in a given class, school, or a larger community. The latter is concerned with meeting the needs of a particular cultural group in a specifically organized environment, for ex-

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ample, in a bilingual school, in a remote and isolated rural school, in an institution for speech-impaired children, and so forth. In societies with a stable ethnic and language minority makeup, it is easier to multiculturalize the educational process through bilingual education. As bilingual education incorporates a parallel study of the minority and majority cultures, it provides a good framework for effective implementation of the ideas of multicultural education. Working in a multicultural classroom, it is recommended that teachers continually enhance their multicultural competency. As in the case of global competency, this may include at least three components: attitudes, knowledge, and skills. The recommendations I provide below are most suitable for the multicultural-education-for-all approach. The notion of attitude is related to an educator’s way of thinking, feelings, and disposition toward working in an ethnically and culturally diverse environment. First of all an educator needs to possess a positive attitude toward diversity. The educator should understand that the lifestyles of some other cultures, even if they are strange and unacceptable in the teacher’s native culture, may represent an important element of the indigenous way of life in those “other” cultures. In the light of the discussion, I recollect an intricate situation from my pedagogical experience. Once I happened to sit at the same table with a seventh-grade boy in a small rural school cafeteria. Then I was supervising a group of student teachers in that school, where students from various ethnic groups and two religious groups (Orthodox Christians and Muslims) studied. The boy was enjoying his beef with mashed potatoes and consuming some lemonade. As for me, I ordered pork, some vegetables, and a cup of tea. The boy kept smiling, then looked at the piece of pork lying on my plate and began sarcastically lecturing me on the dangers of eating pork. “Please excuse me, sir,” said the boy, “for not knowing your name, but how do you venture to eat this pork? In my family nobody has ever eaten pork. Some of our teachers also used to tell us to be careful with pork, because, as they said, pork is a disgusting and dirty type of meat. Eating pork is a shameful deed. It may also contain some infectious worms and bacteria that may harm people’s health. Why do you eat it, sir?” I immediately guessed that the boy was from a Muslim family, and so were the teachers who had dissuaded him from consuming pork. I knew that it was natural to not eat pork in Muslim families and communities, especially in rural areas where religious rituals and traditions are pursued more fervently than in urban centers. I was only glad that the boy stood away from pork, thus following the traditions of his family and the canons of the Muslim religion. I also rejoiced

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over the fact that those teachers to whom the boy referred stuck to some traditional canons and consumed beef instead of pork. However, I was distressed by the fact that those educators were not multiculturally competent and therefore applied the notion of “disgust” to the whole idea of pork (which is currently being consumed by the overwhelming majority of the world population). For as long as time permitted, I tried to enrich the boy’s multicultural experience. I said, “You do not eat pork and you eat beef, and this is quite a normal thing in your family and culture. However, there are quite a lot of people in the world who do not eat beef. A good example is in India, where eating beef is a taboo for many people, because the cow is a sacred animal in their culture. As it is normal not to eat pork in your culture, in the same way it is quite normal not to eat beef in theirs. The reason for refusing to eat pork is premised on religious and cultural traditions in your culture, and so is the refusal of beef in Indian culture. As a citizen of the twenty-first century, you should be respectful and tolerant toward the religious and indigenous traditions of other ethnic and cultural groups, including also other peoples’ food styles and cuisines.” I saw a spark of understanding in the boy’s eyes. . . . Regrettably, I was pressed for time and had to leave the school premises. Driving back home, I kept thinking of those teachers who apparently lacked due multicultural and cross-cultural competency.

Knowledge is a salient component of any education. Enhancing a multicultural knowledge base necessitates learning as much as possible about the ethnic and cultural groups to which the members of the class belong. For example, the educator is required to gain insights into the essence of ethno-psychological peculiarities of these ethnic and cultural groups. An acquaintance of mine, Margarita Zubova, told me in a conversation about how much easier it was to cope with children in a multicultural classroom if one knows the indigenous characteristics and learning preferences of the ethnic groups to which the children belong. When Margarita started teaching her new group of first-graders, there were eight Russian, four Byelorussian, two Ukrainian, two Lithuanian, two German, two Bashkir, and two Tatar students in her class. She was perfectly familiar with Tatar, German, Russian, and Ukrainian ethnic groups—their indigenous ways of life, their value systems, their modes of interaction, and their behavior traits—but she had never had any experience working with Byelorussian or Lithuanian students. Therefore, she scrupulously studied the history, culture, lifestyles, cognitive preferences, and other cultural characteristics of Byelorussians and Lithuanians. Margarita also attentively observed the Byelorussian and Lithuanian kids on a regular basis.

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The teacher gradually came to know that her Byelorussian students are traditionally hospitable, unpretentious, and emotional, and they try to avoid conflicts. The Lithuanian learners are optimistic and industrious; they value honesty and are prone to independent thinking. Likewise, she discovered that the Byelorussian children are fond of working cooperatively, whereas the Lithuanian kids prefer working individually. Making use of this and other multicultural knowledge helped her facilitate interaction with the students from Byelorussian and Lithuanian ethnic backgrounds.

Teachers are required to know about, and differentiate between, each student’s diversity. That may take the form of differences in age, character, manners of interaction, styles of clothing, hairstyles, modes of socializing, preferences for some favorite activity or pastime (hobby), devotion to a particular genre of arts or music, and liking of certain virtual sites on the Internet. All this means that each member of an ethnic, cultural, religious, or language group simultaneously belongs to other subcultures determined by the individual’s personal inclinations, interests, drives, and other explicit and implicit characteristics. One young girl may be keenly interested in modern pop music; another female student’s favorite pastime may be cooking and sharing her cooking skills with her peers. Still another student may be fond of traveling, an enterprise that may call her subsequently to learn foreign languages or at least some of the essentials of the spoken languages of the countries she plans to visit. It is important for a teacher to possess a set of specific skills to address the challenges of increasing diversity. For instance, teachers need to possess classroom management skills. Working with a diverse range of students, the quality of classroom management is largely dependent on how well the educator knows students’ socialization patterns, their interactional and relational styles, their learning styles and cognitive preferences, and their core values. Much depends on how effectively the educator addresses ethnic, gender, disability, language, and social class issues. In a multicultural classroom, stressful and frustrating situations emerge more often than in a standard monocultural and monolinguistic class. Teachers get frustrated owing to lack of knowledge about their students’ historical and cultural background, their behavioral and cognitive characteristics and traits, and their families and communities. Working educators should continually strive to improve and expand their multicultural mastery. They should gain more knowledge and master their techniques and strategies of instruction and interaction with children. Among many ways of achieving multicultural growth is self-education. A teacher’s self-education program may include (1) working with the Internet

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and learning more about the theory and practice of multicultural education, (2) getting acquainted and sharing reflections with other teachers and advocates of multicultural education, and (3) gaining from colleagues’ professional experience by visiting their classes. A very effective way of learning about human diversity is traveling about and seeing one’s own country and the world, as I recommended doing in a previous discussion. In the end I offer more suggestions so as to enhance educators’ multicultural mastery: ■

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Keep in mind that the top and uppermost idea of multicultural education is to create necessary conditions for all students (regardless of their ethnic, cultural, gender, and social class background) to improve their academic achievement (Banks, 2001). Create a classroom environment that permits addressing the ethnic and cultural needs of all children. Ensure your positive and tolerant attitude to the diversity of students and to the notions of “alien” and “foreign.” Provide extra guidance and support for the children with alternative behavior and alternative health. Keep a journal of your observations in your multicultural classroom. You may write in the journal information on children’s behavior patterns, their academic growth, their psychological and social changes, and on the type of their peer relationships. In fact, you may keep several journals and conduct informal research on each child’s development from different perspectives. Enrich and improve your multicultural competency by meeting people, by gaining from your colleagues’ work, and by making use of the Internet and other mass media resources.

The list of professional characteristics pertaining to multicultural competency will not end here. In the forthcoming pages I will seek to address other variables and tactics in dealing with diversity, which are most missed in teachers’ educational careers. A primary task of an educator working in a pluralistic class is to be knowledgeable about students’ learning preferences and learning styles, the analysis of which I proceed to next.

Questions 1. What factors were the ideas of multicultural education triggered by? 2. What dimensions is multicultural education characterized by?

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3. What components does a teacher’s multicultural competency include? 4. Margarita Zubova undertook theoretical and practical investigation of the Byelorussian and Lithuanian children in her class. What did she learn about these children? 5. What factors does the quality of a teacher’s classroom management skills depend on in dealing with a diverse range of students? 6. What should working teachers do to continually improve and enrich their multicultural competency?

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The young man who has the combination of the learning of books with the learning which comes of doing things with the hands need not worry about getting along in the world today, or at any time. WILLIAM S. KNUDSEN

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge . . . observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. DENIS DIDEROT

to school a variety of learning styles and cognitive preferences from their kindergartens, families, and local communities. What is learning style? In Kenneth Cushner’s (1990) opinion, learning style is seen as “individual variations in how people perceive, think, solve problems, learn and absorb and retain information and/or skills” (p. 102). Felder and Henriques (1995) provide a similar definition. Learning style is “the ways in which an individual characteristically acquires, retains, and retrieves information” (p. 21). Learning style may be determined by a set of factors. Sociopolitical Factors. For example, the idea of collectivism, a prevalent directive in the former Soviet Russia, has had a great influence on education in general and on children’s cognitive preferences in particular. Con-

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temporary Russian students prefer working cooperatively, and information flows freely from class to class. Children like discussing their academic grades with each other. High-achieving students willingly assist slow learners in solving various tasks. The idea of personality formation in the collective was largely developed by Anton Makarenko, a noted Russian pedagogue. He viewed intra-collective association in conjunction with a collective’s interactions with a wider society, which provides the main source for developing a harmonious individual. The notion “educational collective” is associated with Makarenko’s name. Religious Factors. A religion can mold a subsequent attitude to life and to cognitive activity. For instance, the Protestant work ethic has affected not only the development of the American character, as I wrote earlier, but also the formation of attitudes to education and the shaping of students’ modes of learning. The important assets and tenets of Protestantism have added a lot to the development of mainstream American students’ cognitive preferences. They tend to be field independent, prefer working for individual recognition, and are normally task-centered, competitive, rational, and honest. Cultural Factors. People of all ethnic and cultural groups have sought to cognize the world and to understand the laws of nature by observing and gaining knowledge on the surrounding reality. Gradually, different groups developed specific cognitive styles that they passed on to further generations. Cultural differences can account for some major differences in cognitive styles. Some cultures have developed such practices as learning through social dialogue with the elderly. For example, in most Bashkir and Tatar rural communities inhabiting Central Russia, learning by listening to and interacting with old men and old women has always played a positive role in child and adolescent development. As K. S. Akhiyarov (2000) indicates, interaction with old and experienced people “encompasses a sense of the land’s past that the elderly individual carries within himself ” (p. 152). The Navajo tradition suggests that one gains knowledge more effectively by observing and listening as opposed to doing and talking (Keating, 1996). Vera John-Steiner (1984), who conducted research in Pueblo communities of Arizona and New Mexico, says that Pueblo children excel in observational learning, learning through exploration, and learning through social dialogue. As in Bashkir and Tatar communities, Pueblo children often interact with the elderly, absorbing their wisdom and life experiences. Native American students also prefer learning by silent observation and supervised participation. Putting the student in competitive roles, a favored

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strategy in Western cultures, is not willingly accepted in Native American cultures (Schaffer, 1988). Research conducted among students from different ethnic backgrounds shows that cooperative learning activities in small groups appear to match the learning style preferences of Hmong, Mexican, and Vietnamese students but would be a mismatch with Korean and Armenian learners (Park, 2002). Recent investigations (“UF study,” 2006) indicate that Chinese students give preference to “practical” learning styles, showing more interest in material that has real-world applications. They also prefer an organized environment—orderly classrooms and firm standards of behavior. Academic Factors. Even though styles of learning are relatively consistent over time, school experiences may promote certain changes in students’ cognitive preferences. A student may (1) cope with and progress in shaping his or her traditional learning style and achieve academically, (2) acquire and get used to another mode of cognition, and (3) get used to utilizing multiple styles of learning (Sinagatullin, 2003). Students’ adjustment or choice of learning style is also dependent on their approaches to learning and orientations to studying. Morton and Säljö (cited in Felder & Brent, 2005) define three approaches to learning: 1. A surface approach, when students memorize facts and follow routine solution procedures without trying to understand their origins and limitations. 2. A deep approach that is based on the understanding of material. 3. A strategic approach, characterized by students’ striving to assess the level of effort they need to exert to achieve their ambition. Students adopting a surface approach have a reproducing orientation, those pursuing a deep approach have a meaning orientation, and students inclined to strategic tactics of learning tend to possess an achieving orientation. Technological Factors. The Internet and related technologies have firmly entered the life of studenthood in the new millennium and have promoted the building of a global cyberspace, which involves millions of people of different ages interacting with each other and gaining infinite knowledge and information. The impact of new technologies on education has begun to transform not only the ways of learning but also entire educational systems. Technology-based styles of cognizing the world strongly challenge well-proven learning practices based on interaction with the teacher and work with traditional printed material in a textbook.

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Individual Psychological Factors. Using a particular learning style is also determined by a student’s inner psychological characteristics. For instance, a choleric or sanguine child may prefer working in a group, whereas a melancholic or phlegmatic student may take a liking to working individually. Environmental and Physical Factors. Children’s cognitive preferences also depend on an environment they choose or create for themselves. Some students prefer warm conditions, others like to study in a cool room. One student is indifferent to the state of cleanliness of the room; another one may require complete neatness and order in the surroundings. Complete silence or a moderately noisy atmosphere, bright or lower light, working individually or studying in the presence of someone else—all these factors can influence a student’s cognitive processes (Sinagatullin, 2003). From a learning preference perspective, students can also be subdivided into sensing and intuitive, visual and verbal, active and reflective, sequential and global, and inductive and deductive (Felder & Henriques, 1995). Grashna and Riechmann (citied in Potter & Emanuel, 1990) classify learners into dependent, independent, competitive, collaborative, participative, and avoidant (uninterested in what happens in class). On the whole, every student has a learning style. One child may stick only to one way of learning over a long period of time; another may use multiple cognitive styles, adapting to new circumstances and strategies of teaching. In practice, mismatches often occur between students’ learning styles and the teacher’s instructional styles, which sometimes lead to psychologically unfavorable consequences. When such cases occur, students tend to become inattentive, begin to receive low grades, and often get discouraged about the subject, the teacher, and the school and its overall academic atmosphere. Such a course of events also has a negative impact on the teacher, who may start “recouping his losses” by becoming captious and unjust toward students or may start questioning his or her own professional competence. Thus, knowing and considering students’ learning preferences is only one side of the problem. More difficult is selecting an appropriate instructional style or method that may adequately match a particular mode of learning and a particular educational environment. As instructional or teaching styles are many in number, I will focus on just a few of them. Direct Instruction. Widely accepted in school practice, this method is good for teaching specific facts and skills and helps easily measure students’ achievements. Most of the students, regardless of their ethnic and cultural

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origin, may gradually adapt to this style of teaching. At the same time, this method may impede the development of learners’ creative potential and be incongruent with cooperative styles of learning. Cooperative Approach. This helps students learn from each other and fulfill academic and social skill goals. This effective method fosters mutual responsibility and teaches learners to be more compassionate and tolerant of each other. The disadvantages of this approach are as follows: Students preferring to work individually find it difficult to be engaged in cooperative activity; talented and gifted students tend to be superior in solving academic tasks and constantly “stand out” in the group. Small-Group Discussion. Some students feel more comfortable working in small groups than in large groups or individually. In group discussion, students are aware of their individual accountability and responsibility for the success of the whole group. In fact, small-group discussion is a form of the cooperative approach. However, as in the case with cooperative strategies, field-independent learners will normally prefer to work for individual recognition. Role Playing. This effective didactic approach elicits students’ curiosity and motivates them to cognitive activity not only in elementary school but also in middle and high school. College and university students are also happy to assume different roles while studying various subject areas and in fulfilling some social activities. I know from my teacher training experience that most students, prior to their student teaching experience in school, are fond of assuming the roles of teacher, student, and parent. I often practice a variety of professional role-playing with my second- and third-year students, and then I enjoy witnessing the traces of my approaches in the ways they conduct lessons and extracurricular activities while student teaching. Brainstorming. This activity depends on the active participation of the whole group, helps create a spirit of cooperation, and encourages students’ creative thinking. Owing to various cultural and individual reasons, not all students willingly join in such an activity. Some learners know that they are not sharp-witted and clever enough to solve intricate problems and try to stay apart from group work. Others just loathe working cooperatively and prefer answering questions in academic solitude. Teachers are required to use brainstorming techniques rationally, trying not to exceed the established mental and physical boundaries and norms. Experiential Learning. Even though student-centered and activity-oriented, this approach needs a step-by-step monitoring of the teaching process. In this context, it is impossible not to remember John Dewey, who believed that education must engage and enlarge experience and that children learn

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best by doing. In the Eurasian tradition, a similar way of cognizing the world is often addressed as an activity-based approach. In experiential learning, the primary emphasis is placed on the process rather than on the result of learning. After some reflection on teaching styles and instructional techniques, the following reasonable question arises: How should a teacher cope with the diversity of students in the contemporary classroom? First of all, it becomes clear that teachers will not be able to perfectly fit the demands of all students’ learning styles in a multicultural classroom. Nor will it be possible for all students to adequately and speedily change their cognitive preferences and adapt to the teaching style of one educator, a scenario often occurring in elementary school, or simultaneously adapt to several teaching styles, when they are taught by several teachers in middle school and high school. One of the best ways of coping with and overcoming the problems regarding the correlation of teaching style and learning style is striving for the principle of equilibrium, or the golden mean, in using instructional styles. It means that the teacher needs to create an optimal teaching/learning environment. For instance, in one case, the teacher may address the majority of students simultaneously by using, for example, direct explanation; while in another case, the teacher may fit instructional techniques to the preferred style of learning of each student or each group. Following are four general strategies for educators to keep in mind: ■

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Take into consideration the learning styles that children bring to school from their homes and indigenous cultures. Consider also their culturally specific manners of interaction with peers, adults, and parents and their general attitude toward schooling. Avoid attempting to immediately change culture-related and religion-dependent traits and traditions by forcefully introducing certain innovative techniques and strategies of instruction, assessment, and teacher-child interaction. Innovative styles of teaching will, in any case, constantly push their way through in the near future. Do not stick to each newly introduced innovative strategy. Subsequently, try to use culture-related and innovative strategies in a well-considered balance. Strive for a balance of instructional strategies. Approach learners partly in the manner they prefer and partly in a less preferred style (Felder & Henriques, 1995). It is virtually impossible to accommodate every student in a class with the instructional method

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that matches his or her learning preferences. In the long path of schooling, when a learning environment is favorable, especially when you work individually with a given student, you will have numerous opportunities to use a style of teaching or a communicative approach that will suit the cognitive preferences of the given student. Remember that in creating a favorable pedagogical atmosphere in class, you need to keep in mind, both consciously and subconsciously, all the possible psychological, physiological, genealogical, familial, and socio-emotional characteristics that a child may manifest in learning a given topic or solving a given task.

In this chapter I have called multicultural educators to consider students’ learning preferences. In addition to this important task, educators need to be competent in using folk pedagogical traditions of various ethnic and cultural groups. How is folk pedagogy interrelated with multicultural education? What values is folk pedagogy based on? I intend to answer these and some other questions in the upcoming chapter.

Questions 1. What is learning style? 2. What factors may learning style be determined by? 3. What cultural modes of learning are observed among some Native American peoples? 4. To what learning styles do Chinese students give preference? 5. What changes can academic factors promote in students’ cognitive preferences? 6. How do you understand the following suggestion: “Strive for a balance of instructional strategies”?

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Disregarding the fundamentals of indigenous traditions and folk pedagogy results in the decline of human culture. GENNADY VOLKOV

If parents pass enthusiasm along to their children, they will leave them an estate of incalculable value. THOMAS ALVA EDISON

HE IDEAS OF FOLK PEDAGOGY are related to the indigenous traditions of child rearing and education among different peoples. For example, in Russia and some other Eurasian countries, folk pedagogy has historically encompassed two interconnected phenomena: an idea of teaching and an idea of upbringing. Not only the specific idea of folk pedagogy but also the whole idea of pedagogy has also embraced these two notions, as was shown in a previous chapter. The objectives of folk pedagogy are closely interrelated and intertwined with multicultural education, which, among other important strategies, uses the outcomes of indigenous and folk pedagogical research to address the diversity of students (Sinagatullin, 2003). There is also an interrelation between folk pedagogy and classical (scientific) pedagogy or education. The so-called classical education absorbs the best canons and traditions of folk pedagogy of different cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious groups; conversely, folk pedagogy often utilizes the strategic and tactical arsenal of classical education (Kukushin & Stoliarenko, 2000).

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Throughout history, folk pedagogical approaches and strategies have always played an important role in children’s personality growth and in molding their learning styles and cognitive preferences. The principles, goals, means, and factors of folk pedagogy of different cultural and ethnic groups have much in common because they are normally based on value patterns characteristic of the entire human race. Folk pedagogy is aimed at developing in the individual such values as honesty, kindness, industriousness, respect for parents and the elderly, tolerance, health, and so on. Since very ancient times, people have understood that the entire surrounding world has a subsequent educative impact on children and adolescents. Leo Tolstoy (1989) wrote, “Children’s games, sufferings, parents’ punishments, books, labor, learning (both forced and free), the arts, science, life—all educate” (p. 208). Expressing similar ideas, the noted educator Gennady Volkov (1999) holds that “all the surrounding reality, beginning from the sun and the human heart and ending with a grit and a drop of dew—all these educate” (p. 67). Means of folk pedagogy are great in number, and they differ across cultures. In our human society, among a rich legacy of the means frequently used in child education are play, folk music, fairy tales, and proverbs and sayings. Play or games (when we mean some contest played according to rules) may contain and be related to dances, songs, riddles, fairy tales, and sporting events. Lev Vygotsky (1991) maintains: Play, a natural peculiarity of human nature, is inherent not only in man; an animal’s baby is also fond of playing. Consequently, this fact must have some biological meaning: Play is needed for some purpose and has a special biological designation; otherwise, it could not have existed and been widely used. (p. 123) Play is a natural school for an animal. Thus, kittens playing with a ball of thread or a dead mouse brought by an adult cat learn to catch live mice. This biological meaning of play as school and preparation for future activity is fully confirmed by studying human play. (p. 124) [Play] is the first school of thought for a child. (p. 127)

Reflecting people’s hopes, aspirations, and lifestyles, folk music plays an important role in child and adolescent development. The first folk tunes that an individual hears soon after emerging into this world may be lullabies, traditionally sung by mothers (also by grandmothers, sisters, and other relatives). In Volkov’s (1999) opinion, singing a lullaby to a baby is the most nature-conformable pedagogy in human history. Folk music may encom-

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pass different historical epochs. When used properly, folk songs and melodies enhance children’s aesthetic development and instill them with a sense of love and patriotism for their land and people. Many folk music genres originated in the United States. For example, Native Americans have a variety of songs for many occasions. Singing and dancing is a vital part of their religions and ways of life. I was deeply touched when I first heard the idyllic tunes of Navajo Melody performed by an old man in Albuquerque. Several music styles—spirituals, jazz, and blues—were created by African Americans. The epoch of brave cowboys contributed to spreading country music, which had originated in the southern United States, and especially in the Appalachian mountains. In the mid-twentieth century, it spread across all continents. Country music is one of my favorite genres, and I keep dozens of discs with country songs in my home and office. I like to listen to noted country music artists of the past and present. I especially enjoy listening to Walkin’ after Midnight, Sweet Dreams, and Crazy performed by Patsy Cline, Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses (Kathy Mattea), Truck Drivin’ Man (Boxcar Willie), Sea of Heartbreak (Don Gibson), Mama Tried (Merle Haggard), I Walk the Line (Johnny Cash), and many other country songs and melodies. Fairy tales are widely used in child education in various cultures. They contain valuable ideas that have a positive impact on child personality development. One of the most important themes embedded in fairy tales is the struggle between good and evil, with the former eventually coming out victorious. The main ideas of some fairy tales are congruent with those of proverbs, such as “Nothing is impossible to a willing heart,” “All that glitters is not gold,” “Work done, have your fun,” and so on. Most proverbs and sayings encompass a great spiritual power and express folk philosophy and folk psychology (Akhiyarov, 2000). They usually express some generalized and wholesome idea or truth and embody a strong educative potential. It is a good thing that school textbooks contain a great variety of proverbs and sayings. In other cases, it is necessary to know that proverbs cannot be recommended at random, especially to preschool and elementary school children. Some proverbs, sayings, and witty phrases encompass notions congruent with the psychology of married couples and people of middle and old age. Young children may have difficulty understanding such notions. In most cases they may mislead or even threaten young girls’ and boys’ hearts. Folk pedagogy of different peoples is also based on, and determined by, an array of factors having a positive impact on children’s cognitive, intellectual,

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and physical development. I will briefly discuss such factors as family, religion, natural environment, work, holidays, and hunting and fishing. As the primary cell of human society, family creates a natural and supportive environment for children. Family promotes the use of different pedagogical methods such as playing with children, watching and monitoring children’s daily responsibilities and duties, involving them in and challenging them with various types of work, helping them to better perform and achieve the result of an activity, providing them with an example to be imitated, and preparing them for life (in a broad sense). Family and extended-family members may involve children in social dialogue, providing them with valuable insights about the surrounding reality and helping them understand important phenomena in life. Especially useful for children is interaction with the elderly. Old men and old women can often create a secure and nurturing environment for their grandchildren, provide them with valuable admonitions, and recognize and promote the development of their talents. Tragically, family foundations are being shattered and destroyed in many countries, and the situation in northern cultures is extremely sad. Divorce, continual quarrelling among family members, various forms of adultery, drinking and drug use among parents, child abuse and neglect—all these family-related factors hinder the process of harmonious child development and character formation. Child development is largely reinforced by natural environment. In folk pedagogical traditions of the Native Americans, the Africans, and the Aborigines of Australia, the phenomena of nature and man are inseparable. The unity of these notions represents one of the harmonies of life. Since ancient time, there has been a good tradition among many peoples to teach their children to treat land and water with reverence and love to preserve the ecobalance. For example, this tradition is still preserved in Native American communities. It is sad to note that, since the coming of the Spanish conquistadors headed by Hernán Cortés, people all over the American continents have been relentlessly exploiting natural resources and irreparably destroying the ecosystem. Remaining as a strong element in folk educational traditions and canons, religion has a tremendous influence on people’s minds and child development. Religion promotes the development of an individual’s sacred standing, spirituality, and moral qualities (Volkov, 1999). Traditionally, people have got used to embodying religion with the belief in the Almighty, as people now do in Christianity and Islam. However, we sometimes forget old religions based on paganism.

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I am of the opinion that paganism also contains a huge impetus and arsenal for educating the young generation, and it is unwise to blindly reject all that is related to the phenomenon of old religions. Although some polytheistic religions and beliefs in the past contained some awful rites, such as blood feuds and human sacrifice, ancient religions have left a tremendous legacy that can be used in education and child rearing. National holidays, fairs, and other bright and festive events considerably influence children’s imagination and personality growth, elicit their curiosity, and open a novel and cheerful world for them, especially when they themselves participate in the activities. For example, in the Native American communities of New Mexico, children and adolescents participate in the Harvest, Comanche, and Corn Dances that are so much a part of the Anasazi Indian culture (Harris, 1993). Whatever holiday celebration or festive event it is, children like to participate in various competitions and sideshows, and they share the cheerful mood of their parents and other adults. When not invited to a holiday gathering, they may be terribly offended. Involving young girls and boys in different forms of work related to the household or farm builds a prerequisite for developing not only industriousness but also their moral and volitional characteristics. In farming communities young children and adolescents help adults attend to cattle and poultry, which promotes their sense of responsibility for growing domestic animals. By helping adults in farming and household activities, children also become solicitous and physically strong. Encouraging children to take part in hunting, fishing, and foraging activities is another useful enterprise in child development. For an average schoolchild in a Western culture, such activities may symbolize just some sort of entertainment, but for some cultural, ethnic, and racial groups, especially those living in continental enclaves and on numerous islands in the Pacific and the Atlantic, hunting and/or fishing remain major factors of survival. Participating in activities related to pursuing the nonhuman world for food promotes young people’s physical development, strengthens their endurance in extreme and atypical conditions, and develops their exploratory and observational skills. I end this chapter by suggesting several pedagogical precepts for educators: ■

Whenever appropriate, learn and use the folk pedagogical strategies in the educational process. A proper use of the means and factors of folk pedagogy plays an invaluable role not only in folk pedagogy proper but also in classical education.

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Keep in mind that folk pedagogical traditions are closely related to the historical roots and basics of child and adolescent development—that is, to important phenomena such as learning style, learning preference, and child-parent and child–extended family relationships. Identify and address cultural and ethnic peculiarities while integrating folk pedagogy into the educational process. Each ethnic and cultural group boasts its own arsenal of indigenous traditions of child development. However, keep in mind that the means and strategies of folk pedagogy of different groups have much in common.

In this chapter I have sought to persuade the reader to use folk pedagogical traditions in educating children. I have also provided evidence that folk pedagogy is crucial in developing essential personality characteristics in students. Whatever pedagogical strategies are used in the classroom, there is one vital facet needing to be observed in educational institutions of all types: Educators are expected to seek better ways to promote and maintain children’s health. Following are some reflections on this vital topic.

Questions 1. How do you understand the idea of folk pedagogy? 2. How is folk pedagogy related to multicultural education and classical education? 3. Why is it important to use folk pedagogical traditions in contemporary schooling? 4. The author has briefly described some of the means of folk pedagogy. Have you used any other means of folk pedagogy in your educational career? 5. Why is family considered a major factor in child rearing? 6. Which factors of folk pedagogy promote favorable opportunities for the physical development of children and adolescents?

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[It] is easy for a barbarian to be healthy; for a civilized man the task is hard. SIGMUND FREUD

Health is above wealth. ENGLISH PROVERB

I CALLED on educators to feel concern for their health. This task may be considered not only as a simple objective but also as an obligation or even a duty for the average educator. Another important task educators are required to fulfill is to teach students to promote and maintain their health. Health education is included in the school curricula of the majority of states in America. Inclusion is one thing; another thing is how such an education is conducted. The truth is that health education is not always carried out properly, in America and in the majority of other countries. We cannot put all the blame on teachers and schools for that. The times have changed and brought about a myriad of factors affecting children’s health. Schools cannot take all the responsibility upon themselves, although they also cannot and must not stand aside. The current epoch is characterized by the deterioration of children’s health. Their health is undermined by a range of environmental, economic, and other factors. Many students compromise their health by their own behaviors. Another sign of the contemporary epoch is the “rejuvena-

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tion” of a number of diseases. For example, a couple of decades ago, Type 2 diabetes could be found mainly in people over fifty. Today this disease affects more and more school- and university-age children. Also on the rise among children and teenagers are cardiovascular diseases, which in the past used to affect mostly middle-aged and old people. A most widespread health-compromising behavior among children is cigarette smoking, with young smokers tending to increase their daily use of cigarettes. Some high school students smoke as much as twenty-five to thirty cigarettes a day. A former schoolmate of mine began to smoke at the age of six and used to smoke around thirty cigarettes a day at the age of sixteen. When he was a ninth-grader, he began coughing profusely and feeling acute pains in his chest. He underwent a medical checkup and the doctors gave the diagnosis: chronic obstructive bronchitis, which could develop into tuberculosis. Owing greatly to self-possession and to the efforts of specialists, he gave up smoking in the tenth grade. After several months he stopped coughing and the bronchitis gradually left him. Alcohol use is another serious threat to schoolchildren. It spoils their physical health, negatively affects their social behavior, and inevitably hinders academic progress. Especially harmful is drug addiction, which brings very serious damage to children and adolescents, including damage to the brain, the cardiovascular system, and the nervous system. Some young people begin their “drug career” by smoking marijuana, a seemingly mild drug. However, it is a drug, and a person can quickly become dependent. Marijuana modifies perception, delays reactions, and reduces motivation for cognitive activity. When young boys and girls get high, they often cannot fully control their behavior. Children and teenagers bring harm to their health by engaging in early and unprotected sexual activity. Since the 1970s, the median age for a first sexual experience has been declining dramatically. Furthermore, a great number of young people do not use contraceptives or use them only occasionally (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002). Smoking, alcohol abuse, drug addiction, and excessive and promiscuous sexual activity can also be included on the list of the worst human sins, as I have tried to show in the beginning pages of this book. Among other factors increasing the likelihood of a student’s contracting some form of disease are behaviors such as the negligence of exercising, consumption of high-calorie and fatty foods, extensive use of the computer and mobile phones, extensive TV-watching, and a careless and inconsiderate attitude to the possibilities of bodily injury.

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The new century has brought about new challenges to parents, educators, and medical workers, because they have to deal (as was mentioned earlier) with preventing and curing diseases that are no longer found solely among adults. One such disorder is obesity and the side effects related to it. Obesity is a condition in which a child’s body weighs approximately 20 percent more than what is optimal for normal healthy development. When children are considered overweight, their body mass is higher than their optimal weight, but not on the scale for obese children. In scientific literature, the borderline between obesity and overweight is often blurred. Children having extra weight experience consequences similar to those of the overweight and obese adult population. Consequences of childhood obesity may include orthopedic (damage to the bones in the hips and legs), gastroenterological (the formation of gallstones and enlargement of the liver), pulmonary (sleep disorders, asthma), neurological (headaches, blurred vision), and endocrine (metabolic syndrome, overproduction of male hormones in females, or hyperandrogenemia) problems (Must & Strauss, 1999). In 1960–1962, 44.7 percent of the U.S. population was considered overweight, whereas in 1999–2002 the figure rose to 65.2 percent. The figures for obesity constitute 13.3 percent and 31.1 percent respectively (Kashner, 2007). By writing about obesity—a subtle and delicate theme—and what harm it can bring to people’s health, I in no way intend to marginalize obese individuals and do not hold them up as objects of pity. For example, I support the fat acceptance movement and the idea of “health at every size,” which aims to place an individual’s physical and mental health before physical appearance and size (“Fat acceptance movement,” 2007). Nevertheless, parents and medical workers should seriously attend to these issues. In some countries obesity has grown from merely a physical into a political problem that is rapidly growing and can begin to create a threat to the health of the whole nation. Another problem that has descended from the “heights of old age” is mental illness related to a disorder of the brain, resulting in the disruption of an individual’s ability to optimally function in the family, in the immediate community, and at school. Children and adolescents are affected by a range of mental health problems—anxiety, depression, eating disorders, elimination disorders, communication disorders, attention-deficit disorders, and other more or less severe unhealthy manifestations. For educators and parents it is easy to identify their children’s physical needs, but a child’s emotional and mental problems may not be as obvious.

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Mental health issues have become a global problem and challenge contemporary humankind. Rosalynn Carter (1999) maintains the following on this issue: Globally, in developed and developing countries alike, mental illnesses exact a tremendous toll in the loss of life and in human suffering, evident in the distress and despair of individuals and the anguish of their families. . . . The World Health Organization estimates that mental health problems the world over produced 11.5% of the 1998 Global Burden of Disease, measured in life years lost to disability—a toll greater than that exacted by tuberculosis, cancer, or heart disease. In addition it is estimated that by the year 2020 that number will have increased to 15%, with depression being the world’s second most burdensome illness. (p. 41)

Still another vital problem affecting children’s and adolescents’ health is a variety of disorders resulting from their inability to cope with, or from negligence of, the extreme climatic conditions. There are places on the globe where climate is relatively mild and favorable, such as in the southeastern United States, France, Italy, or southern Ukraine. In other places, especially in the far northern United States (Alaska), Canada, northern Europe, and northern and northeastern Russia, winters are cold and long, and the periods when fall merges into winter and winter into spring are nasty and wet. In cold periods, some children tend to wear light clothes and often refuse to wear headgear. Owing to these and other factors, they frequently catch colds, and even acute bronchitis or a simple form of flu may grow into a chronic cold-related illness. Conversely, in regions with a hot, dry climate, children and adults are subject to sun-related diseases. Overexposure to sun results in sunburn, which can slowly develop into skin cancer; the sunburn one receives today may take fifteen to twenty years to turn into cancer. As for the youngest ones, children under the age of three should be totally protected from exposure to the sun. To minimize health-compromising behaviors and maximize healthenhancing behaviors, effective health education strategies should be conceptualized and implemented at school. An important objective in health education is to provide students with sufficient knowledge about what harm health-compromising behaviors bring to their health. It is necessary to show students the severe consequences of certain diseases arising out of negligence of healthy lifestyles, healthy food, and regular exercising. First, students should know their own family health histories and risk factors that increase their chances of getting certain diseases. Second, they need to ac-

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quire the skills of taking good care of their health and knowing how to prevent or reduce the threat of the diseases that run in their genealogical tree. Third, and most important, they must have a great will to be healthy. The idea that health, both physical and mental, is a great priority in life and in their future profession should never leave their minds. Education for health can be carried out on a more effective basis if the teacher knows each child’s health portrait well. To reach this goal, teachers need to consult the school medical personnel and study students’ sick lists and their family health histories. Realizing this task, which is closely linked to the issue of a child’s genealogical tree overall, is not an easy matter. Only persistent and regular observations and close relationships with parents, relatives, and, again, with the medical workers in charge, can lead to fruitful outcomes. A child’s family health history is associated with information about health conditions and diseases that affect the child’s parents, grandparents, and close relatives. Knowing children’s genealogical health histories can help the people responsible for children’s education and health to predict diseases and undertake the necessary measures to reduce risks. If a family has a pattern of the same disease in its historical genealogical development, it may be a sign of an inherited disease that could be passed on to any newborn child belonging to that same family. Elementary school teachers may be in close contact with children for several successive years; therefore they gradually become knowledgeable about their students’ health problems. For the teachers of a specific subject area in different grade levels, this task entails some difficulties. In a school in which the overall psychological atmosphere among the teachers is favorable and the teachers render mutual help to each other in solving problems that arise, all teachers come to know well all the students and all their strengths and weaknesses, including health problems. In implementing health education strategies in a multicultural classroom, it is necessary to know that health practices and behaviors are often influenced by cultural and religious beliefs. The state of being healthy may also be perceived differently across cultures. For example, in Western cultures an ideal healthy male is often seen as tall, muscular, and, perhaps, armed with physical self-defense abilities. An ideal female is portrayed as tall and slim. This information may be misleading to some adolescents and adults from Asian cultures, who are normally shorter. According to modern research, consuming healthy food is associated with eating low-calorie, fat-free, and vitamin-rich food. Who is against such healthy ways of satisfying gastronomic needs? But these requirements may not match the “healthy food” concepts of some peoples or professional

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groups. For instance, fatty pork (or salty pure fat) is a national food in Ukrainian communities. Obsessed by it, Ukrainians can eat such fat in great quantities, but there have never been any reports that Ukrainians suffer more from fat-related diseases than the representatives of any other nation do. The amount of high-calorie and fat-rich food that people consume also largely depends on an individual’s occupation and ways of living. For instance, students actively involved in sports or physical labor (in rural settings and farm areas) need more fat-rich food because they burn calories by regularly and intensively exercising the muscles. Extra amounts of fatty and high-calorie food are unlikely to bring any harm to their health. Young people who are not involved in active forms of exercising or physical labor need fewer calories in their diet. With all this in mind, I urge educators to keep to the following suggestions: ■

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Continually enrich your professional expertise by acquiring knowledge about your students’ health and by gaining novel and ever-increasing information on achievements in the spheres of medicine and health. For instance, the current epoch necessitates knowing that many diseases characteristic of middle and late adulthood are being “rejuvenated” and striking children and adolescents. Study your students’ family health histories. Collect information about your students from their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, and other relatives. If there are adopted children in your class, try if possible to get information about them from their birth parents. Share your information with health professionals and other teachers at your school. Working with a diversity of students, consider both culturally determined and universal health-preventing and health-promoting strategies. Maintain close relationships with medical workers, psychologists, and, of course, parents in promoting healthenhancing behaviors among your pupils. Educate children about eating disorders and ask them to set goals for improving their eating habits. Teach your students to drink more natural water instead of juices and sodas. By consuming highly sweetened drinks, children and adolescents may gain weight and potentially become obese. Their young bodies grow accustomed to the sweet flavor; therefore, switching to unsweetened

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liquid becomes a burden for them. This is exactly what I was accustomed to doing when I was a school and, then, university student. I drank a lot of lemonade and strongly sweetened tea and coffee and, by the age of twenty, gained extra weight. In conclusion, I articulate one underlying assumption: If students strive to be healthy, much depends not only on external factors—that is, how educators and other personnel supervise their health—but also on how they themselves take care of their health. The earlier they come to know major facts about their bodies and the earlier they learn about the risk factors to their health, the better they will be able to promote health-maintaining, disease-preventing, and risk-reducing behaviors by themselves or with a little help from professionally trained adults. The chapter has called on educators to study children’s genealogical trees to better deal with health issues. The following chapter seeks to explore the phenomenon of genealogy based on a wider range of determinants.

Questions 1. How do you understand the phenomenon of the “rejuvenation” of diseases? 2. What health-compromising behaviors of children and teenagers can you name? 3. What harm can being overweight or obese bring to young girls and boys? 4. By what mental health problems are children and adolescents affected? 5. Why is it important to undertake preventive measures from coldand sun-related diseases? 6. Why is it necessary, among other optimal measures, to study scrupulously children’s family health histories?

17

Learn a Child’s Genealogy

Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Like parents, like children. ENGLISH PROVERB

in addition to environmental and pedagogical determinants, child development is largely influenced by hereditary factors. This means that an infant receives a considerable share of traits and features through genes. The science studying the ways in which traits are passed from parent to offspring is called genetics. At the time of conception, an individual inherits twenty-three chromosomes from the mother and twenty-three from the father. Together they form twenty-two pairs of autosomal chromosomes and a pair of sex chromosomes—either XX if you are female or XY if you are male. Not only for human beings but also for other forms of life, the continuation of the species depends on the genetic code being transmitted from parent to offspring (“Human physiology,” 2007). Practically all attributes and components of the human body are affected by an individual’s genetic code. Some of the developmental processes, nevertheless, depend on concrete circumstances. For instance, a boy who grows up in poor conditions may not grow as tall as his parents. In contrast, a boy who has been nourished well and grows up in clean physical and favorable psychological conditions may outgrow his parents in height. Personality characteristics and dispositions such as intelligence,

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emotionality, altruistic tendencies, sociability, and activity are other examples in which genes may play a part (Mischel, 1993). Let us consider just one aspect of human faculties—intelligence. Two sources of evidence—twin studies and adoption studies—indicate that intelligence has a genetic component. Some studies have used identical twins and fraternal twins to learn how strongly heredity influences IQ. Identical twins represent genetically equivalent human beings because they begin as a single fertilized egg that then separates. As for fraternal twins, they are conceived as two separate fertilized eggs; they share about 50 percent of their genetic makeup, and the other 50 percent is unique to each twin. In cases where twins are raised by different families, they often show similar IQ scores, with identical twins showing even more similar IQ scores. Other studies compared adopted children with both their adoptive and biological parents in order to separate the effects of heredity and environment. Adopted kids share the same environment with their adoptive parents, and they share a similar genetic makeup with their biological parents. Upon obtaining IQ scores for adopted children and for both their biological and adoptive parents, researchers found out that the children’s IQ scores were more highly correlated with the scores of their biological parents than with the scores of their adoptive parents. Thus, in a group of people who placed their children for adoption, those with the highest IQs tended to have children who, in spite of being raised by other parents, also had the highest IQs (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002). Not only the positive sides of an individual’s development may involve a genetic component; genes may also have a negative effect on human fates. Some defects in genetic code can leave a tragic trace on human lives. One example is Down syndrome, a chromosomally transmitted form of mental retardation that is caused by the presence of one extra (forty-seventh) chromosome. This syndrome appears approximately once in every seven hundred births. A person with this abnormality has a round face, a flattened skull, short limbs, and difficulties in mental and motor abilities. It is known that African American children are rarely born with this syndrome. Another abnormality involving chromosomes is Klinefelter’s syndrome, in which males have an extra X chromosome, making them XXY instead of XY. Males with this syndrome have undeveloped testes, and they usually have enlarged breasts and become tall. This disorder tends to occur once in every eight hundred male births (Santrock, 2002). Some diseases involve harmful genes; therefore they are called inherited diseases. The most common of them are cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anemia, and hemophilia (“Human physiology,” 2007). Cystic fibrosis is a disease

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that causes sticky mucus to form in the body, mostly in the lungs and digestive tract. A common disease in children and young adults, cystic fibrosis may cause an early death. The buildup of a mass of mucus results in lung infections, digestive problems, and problems with sweat glands and with the male reproductive system. In patients suffering from sickle-cell anemia, the red blood cells change from the normal round shape to a hook-shaped “sickle.” These cells die quickly, causing chronic anemia and early death. Sickle-cell anemia affects mostly African Americans and some Latino Americans. Hemophilia is caused by a low level or absence of protein in the blood, which is unable to clot without this vital substance. The symptoms of hemophilia are bleeding in the joints, knees, and ankles, and excessive bleeding after wounds, surgery, cuts, or loss of a tooth. Hemophiliacs, however, can live a long life (“Human physiology,” 2007). Hemophilia also became known as the “royal disease,” because there was a long and widely known period of the so-called British hemophilia line in the history of Europe. From Queen Victoria (1819–1901), this disease afflicted several other royal houses in Spain, Prussia, and Russia. For instance, the Russian Czar Nicholas II (1868–1918) married Alix (her Russian name was Alexandra), a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Alexandra, who carried the same gene mutation as her grandmother, passed the disease to her son Alexei, who was born in Russia on August 12, 1904, and was the heir to the Russian throne. At that time hemophilia was an untreatable disease and led to an untimely death. When Alexei was six weeks of age, Nicolas and Alexandra realized that their son had hemophilia. Doctors failed to treat the heir properly, and Alexandra, a deeply religious woman, came to rely on Grigori Rasputin, who later became a notorious figure in Russian and world history. Rasputin was said to be psychic and have an ability to heal through prayer. He was indeed able to stop Alexei’s hemophilic attacks and give him some relief. Through his healing powers, Rasputin began to strongly influence the czar’s family. Both parents considered Rasputin a religious prophet. Interestingly, this same Grigori Rasputin wrote a prophetic letter prior to his death in December 1916. Here are some short excerpts from it (“Grigori Rasputin,” 2005). I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. . . . Tsar of the land of Russia, you must know this: If it was your relations [relatives] who have wrought my death, then—no one in your family . . . none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people. (p. 5)

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His predictions came true. Rasputin was assassinated on December 16, 1916, by a group of people including the czar’s cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri Romanov, and Prince Felix Yusupov. In less than two years, in July 1918, the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas II, his wife, and all his children. Thus, by “healing” the heir’s hemophilia, Rasputin gained the royal family’s confidence, began to play an important role in the vortex of czarist Russia’s last days, and found time to “predict” the downfall of the Romanov dynasty. In addition to biological parents, other people in the ancestral line also may play a definite role in transmitting their physical, intellectual, behavioral, and socio-emotional traits to a given child. Any individual having even the slightest genealogical tie (a “connection by blood”) with a newborn child may exert an hereditary influence on the child. These people may include grandparents and their predecessors, sisters and brothers, and other close and even remote relatives. This brings to my mind one episode from my professional experience. While teaching in a senior grade, I and my colleagues started noticing behavior changes in one of the boys. He began missing classes, was often seen with swollen eyes, and smelled of alcohol. Soon I was called to the principal, who announced that the fellow, in a drunken state, had abused a girl living next to the school. We carefully studied the boy’s genealogical records and discovered that his father had been drinking for a decade, had no job, and continually abused his wife; his grandfather, who had been given to drinking for years, had died of an overdose of vodka; his elder sister, aged twenty-five, had been drinking heavily and, for this reason, had been abandoned by her husband; and several of his other relatives had been downright alcoholics.

This case—along with a myriad of other similar examples—additionally indicate that hereditary factors often can make a strong impact on the development of a child’s character traits and deeds, even though child development is known to be influenced by a set of other factors as well. I venture to say that in this case the boy could have taken over from his predecessors the so-called “alcoholic gene,” which, owing to “favorable circumstances,” abandoned its dormant state, surfaced, and began to destroy the boy’s psychic and physical development. Researchers have identified a gene variation that seems to influence an individual’s craving for alcoholic beverages. The gene mutation involves a cell structure called the mutopoid receptor. In preceding studies this receptor has been shown to bind beta-endorphin, which is a pain-relieving chemical our body releases in response to alcohol intake. When the gene

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variant or the “G allele” is present, the receptor binds to beta-endorphin more strongly than when the more common “A allele” is present. Dr. Esther van den Wildenberg from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands investigated the influence of G and A alleles on alcohol craving. The study found that G allele carriers showed more craving than did people with only the A allele (“Scientists discover,” 2007). It stands to reason that possessing an inherited predisposition to drinking does not mean one will become an alcoholic at some point in life. There are other factors leading to alcoholism or heavy drinking as well. Some genetic factors may increase the risk of suicidal behavior, although the causes of suicide are multiple and complex. Such are, for example, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Among other factors is a family history of violence, mental disorders, and substance abuse. The suicide rate increases after puberty, but there are also many cases of suicide committed by children aged ten through fourteen. There are potential warning signs indicating that an adolescent is thinking about suicide. These are some typical signs: losing interest in school performance, risky or self-destructive behavior (unsafe driving or drug use), giving away belongings, personality changes (becoming outgoing after being shy), anxiety disorder (feelings of extreme uneasiness or worry), withdrawing from social contact, and seeing oneself as completely worthless and unlovable (Mayo Clinic, 2006; Suicide and Mental Health Association International, 2007). Annually nearly one million people around the world commit suicide. Completed suicide is higher in men, while women make more suicide attempts. In the United States, Caucasians resort to suicide more often than do African Americans. Non-Hispanic Caucasians are 2.5 times more likely to commit suicide than are Hispanics and African Americans. In Europe high rates of suicide are reported in Hungary, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia (“Suicide,” 2007; Marusic & Farmer, 2001). By discussing the phenomenon of genes, I do not suggest that educators stick only to hereditary factors as the main cause of a child’s good or bad deeds or healthy or unhealthy state. As was mentioned, environmental causes also make a strong impact on child development. In fact, heredity and environment tend to operate together to produce an individual’s physical and mental capacities. Basing on the arguments presented above, I formulate these recommendations for educators:

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Along with other professional obligations and duties, allocate time to collecting data and investigating your children’s genealogical trees, including not only biological parents as the objects of investigation but also grandparents and relatives. To learn about children’s ancestral heritage, maintain close relations with their families, relatives, and community members. Learn about all the ancestral line. As was recommended in the preceding chapter, study students’ family health histories. Look at a child’s face. It inevitably, in certain proportions, resembles that of the father or mother or both. Similarly, the child’s other physical characteristics—eye color, hair color, voice, manner of gesticulation, form of the legs, configuration of the arms, wrists, and fingers—may also be similar to those of the parents and, to some extent, of other ancestors on the genealogical tree. Quite similarly, a range of socio-emotional and behavioral traits may also be inherited. Chronicle your observations of students’ academic achievements and cases of their inadequate behavior in the school milieu and elsewhere. Follow up when you suspect unusual problems in a child. Keep in mind that both hereditary and environmental factors affect child development. Not all stable ancestral traits are inherited by a newborn child; equally, not all inherited predispositions surface in the course of an individual’s lifespan.

In reflecting on the topic, it is worthwhile to note that, according to recent investigations, genes (the sections of DNA that encode proteins) are not the “sole mainspring of heredity and the complete blueprint for all life” (Gibbs, 2003a, p. 48). Much also depends on the genome, a complex biochemical machine that operates in three-dimensional space and possesses dynamic and distinct interacting parts. It is the dark parts of the genome that control the development and distinctive traits of all living beings, including humans (Gibbs, 2003a, 2003b). “The genomic era is now a reality” (Collins, Green, Guttmacher, & Guyer, 2003, p. 835). It is sad that some children are born with inherited diseases or just with some form of physical and mental disorders. How do educators treat such children? Do they sincerely love them? Let us talk on these issues in more detail in the forthcoming pages.

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Questions 1. What factors influence child development? 2. How can you prove that intelligence has a genetic component? 3. Cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anemia, and hemophilia are often called inherited diseases. How does each of these diseases affect a human being? 4. Why is hemophilia called the royal disease? 5. What are the signs indicating that an adolescent may be thinking about suicide? 6. How do you understand the notion “alcoholic gene”? Do all people with an inherited predisposition to drinking become alcoholics?

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Real love occurs only when you renounce personal benefits. LEO TOLSTOY

We must take [children] and love them as God gives them to us. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

LEO BUSCAGLIA (1972) CLAIMS that “the perfect love would be one that gives all and expects nothing” (p. 97). He also notes that “love knows no age” (p. 109). The Russian educator Vasily Sykhomlinsky expressed his love for children in the following statement: “To children I give my heart” (cited in Bim-Bad, 2002). The philosopher Piterim Sorokin (1991) identifies love as one of the greatest energies man has ever known. This energy differs from other energies such as force, work, and power. Love’s properties are qualitative rather than quantitative. Pure love acknowledges neither bargain nor reward. It asks for nothing in exchange. In its varying forms, love is an essential factor of longevity and good health. An altruistic love differs in its “qualities” and “colors” and contains properties such as sympathy, kindness, friendship, devotion, respect, and reverence. “To love and to be loved,” writes Sorokin, “is probably the most essential vitamin indispensable for the healthy growth of an individual. . . . The power of love exceeds the boundaries of personal relationships and circumstances. It makes an impact on the whole social and cultural life of humankind” (pp. 131, 134).

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Formulating a comprehensive definition of the phenomenon of love and recommending a universal remedy of how we should love children and teenagers looks like a futile endeavor. An average earthling tends to prefer the beautiful to the ugly, the sweet and tasty to the sour, a companion with a gentle and favorable disposition to a colleague having a disagreeable nature and a bad temper, and a wealthy environment to a sparse one. We generally like to consume the food that satisfies our palate most. Unlike some other professions, the teaching profession requires other approaches. It is the unloved pupil that an educator has to pay the most attention to. A teacher is required to do a most boring job with love. In a sense, this is a tragedy of this noble profession. We often forget that children and adolescents need not only a parent’s love but also an educator’s love. Unfortunately, the progressive growth of humanity, irrespective of our continuous efforts aimed at becoming intellectually and physiologically perfect and despite medical progress and educational efforts, has a small defect or shortcoming that affects a certain number of innocent children who are born blind or deaf, with missing or deformed limbs, hereditary HIV infection, or with mental illnesses such as Down syndrome, phenylketonuria, or galactosemia. Today there is a growing understanding among education policy makers, teachers, and parents that each child with these kinds of difficulties has absolute intrinsic worth, his or her own distinctive personality, and a right to develop his or her potential. That teachers should have a great and exceptional love toward natureand fate-offended children has been understood since ancient time. However, do all educators really love such children? Historical and present-day evidence indicate that children with alternative cognitive abilities, alternative health, and alternative behavior often remain less noticed and less loved than their mainstream counterparts. In pedagogical reality, some teachers tend to be more favorably disposed to students who are advanced academically, behave properly, unconditionally obey the teacher’s orders and requirements, have respected and highranking parents or relatives who may “utter a word when needed,” look prettier or more handsome, and show a special talent in some cognitive and creative activity. Educators also tend to build a more nurturing attitude toward students who are in familial, kinship, or even neighborhood relationships with them, who are physically and psycho-emotionally healthy and cheerful by nature, and who simply appeal to educators owing to subjective reasons.

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International evidence suggests that some parents resort to bribery or exhibit signs of special affection toward some teachers. One of the results of this is well known: The teacher has to pay a more nurturing attention to the bribe-giver’s offspring. The worst case is when an educator or faculty member, pursuing mercenary and sordid motives and making use of his or her official position, seduces a student to sexual relations and shows “pedagogical indulgence” toward the seduced. Children with abnormalities, mainstreamed with normal children, require special nurturing. Educators need to change their attitude toward such children and treat them with special love and care. Educators are required to empower physically normal students to help their peers who have physical handicaps. The former should find themselves in a prestigious position helping the latter in the space of the school and elsewhere. The physically impaired children, in return, would be crucially motivated to interact with their mainstream counterparts and would feel that they are equal members of both the school community and of wider society. Historical evidence shows that many children and adults suffering from physiological problems succeed in creative and professional activities, equaling or even surpassing their peers who do not have alternative problems with their physical health—for instance, the blind musicians Stevie Wonder of the United States and Diana Gurtskaya of Russia. Learners with mental disabilities—but who are able to study in standard conditions—also need specific care and love on the part of the educator. In many Asian, African, and Central and South American countries, especially in rural areas, students with covert and relatively overt signs of mental retardation often study in one mainstream class. Lack or absence of qualified specialists capable of undertaking medical and psychic diagnosis and treatment of such children aggravates the overall situation. Despite this fact, educators and other school personnel are morally obliged to create a nurturing and most favorable environment for students suffering from psychic problems. Some mental health problems are mild, almost invisible to the untrained eye, while others are marked and potentially last a lifetime. Children experiencing severe forms of mental retardation are placed in specially organized educational institutions. Sometimes they are allowed to stay in the parents’ charge but only under regular supervision and care on the part of medical workers, psychologists, and other professionally trained people. It is not always possible to provide such children with the required nurturing, especially in economically impoverished, remote, and war-torn regions of

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the world. As in the case with children having physical impairments, educators are required to possess psychological tolerance and understanding in approaching mentally retarded children and their parents. Mentally handicapped kids must be surrounded with a special love and the utmost attention. Mental retardation may be caused by hereditary factors, certain illnesses (such as, for example, German measles), biological accidents during pregnancy, and overuse of medicine. A number of cases are due to unknown causes. In passing, it is necessary to note that individual human capacity cannot be measured at each given moment. We all change, especially at a younger age. Owing to persistent efforts from educators, parents, medical services, and society at large, a considerable number of exceptional children change dramatically over time, eventually joining the ranks of the workforce and mainstream society. In Broadribb and Lee’s (1973) opinion, a child’s mental development is like a ladder to be climbed. An intellectually normal child climbs high, an average child gets perhaps halfway, while a child with retardation is able to reach the first or second rung—“but it is the same ladder for all” (p. 216). In families having children with cognitive disabilities, every parent goes through a period of guilt and self-incrimination. Some parents go through phases as in the adaptation-mourning model, while others experience incidents and events that they perceive as critical and difficult (Roll-Pettersson, 2001). It is estimated that one in ten children and adolescents in the United States suffers from mental illness severe enough to cause problems in their development and daily life (Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, 2005). Up to 3 percent of children and up to 8 percent of adolescents suffer from depression, with anxiety disorders being the most common mental health problem occurring in this group. Common among adolescent and young women (and present, although less common, among men) are eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Educators and parents are required to avoid using inappropriate terminology while interacting with exceptional students and their colleagues in the presence of students. For example, words such as “blind,”“deaf,”“crippled,” “invalid,” and “neurotic” equate students with physical and mental conditions, and each time educators use such language units, they additionally draw a child’s attention to his or her disability, having a psychologically negative effect on personality formation. Instead, educators may say a “child with alternative eyesight,” a “child with alternative hearing abilities,” and so forth. Using the phrase “normal child” might also be offen-

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sive and hurtful for children with exceptionalities, because this statement implicitly reminds them of the existence of abnormal children, among whom they number themselves. Accentuating a negative connotation on some ethnic and racial features will be twice as hurtful for exceptional children as for their mainstream peers (Dmitriyev, 1999). Educators are required to foster feelings of self-worth in children and adolescents regardless of their physical appearance. Feelings of self-worth often come from external factors such as appearance, group approval, and social achievements. Feelings of unconditional self-worth are achieved when individuals come to realize that they are important and worthwhile, simply because they are unique human beings. Educators should take extra care of students from low-income families and from immigrant minority groups. They need reduced prices for meals, for using public transportation, and for buying necessary textbooks, didactic aids, and computers. Certainly, when it comes to dealing with children having alternative health and alternative individual and social behavior, an educator or a parent is not always able to cope with all the problems single-handedly. School administrations, school district authorities, and all school personnel are obliged to render assistance and offer favorable terms for exceptional children. I used to hear some theorists and practitioners say that showing excessive love to a child may be perilous. In some circumstances this statement may seem true, but not with reference to exceptional children. Love to such children may never be excessive: It may be only insufficient. I am of the strong opinion that educators will unlikely be able to use their psychological and educational ingenuity purposefully and influence such learners favorably until they first learn how to sincerely love them. With all these assumptions in mind, I offer several comprehensive suggestions for educators: ■

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Exercise a strong feeling of affection for children suffering from physical and mental illnesses and for those who misbehave. They need unconditional love and full acceptance. A child should know that your love does not depend on his or her academic accomplishments, manners of behavior, and physical appearance. Loving the unloved is a most humanistic quality when it comes to the teaching profession. Once in a while, remember this saying: “That person can be referred to as industrious and perfect who performs an unloved job with a sense of love.”

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Establish close relationships with parents in dealing with exceptional children. Learning that their child is abnormal, the parents may instantaneously experience psychological shock; the question “Why did it happen to my child?” may immediately come to their mind. Avoid labeling exceptional children with speech units reminding them of their abnormalities, and do not discuss their health problems in the presence of their mainstream peers.

Better support is also needed for exceptional children on the part of governmental and local authorities. When there is a tragedy with one child, it should be looked at as a tragedy for all the given community or society; when a child or teenager recovers and becomes a full member of human society, it should be considered as a great joy and victory for the whole school, all the community, and all the parents whose children attend the school. Absorbed in educating children, teachers sometimes forget that they are, in fact, dealing with the subcultures of boys and those of girls. Although we live in one human world, educators cannot ignore these more or less distinct subsystems. Next I remind educators of some important gender issues worth taking into consideration.

Questions 1. What do Buscaglia, Sykhomlinsky, and Sorokin say about the phenomenon of love? 2. Do you think that all educators treat all children in their classes fairly? 3. What kind of nurturing do children with physical and mental disabilities require? 4. What do Broadribb and Lee mean when they compare a child’s mental development with a ladder to be climbed? 5. Why is it necessary to avoid using inappropriate terminology in interacting with exceptional children? 6. Can an educator alone cope with all the problems concerning exceptional children? Who should the educator work with in dealing with this problem?

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Men have sight; women insight. VICTOR HUGO

If you educate a man you educate a person, but if you educate a woman you educate a family. RUBY MANIKAN

is creating an educational environment that can help both female and male students—regardless of their cultural, ethnic, and social class backgrounds—to have equal opportunities for favorable personality growth, civic development, and academic achievement. Gender role expectations vary across cultures and change over time. For example, in northern European and Englishspeaking countries, an open display of affection between men and women through kissing, hugging, and body contact may be practiced in public places—whereas in some Islamic and Asian countries, similar signs of affection are not approved. If two males in the Arabic civilization or two females in Russia are seen walking hand in hand, it does not necessarily mean that such couples pursue homosexual relations. But if two males are seen walking hand in hand in North America or northern Europe, this scene may immediately imply homosexual closeness. In Islamic cultures a woman is supposed to be a virgin when she marries a man, whereas in Western cultures this issue is not very important and is seldom discussed on the formal, civic, and parental level. However,

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parents are known to expect their children to behave decently, be unblemished until their marriage, and to create a happy monogamous family. In some cultures, a man may live in a plural marriage; in other cultures, only monogamous marriage is allowed by law. For example, the Islamic religion does not prohibit polygamy. It was also an accepted form of marriage by the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints until 1890. In some ancient cultures and civilizations, polygamous family relations were widespread. Today the overwhelming majority of people in the world enjoy a monogamous family life. Same-sex marriages have also become a reality in some Western countries such as the Netherlands, the United States, and others. An increasing number of people cohabit—that is, they live together and have sexual relationships without being married. A significant part of gender education deals with sexuality education. In the United States there are at least two types of such education in schools: comprehensive sexuality education and abstinence-until-marriage programs. Starting in the kindergarten and continuing through the twelfth grade, the first type of program covers a broad spectrum of sex education, including safe sex, the use of contraceptives, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The second type of programs emphasize abstinence from all sexual behaviors outside of marriage and excludes instruction on contraception and disease-prevention methods. Typically, a lot of schools fall in the middle of these two camps (Witmer, 2007). To develop students’ attitudes and beliefs about sexuality, specialists and teachers need to be knowledgeable about such topics as sexual orientation, sexual harassment, forcible sexual behavior, and the phenomenon of attractiveness. Specialists generally view sexual orientation along a continuum from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual. An individual’s sexual preference—heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual—is likely the result of a combination of genetic, hormonal, cognitive, and environmental factors (Santrock, 2002). Most of the people in the world engage in heterosexual relations, build up monogamous families, and give birth to children who reinforce the human genetic fund. A small but sizable percentage of adolescents and adults are sexually attracted to their own sex. Others are attracted both to the opposite and to their own sex. Scientists estimate that 5 percent to 10 percent of the adult population may be gay, lesbian, or bisexual (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002). Throughout the world, individuals who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual are often misunderstood, discriminated against, and marginalized. On the contrary, they should be properly understood and properly treated: An indi-

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vidual does not appear to voluntarily decide what sexual orientation to select. Attempts to convert homosexual people into heterosexuals often finish unsuccessfully. Sexual harassment in schools is the unwelcome and unwanted behavior of a sexual and sexist nature that interferes with a student’s right to receive an equal educational opportunity (Stein, 2000). As a manifestation of power and domination of one individual over another, it can affect anyone, regardless of sexual attraction or appearance, ethnicity, marital status, or sexual orientation. In educational settings, sexual harassment usually occurs between same-age and different-age students, as well as between teachers and students. Female students fall victim to sexual harassment far more often than male students. Types of sexual harassment include sexual propositions or threats, sexual gestures and looks, unwanted touching or grabbing, suggestive lip licking and howling, spreading of sexual rumors, and pulling of clothing in a sexual manner. Sexual harassment can occur in any place possible: in the classroom, the hall, the cafeteria, in the gymnasium or on the playing field, in the pool area, in the parking lot, in a car, on school grounds, and outside of the school. Looking at relations between males and females, it is also necessary, among other things, to keep in mind sociocultural aspects of this phenomenon. For instance, in approaching sexually immoral behavior, it becomes necessary to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate behavior—in other words, to see a difference between a kiss and a “kiss” as well as between a hug and a “hug.” Forcible sexual behavior usually encompasses attempted and completed rape. In both cases victims experience different forms of trauma. Rape victims may experience depression and anxiety for months and even for years; their favorable recovery is largely dependent on support from parents, teachers, and other people surrounding the victims. Another topic I want to briefly analyze in this chapter is attractiveness, which may manifest itself in different forms in boys and girls. An individual may attract other people by his or her decent behavior; by an ability to properly perform a certain job; by being a high-achiever in music, art, or sports; or by being beautiful in appearance. A most intriguing aspect of this topic is physical attractiveness. Closely related to beauty, physical attractiveness stands as a measure of a person’s ability to attract, arouse interest, or instill pleasure. It is no secret that attractiveness is related not only to social status in childhood and adolescence but also to indices of happiness, popularity,

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sociability, and success in adulthood (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). “Early in life the individuals learn the ‘rewards’ that society has for the person perceived as attractive” (Page, 1992, p. 152). Sometimes we distinguish between general physical attractiveness and sexual attractiveness. Judgment of physical attractiveness is partly universal to all human societies, partly dependent on a certain culture or historical period, and partly dependent on individual preference. Historical and societal evidence indicates that physically attractive people receive more attention from other people, have more choice in romantic partners, receive better treatment from authorities, and get better promotions and better jobs. People often attribute positive characteristics to attractive people even without consciously realizing it. Findings indicate that men tend to value physical attractiveness more than women (“Physical attractiveness,” 2007). In the teaching profession, the physical attractiveness of children also affects how they are treated both at school and in the out-of-school milieu. A certain degree of marginalization of unattractive and less-attractive children by educators and parents continues to occur in human society. One curious example will perfectly fit the context of this discussion. Researchers in Edmonton, Canada, watched how parents interacted with their kids while shopping in supermarkets. They found out that so-called ugly children were more neglected and allowed to engage in more dangerous behavior. For example, among four hundred parents and their twoto-five-year-old children, only 1.2 percent of the homely children were buckled into the shopping cart, compared to 13.3 percent of the prettiest ones. Less attractive kids were also allowed to walk farther away and more often were out of sight of their parents (“Are ugly children less liked?” 2005). I interrupt my discussion on attractiveness to say my “no” to teachers who tend to provide more attention and nurturing to attractive children and adolescents. No matter how difficult it is to overcome the millenniaold and accepted stereotypes of teacher-student relationships, educators are obliged to love and approach all children equally. One seemingly small but objectively huge negative facet of sexuality is the sexualization of girls and young women. Sexualization occurs when an individual’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal and when an individual is sexually objectified—that is, turned into a thing for other people’s sexual use. Psychologists found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of young females in advertising, merchandizing, and the media is harmful to girls’ cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and their healthy sexual development. Researchers link sexualization with

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three of the most common problems—eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression or depressed mood. They call for the replacement of sexualized images of females in the media and advertising with positive ones (“Sexualization of girls,” 2007). In discussing gender education issues, one can not avoid the debate over the advantages and disadvantages of coeducational and single-sex schooling. Until the 1910s–1920s, single-sex education was widely practiced all over the world. In some countries, coeducational classes began to emerge in the mid- to late nineteenth century, but since the 1920s, coeducational schooling has considerably strengthened its position. Currently there are both advocates and opponents of coeducational schooling and equally of single-sex schooling. A fervent supporter of coeducational schooling was Lev Vygotsky (1986). He assumed that single-sex schooling additionally accentuates the difference between girls and boys, whereas coeducational schooling presupposes large-scale and natural interaction of both sexes. Engaging in thousands of widely differing types of relationships, children stop noticing the gender and sexual peculiarities of each other. In some cases, relationships lasting from early childhood until late adolescence may create a strong foundation for marriage and further happy family life. In other cases, a long-term, premarriage friendship may be harmful to further serious relations. I now remember the case of Nicholay and Rosa, with whom I got acquainted when I was a university student. By the time I received my university diploma, I had known this pair for some period of time. I knew that Nicholay and Rosa had become friends in early childhood and never parted. In middle school their friendly relationships had grown into a passionate love. During their university years, they had spent all their free time together. Never in my life had I seen such a close and friendly relationship between two young people. About ten years after my graduation from university, I accidentally met Nicholay, with whom I had a hearty and frank talk. It so happened that he had married Rosa soon after graduation, but after a couple of years they divorced. Neither Nicholay nor Rosa had expected that everything would someday come to an end. But the breakdown was not disastrous at all. There was no panic but only a good understanding of the fact that their love for each other and their close relationship had grown into friendship even before their marriage. They remained friends after the divorce. Nicholay said to me, “I was always feeling that, prior to our marriage, Rosa and I had been doing much of what married partners have to undergo. During our long friendship, we did everything together. We ate together. We almost always walked holding each other’s hand. Before marriage, we

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had done so many things that there was nothing idyllic and novel left for us to do after marriage. As we felt that our married life was coming to an end, we left off the idea of having children. We had been faithful to each other and had our first sexual intercourse at the age of seventeen. We had married five years later and after two years of married life we divorced. Now I have two boys with my second wife.” I also met Rosa several times in the business of living. Once, drinking tea in a café, we remembered our student years. She could not help mentioning her relationship with Nicholay. “We became friends when we were both four years old,” she said. “Our parents strongly encouraged our relationship. It looked as if we each had two fathers and two mothers. Closer to the age of eighteen, I started feeling that there was something unnatural in such relations. I saw how my girlfriends looked at and talked of some boys and young men. They were starting something new in life, opening a new world of partnership, becoming aware of the phenomenon of love in due time. It seemed to me that I had already learned this ‘new phenomenon’ long ago. Our marriage was merely a ritual that we needed to perform to decently follow some formal and civil norms of human existence. We parted smoothly and now are just friends.”

I regret that such an incident occurred to this young pair and wish each young man and young woman could build a happy personal life. In addition I encourage educators to listen to the following pieces of advice: ■

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Provide students with accurate knowledge and information about gender relationships and help them develop and understand their attitudes and beliefs about human sexuality and sexual relationships, about how to ensure sexual health, and how to make proper decisions as they mature into sexually healthy adults. Help young girls and boys develop responsibility and accountability regarding sexual relationships and avoid overdoing sex education. Avoid approaching students based on their appearance—that is, avoid showing discrimination against physically unattractive students and exhibiting exclusive attention and affection to physically attractive learners. This same rule also refers to any other type of attractiveness. For example, some students may attract others— including also teachers—by being industrious, high-achievers academically, respectful to the elderly, and so on. Especially inappropriate for an educator is to have a specific affection for an opposite-sex student and provide the “subordinate” young individual with all possible support and advantages in the educational process.

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Learn more about the essence of sexual harassment, what it includes, and what you can do if a case of sexual harassment occurs in your class or school environment. For example, in the United States, sexually harassed students are expected to complain to a teacher or school administrator. If action is not taken to remedy the situation, a student may complain to the school district or to the Title IX coordinator. Take all necessary measures and action if any other cases of physical and moral abuse occur among children or if an older student abuses a younger one. We are accustomed to hearing how rudely male students treat female students. In contemporary times such cruel gender-related treatments can also be inflicted by female students on male students.

Educators have to deal with different types of student behaviors. Evidence indicates that some educators are not patient and tolerant in approaching some of the complicated situations in the pedagogical process. To learn more on the notion of tolerance and its relation to education, take a look at the next page.

Questions 1. What is a major goal of gender education? 2. Provide examples to prove that gender role expectations vary across cultures. 3. What should teachers and specialists know in order to develop students’ positive attitudes about sexuality? 4. Does an individual attract other people only by physical features? Provide your reasons. 5. There are both advocates and opponents of coeducational schooling. Who was a fervent supporter of such an education? 6. Do relationships between a girl and a boy lasting from early childhood until late adolescence always create a favorable foundation for building a happy family life? What does the author say about such relationships?

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Be Tolerant

Patience is the companion of wisdom. ST. AUGUSTINE

Intolerance has been the curse of every age and state. SAMUEL DAVIES

HERE ARE A VARIETY OF DEFINITIONS and attempts to define tolerance. In a most generalized sense of the word, I take tolerance as being an inner moving force enabling educators to patiently and objectively find a way out in difficult situations that they encounter while working with a diversity of students. Tolerance may express a state of thinking, feeling, or being. In this respect we may say, “He is respectful to the mentality of other cultural groups.” It also may express a state of acting, becoming, growing, and changing, as in the sentence “She is changing her attitude toward the religious rituals of this ethnic community.” To tolerate is more than the ability to endure what we dislike; it is also the ability to care, feel connected to, and to empathize with the great variety of human mentalities, behaviors, ways of life, and modes of cognizing the world that students bring to schools from their homes and communities. Tolerance borders with patience. A patient educator understands that overcoming difficult situations it is not an easy process and that it is only through numerous patient attempts and approaches that a pedagogue may solve some complicated problem. If an educator responds with understanding and patience to classroom difficulties, each attempt to over-

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come those difficulties can be beneficial, and each “conquered difficulty” may look like a lesson learned. Owing to people’s mobility and migration, contemporary educational institutions tend to become increasingly multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual. Children bring to school different learning styles, modes of interaction, and types of mentality. Of primary importance is to possess a fair, objective, and permissive attitude to other peoples’ modes of life and customs even though their cultural practices may look strange and “otherworldly.” For example, in Western cultures, teachers commonly write students’ names and correct errors with red pen, whereas in parts of Mexico and among some Chinese, writing one’s name in red may have negative connotations. This means that teachers had better avoid writing children’s names in red. Students belonging to Anglo-American culture are fond of challenging educators by posing questions and sharing their insights on a problem under discussion, whereas in many Asian countries, students find it difficult to ask questions or to challenge ideas because they regard teachers as highly respected figures. To encourage participation among multicultural students in such conditions, it is better to use small-group activities and avoid classroom lulls (Dresser, 1996). All these cases require teachers to be tolerant by not breaking specific cultural norms. Teachers are required to be patient with the numerous mistakes and errors students make while learning various disciplines. To err is natural. All children cognize the world by making mistakes and, often, by the method of trial and error. A proverb says “That person does not commit mistakes who does not work.” Students tend to commit some sort of wrongdoing in learning all the subject areas in the curriculum. Especially numerous are their mistakes in learning languages. At school children may learn one or more languages. In monolingual settings, under favorable circumstances, children usually learn their native language and at least one foreign language. In bilingual settings they normally learn the indigenous language, the state (official) language, and also one foreign language. The required number of languages that students should learn and be proficient in is often determined by the language situation in a given region or country and by a given language policy, which is usually part of a country’s bigger policy. A good language policy has always been an important means of enabling a society to respond to its linguistic and cultural diversity. When students come to school, they normally possess their native language with a certain degree of fluency. They have optimal habits and skills of speech and some ability to read. Other children entering the first grade

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can use a computer and can search for the required information on the Internet. Over time, students enhance their native language skill use and start committing fewer mistakes owing to the active use of this language in school, at home, and in the out-of-school milieu, as well as owing to the specially organized native language instruction at school. Learning a second or foreign language is a more difficult enterprise. In second-language acquisition students commit numerous mistakes, especially in the early stages of learning. It is toward these numerous mistakes that an educator needs to be especially tolerant. A teacher should not get frustrated and stop students to correct each minor mistake they make while using a language or fulfilling various language exercises in textbooks. I fully agree with Frances Gorbet (1979) who writes: It is sometimes more effective to tolerate errors than to correct them. Some errors are normal to the learning process and are developmental. What should be clear is that teachers cannot and should not correct every mistake. The sensitive teacher must become skilful in developing the ability to recognize and respond to significant errors effectively. . . . Errors must be seen not as signs of failure, but as signs of learning itself. . . . Errors are not a cause for alarm but are tools for helping us to help the student progress easily and naturally through the stages of his interlanguage. (pp. 27–28)

Obviously, we should not let matters take care of themselves to the extent that we stop preventing and correcting mistakes at all. In this context I mean the necessity of being tolerant toward the entire philosophical category of “mistake.” In other words, first it is worthwhile to concentrate on the content of speech rather than on mistakes and their correction. From the vantage point of learning a second or foreign language there occur two types of common and typical mistakes: mistakes common to all people worldwide, who start learning a second language; and mistakes caused by a negative transfer from the native language or any other previous language. For example, in learning English as a second or foreign language in a non-English-speaking country, the following common grammatical errors can occur: 1. Errors in word order (“She ice cream likes”), owing to the fact that in many other languages word order is not as strict as in English. 2. Dropping of the ending -s in the third person singular (“Camilla work hard”).

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3. Wrong formation of the negative and interrogative constructions (“They not know that man”; “Know you this teacher?”). 4. Errors in the usage of articles (“Washington is capital of the U.S.A.”; “My brother is the physician”). 5. Errors in the usage of the article to (“I want go to the museum”; “She promised send him a message”). Errors triggered by the interference of a previous language are specific. For instance, students whose first or native language is French tend to commit a number of specific errors while learning English (in addition to typical errors characteristic of all people learning English as a second language): 1. The replacement of the verb be by the verb have (“We have hungry”; “I have fifteen years old”). There is a clear indication that this error is caused by the French language in which, in similar cases, the verb avoir (to have) is used, whereas in English in similar cases people use the verb to be. 2. The wrong placement of objective pronouns (“I him know well”). This error can be unmistakably ascribed to the French language, because in French, in a similar sentence, the object expressed by the pronoun is placed between the subject and the predicate ( Je le sais bien). 3. Numerous errors in using verb forms. For example, one typical error is using the present indefinite instead of the present continuous (“I write a letter now”). The causal factor of such errors is again the French language, in which an action occurring at the moment of speaking is expressed by présent, a tense form that does not require the verb to be (in French, être). The French express such an action not by the verbal form itself as is done in English (“I am writing a letter”), but by the combination of a verb (écrire: to write) and an adverbial modifier of time (maintenant: now). The whole sentence in French is J’écris une lettre maintenant. When a teacher continually and impatiently interrupts, corrects, or becomes anxious about a child’s mistakes, the teacher’s anxiety continually passes over to the child. Eventually, the child’s phobia about committing mistakes may grow into a hatred of the entire activity of second-language learning.

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Tolerance does not mean that all social practices, all behaviors of students, and all behaviors of surrounding people have to be accepted. Behaviors breaking humanitarian and social laws and rules, such as violence, robbery, and terrorism; actions that discredit and humiliate our neighbors, like stealing and adultery; and deeds incompatible with the norms of student life, such as carrying and using weapons and firearms, selling drugs, and drawing younger peers to drug and alcohol addiction should not be tolerated. Being tolerant does not mean becoming apathetic and resigning oneself to all possible difficulties emerging in educating students. Being tolerant means being patient with the whole range of students, yet consistent in one’s academic requirements and instructional strategies; taking into consideration students’ indigenous modes of cognitive activity, yet continually disciplining them by using pedagogically appropriate strategies; not losing one’s temper in dealing with low-achievers, yet systematically checking and assessing their academic progress. Being tolerant requires being patient with the perceptions and treatments of different ailments across cultures, yet persistent in promoting preventative and healthy measures when needed; accepting the variety of worldviews children exhibit in class, yet showing readiness to explain certain phenomena from a scientific perspective; and radiating willingness to listen to parents’ viewpoints on child rearing, yet being ready to explain to them the requirements that the contemporary, globalizing epoch has for educational institutions. Parents can positively influence children through the nature of their relationship with each other. When parents have a tolerant and healthy relationship with each other in the family circle, they tend to sustain favorable interactions with and a favorable attitude toward their child or their children. As Fieldman, Gowen, and Fisher (cited in McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002) state, children of happily married couples, who willingly share their joys with children and patiently and “invisibly” endure small difficulties in the partner relationship, traditionally perceive their childhood and adolescent years as satisfying and enjoyable. Upon reaching adulthood, such children are likely to establish intimacy with their own partners. Tragically, not all contemporary families can provide their children with due attention and a nurturing environment. When parents are intolerant of each other and continually embroiled in conflict, such a state of affairs is associated with assorted problems in children, including physical aggression, depression, and anxiety, as well as long-term difficulties in trusting others and maintaining intimate relationships. In other cases, parents affect

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children through the manner in which they treat them. If they maltreat their children by neglecting them and by subjecting the little ones to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, such maltreatment may have long-term negative impact on their children’s cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional development (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002). Tolerance and patience must be two golden assets of a person educating the young. Having discussed some important points, I offer the following guidelines for educators: ■

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Keep in mind that you should possess a tolerant altitude toward all students irrespective of their mentality, ways of interaction, learning styles, tastes in food, and their attitudes to health and the treatment of various ailments. Be tolerant toward students’ learning styles and cognitive preference (a topic discussed in a previous section); toward their parents, whose attitudes toward education and life may vary and change over time; and toward an array of political, economic, and social changes occurring on the national and global levels. Sad or unexpected news on some calamitous events often irritates educators, who then transmit their frustrated state into the teaching process. Exercise tolerance toward the daily professional routine you are involved in (checking children’s workbooks, preparing for classes, designing lesson plans, and conceptualizing ideas of how to better interact and deal with exceptional and low-achieving learners). Exhibit tolerance toward the pressure from education policy makers and bureaucratic structures, which insistently demand better qualitative and quantitative results from teachers and students. Avoid showing continual intolerance toward academic difficulties such as students’ careless actions and errors, especially in secondlanguage or foreign-language learning. Exhibit due tolerance and patience toward mistakes occurring in the early stages of language learning. It is obvious that language mistakes should be prevented and corrected, but a continual attention only to errors may be detrimental to the development of children’s language and speech habits in a second language.

I have come to the conclusion that educators should exhibit a high level of patience in corresponding pedagogical situations. On the other hand, they also should work and live with dignity, a quality I will discuss next.

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Questions 1. What is tolerance? 2. What quality does tolerance border with? 3. Why is it necessary to be patient toward students’ minor careless actions? Why should educators be especially tolerant of errors occurring during the initial stages of second-language acquisition? 4. Educators are required to be tolerant in many situations arising in the pedagogical process. Does this mean that they are free to accept any behaviors from students? 5. How can a healthy atmosphere in the family influence a child’s development? 6. Are you always tolerant and patient in dealing with children? What classroom situations disconcert you most?

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Be Careful Not to Lose Your Dignity

Society knows freedom when its people know dignity. A. AUBANOVA

Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness. EDWARD G. BULWER-LYTTON

intrinsic and absolute value, an inherent worth that cannot be bought or sold. No matter what form it is cloaked within, this worth is in a human being. This worth is also inherent in each educator and parent and in each individual involved in child and adolescent upbringing. Only its quantity and quality differs from person to person. This worth is called dignity, a salient aspect of an educator’s personal characteristics. As human society and interpersonal relations in this society become harsher and more strained, it becomes important for educators to control their emotions in difficult situations and not to lose their self-respect. Dignity is a close relation to truth, value, goodness, and freedom. People surrounding us need others to appreciate them by the truth, the highest dignity. The truth about a person—and about an educator, in the first place—is that man is created for committing good deeds. Man is created for goodness. The thing that increases man’s dignity is goodness; everything that decreases it belongs to evil. The truth lies between goodness and evil. This median line between the two categories really exists; that is why people

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tend to be sensitive about their dignity. “Each action of a man either elevates or demeans his own dignity or other people’s dignities” (Aubanova, 2006, p. 2). People tend to evaluate and esteem other individuals. If they esteem some other individual highly, his dignity elevates; if they underestimate him, his dignity decreases. A person’s dignity depends on how others evaluate him. However, from a dialectical perspective, there is evaluation and “evaluation.” When we really value others, we should not behave as if we are at a marketplace; dignity has nothing to do with trading. As a highest human value, dignity represents an infinite objective to strive for. Showing goodness to a colleague means increasing his or her dignity. Disrespecting your colleague means humiliating his or her dignity. When parents ask their children for respect, they ask them to show goodness to their parents. When we guard children’s dignity starting from childhood, they form the right image of themselves; if we begin humiliating children in their childhood and continue doing it in later years, they may get used to humiliation, acquire low self-esteem, and may eventually wrongly value the people around them. When people learn the truth about themselves and carry it with dignity, they become free. What is internal freedom? It is freedom from doubts about dignity and from fear about being wrongly accused. An individual should not have to fear losing honor or dignity. Educators are required to show reason and self-respect when faced with difficulties posed by the following external factors: The Challenges of Globalization. Along with the positive impact on many aspects of life, globalization has a negative impact on humanity, to which I drew the reader’s attention in a preceding discussion. Educators, as one of the largest working cohorts in the world, also have to endure the outcomes of globalizational processes. For example, the influx of globalization entails the formation of a global educational space with its specific educational principles and standards. This tendency gradually forces separate countries out of their national culture and unique systems of education. Whether educators like these changes or not, they have to reorganize their attitudes and instructional strategies according to the so-called international standards of the organization of education. Federal and Regional Reorganizations. Educators have to endure numerous educational reorganizations prompted by various hierarchical structures. In some authoritarian countries, just a passing thought of some high-ranking official may lead to changes in the overall structure of education. Even if one reform has not been fulfilled, educators rush into conceptualizing and implementing some new ideas of yet another reform.

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Such caprices of the highest echelons of power ultimately lie heavily on the teacher’s fragile shoulders. Adding to the numerous reforms and restructurings in education are the continual bureaucratic governmental, ministerial, and local-district inspections of educational institutions. In some countries, to pass to a higher professional grade, educators have to undergo various forms of testing and documentation-checking procedures. “Paper Creation” Activity. There is no end of such unnecessary work in contemporary educational institutions and nobody ventures to interfere and stop this monkey business. Paper pushing is often based on “strictly determined” hierarchical and bureaucratic laws and principles: Each bureaucratic layer checks a lower layer, with a teacher being the last person who has to endure the entire bureaucratic nightmare. The educators of the 1950s–1970s unanimously acknowledge that they had much less “document creation enterprise” than contemporary school teachers. College and university faculty are likely to experience the same, if not a greater amount of paper pushing. The Deterioration of the Educator’s Health. In a previous discussion, not in vain did I appeal to educators to take care of their health. The new millennium is characterized by the worsening of people’s health. Many people, ranging from kindergarteners to the elderly, lack protective barriers and resistance against professional or common diseases. On the whole, humanity’s immune system is on the decrease owing to a multitude of causes. Educators are not an exception. A balanced diet and regular exercise help a lot, but any individual may sooner or later fall ill. Natural Disasters. Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, nasty weather, and other misfortunes bring about sudden cataclysms to people and also to the whole matter of education. Such calamities take away the lives of children and their parents, leave some children parentless, destroy school premises, and result in various epidemics in the areas subjected to the disaster. Educators are required to withstand and overcome with dignity the internal difficulties—that is, those posed by the teaching profession itself. They experience lack of financial support. Compared with other professional groups, teachers and educators are underpaid groups of workers. Everybody is astonished at “brave teachers” heroically working from lesson to lesson in the “nervous” school milieu for low pay. Only it seems that nobody really cares for the fate of educators. Teachers work in overcrowded classes. In northern and eastern European countries there is a noticeable decrease of population, whereas in most of the countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, a tremendous

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demographic influx is under way, which results in an increase of class sizes. Working in large classes has its own and specific difficulties. First, teachers are unable to concentrate sufficient and nurturing attention on each child during and after lessons. Second, overcrowded classes do not allow teachers to develop effective speech and communication skills in each child. Third, in such classes it becomes more difficult to cope with discipline. In fact, in large classes all the problems teachers face in normal-size classes are augmented in proportion to the number of children who exceed the normal class size. Teachers work in remote and rural areas. Some teachers discharge their professional duties in extreme conditions. They work at schools located far from urban and cultural centers, in mountainous areas, in sparsely populated locales, and in insular regions. Teachers work in areas with extreme climatic conditions, like in northern Africa, where people have to endure a hot and arid climate most of the year, and northern Canada and northern Russia, where winters are cold and long-lasting. People of some other professions, like miners, oil workers, and car builders, may live and work only in certain places in which these branches of the economy function. This postulation does not refer to teachers, for with them things unfold differently. It is almost a law that teachers should be in all the places where people live. Even if one middle-aged family lives on a remote Texas ranch or if two working families live in the distant Canadian north, someone has to teach their children. Whatever difficulties educators experience and whatever problems they encounter, a prime goal in such situations is not to give way to panic but to emerge victorious and with dignity out of these and other predicaments. Teachers who can stand on their dignity and control their emotions in a difficult situation are usually more independent in their decisions and worldviews. We are all dependent on juridical and civil laws, definite social codes, and religious beliefs that we try not to violate. In this context, being independent means not allowing one’s mind to be colonized by frequently emerging and quickly waning strategies of teaching. Being independent also means being free in thinking as well as in conceptualizing, designing, and implementing one’s own ideas in the classroom and in outof-class activities. The phenomenon of being independent borders with that of being responsible and requires the teacher to be answerable for his or her deeds. One prerequisite that the unity of these two categories rests upon is that an independent educator has the responsibility to make the right decision in all the problematic situations arising in the teaching process.

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With these assumptions in mind, I offer the following suggestions for educators: ■

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You have a right to lead a dignified professional life. Dignity is inherently preserved in your heart, but most of it is obtained. One should try hard to obtain dignity. Practice shows that teachers often obtain dignity from the “adults in their professional environment— teachers, administrators, and parents—indirectly, through their students” (McPherson, 1983, p. 201). Safeguard your self-respect and control your emotions in complicated situations. Difficulties in the teaching profession may be prompted by the challenges of contemporary globalization, continual educational reforms and reorganizations on federal and regional levels, numerous bureaucratic inspections, and the backlog of work related to preparing various forms of documentation and teaching programs. Circumstances can take such a turn that there is no escaping from these external factors; teachers all over the world, in one way or another, experience them. Guide and cope with your emotions and manners and do not violate the required professional etiquette if you happen to work in difficult situations such as in overcrowded classes, isolated and rural regions, and places with unfavorable climates. Dignity should be an important guiding principle for your actions. Feel good about yourself. Educators with strong self-esteem tend to respect and value themselves and are more likely to respect their colleagues as well as students and their parents. In the teaching profession there is no predicament that you cannot come out of with dignity.

Human dignity is also related to human rights. Like people of any other profession, educators can fairly expect the minimal conditions necessary for effective work and a worthy life. In addition to enhancing their global, humanitarian, and multicultural competency, educators are expected to constantly master specific didactic strategies and techniques as well as conceptualize new ideas to ameliorate the educational process. How should educators effectively motivate students’ cognitive development? Why is it necessary to be a positive role model for kids? Why is it important for teachers and students to train their memory capacities? Why does the current epoch necessitate that educators teach students to protect the natural

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environment? I intend to explore these and a range of other issues in the following section.

Questions 1. Why is it important for educators not to lose the respect that they have for themselves? 2. What relationship does dignity have to truth, value, goodness, and freedom? 3. What contemporary external factors challenge teachers? 4. What other difficulties do contemporary teachers experience? 5. What kinds of difficulties do you experience in your work? 6. Do you always manage to get out of complicated situations with dignity?

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n this part of the study I encourage educators to enhance students’ cognitive development and motivation for learning; to avoid inordinate academic pressure on children, and excessive experimenting with them; and to develop their communication and speech skills. Educators are also expected to explore the frontiers of the unknown and to prepare young graduates to improve and refine the world.

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There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON

Motivation is everything. LEE IACOCCA

and cognize objective reality is a crucial goal of the entire system of education. Motivation is likely to be necessary in the performance of all learned behavior. Motivation does not happen by itself. We will never properly raise students’ impetus to learn if we say, “Children, now I will motivate you to love mathematics. Take your textbook, open it to page 77, and let’s do exercise 13.” Motivation may be triggered by a wide range of factors. It usually occurs most successfully when a learner consciously comes to the conclusion that he or she needs to do a certain thing. Motivation is a state that energizes, directs, and sustains behavior. Virtually all children are motivated to a certain extent. One may be keenly interested in the subject matter and actively participate in classroom discussions; another may be more concerned with social activities rather than with acquiring a knowledge base; still another may be focused on sports. According to most theorists, there are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation occurs when children are motivated by factors within themselves or inherent in the activity they are

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performing. Extrinsic motivation comes into play when children are motivated by factors external to themselves—for instance, when they want the good grades or glory that a particular accomplishment may bring (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002). Effective teachers use a variety of methods to motivate their children. My recommendations for classroom practice include: Eliciting Students’ Emotions. In motivating learners’ academic performance, it is important to elicit their emotions. Experience indicates that an emotionally colored fact, piece of knowledge, or bit of information is fixed in a child’s mind more firmly and strongly than facts explained in an indifferent manner or, as Vygotsky (1991, p. 134) says, “pronounced in a deadly manner.” Concerning the overall subject of emotions, Vygotsky notes: Emotional reactions must lie at the core of the educational process. Prior to introducing a certain piece of knowledge, the teacher is required to elicit a student’s corresponding emotion and relate this emotion to a novel item of knowledge under consideration. . . . Only by passing through the student’s feelings will a certain piece of knowledge be effectively acquired. (pp. 141–42)

Setting Challenging Tasks. In this respect, it is essential to find equilibrium between a student’s current level of competence and the difficulty of the goals (Wang, 2001). Difficult goals as well as those that are easily attained are unlikely to raise students’ motivation and challenge them to accomplish a task. Using “Local Material.” It is desirable that educators use so-called local material, especially in the form of visual images pertaining to students’ past experience and to their cultural and historical heritage. Cognitive activity is closely intertwined with memory, which is energized by an array of factors. I know well that visual images play a crucial role in electrifying memory capacities and in enhancing cognitive development. However, the idea of visual images again struck my mind when I recalled the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his liking for ancient objects. It happened in Vienna, Austria. I was sitting on a bench near the Vienna State Opera House, where the world-famous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra resides, when it occurred to me that Sigmund Freud once lived and worked in Vienna, the city where I was at that time. I was familiar with some of his works and fundamental research directions. As my mind switched to this psychoanalyst, I, led by some unknown force, remembered that Freud had been fascinated by ancient objects, which had spoken to him of the past being still alive at the

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present moment. In fact, placing an emphasis on the past being alive in the present constitutes one of the chief directions of psychoanalytic theories. Upon returning to my pedagogical academy, I asked two of my student teachers, who were having their first student teaching experience at a village school, to organize an extracurricular activity dedicated to the village and its people under the common title “Do I know my village?” Prior to this activity I asked the student teachers to collect various pictures of the village and its environs, the rural students’ and their parents’ pictures, objects of art that had been manufactured by local craftsmen, the rural residents’ past pictures, their hand-made articles of the past (which were kept securely in the classroom and the school museum), and information and objects related to the children’s parents and grandparents. In other words, I asked them to collect visual aids (pictures, objects, symbols) that would remind the children of their personal past lives and were related to their indigenous culture or historical traditions. My student teachers were lucky to persuade some of the parents to bring a wide range of visual objects from their homes. In the end, the student teachers conducted the extracurricular activity with fourth-graders. The school teachers who witnessed the approach accompanied by the exhibition of local objects were amazed at how positively the strategy impacted children and how it elicited their curiosity to learn more and more about their school, their village, and their agricultural region.

Later, racking my brains over this phenomenon, I came to the following conclusion: The children’s incentive to cognitive activity and their increased love for their local roots were triggered by the fact that they must have deeply felt their participation in the life of the local community. They remembered their preschool years and past experiences, and such nostalgic remembrances must have begun to have a meaning in their present lives, when they were already fourth-graders capable of committing independent deeds. Using Proper Strategies of Assessment. As an important part of the educational process, assessment is a vital tool for motivating students’ cognitive development. In classroom assessment, most teachers are known to use both standardized tests and nontest methods such as performance assessment, group discussion, question-response, and other techniques. There has been a lot of criticism of standardized testing. Some theorists and educators zealously stand up against using such forms of assessment. Others regard such tests as the only proper method of assessment because standardized tests, they assume, reduce to a minimum teachers’ subjective attitude to students’ academic achievement. I myself assume that in the

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teaching process various forms of assessment can be used: test and nontest strategies, oral and written forms of assessment, and strategies based on the use of technology. Vygotsky (1991) recommends keeping in mind two kinds of achievement levels while evaluating students’ progress: relative and absolute. If a student’s current level of achievement is compared to the student’s previous level of performance in the same subject area, the current level of advancement may be called a “relative success.” When a student’s present level of progress is set side by side with that of the generalized progress of the whole class (or the level required by the curriculum), the learner’s present level of academic achievement is referred to as an “absolute success.” Vygotsky assumes that most educators commit one common mistake: They tend to compare and measure students’ current answers against the average level of the academic achievement of the whole class. Evidence indicates that this “average” level often equals the level of a strong pupil’s achievement. Pursuing this approach, educators often wrongly evaluate a weak student’s progress, which in some cases may be greater than that of a high-achieving student if the weak student’s progress is measured according to the relative-level criterion. To illustrate the statement, let us present two situations with unequal levels of achievement. Let us imagine that a low-achieving student who knows the names of ten countries and their capital cities and can show them on the map has learned about ten more countries for a certain lesson. A high-achieving student from the same class who knows thirty countries also has memorized the location of five more countries for the same lesson. As far as the absolute criterion is concerned, the second student has a much better performance level because he already knows thirty-five countries and their capital cities—but “according to the relative level of achievement, the first learner has made more progress, because he has doubled his scope of geographic knowledge, and for this reason, he deserves more praise” (Sinagatullin, 2003, p. 230). Using Proper Reward and Punishment Strategies. I begin by noting that in this context I fully exclude any idea of material rewards or corporal punishment. In schools both should be avoided completely. In reflecting on this, I mean that we can reward or punish children by giving corresponding grades (symbolically represented by letters, numbers, or other signs), or by verbal praise or verbal reprimand. Parents also should not frequently resort to material rewards to praise their children’s academic achievement. When they repeatedly reward the child, they get the child not only into the habit of receiving rewards for academic success but also into the habit

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of expecting a more precious and valuable material reward each time the child receives a new material present. Assigning grades is a reliable and historically proven strategy of eliciting students’ academic progress. Each student is eager to know how well he or she has recited a poem, how correctly he or she has translated a foreign text into the native language, or how correctly he or she has solved a mathematical task. Students want to know “where they are” and “what they should pay attention to” in learning a theme or a whole subject area. Some specialists and educators seek to persuade the teaching public at large to resort to a nonmark system of instruction. They take the view that children can gradually progress on their own; teachers should only facilitate this process by continually involving them in various cognitive activities. If the reader asks my opinion about the nonmark system, then, the answer is transparently clear: I am categorically against using any form of a nonmark method of teaching. On the other hand, it is necessary not to overdo the giving of grades. If a learner receives a separate grade for each fragment of oral answer (in other words, for “each opening of the mouth”), such a rewarding will not yield positive results. The learner may get into the habit of working only for the sake of the material fixation of her answers by the teacher. The same scenario, only in reverse, may occur in a case where the teacher frequently punishes a learner by giving low grades or by discipline. Paradoxically, children may also get used to punishment. Some students stop reacting to punitive remarks if they hear them frequently and everywhere, in class and on the school grounds. Numerous reprimands may motivate a child negatively, and eventually the child may lose self-confidence and start hating teachers and school as a whole. A series of inappropriate punishments may even lead to aggression. Providing Verbal Feedback. Apart from giving grades, ensuring appropriate verbal feedback on students’ progress is an effective way to elicit their impetus to further cognitive activity. Feedback should be constructive, encouraging, and accurately reflect the students’ current abilities—that is, how well or how badly they perform in class. Both encouragement and fair criticism from teachers favorably influence students’ self-efficacy. In most cases proper feedback clearly tells the student what is expected from him or her. As in the case with rewarding children by putting grades, the teacher’s verbal comments should not be very frequent (i.e., after each phrase or each sentence that a student pronounces); otherwise those comments will ultimately only hinder the teaching/learning process. Students may get used to hearing the teacher’s numerous reflexive utterances, which may

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lessen their educative effect. Equally, the teacher does not need to remain silent, without a single response to a student’s complete performance or to a series of such performances. Several implications emerge for educators regarding the issues examined in this chapter. They include the following: ■

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Concentrate on strategies that promote intrinsic motivation. You can more effectively engage children in cognitive activity and maintain their curiosity if you ignite their emotions and inner desire to perform an activity. Encourage children with challenging tasks that enhance cognitive processing. Extremely difficult and overly simple tasks are equally undesirable in the teaching process. Both may result in reducing the motivation to learn. Design lessons that are both challenging and motivating. When appropriate, seek to use visual images related to students’ experience, culture, and historical heritage. Capitalize on proper techniques of assessing children. Use a strategy that best suits a given situation. In one case, you may ask a pupil to reproduce a text orally; in another, it would be better to organize a group discussion; in still another situation, a substitution test would be an effective form of assessment. Reinforce children’s academic performance accurately. Do not overdo the grades and verbal feedback. Conversely, avoid leaving children’s responses without attendance. Provide students with positive feedback and do not punish their misbehavior in the presence of their peers.

Motivation should be a key aspect of the teaching process. Teachers should be especially attentive and alert in working in a culturally and ethnically pluralistic classroom, to which children bring a variety of lifestyles and cognitive preferences from their families and communities. Educators play a crucial role in motivating children to cognitive activity. An important aspect of the teaching profession is that educators themselves and their every deed—however tiny it is—are almost always in the sight of students. As things stand, by the very essence of their noble profession, educators are required to behave decently so as to be positive role models for their disciples. What should educators do to accurately discharge their professional and humanitarian obligations? Let us seek for the answers in the next chapter.

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Questions 1. Why is motivation, which is so “invisible” at first glance, an important component of the learning process? 2. Psychologists subdivide motivation into two types. How do these types differ from each other? 3. What role do emotions play in children’s cognitive activity? 4. Have you ever used any local material of the nature the author described above? If you have, what impact did it have on your children’s learning? 5. What is the difference between a relative success and an absolute success? 6. Why is it harmful to go too far in positive feedback as well as in punitive reinforcement?

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Be a Positive Role Model for Children and Parents

Children are in more need of models than of critics. FRENCH PROVERB

A good example is the best sermon. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

educators’ styles of interaction with others and their modes of behavior. Most children and adolescents tend to imitate almost everything educators do. The teacher’s gestures, clothes, manners of greeting, and techniques and strategies of teaching—these things are seen and heard by students and, in this or that aspect, are remembered and often imitated in similar situations. What happens between teacher and learner in many spheres of school life is of such significance that its effect often goes on forever. This is what Dawson (1989) said about it:

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It is one of the glories and horrors of teaching that you keep on bumping into those you have taught as you go about the world, getting on with the business of living. What is more, when you bump into them, your part in their development is immediately brought to their minds. (p. 6)

Today we can permit a teacher to forget a couple of mathematical formulae, but we cannot forgive her if she comes to the classroom in an unacceptably short skirt or without a brassiere underneath her top. Likewise, we cannot forgive him if he addresses children with alcohol on his breath 156

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or uses vile language, even if only once. It is this “once” that will be remembered by children who will sooner or later graduate from school. The personality of this teacher may forever be associated with this vulgar word or phrase, or with the smell of alcohol. There is a strange paradox related to a teacher’s or a parent’s indecent behavior. When a teacher continually uses vile language or abuses alcohol or, in other words, when an educator get used to violating social and pedagogical rules of decency, children stop noticing such behaviors and tend not to discuss that educator. Conversely, if a decent educator (who has never been observed using obscene language) uses only one filthy phrase in front of a group of students in the duration of all his or her professional life, his indecent linguistic behavior will be remembered forever. One generation of students may tell other, younger generations about his or her having used this foul language unit once upon a time. Moreover, this educator may well receive a nickname that may be closely associated with the content of the lewd phrase or word he or she accidentally used once. Whether it is possible or not, an educator should always strive to be a positive role model for children and all surrounding people. As the process of child nurturing has an exemplary nature, educators are required to be especially attentive to themselves. The following professional activities and professional manners require the uppermost concern. Teaching the Subject Area. Some teachers come to the lesson not fully prepared or totally unprepared. Other teachers often just reproduce the contents of textbooks and make learners retell the same material. It is necessary to prepare carefully before beginning a deed. This motto is true for anyone who is to deliver a lesson, to meet the parents of a misbehaving child, or just to make a speech in front of an audience. Undoubtedly, teachers’ styles of interaction and behavior in front of learners are imitated and often used by the learners in later years while rearing their own children. If some of the teacher’s former students choose the teaching profession, they may become enthusiasts of reproductive, read-and-tell styles of teaching—that is, advocates of the strategies used by their former schoolteachers. Interacting with Kids in the Out-Of-School Milieu. The manner of interaction a teacher traditionally uses with children and adolescents often stays fixed in students’ memories for a long period of time. When schoolchildren grow up and become adults, they often remember the ways the teacher used to interact with them. They also remember the words the teacher used and how the teacher talked with other teachers and educators. Some people of adult age remember well their teachers’ modes of interaction

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with them at school and often take those modes of communication as patterns for imitation. There is a strong possibility that these adults will use similar styles of interaction with their own and other children. Interacting with Community Members. Even though community members may be great in number, they come to know schoolteachers well, especially in rural settlements and farm areas. Most of them are simultaneously parents and relatives of the children attending the local school. The teacher often engages in pedagogical or just everyday conversation with community members. Talking to the teacher is a great source of pride for most of them, because the teacher educates their children. It is known that any child is an invaluable treasure to parents and extended family members. Fundamentally, a teacher resembles millions of other human beings and possesses the same basic and vital humanitarian and physical needs. But from a moral perspective, in the neighborhood he is considered a person of authority, responsible for educating young girls and boys. He takes an active part in preparing them to become good citizens of their country. Community members tend to attentively listen to each word the teacher utters; each assumption and admonition he or she articulates is often taken as a sacred truth. Fulfilling Day-To-Day Duties. Like other members of human society, teachers and educators go shopping, visit entertainment and sporting events, visit cafés and other eateries, work in the yard, and grow flowers in the garden. Simply put, they move around, and their ways of living are laid out in the open before everybody. The reader remembers Dawson’s assumption that teachers often bump into those whom they have taught. This assumption is true. However, teachers continue to meet not only those they have previously taught, but inevitably, and in the first place, those they are teaching right now, today. Teachers are also and always in sight of their present-day schoolchildren. The nature of the teaching profession and common sense require the teacher to be very cautious in fulfilling out-of-school and out-of-home obligations and to be careful and prudent in all their social contacts in the neighborhood. The Manner of Dressing. Clothes are an important attribute in a human being’s life. In a sense, what is on us becomes a part of us. If our intelligence and knowledge symbolize our content, then, from a philosophical perspective, clothes may represent our form. It is transparently clear that intelligence and professional qualities are more important in human beings than their appearance. However, clothes are especially important for a teacher. Clothes do not make a teacher, in the strongest sense of the word, but the manner in which a teacher dresses, like the manner of behavior and

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manner of interaction, has an educative and imitative impact on children and, of course, on the surrounding people. Most educators of all ages, like most representatives of other professions, prefer wearing casual clothes after finishing their professional obligations in educational institutions. Nobody is against a teacher wearing informal attire in leisure hours, but school is another and a special place. Moreover, school is and must be a holy bastion of knowledge. Some teachers, especially during the early period of their career, come to school in ultra-casual clothes, without discriminating between the school and out-of-school environments. Some female teachers can be seen in super-short skirts, transparent T-shirts and dresses, or wearing showy hairstyles. Some male teachers may come to class in worn-out and torn jeans, hippy-like hairstyles, or with various tattoos clearly visible. In terms of this discussion, I remember how I was once supervising student teachers at an urban school. I went to a classroom full of tenth-graders, where a student teacher was to deliver an English language lesson. I went to the back row, took my seat, prepared my pen and paper, and began looking around the room. Very soon a young girl, a twenty-something, came into the classroom, carrying a poster. It looked like she was soon to go to a dancing party. She was wearing a short skirt, wedge-soled shoes, and a thin T-shirt tightly fitting her body. Her hair was dyed blue. When this “doll” started approaching me, I noticed that she was also wearing abundant and gaudy makeup. She had painted her lips light red, her long fingernails dark red, and her toenails violet. I also took notice of an inscription on her shirt, which was visible at close glance. It read, “I love boys and domestic animals.” At first, it occurred to me that my student teacher probably planned to use this young girl as some “personage” at her lesson. Then, all of a sudden, I recognized in this girl my student teacher. So changed and extravagant she stood before me and, of course, in front of the tenth-graders! I was stunned. In an instant, another female came into the class. She looked less extravagant in her attire; however, she also looked like a girl who was looking forward to going to a dancing party. A little bit later I came to learn that the latter female was the working teacher of English in this class. In her thirties, she looked younger in her clothes and makeup. Now, as she entered, I noticed she was wearing a tightly-fitting trousers “hanging” on her thighs and a short sweater, which allowed her navel to be visible to everybody. She also had very abundant makeup. The teacher of English came up to me and said that she had helped the student teacher to prepare for the lesson and now she was quite ready to deliver it.

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I thought to myself, “How could this teacher in her thirties and this student teacher of mine, who is probably ten years younger, venture to come to school dressed like this? The student teacher is young and inexperienced, but the main teacher has worked in school for at least seven or eight years. Has the working teacher always dressed in such a manner? During my lectures and seminars I keep telling students that school is a holy place that should promote the development not only of knowledge and skills, but also attitudes and moral character of students. How on earth can this practicing teacher and this preservice teacher develop children’s moral and civic character?” Eventually I did not allow the student teacher to conduct the lesson. The English language teacher did it for her. I took the student teacher to a window in the corridor and talked to her for half an hour. We seemed to have understood each other. The student teacher conducted her lesson the next day. Sitting at the back of the classroom, I saw a considerable change both in the working teacher’s and the student teacher’s appearance. They both looked like beautiful young females in strict and fashionable clothes.

It is necessary to note that in rural areas, remote and isolated villages, and farming communities, teachers and educators are required to be twice as cautious and twice as diligent in discharging their professional and civic duties and obligations, because in such pastoral and bucolic environments, what is exemplary in urban and metro settings becomes twice as exemplary. Rural teachers’ strategies of instruction and communication with girls and boys are often considered, both by children themselves and by parents, as the only correct methods of child development. In contrast to urban settings, in a rural milieu people and children tend to see in a teacher an authority figure, an individual to be respected. It often becomes a priority task for rural children, adolescents, and parents to “be like the teacher” and, most important, to “live like the teacher.” In a later section I plan to discuss in more detail some of the issues pertaining to rural teachers and rural education. Meanwhile, I ask educators to listen to the following suggestions: ■

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Keep in mind that the teacher is a living symbol. Whatever type of educator you are, there is no escaping from your disciples in all your lifelong endeavors. Be a positive role model for your students, on the school grounds and elsewhere. The teacher is seen everywhere and much talked of in family circles and the community. Since teaching is exemplary in nature, be especially alert and attuned to such aspects of your professional and everyday activities

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as teaching the subject area, interacting with children in school and out-of-school environments, and interacting with parents and community members. One of the important attributes of the teaching profession is the teacher’s appearance, or how he or she looks in front of children, colleagues, and the public at large. Try to wear fashionable yet appropriate clothes. If you are a rural teacher or plan to work in a rural school, keep in mind that such surroundings necessitate that teachers be even more cautious with regard to their professional obligations, ways of interaction with parents and community members, and modes of behavior.

Educating children is a unique enterprise. Even if educators try to be good role models for students and surrounding people, they sometimes commit careless actions and wrongly understand some situations. What kinds of hasty decisions and mistakes do educators make in their profession? The chapter to come is specially written to clarify these points.

Questions 1. Why is it important for a teacher to be a positive role model in school and out-of-school environments? 2. What does Dawson mean by “one of the glories and horrors of teaching”? 3. In what way can a teacher be nicknamed? Did any of your former schoolteachers have nicknames? 4. Why is it important for an educator to acquire a habit of dressing modestly and appropriately? 5. Can you think of some additional facts (not mentioned in the chapter) to prove that the teaching profession has an exemplary nature? 6. Have you adopted and used in class any of your former teachers’ styles of instruction and/or manners of interaction with people?

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We can know nothing about what is outside us if we overlook ourselves. ITALO CALVINO

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. ALEXANDER POPE

they have not done correctly in different ways. Some approach them with anxiety and fear and, if mistakes occur frequently, become too apprehensive. In some cases a fear of making another mistake leads such an individual to a high degree of nervous tension. Others become aware of their careless actions and try to improve the situation. Still others do not pay a lot of attention to their wrong actions and consider them to be trivial and unimportant. They may remain equally excited or, conversely, quiet in all life situations whether they are on the right or wrong track. However, mistakes happen and oftentimes a mistake is a natural careless action. For us, this fact is not very important. What is important is that many people tend not to admit their mistakes. Admitting mistakes should be one of the major characteristic features of a human being. For an educator this objective is of prime importance because some wrongdoings, if not attended to properly and in a timely

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manner, may become habitual and may not yield to eradication. They may become a cause of eternal suffering to the teacher. Continual mistakes and an inability to admit, analyze, and correct them may eventually, along with some other negative factors, end up with burnout. Mistakes may occur out of forgetfulness, inattention, or a careless action. Sometimes teachers, especially recent graduates, misunderstand a situation and find it difficult finding a way out. A considerable number of mistakes may be attributed just to teachers’ stubbornness and unwillingness to go into a concrete educational situation or undertake an in-depth analysis of a previous, similar difficult situation. What sorts of mistakes do teachers make? Organizational Mistakes. Teachers sometimes bring their personal or family troubles to the classroom. In such cases their unnatural and nervous state may pass on into the overall “aura” of the classroom. A nervously electrified teacher may sprinkle his problems upon students. In other cases, teachers may leave some necessary things at home. For example, they may forget to collect their glasses, lesson plans, necessary manuals or teaching aids, pens, and computer disks. The person to be blamed in these cases is the teacher. Some educators are accustomed to packing their things in the morning, right before leaving home for school. Instead, they should prepare and pack their personal and didactic stuff beforehand. Some teachers like to come late to class, while others often let the class out before the bell rings. While discharging their professional obligations, some teachers come to hasty decisions and start thinking only after they have done something wrong, as if forgetting the well-known proverb “Look before you leap.” Wearing inappropriate clothes is another organizational action insufficiently considered by the teacher, as was previously mentioned. Some teachers come to school in showy, shabby, or whimsical attire, which attracts students’ attention and distracts their cognitive motivation. Communication Mistakes. Out of forgetfulness, absent-mindedness, or inability to control their anger, teachers may address students with rough words and obscene language. In other cases they fail to address their students, colleagues, or parents by name, which adds psychological discomfort to the process of interaction. In such cases it is better to consult a prepared list of children’s or parents’ names. Didactic Mistakes. Teachers may provide children with incorrect facts. For example, a teacher may, casually or out of lack of knowledge, wrongly say that the capital of Canada is Montréal (actually it is Ottawa) or the capital of Turkey is Istanbul (it is Ankara) or that Spanish is the official language all

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over South America (whereas in Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, the official language is Portuguese). A teacher may make language mistakes while writing on the board, in children’s workbooks while correcting their errors, on the computer screen while providing some instruction in written form for students, and in live speech. In some cases a teacher wrongly evaluates a student’s answer and sets the grade too low or too high. A good way to learn how to admit one’s wrongdoings is self-reflection, an important part of which is self-evaluation. To evaluate their work, teachers may ask themselves a series of questions. For example, after a lesson is over, a teacher may try to find reasonable answers to the following questions: 1. Have I realized all the goals of the lesson? 2. Have I been able to motivate children to creative activity? 3. Have the students acquired the required knowledge [information, skills]? 4. Have all the students understood the topic? 5. Have I used time appropriately? 6. Have I offended some of the children by being too obtrusive? 7. Have I used the time in favor of developing students’ communication and speaking skills? After covering a subsequent theme, the questions on self-evaluation may include the following: 1. To what extent and depth have my students acquired the given topic (theme)? 2. Have I included sufficient new data and information while explaining the material? 3. Have I managed to direct students to the required sources of information and knowledge? 4. Is all the knowledge I have provided worth learning? 5. Have all the students progressed well while learning this theme? 6. How have my instructional styles and modes of interaction matched students’ learning styles and cognitive preferences? 7. To what extent has the information and knowledge I have provided matched the official curriculum? 8. Have I assessed the students correctly? What is the ratio of standardized tests that I have used and traditional methods of controlling students’ academic achievement?

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After a longer period of time, for example, at the end of a school year, the teacher may try to find reasonable answers to another range of questions in order to look back and think of what aspects of professional work can be changed and improved: 1. Have I passed and fulfilled all the curriculum requirements? Is there anything important that I should have done? Have I failed to do anything? 2. Have I realized all my professional plans? 3. What useful things have I done? (The teacher may list all the important and priority deeds on a piece of paper.) 4. What careless and ill-considered actions and deeds have I committed? (The teacher may also write a list of such activities and reanalyze them.) 5. How effectively have I used newly acquired knowledge and information in the teaching process? 6. How have I managed to cope with discipline in class? What should I do to ameliorate discipline and improve classroom management? 7. Were my interactions with parents favorable? 8. Have I paid sufficient attention to health education? 9. Have I conducted effective personal observations to keep track of students’ cognitive and personality development? 10. Have my family problems affected my interactions with students and colleagues? In teachers’ work there also exist questions which need answering at all times; these are the so-called “eternal” questions surrounding the problems that face educators throughout their career. Among such questions we can articulate the following: 1. Did I choose the right profession? 2. Am I a good teacher? Do I cope with my work as a school (kindergarten, college) teacher? 3. Am I doing well at working with the diversity of students? 4. Do I take good care of my health? Do I get regular checkups? 5. Do my everyday modes of behavior and interaction with people outside school fit the requirements of the teaching profession? 6. Do I cherish the phenomenon of time? 7. Does my multicultural and global competency meet the requirements of the contemporary epoch?

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8. Can I work with computers and related technologies well enough to be in step with the era of science and technology? 9. Can I assess, collect, and digest the inflow of knowledge and information so as to effectually use it in the classroom? 10. Do I wear appropriate clothes when I go to school? 11. Why do people ascribe the job of a teacher to be a noble profession? Self-reflection should also contain self-criticism. Sometimes we like to criticize other people, but when it comes to ourselves, especially to admitting our own negative deeds, we are strangely reluctant. Tejvan Pettinger (2007) recommends that an individual follow several rules in the art of selfcriticism: 1. Avoid excessive guilt while criticizing yourself. Instead of helping us to improve, guilt tends to make us feel miserable. 2. Avoid judging other people by the same standards. It is necessary to stick to self-criticism; other people may be pursuing other lifestyles and values and living at a different pace. 3. Avoid self-contempt. Self-criticism does not mean self-contempt. We are not criticizing our whole selves, but a certain action of ours. 4. Do not let pride get in the way. Your pride dislikes being criticized, but refusing to condemn the wrong things you have done from a sense of pride only augments the existing mistake. 5. Listen to suggestions from others. On occasions when we cannot see our faults, it may be beneficial to invite criticism from a friend or colleague. Self-criticism cannot and should not turn into the main weapon of a teacher’s self-reflection. Excessive criticism of oneself is as harmful as excessive criticism of someone else, especially if this someone is your colleague or a person under your control. Drawing from the above discussion, I offer the following recommendations for educators: ■

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Admit your mistakes when the overall situation prompts and suggests doing it. Teachers of dignity should acknowledge their careless and hasty decisions rather than refuse to acknowledge them. Avoid admitting all your minor mistakes and lapses—otherwise your dignity may crack and you may threaten your career. Students may

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think, however wrongly, that by doing so you are admitting an incapability to teach and cope with class and school discipline. Too many cases of admittance may well mount into a generalized, negative attitude from students and/or parents concerning your overall professional expertise. Take a step back and self-reflect on how you have conducted a lesson, how you have spent your professional day, week, and academic year. Look back at what you can improve and change. Finally, and most important, try to attentively read this book. Most of the recommendations and precepts offered in it are directly related to teacher self-reflection and self-improvement. The book may help you concentrate on some of the vital and hidden facets of education, admit some of your careless deeds, and help improve some of your strategies of teaching and child rearing.

Admitting one’s own mistakes should be a golden principle and an uppermost quality of a person involved in teaching. There are cases when an educator needs to acknowledge his or her fault openly, in front of colleagues, parents, or students. In other cases, it is easier to contemplate one’s wrong actions by oneself. Ultimately, the process of admitting one’s mistakes is a process of the continual improvement of one’s professional competency and one’s inner self. Among the mistakes some educators are unable to avoid is their frantic striving to constantly overload learners with academic tasks. The next portion of the manual provides some reasonable arguments about why educators are recommended to avoid inordinate academic pressure on learners.

Questions 1. What are the main causes of teachers’ mistakes? 2. What types of common mistakes do teachers make in their profession? 3. Do you ever criticize and blame yourself for your wrongdoings? 4. If you frequently commit careless and ill-considered deeds, reflect on their causal factors. What are you doing to eradicate the causes? 5. Why is it important for a teacher to admit his or her mistakes? 6. How can you explain the meaning of the following quotation: “No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes” (William E. Gladstone)?

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A child should not be forced to be busy all the time. Let’s take away the tremendous pressures we place on our children, both in school and at home. Give the child an opportunity to sit back and daydream once in a while. DR. BENJAMIN FINE

We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up. PHYLLIS DILLER

“excessive” in this context, I caution educators against going beyond normal and acceptable limits of loading a child with academic tasks. Thus, my underlying assumption rests on the premise that educators and educational structures should not exhort extreme and exorbitant strategies and techniques in the child-education process—that is, approaches exceeding the boundaries dictated by reason and by psychological and physical human capacities. In reflecting on the necessity to avoid excessive academic pressure on students, I do not negate the necessity to ensure children’s full cognitive potential in cognizing objective reality. Undoubtedly, schooling necessitates that we (1) center on children’s strengths rather than deficiencies and use strong points to improve weaker aspects of cognitive development (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002), (2) provide challenging tasks that promote maxi-

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mum cognitive development, and (3) facilitate the development of mental processes and cognitive skills in social relations. I stand for strong and quality education, which I will illustrate in a later chapter. There are cases when abnormal physical, psychological, and emotional pressure on an individual can lead to burnout. Both educators and students can be subject to this syndrome, which, according to Maslach and Jackson (cited in A. Sarros & J. Sarros, 1990), encompasses at least three things: (1) emotional and physical exhaustion as a result of daily work pressures and constraints; (2) depersonalization characterized by the development of negative attitudes toward the people one works closely with; and (3) a lack of personal accomplishment, indicating a loss of self-esteem and work accomplishment as a consequence of limited positive feedback and recognition. Burnout may be both a process and a syndrome. For example, when we deal with a person’s emotional exhaustion, we mean a result of a prolonged process. This process may be associated with continual stressful situations. As for the teaching profession, Kelly, Rottier, and Tomhave (1983) focus on three sources bringing about stressful situations that eventually may lead to teacher burnout: environmental sources, interpersonal relationships, and intrapersonal relationships. Environmental stress factors include poor resources, inadequate teaching facilities, continual classroom interruptions, poor overall organization, excessive paperwork, and decreasing job mobility. Interpersonal stress factors involve relations in the family, with coworkers and administrators, and with community members. Intrapersonal stress factors are embedded in an individual’s inner self. For instance, such factors as possessing a poor self-image, being a perfectionist, and trying to fulfill difficult role expectations can produce high levels of stress and end up in burnout. Experimental evidence indicates that men have a greater level of burnout in general. Women have traditionally been considered the nurturers through the years and, on the whole, have had more interpersonal relationships with children. Consequently, male teachers are more subject to stress than female teachers. Teachers in the thirty-five to forty-five age group are more depersonalized than younger or older groups. Interestingly, it was also found that Protestant teachers were significantly more depersonalized than Catholics or nonbelievers (Huston, 1989). The problems of burnout and stress are commonly discussed in relation to various professions in which adult populations are involved. For instance, I have just shown how educators can be exhausted, depersonalized, and end up in burnout. However, little is said on this topic in relation to

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school students, who can also psychologically and physically exhaust themselves and who can become ill after a period of excessive pedagogical pressure and hard work. Therefore, among other objectives, in this section I intend to fill some of the gaps both in the problem of student burnout and of how to avoid this syndrome. A range of factors can cause student academic burnout. I analyze just a few of such factors. Inordinate and High Expectations of Learners. Some teachers want children to be perfectionists in knowledge construction and logical thinking during all lessons. In other cases, teachers erroneously expect from learners answers that are equal to their own professional capacities; this means that children’s answers should be full, apt, and perfectly substantiated with facts and important data. Teachers should assume responsibility for the quality of children’s knowledge and for their overall development. However, children cannot reach the level of the teacher’s professional expertise by providing full and logical answers during their school careers. Many teachers sincerely believe that only they and nobody else are responsible for each student’s success or failure. A policy based on extremely high expectations often results in disappointment. Continual Experimenting. In this context, by experimenting I understand two perspectives: a narrow variable pertaining to the professional activity of a teacher or group of teachers and a broader variable encompassing the activities under the patronage of out-of-school educational structures. Some educators excessively experiment with children by frequently introducing and probing various strategies of teaching and learning. They are inclined to continually modify, alter, or completely change their styles of teaching, which subsequently makes learners frequently adjust to the capabilities of the “masterly teacher.” Thus, children become objects of investigation for probing the novel ideas, methods, and strategies that frequently strike the “enthusiastic” teacher. In my teacher education career, I was acquainted with one middle-aged teacher who taught the French language in the fifth through eleventh grades. He used to see me frequently, seeking advice on various questions of organizing the instructional process. Here I will tackle only one aspect of his teaching—how he worked with foreign language words. It is known that in foreign language learning it is very important to remember as many words and phrases as possible. Language units should be put in the longrange memory and remembered for good. This is how he changed his strategies within one term (two months) working with vocabulary items in the seventh grade.

AVOID EXCESSIVE ACADEMIC PRESSURE

First he made students write out each unknown word with adjacent words (in a phrase) in a special notebook and checked their knowledge of these units each day. As I know, this is an effective strategy, because children memorize a word better if they see it in a phrase. Quite suddenly, in a dozen days, he put forward another requirement: He forbade writing down the words and phrases. Instead, children were asked to memorize all the unknown lexical units orally. “Consult a dictionary about each unknown unit, look at this unit, try to remember it, and close the dictionary. By doing it, you give a command to your brain, and it will unmistakably remember the unit forever,” said this teacher to his students. Some short period passed. Digging into educational literature, the teacher read in a manual about one more “effective” method based on the premise that, after a couple of years of learning a second language at school, learners may not learn new words. All they need to do at this stage of foreign language learning is to read as many texts as possible, trying to understand the main idea. As children read a lot, they gradually “decipher” the meaning of unknown words unconsciously, in the same way as they did while progressing in their native, first language. Immediately after reading about this novel strategy, he ran to his students, stopped the previous strategy of learning new words, and introduced this third strategy. Our story has not ended yet. Very soon after this incident, he came to me and confessed that he had in mind another, fourth way of learning new words and explained to me its nature and essence. Only after a long and heated conversation could I convince him that a continuous changing of instructional strategies—that is, the continuous experimenting with children— may bring only harm to their cognitive abilities because they are unable to frequently adopt new approaches, even if each new approach may look better than a previous one. I recommended to him that he should return to using his first strategy of learning new lexical units—by writing down them in a notebook. I also told him, “If children themselves discover any other strategies of learning new lexical units and grammar patterns, let them use their own strategies, but only in addition to this fundamental strategy used by all the class.”

Another funny incident occurred to my former acquaintance Albert. When Albert was an eighth-grader, his physical training teacher convinced the students that regular running in the early morning is very useful for children, adolescents, adults, and, in general, for people of all ages. The teacher insisted on their starting to run in the morning. A number of students in the class, including Albert, began running or jogging in the morning. Some of the students sincerely believed that this enterprise was useful.

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After a couple of months, this same teacher changed his mind about early sessions of running. “Life changes rapidly,” he said. “You know, guys, medical science now recommends another method—running somewhere between four and seven p.m. Running in the morning can spoil your heart. That is why it is more useful to run in the second half of the day.” Some of the boys changed the time of their running sessions. On the whole, the teacher left the students and, of course, Albert himself, nonplussed. Albert stopped running completely, but he did not stop engaging in other forms of exercising.

A broader scope of experimenting is often conducted by school district authorities, various research centers, educational laboratories conceptualizing and implementing innovative experimental programs, and various types of governmental structures pushing their ideas and often politicizing the overall educational process. Such structures tend to make high demands on the quality and quantity of education. These requirements normally materialize in programs and curricula that often require learners to undergo a brain-racking job of studying a set of subject areas overloaded with knowledge, information, and various types of standardized tests. I again recommend not mixing up the two notions: the notion of continual and grueling overloading of the teaching process with novel, quite unexpected ways of teaching and learning, which constantly confuse and eventually exhaust learners; and the notion of infusing this process with novel and moderate knowledge and information, which is a normal approach promoting students’ cognitive development. Extra “Patriotism” Concerning One’s Own Subject Area. Some educators tend to continually remind children that their subject areas are the most important in the school curriculum and that it is their subject areas that positively affect children’s lives and have the major impact on their development as citizens of their own country and the world. Therefore, such educators exceed children’s academic limits, attracting too much of children’s attention and energy to their own disciplines and providing learners with solid homework. Overusing the Computer Screen. The current virtual epoch and supermodern technology also succeed in making ever-growing demands on the growing generation, forcing young children to sit up for long hours working on their computers. Immoderate and continuous work on the Internet exhausts and harms children’s nervous system, spoils their eyesight, and triggers other problems with their health, as I postulated elsewhere.

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Following are some suggestions that can help you stop from pushing students to carry out an arduous amount of academic work. ■

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Avoid excessive academic pressure on children—that is, do not use educational strategies and techniques exceeding children’s intellectual, socio-emotional, and physiological capacities. Do not equate children’s abilities to yours. Keep in mind that extremely high academic pressure on children may be damaging for their entire cognitive development, especially at the preschool and elementary school levels. Some students who are forced to tediously fulfill academic tasks at an early age may get exhausted in later years, owing to the symptoms of academic burnout or other psycho-emotional factors. My professional and social experience indicates that a certain number of high-achieving students who become subjected to the burnout syndrome by the end of their school career find it difficult or even impossible to favorably cope with their further intellectual career. Do not resort to excessive experimenting with your learners. If you overuse novel and extraordinary ways of teaching, children will simply become enslaved by these various probings and attempts. Introduce novel techniques of teaching cautiously, in due time, in a needed proportion, and in consonance with the curriculum requirements.

In analyzing these issues, I again want to convince the reader that I am all for promoting learners’ maximum cognitive capacities and for proper experimenting, but I am against inordinate academic pressure and excessive manipulation with children and adolescents. A human being’s cognitive potential seems to be distributed, probably unevenly, for the space of all his or her lifespan development. Let us not crush this human potential at school and doom learners to a burnout state by the time they finish school education. Exacting or loyal as an educator is, there is one asset that the educator needs to attend to in any event. It is memory that helps the educator greatly in teaching and various circumstances in life. Memory needs to be trained, as I demonstrate next.

Questions 1. What does the author mean by using the term “excessive academic pressure”?

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2. What are the sources that can eventually lead to teacher burnout? 3. Why do males generally experience a greater susceptibility to burnout? 4. What factors can cause student academic burnout? Describe them in brief. 5. If you are an advocate of introducing new instructional techniques and experimenting, how often do you resort to such strategies and how do they help your students? 6. Were there any situations in your class when some of your students were considerably stressed? How did you cope with such situations?

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Memory is the usage and participation of prior experience in present behavior. LEV VYGOTSKY

Memoria bona est bonum magnum. [Good memory is a great gift.] LATIN PROVERB

E OFTEN DRAW INSUFFICIENT attention to the fact that each person possesses a fantastic ability to keep information and facts in memory. We do not wonder at this amazing ability, considering it just a natural thing in life, but it is memory and its effectual functioning that matter enormously in the teaching profession as well as in a student’s cognitive development. Forgetting a required material or the name of a writer at a lesson, stumbling over someone’s telephone number, addressing your pupil’s parent as just “sir” or “madam”—all may be part of the inefficient work of your memory. An average individual is known to utilize only a small share of memory potential. Generalizing various definitions into one short sentence, one can say that memory is an individual’s ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve knowledge and information (Foer, 2007). From the realms of psychology, studies of memory have jumped into other spheres of science such as education, medicine, and neuroscience. From an information-processing perspective, there are three important stages in the formation and retrieval

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of memory: (1) encoding or registration (processing and combining the received information), (2) storage (creating a record of the encoded information), and (3) retrieval or recall (calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in an activity) (”Memory,” 2007). Information may be retained for only a short period of time; in other cases, it is retained for a lifetime. The individual’s memory is continually active owing to an increase of the processing speed. From a perspective of the duration of memory retention, there are three types of memory: shortterm memory, long-term memory, and working memory. Short-term memory allows a person to recall a piece of knowledge or information from several seconds to approximately a minute. Long-term memory can store larger quantities of information for longer periods of time. It is more of a repository for the information, knowledge, and skills that people garner over the years. As a repository, long-term memory provides the knowledge base that permits individuals to favorably address and respond to new information and experiences. Working memory is where most thinking and cognitive processes occur. There is a range of memory disorders hindering the processes of storage, retention, and retrieval of information. We deal with amnesia when a person loses his or her memory. By studying this disorder, it has become possible to observe apparent defects in the brain’s memory system. Alzheimer’s disease—a progressive brain disorder characterized by a gradual deterioration of reasoning—also affects memory and cognition (“Memory,” 2007). Some information is not retained in the memory; it is forgotten, and no effort can make an individual recall it from memory depositories. On one hand, being unable to recall information or forgetting information can hinder active and cognitive processes. On the other hand, forgetting information, especially when it will not be used in an individual’s professional and cognitive activity, may be, as Vygotsky (1991) noted, a very useful process from biological and psychological perspectives: “Surprisingly, educators do not always notice the useful hygienic significance of forgetting [information]. All that is not actively used in our memory is a harmful and dead weight, ballast which an educator must get rid of ” (p. 178). In infancy the brain develops and matures speedily. Can infants remember? Theorists can only guess, and a true answer has not yet been found. When a child reaches the age of seven, conscious memory comes into play, and young children can remember a great deal of information if taught properly. During middle and late childhood, long-term memory increases, and many characteristics of the child—such as, for example, atti-

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tude, motivation, and health—determine the effectiveness of memory. In middle adulthood the speed of information processing and memory capacities are likely to decline, but this downward trend is not dramatic. If an individual continues working productively and creatively and uses effective strategies of maintaining memory in good order, then it is possible not only to maintain but to considerably increase memory horizons. As in any other intellectual or physical activity, memorization is largely dependent on one’s motivation to learn something so that one can remember it perfectly. In other words, memory works most actively when led and directed by personal motives and strong emotions. It is known that people memorize and retain information better when led by a positive impetus. For example, an elementary school teacher who has just started working with his or her new first-graders will be highly motivated to remember the names of all the children in class as quickly and accurately as possible. Equally, prior to the first meeting with the children’s parents, the elementary teacher will be determined and enthusiastic about remembering the parents’ names. Teachers and educators working in rural schools may not be confronted with such a problem: In rural settings, people usually know each other well. In cities and densely populated areas, a teacher beginning to work with a new enrollment is undoubtedly faced with this task. Sometimes educators keep condemning a child for having no interest in school subjects and no motivation to learn and remember academic knowledge and information. We often label such girls and boys as slow learners or low achievers. These same children, lacking interest in gaining knowledge and being unable to learn certain rules by heart, may turn out to be talented in some other sphere of activity, an activity that arouses their motivation to that occupation. For example, one child who lags behind as a student may be a good soccer player and may have a good knowledge of the names and biographies of the world’s famous soccer players. Another student, disinterested in academic knowledge, may show great promise as a future musician and remember every single detail about the lives and creative careers of celebrated musicians. These and similar examples provide evidence that a proper functioning of memory depends on an individual’s motivation to grasp and retain a needed piece of information. Also, the quality of acquiring information and knowledge depends on how intensively a person can concentrate on the material under study. Young children’s attention tends to be distractible; they quickly move from one thing to another. With age, attention becomes increasingly purposeful,

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but not all adults (and not even all educators) can effectively concentrate on a task when needed. Proper concentration requires that an individual focus attention on a particular task and keep it there. As Vygotsky said, in such circumstances it is necessary to “collect the organism into one dot.” One way to make the memory work better, apart from mental and intellectual effort, is to increase the supply of oxygen to the brain. The best way to do it is to stay physically active in the open air. Doing regular physical exercises, walking to work and back, bicycling, swimming, working in the garden, hiking—all these and other similar physical activities will inevitably keep your brain in a fresh state and ameliorate your abilities to memorize and retrieve useful knowledge, information, and data. I myself have noticed myriad times how easily I can carry out most of my mental operations after physical activity in the open. I feel myself especially intellectually active after staying out in cold weather in the late fall, winter, and early spring. Good nutrition also promotes the improvement of memory. What sort of memory do you have? To receive a most simple, generalized answer on this question, we invite you to take a short test “Do I have a good memory?”

Test Study the words given below (thirty in number) for one minute. Then cover the words and try to write (in any order) all the words you managed to remember. Helicopter, village, child, happiness, disc, the Rockies, woman, pen, student, February, vacation, education, news, key, settlement, radio, paper, marriage, euro, man,August, door, words, computer, the Alps, teacher, dictionary, dollar, plane, holiday

Now calculate the number of words that you have written down. If you have written down ■

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six words or less, your memory leaves much to be desired, but it is not in a hopeless state seven to fourteen words, your memory is adequate but you are unable to properly concentrate your attention fifteen to twenty-two words, you have a good memory twenty-three to twenty-six words, you possess an excellent memory twenty-seven words and more, you have an infallible, phenomenal memory

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The specificity of some disciplines in educational institutions as well as the nature of some professional activities largely foster the amelioration of memory capacities. For example, learning a foreign language promotes the skills of retention, recollection, and reproduction of information and knowledge. People involved in theatrical activity and show business have to remember, sustain, and correctly reproduce various materials—poems, stories, excerpts, programs, and songs. The very essence of their profession helps them better their memory. Whatever activity one is involved in, memory can and needs to be trained, especially in middle and late adulthood. There are many techniques of memory training. I offer just a few of the simplest (Sinagatullin, 2006): ■

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Among other important information, try to recall, now and then, telephone numbers, birthdates, and the names of your former colleagues, friends, and remote relatives. Learn daily at least four to five new geographical names on the world map, some events and dates from the world history, or short biographies of some noted personalities. Whatever subject area you are instructing, such information will be instrumental, at an appropriate time and place, in enriching students’ cognitive and global horizons. At the end of each successive day, try to relax and recollect all the activities (in every small detail) that you have fulfilled since waking up in the morning. After a dozen days of such training, on a Sunday evening, relaxing on a sofa, try to recollect all your activities of the past week, bringing to mind all possible details and interesting facts. Then expand your “period of remembrance” over a month, then over a year and even longer periods. Performing such a job requires a huge and strenuous concentration of attention. Buy a good book on memory and memory training and, in leisure hours, try to do a couple of memory-training exercises as required in the book. Let your students know that memory is an invaluable thing when it comes to cognizing the world. Help them ameliorate their memory capacities. Do not forget first to strike learners’ emotions and arouse their interest if you want to fix anything in their minds. One of the effective strategies of strengthening children’s memory is making them successively repeat prior knowledge and information by accurately and consciously linking it with a new piece of knowledge, information, and data.

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Memory is an invaluable asset in your educational activity and everyday life and represents the “world and its history in your brain.” Even though your memory is continually activated and enriched with novel information, do not forget to train it using effective methods and strategies. As my observations suggest, teachers and students possessing good memory capacities often outperform their peers in cognitive activities in dealing with various situations of social contact, and simply in the business of living. Ability to extract required data, knowledge, and information from one’s reliably stored “brain depositories” at the required time and place facilitates life, making it much more interesting and worth living. Provided that you possess a good memory and are knowledgeable about many things, should you use your “wise” knowledge base speedily or disseminate it over a longer period of time? What sort of knowledge is it? For the answer, you just need to take a look at the next chapter.

Questions 1. What is memory? 2. From the perspective of the duration of memory retention, there are three types of memory. Could you name and describe them? 3. Sometimes it is useful to forget some information. Why? 4. What effective strategies of training memory can you propose to your students? 5. How do you understand Vygotsky’s admonition to “collect the organism into one dot”? 6. Why is it important for a human being to have a good memory?

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A well-cultivated mind is made up of all the minds of preceding ages. BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

requires a pedagogue to regularly accumulate and digest enormous portions of novel knowledge and systematically cognize the surrounding reality. In performing this scrupulous job, the pedagogue learns much both by getting deeper into formal, scientifically proven knowledge and by seeing the world and communicating with people belonging to various professions and with various hobbies. In a way, a person involved in teaching and child rearing needs to know everything and must become a “walking encyclopedia.” Unattainable as this task is, the individual responsible for our children’s intellectual, physical, and social development should continually attempt to learn and know all or almost all, not only within the labyrinths of the pedagogical profession but also about the wondrous world we live in. In reality, a considerable number of educators across cultures are professionally competent and knowledgeable about many things. They possess the necessary attitudes, knowledge base, and skills; can think logically; possess certain life experience and wisdom; understand and accept national

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and universal values; and strive for a lifelong education as a major challenge of the twenty-first century. However, some educators commit one mistake only seemingly trivial and embarrassing at first glance: They often fail to make a judicious and rational use of their “golden knowledge scope and wisdom” that lies, so to speak, beyond the formal knowledge base required by the program and curriculum. To begin with, let us concentrate our attention on a lesson given by Vera Gurdina, a young elementary school teacher. By the time I came to her class to evaluate her lesson, she had worked at the school for only one month. According to the requirements of our department, the faculty members have to supervise young graduates for one year. So, I called her a couple of days prior to my coming to the school, and at the appointed day and hour I appeared and took my seat in a back row of her classroom. She was given the fourth-graders, who had been taught by another teacher for three years. The former teacher had given birth to a baby and was on a paid maternity leave from her job to take care of the baby. I made myself comfortable in the cozy classroom, studying the fidgety and restless children and waiting for the young lady to begin her lesson. After the bell rang, she greeted the pupils, let them know about the objectives of the lesson, explained the new material, checked their homework, and assessed the children’s answers. I was glad to see how she skillfully managed discipline. All this was done well. Nevertheless I noticed another peculiar feature of the lesson: This “newborn” teacher infused children with a huge portion of human wisdom. It seemed to me that I was listening not to a young educator but to a holy woman made wise by experience, philanthropic deeds, and by continual learning from holy religious books. Even though Vera covered all the objectives, she used a considerable number of lyrical digressions, filling them with all sorts of admonitions, rules, and witty phrases. I should say that the admonitions were educative and wise, but she provided too many admonitions at a time. At the beginning of the lesson she diverted her attention from the lesson and addressed a boy who was looking out of the window. Vera reproached the boy for not listening to her. She told him that pupils who don’t listen attentively to the teacher will not be knowledgeable in the subject area and about the world. She said lastly, “You should know, Victor, that knowledge will forever govern ignorance.” A bit later, the teacher, not quite in congruence with the content, told children that it is a good thing when a person renders help to homeless people and beggars by giving them special attention or alms. She recalled in her mind an episode from her university years. “My grandparents,” said Vera, “were kind-hearted people and taught me to help people in need. I

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used to help many people in many ways: by helping an old woman to cross the street, by giving alms to beggars, or by doing a great many other favors to surrounding people. When I was a sophomore, there was a beggar who used to sit near our bus stop, and I used to give him some coins each time I passed him. Once, on a winter day, I handed him a coin and went in the direction of my house. When I was already approaching my home, I heard someone behind calling me to stop. I turned back and saw the beggar hobbling and crying out something. He was holding something in his right hand. When the man came up to me, he returned my purse, which I had dropped near the bus stop. I was so grateful to him for such a deed that I wanted to give him all the money I had in my purse, but he refused to take anything.” When Vera finished her story, one girl interrupted her by asking, “But what if that beggar uses the money people give him for buying alcoholic beverages or narcotics?”“It does not matter what he does with the money,” answered the teacher. “The Bible says that, when you give alms, your left hand should not know what your right hand is doing.” In the course of the lesson she resorted to more than a dozen wise admonitions and supported some of them with factual material from her life experience. It seemed to me Vera dug out the wisest homilies from her knowledge stock. At the end of the lesson she reprimanded a boy who had thrown a crumpled piece of paper at a girl sitting next to him. This time she remembered Napoleon. “You know, Roman, you committed just a minor ill-considered action. What if such small deeds grow into bigger transgressions? Now, children, please look at me. You should be very careful everywhere and always. Do you know what Napoleon said about this?” A boy sitting just in front of the teacher’s table shouted, “I know Napoleon, he was defeated at the beginning of the nineteenth century.” “Right you are, Peter,” continued the teacher, “but I want to remind you of his famous phrase. It runs as follows: ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is but one step.’ Please, always keep in mind this wise saying.”

As the lesson was nearing a close, I began thinking to myself: “She applied so many wise admonitions and supported them by pertinent examples. How does she conduct other lessons? Does she conduct them in the same manner or not? Did she just want to show me how wise she is? Will she be able to distribute her valuable knowledge base, lying beyond the formal curriculum, evenly over time?” While analyzing her lesson, Vera confessed that there was an element of showiness in the way she had been making use of her precious wisdom reserves during the open lesson. Only in this case, I was not interested in her showiness, but in how she overdid using her golden educative arsenal.

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This arsenal, as is seen from the preceding episode, may encompass useful recommendations and wise admonitions such as proverbs, sayings, and witty phrases, which can set a learner in the right direction. Such knowledge may also incorporate remembrances from life experience and knowledge related to some important human values or historical events. The “spendthrift-type” educators tend to fire off a great amount of wise knowledge, practical wisdom, and discretion all at once, over a short period of time—for example, during one lesson, as did Vera, or while conducting any one extracurricular or social activity. They find it difficult to distribute their “golden wisdom” rationally and evenly over a longer academic span. For example, they often use a lot of prudent proverbs and witty phrases at one lesson or illustrate their explanations by providing students with the entire arsenal of examples they possess about the lives of great and renowned people. In other cases they resort to telling a series of interesting “educative” episodes from their childhood while explaining a topic, or they resort to too many admonitions at a time. Directing a student to the right path is a sacred task for any educator. But when an educator attempts to use too much of his or her prudence and judiciousness at one lesson, the educative effect of such strategy will hardly be in favor of the educator and students. First, the educator will leave less wisdom and wit for the rest of the academic time assigned by the program. Second, providing a huge inflow of wise prescriptions and rules within a forty-five-minute communication with pupils will be hardly helpful for the students, for they will find it difficult to grasp and digest all the wise and high-flown precepts during such a short period. Thus, by saying “learn to leave your golden knowledge and wisdom unsaid,” I do not mean that an educator should only use one useful admonition once a year. What is meant—and it is clear from the entire context—is that the educator should not exhaust all or most of his golden arsenal of wisdom speedily. As far as the overall process of child rearing is concerned, the teacher may, and probably should, repeat thousands of times the long list of conventional verbal units, such as “stop doing that,”“stop biting your nails,” “it is impolite not to greet the elderly,” and create a lot of educative situations to put the wrong to right. This and similar lists and situations are not included in the teacher’s precious knowledge and wisdom arsenal I am talking about in this chapter. Let us summarize the assumptions on the topic by the following recommendations: ■

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measured, weighed, and arranged with professional mastery and discernment. It is through this arsenal that a considerable part of child upbringing and moral education occurs. Never stop enhancing your professional competency by gaining wise knowledge that has been garnered and accumulated by different human cultures and civilizations since the most ancient times. However, be patient and avoid shooting off your entire “knowledge-and-wisdom” clip of cartridges during a short period of interaction with children. Instead, learn to leave your precious wisdom arsenal unsaid so that you may use the “unsaid” in some other lesson or in a more suitable educational situation. If you know a lot of winged language units, proverbs, and sayings, use them rationally, distributing them over a longer academic time span. For instance, you may select twenty-some wise sayings and admonitions and infuse them evenly when an opportunity permits. It may be more rational for students to learn one truth at a lesson and hear it substantially than to hear several truths and admonitions without understanding properly their essence and meaning. However, when you teach proverbs and sayings provided in textbooks, then, of course, you may introduce as many proverbs at a lesson as recommended in a textbook. In this case, the study of these proverbs and the moral lessons standing behind them are not a part of the teacher’s golden arsenal, but a part of the curriculum. Keep in mind that splashing out too many words while reprimanding or, on the contrary, praising a pupil is also considered an unsuccessful technique. In both cases, too, it is worthwhile to avoid verbosity and to leave unsaid some of the verbal units, some admonitions, or some remarks. You may well use them in some other, probably more suitable teaching/learning situation.

There is also another wrongdoing educators are often unable to miss: They tend to frequently repeat one and the same sacred truth almost each time they interact with kids. Once, while supervising student teachers, I heard the children secretly calling their English language teacher “Bed of Roses.” Later I came to know why they had labeled her with such a nickname. It so happened that, both in and out of place, this teacher had for years been using the English proverb “Life is not a bed of roses” in interacting with children in class and elsewhere.

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Questions 1. Why should educators continually enhance their professional competency? 2. What does the author understand by the notion of “golden knowledge and wisdom”? 3. Why should teachers rationally and evenly distribute their wise and educative arsenal? 4. Can you leave some of your valuable educative arsenal unsaid so as to use it in other, more appropriate teaching/learning situations? 5. Is your wisdom and golden knowledge reservoir rich? 6. Do you add new knowledge to this reservoir by referring to the entire human wisdom arsenal that has been accumulated and gained throughout recorded history?

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Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

If I went back to college again, I’d concentrate on two areas: learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively. GERALD R. FORD

I titled this section as I did. The first reason is depicted openly, in the very title. The essence of it sounds as follows: While explaining a new topic a teacher has to do all or almost all the talking. This is a natural and age-old technique according to which things should unfold exactly in this way: The teacher is explaining a new material; the children are listening to the teacher, trying to comprehend the essence of the material. Some teachers take the initiative and speak for a long time on a theme under discussion or on some area of knowledge that a teacher assumes to be important for students. In such cases, the teacher enjoys the lion’s share of the talking that occurs in class. By taking up too much time at a lesson trying to express himself or herself orally, the teacher often leaves little chance for children to express themselves and participate in various classroom discussions. I used to notice this drawback at many lessons I happened to visit. In native-language

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and foreign-language lessons and literature lessons, this common mistake surfaces even more strikingly. The second reason I chose this title encompasses a hidden meaning. Calling teachers to intensify and expand children’s talking (speaking) skills, I at the same time summon them to ensure children’s overall language and speech skills. It is at school that most children learn how to speak with phonetic, lexical, and grammatical correctness, and it is mostly at school that they develop their skills of communication with a diversity of other students. Therefore, the notion of talking, in this second interpretation, incorporates all sides of a child’s ability to communicate, both expressively (the ability to speak monologically and dialogically, and the ability to write) and receptively (the ability to comprehend and understand others, as well as the ability to read). Children’s language acquisition is known to occur gradually, through interaction with parents, other people, peers, and teachers. Up to the age of five, children develop language at a very rapid rate, and by age six, most children have learned the basics (Golonka, 2007). Girls tend to develop language skills faster than boys. Language development, more than any other aspect of an individual’s development, reflects the maturation of the brain. Six-yearold children learn to correct their own grammar and pronunciation mistakes. Most young girls and boys considerably expand their vocabulary between six and eight years of age. A huge progress in reading comprehension occurs at about nine. At ten pupils start understanding figurative word meanings. Parents and caregivers significantly impact early language development. Studies indicate that children of talkative parents tend to possess a vocabulary twice as large as that of children of quiet parents (Alic, 2007). Specialists hold that children learn the basics of language and speech by school age, and they are probably right. But from a broader perspective, language and speech development continues throughout an individual’s life span. Can we consider that school graduates have learned the basics of grammar, punctuation, and style in the native language and that their speech skills have been fully developed if they, upon graduation, experience difficulty expressing themselves verbally and commit inexcusable mistakes in their oral and written language? Visiting a lot of schools and higher educational institutions on the American and Eurasian continents, I have with deep regret discovered that both school and university students’ overall language and speech literacy in their native language leaves much to be desired. School teachers unanimously complain about the increasing number of language errors that contemporary students commit in speaking and especially in writing. In the

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United States, high school seniors of Anglo-Saxon origin commit a considerable number of mistakes in writing, whereas the same type of high school seniors who are born and raised in rural communities make grammar and lexical errors in monological and dialogical speech, as well as errors in writing. In France some school graduates in metro areas such as Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse commit mistakes both in speaking and in writing. School teachers and university faculty members in the Netherlands also complain about students’ numerous language and speech mistakes. In Russia, the picture of the quality of speech activity is somewhat similar to that in the United States and Europe. In addition to phonetic, grammar, and lexical errors, some contemporary graduates have difficulty generating and constructing speech. Instead of responding to a corresponding question or task, some students just get stuck as if in search of how to recall a required vocabulary or grammar item or how to logically construct a given idea. Speech and language as two inseparable entities play a vital role in child development, so not only language teachers but also teachers of all subject areas must do everything possible to help young girls and boys develop the skills of speaking and listening comprehension. We often ignore this fact. Sometimes parents, the public at large, and even teachers instructing subject areas other than language and literature blame language teachers for students’ slow progress in speech and for their mistakes in oral speech and in writing. Language teachers play a major role in developing children’s speech and language literacy and competency, but working alone they are not able to solve this difficult task effectively. Among other issues related to speech and language, teachers of all subject areas—and, of course, language teachers in the first place—should have a good understanding of the fact that language has a close relationship to thought. In fact, the relation of language to thought is not only close, but thoughts come into existence through language or, as Vygotsky (1986) postulates, through word. In his view, the meaning of any word encompasses an amalgam of language and thought, and it is hard to tell whether we are dealing with a phenomenon of speech or a phenomenon of thought. Meaning is an indispensable component of a word, but a word may be regarded both as a phenomenon of speech and a phenomenon of thought. From a psychological viewpoint, the meaning of a word also represents a concept. Since concepts are acts of thought, meaning may be regarded as a phenomenon of thinking. Word meaning represents a phenomenon of thought only insofar as thought is embodied in speech, and is a phenomenon of speech only insofar as speech is intertwined with

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thought and illumined by it. A union of thought and word represents a phenomenon of verbal thought. Further, Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that thought undergoes a lot of changes before it turns into speech. The transition from thought to word occurs through meaning. The overall development of verbal thought occurs as follows: From the motive that engenders a thought to the molding of this thought in inner speech, then in the meanings of words, and only then in words. It so happens that not only is thought expressed in words, but thought comes into existence through words. Moreover, words play a key role both in developing a thought and in the historical development of consciousness as a whole. Teachers should also take additional care of children experiencing speech and communication disorders in the process of their development. Some disorders are minor and easily cured, while others are hard to cure and need continual professional assistance. Language and speech problems may start quite early. The earliest is language delay, which is estimated to occur in about six out of every one hundred children (Golonka, 2007). I assume that in reality the number of children with language delays is higher. Children experiencing speech and communication disorders have problems in spoken language and in language comprehension, which significantly affect their school performance. Children may experience difficulty pronouncing sounds and understanding what they hear, or problems with the voice and with thinking skills (cognitive communication disorders). One disorder involving fluency of speech is stuttering, in which speech is disrupted by frequent repetitions and prolongations of speech sounds, syllables, or words. A child with such a problem also experiences difficulty starting a word. Stuttering may have developmental, neurogenic, or psychogenic causes (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2002b). Another disorder is apraxia of speech, in which children have trouble saying what they want to say correctly and consistently. They may experience difficulty putting sounds and syllables together in the correct order to form a word. In other cases they grope for the right sound or word and may try saying one word several times before saying it correctly. There are two major types of apraxia—acquired and developmental (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2002a). Screening, assessment, and treatment of speech and communication disorders should involve cooperative efforts of school personnel, parents, and specialists such as a speech-language pathologist, an audiologist (a hearing specialist), an ololaryngologist (an ear specialist), a special education teacher,

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a mental health professional, a physical therapist, and a social worker. Most speech and language disorders are difficult to eradicate within a short period of time. It is the school and its staff that are eventually responsible for taking active measures to involve all the required speech-language specialists to help children with speech and language problems. On the elementary school level, certain responsibility is laid on the elementary teacher who is, in fact, the only or the main teacher instructing all or almost all subject areas. The elementary teacher works closely with a group of children for the entire academic year. As a considerable number of speech and language incidents are passed over and sustained at this age level, the educational policies in some countries are oriented to providing future elementary teachers with an additional professional knowledge base or additional qualification that helps them to diagnose and cure some forms of language-speech disorders. For example, in Russia some elementary teacher education institutions provide future teachers with the additional qualification “speech therapist.” Following are several precepts that can help you examine your own assumptions about the importance of developing students’ speech and language competency: ■

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Reflect on the importance of speech and language in the life of every human being. Remember that not only is language closely intertwined with thought, but the latter comes into life through language. Whatever subject area you teach, track the development of students’ speech habits. If you teach physics or mathematics (subject areas based on working at calculation and logical tasks, requiring, for the most part, silent manipulations of the mind), ask students, upon completion of a task, to comment on the aims, procedures, and outcomes of this work so that they can simultaneously master their speech skills. Teach students to speak correctly and express their thoughts logically and understandably at all lessons and extracurricular activities throughout their school career. At the same time, you need to be tolerant of some of the mistakes learners make in language learning and not stop a child every time he or she commits a mistake, as I postulated in a preceding discussion. Otherwise, instead of developing a child’s proper speech and communication skills, the teacher may create in the child a phobia of speech activity.

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Develop and track students’ writing skills. A good way of engaging students into writing regularly is to ask them to start keeping a diary. People keeping a diary tend to think that their notes will last for a long time and that they themselves or maybe someone else will read their notes someday. To avoid remorse, diary keepers are usually alert about the possibility of committing errors and attempt to write correctly from the grammar and stylistic perspectives.

Speech—in the unity of its expressive and receptive sides—is a major ingredient of a human being. It is an instrument of communicating with other people and with the whole world in general. It is a key instrument for cognizing the world. Our global space is, first of all, a linguistic space. Let us help students develop their language and speech habits in their native language to the fullest. Let them speak and write consciously and correctly. Whatever language they learn in addition to their mother tongue, let them be fluent in it. Let them understand well what they hear and let them easily understand what they read. Let students be maximally involved in speech activity in the classroom, the school environment, and in the family circle. Whatever profession and lifestyle a school graduate chooses, he should communicate with other people competently. Language and speech make a human being. Up to now, I have been addressing an average educator and an average contemporary school, only sporadically mentioning rural teachers, rural schools, and rural lifestyles. In the next chapter I undertake a more detailed discussion of these issues.

Questions 1. What abilities do the expressive and receptive sides of speech include? 2. Most of contemporary students’ language and speech competency leaves much to be desired. Can you name the causative factors? 3. What arguments does Vygotsky provide to convince us that thought comes into existence through words? 4. Why is it important to communicate with other people fluently and flawlessly? 5. Are there any children in your class who have speech and language problems? If you have such children, what measures have you undertaken to help them? 6. How can you explain the meaning of Benjamin Disraeli’s saying “With words we govern men”?

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The men and women on the farms stand for what is fundamentally best and most needed in our American life. THEODORE ROOSEVELT

It takes an entire village to raise a child. AFRICAN PROVERB

differentiating between urban teachers and rural teachers because any educator, whatever his or her residence and place of work, should work well. Both in an urban and rural setting, teaching staff are obliged to realize virtually the same educational objectives and should expect high academic achievement from learners. Both in urban and rural educational institutions, educators need to promote students’ global and multicultural competencies and to provide them with a body of lasting knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will enable them to productively function in contemporary society. As these are common goals for all students, we normally avoid subdividing curricula and programs into the urban and rural ones. However, the world is large and the world is varied. Although we are one human race, in most parts of our globe urban and rural lifestyles and people’s attitudes toward education and basic human virtues differ to a greater or lesser extent. This tendency has always existed in human history. Today the urban/rural differences are not so noticeable in northern European countries. For example, in the Netherlands it is impossible for a newcomer to tell

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a rural settlement from an urban one. Sometimes only a specific smell of dung gives away the secret that you are in a village or a farm area. In other parts of the world, differences between rural and urban life and between rural and urban education are marked and pronounced. In the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western European countries, the rural population can be divided, straining the point, into rural farm and rural nonfarm groups. The former are engaged in agricultural labor, the latter are not, except for doing some cattle breeding or gardening for pleasure. In contrast to these countries, in Russia, for instance, both groups are engaged in physical labor: Farm groups produce and sell their products, whereas nonfarm groups work collectively in state-owned rural enterprises. Most rural residents run their personal households; they grow vegetables and fruit and raise poultry and cattle. Some urban residents associate the words “rural” and “rustic” with the notions “backward,”“uncultured,”“illiterate,” and “provincial,” and working on the land with a “dirty job.” Moreover, as the whole phenomenon of rural life is often marginalized, so is rural education. Unfortunately, this unpleasant trend has grown into a worldwide tendency. With all this in mind, this section is devoted solely to rural educators and also to future educators who look forward to settling in a tranquil countryside to start a teaching career. The share of rural population across the world is relatively large. Thinking logically, it is easy to deduce that people engaged in educating rural children must also be great in number. Rural student populations are also impressive. Michael Arnold (2004) notes that in the United States rural students represent a large and significant population. In some countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, rural student populations are rapidly increasing. Working in a rural school has both advantages and disadvantages (Sinagatullin, 2001). As schools and classes are normally small and have an intimate atmosphere, greater individual attention can be paid to each student. Because educators are closer to parents and extended family members, favorable school/family relations and parent participation in school policy can be obtained. In comparison to their urban peers, rural young people are more industrious and diligent and closer to the land and nature. They also possess higher moral and personal characteristics and are physically stronger and less pretentious. In remote rural settlements schools are not only educational but also cultural institutions. Historically, rural and small town schools have offered unique benefits to students, educators, and communities and pioneered many successful

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educational reform tools such as peer assistance, cooperative learning, sitebased management, and mentoring. The favorable atmosphere and size of rural communities have contributed to the strong connection among rural schools, educators, parents, and local people (National Education Association, 2006). At the same time, rural schools typically experience teacher shortages. Discouraged by the rough conditions of life, some young educators leave rural settings. Those who choose to stay often have to teach a variety of subject areas, especially if they work in small and remote village schools. In isolated and impoverished settings, rural students lack necessary sociocultural assets that are peculiar to metro areas: libraries, museums, fitness centers, and sports fields. In remote areas, rural educators often experience professional and cultural isolation and lack access to professional development opportunities. In most countries the system of bussing does not function properly in rural areas or is completely absent. The bussing organized in America could serve as a good example for many countries to follow. Some rural educational institutions, especially at the elementary level, are so tiny that they have only one small mixed-age class. Students of each grade-level learn their own program. The teacher has to skillfully switch from one grade level to another so as to meet the educational and motivational needs of every learner. I know a dozen teachers who worked and work in mixed-age classes and perform multiple professional duties. One teacher who discharged such obligations is vivid in my mind. His name is Ramzy Kusniarov. Until 2006 he worked at a tiny rural school not far from the town of Yanaul, Republic of Bashkortostan, Central Russia. He was the only teacher and simultaneously principal of that rural educational institution. Each year he used to teach from four to six mixed-age students gathered into one small class. His wife worked at the school as a cleaning woman. Thus, husband and wife “kept” one small public school.

Rural schools experience difficulties throughout the world. The limited space in this chapter permits us to take only a glance at just one country, China, the most populated giant, boasting a considerable percentage of rural population. Despite material support from the Chinese government and charities, the majority of rural children in China drop out after junior middle school, in contrast to urban areas where most students finish high school. The main reasons for dropping out are low scores in the exam-centered system, lack of educational engagement, and lack of relevance to life. Most

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school dropouts face the prospect of farming or low-skilled migrant work (Rural Teacher Education Foundation, 2007). Throughout Russia there are a lot of small rural schools. If any of these schools is closed, the parents will have to move with their small children to metro areas or better locales. The decline of a rural school may lead to the demise of the village and rural community, as has already happened with hundreds of other small rural schools and small rural communities in Russia within the previous decades. As is commonly known, there is one basic curriculum for all schools, both urban and rural. However, in addition to the basic curriculum, rural schools require that educators possess additional and specific attitudes and knowledge to effectively teach and rear rural children. Such requirements may be embedded in an add-on program and included in the curricula of teacher education institutions (Sinagatullin, 2001, 2003). A rural teacher is expected to possess a positive attitude toward working and living in the countryside. The teacher must be aware and proud of doing a great job in the rural setting. Another high mission of the rural educator is respecting and increasing the historical heritage, cultural traditions, and customs of the local community. Villages and small towns are becoming increasingly multicultural and multilingual. Teachers must help young rural girls and boys to perceive and interpret human attitudes and behaviors from different cultural and ethnic viewpoints. Rural teachers are required to possess a supplementary knowledge base about the country and the world. Moreover, their global erudition must far surpass that of urban educators. Half of the world’s rural students probably have luxuries such as cable television, the Internet, or other means of mass media; the other half are deprived of such important information media. It is for the sake of the second half that educators need to continually enhance their multicultural and global horizons and expertise. From this perspective, rural teachers’ professional careers are strenuous, requiring them to work to the fullest of their cognitive potential and to be always in the know about many things. A dedicated educator is expected to inspire rural students with love and passion for the native land and natural environment. At first glance, it may seem that rural young people do not need to be taught how to love their native village and land. However, times have changed. Today’s rural youth cannot be equated to the young people born to the farmers’ and peasants’ families in the 1920s–1940s. Owing to the high mobility and migration of people, villages and rural areas become multicultural and multiethnic. Peo-

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ple who move to rural locales from urban areas have to pass through a period of adaptation. Whether children know their land and community well or not, educators should strive for the girls and boys to make a thorough historical and ethnocultural exploration of the land they live in. The more graduates understand their historical heritage and their community’s joys and needs, the more they are likely to stay or return to their native place and take up their parents’ labor activity. If you are a rural teacher or going to work at a rural school, please take into consideration the following points: ■

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You will not be mistaken if you divide all the human world into two relative segments: urban civilization and rural civilization. In your country this difference may not be observable, but in some parts of the globe the urban/rural differences are striking! In both cases rural educators should possess specific knowledge, skills, value orientation, and beliefs to be able to productively fulfill their professional duties. Take advantage of small class sizes to improve your students’ achievement. Engage in practices such as individual and small group work and brainstorming. You may also monitor students’ academic progress by regularly providing them with short written tests. You can easily check such tests right in class, owing to the small number of children. Be psychologically prepared to perform multiple roles such as teaching several subject areas, working with different grade levels, conducting multiple extracurricular duties, and discharging some social functions in the local community. Love rural land. It is your land and will likely be your descendants’ land. If the circumstances are favorable, take root in the rural setting and make friends with community members. Most of them are your student’s parents, grandparents, or relatives. There are normally three institutions of education in rural settings—school, family, and community as a form of an extended and enlarged family. You are a person assigned to keep these three entities united. And lastly, keep in mind that living in a rural setting has its advantages over living in a metro area. Even though it may appear less pleasing and refined, a rural setting is characterized by peacefulness and separation from the bustling world. Educators who

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love the rural environment with its natural, pastoral, and bucolic atmosphere will have one further advantage over their urban counterparts: They will likely eat natural healthy food and drink natural, pure water, both of which are plentiful in rural regions. Their diets will include more vegetables and fruits, and, if distances allow, they will be glad to replace a car with a bike, a most healthy means of transportation. Organizing education in rural areas is a great challenge not only for teachers but also for education policy makers, school district authorities, and school administrators. Questions relating to rural education that are yet to be fully answered include the following (Arnold, 2004): How does school size influence students’ academic progress? How can rural schools retain teachers? How can rural districts increase efficiency (i.e., lower costs while increasing student achievement)? How can rural schools encourage parents to have high expectations for their children? There is a task that both rural and urban residents should consider. This is the task of protecting our environment. What is biodiversity and how can we teach children to protect it? I offer my reflections on these issues in the upcoming discussion.

Questions 1. What is the difference between an urban and rural school? 2. What types of activities are rural people in Western countries engaged in? 3. What difficulties do rural schools experience? 4. In what way does the existence of a rural settlement depend on the successful functioning of its school? 5. What specific attitudes, knowledge base, and skills should educators possess to effectively work in rural settings? 6. Why is it necessary for rural educators, students, and rural residents to increase cultural traditions and historical heritage?

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Teach Children to Protect the Environment

Nature does nothing in vain. ARISTOTLE

Nature is the living visible garment of God. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

HE TERM “NATURAL ENVIRONMENT” refers to all living and nonliving things that occur naturally on the planet. It is often contrasted with the built environment, which consists of the areas strongly influenced by man. The notion of wilderness refers to places where there is no or almost no human intervention. Each plant or animal species has its place and each one depends on many others (“Natural environment,” 2008). In ancient times people’s activities had little negative influence on the environment. In recent years the population has grown considerably and the Industrial Revolution has produced its fruits. Human activities have begun to destroy the natural environment and biodiversity. Biodiversity creates and maintains ecosystems or biomes such as forests, grasslands, tundra, deserts, oceans, and fresh water (Seabrooke, 2003; Kashner, 2007; Trowbridge, 2008). Forests. They cover about one third of the land on our planet. There are temperate forests and rainforests. The former grow in Canada, the United States, northern Europe, northern Asia, New Zealand, and southern Australia. Temperate forests boast specific trees, vegetation, and animals. Rainforests grow in the equatorial regions. In such forests, trees grow

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close together, shading the ground, and stay green all year. Tropical rainforests are found in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. More than half the world’s animal species and plants live in rainforests. Rainforests are being destroyed by people. Trees are being cut down for logging and cattle ranching, a process leading to deforestation. Cutting down trees also dries the area, leading to changes in the climate. Thousands of animal and plant species have disappeared forever; others have been added to the list in the Red Book. Grasslands. These are huge areas of land where wild grass grows. Grasslands have different names in different places: in Asia they are called steppes; in Africa, savannas; in South America, pampas; in the United States, prairies. About one quarter of the land on Earth is covered with grasslands. The African savannas are the warmest grasslands and boast zebras, elephants, lions, giraffes, and many other animals. The deep and fertile soil of grasslands has always attracted farmers and cattle breeders. Considerable areas have been turned into cropland and pastures. Grasslands are agriculturally useful lands, but excessive use of these lands changes the ecosystem and destroys the natural habitat of unique animal species. Tundra. Tundra are among the harshest and coldest places because such lands are covered with snow for most of the year. The temperature usually does not rise above 45ºF; it is too cold for trees to grow but not too cold for mosses and lichens, which are found in great profusion in the tundra lands. Even though the tundra looks rather cold and dispiriting, it is home to various animal species such as polar bears, gray wolves, snow geese, and arctic foxes. As the climate throughout the world becomes warmer, the permafrost of tundra deteriorates. Previously the permafrost captured large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; it was a natural process. Today the permafrost is melting and releasing carbon into the atmosphere, continuing the greenhouse effect. The tundra’s animal habitats are changing, and some species are now on the point of extinction. Deserts. Covering more than one fifth of the Earth’s land, deserts are the driest areas of the world. However, they are home to a great number of animals and plants that have adapted to harsh conditions. There are hot and cold deserts. The hottest is Africa’s Sahara, and the coldest is in Antarctica. Most of the desert lands suffer from ill-considered and greedy human activity. People settle on semi-arid lands, destroying the natural environment and animals’ habitats by polluting the soil and air. The overall climate change also negatively influences the ecological conditions of deserts. Oceans. The largest biome on earth, the ocean covers two thirds of the surface of our planet. Some coastal water areas are called seas. In general,

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all oceans, seas, bays, and coral reefs form one grandiose water mass that may be referred to as the World Ocean. Found in relatively shallow waters, coral reefs clean the ocean water and are home to thousands of species of animal and plant life. Ocean waters, and especially currents, “monitor” the world weather, and phytoplankton existing in the ocean produces a considerable portion of the oxygen that all terrestrial living beings breathe. The ocean is home to a vast array of plants and animals, the largest of which is the blue whale. Like other biomes, ocean ecology is being destroyed by human activity, especially by overfishing and water pollution. Some of the living creatures in the oceans are under threat of extinction. People living in coastal areas spill sewage and garbage into the ocean. This lamentable attitude of people and industrial enterprises to the ocean is aggravated by global warming, which may some day leave the ocean without any life at all. Freshwater. This is what we all live on and, more important, consist of ! Humans can survive without water for only about a week, but for about a month without food. Even though freshwater is omnipresent, its resources are surprisingly scarce. Freshwater constitutes less than half a percent of the world’s water supply. Freshwater habitats—rivers, streams, ponds, and lakes—contain hundreds of species of living creatures. Sadly, freshwater is being polluted by human activity. Polluted water cannot be used for drinking and swimming. By polluting it, people also destroy habitats. Another problem is the overuse of water. Lack of freshwater is a problem in some parts of the world, but soon it may become a global disaster if people do not change their attitude toward freshwater. Our environment is also being spoiled and destroyed by the inappropriate disposal of waste. People often throw their garbage into forests, rivers, and lakes instead of putting it into special containers. There are two organized ways of getting rid of trash—taking it to landfills or burning it. Currently there are too many landfills in the United States. As they contain unhealthy material, people are not eager to live near them. Trash is also burned in incinerators. The problem with incinerators is that smoke and ash from burning trash may contain harmful chemicals, which can pollute the surrounding area and harm people, animals, plants, and crops. An efficient way to reduce waste is to recycle it. For example, most paper in the world comes directly from wood, not from recycled sources. This is one of the causes of deforestation. From recycled paper, people can produce wrapping paper, newspapers, and various boxes. Likewise, it is possible to recycle rubber, plastic, glass, and other materials.

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The natural environment is challenged by megaprojects, such as dams and power plants. For instance, the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River forever changed the surrounding landscape by forming Lake Mead. When full, it reaches a depth of approximately 500 feet and is 110 miles long (Walker, 1991). The dam is 726.4 feet from the bedrock of Black Canyon to its top, 660 feet thick at its base, and consists of more than 4,366,000 cubic yards of concrete. The dam generates more than two million kilowatts of power. The dam has changed the natural speed of the Colorado River, which has been forming the canyon for millennia. This river is still shaping it, “working hard and unceasingly.” Everybody understands that dams are essential for civilized people, but there is another side to this coin: They negatively impact the surrounding land and ecology. The same can be said about power plants, pipelines, and other similar construction. Fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) are known to negatively impact the environment when they are used as energy sources. Concern over their use has helped spur interest in alternative and renewable energy sources that are less polluting. Wind energy is one such source. Today high-tech windmills with propeller-like blades can be seen all over the world. Sometimes farmers use smaller turbines to generate supplemental electricity. A promising innovation is solar energy. Homes incorporating solar heating designs can save as much as 50 percent on heating bills. Solar energy is dependent on a range of factors such as time of year, weather, and location. Another type of energy, generated from heat inside the earth, is called geothermal energy. For example, in Iceland it accounts for 16 percent of the electricity output and 86 percent of all energy used for home heating. Scientists now debate over finding a way to generate energy from magma, which may be a good source because of its high temperature (Kashner, 2007). Considerable damage to the environment is done by air pollution, which brings about acid rain and global warming. Acid rain is the result of various chemicals being released into the air. Mixing with moisture and other particles, these chemicals form acids, which are carried by winds and then fall down in rain, snow, and fog. Acid rain damages people’s health and harms flora and fauna. Global warming is the slow increase of the Earth’s temperature, mostly by the greenhouse effect. The earth absorbs solar radiation and radiates thermal radiation back into space. In the atmosphere greenhouse gases trap some of the heat; the rest of it goes into space. These gases retain the heat in the same way the roof and walls of a greenhouse hold in the

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sun’s warmth. Because of the burning of fossil fuels, humans are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases, which in turn increases the greenhouse effect—that is, the process of trapping heat and warming the Earth’s surface. Scientists postulate that over the twentieth century the average temperature on the planet rose about 1ºF. It is estimated that the global temperature may rise 2ºF to 6ºF over the twenty-first century, which could speed the melting of polar ice caps, promote hurricanes, and cause changes in crop production and natural habitats (Kashner, 2007). The increasing warming of the globe may change the climate faster than humans and other living creatures may be able to adapt to the ongoing changes. I have painted only some of the environmental threats that are being created by human activity. What is portrayed above is just the tip of the iceberg. But this “tip” suffices to blow the trumpet and call people from all walks of life to protect and save the environment before it is too late. With all these and other points in mind, I offer the following recommendations to educators: ■

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Help students to understand that preserving the natural environment in good order is an important task for each human being, regardless of age, gender, or social status. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil we walk on is our human habitat. The more we damage it, the more harm we bring to our own health and ultimately to the entire human race. Provide students with a solid knowledge base about the issues such as the environment and biodiversity. Today all the plant and animal species on the planet are being harmed by pollution of the air, water, and land, and animal habitats are being mercilessly destroyed. Many species of plants and animals are endangered or on the point of extinction. Encourage and teach students to protect, preserve, and increase the natural state and wealth of the surrounding environment. Whatever region you live and work in, much needs to be done in order to protect and preserve the environment. Have students set specific and practical goals for helping to make the surrounding environment a better place. Planting saplings, cleaning the land of garbage and litter, making birdhouses, participating in the work of nature protection organizations—these and similar activities can make a useful contribution to the protection and amelioration of the environment and biodiversity.

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The increasing disconnection of people from nature, continual pollution of water, loss of habitats, and global warming pose enormous challenges to the harmonious functioning of the natural environment and to the progressive development of humankind. The twenty-first century necessitates that each nation come forward with initiatives concerning its own environmental problems in particular and the problems worrying all humanity in general. Among other important actions, it is necessary to develop clean energy and low-emission technologies to reduce air and water pollution as well as the greenhouse effect. Schools and other educational institutions may help a lot in realizing important ecological projects. We seem to know about the state of our environment, and we are aware that it needs protection. Instructing the young to protect our natural home is a task of prime importance for educators and any adult. However, there are less-known and yet-unknown realms on the planet and beyond, enigmas “under seven locks,” which we should unlock and explore. Next I encourage educators to develop in students an exploratory spirit to cognizing the unknown.

Questions 1. How can you characterize the notion of the natural environment? 2. What biomes does biodiversity consist of? 3. What are the signs confirming the continual worsening of the earth’s ecological system? 4. What alternative and renewable energy sources can you name? What advantages do they have over the use of fossil fuels? 5. How is the greenhouse effect created? What harm does global warming bring to people? 6. What personal contribution have you made to protect and preserve the surrounding natural environment?

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There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day, In a relative way, And returned on the previous night. A. H. REGINALD BULLER

To suppose that earth is the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to believe that in an entire field sown with millet, only one grain will grow. METRODORUS OF CHIOS (FOURTH CENTURY BC)

NTERESTINGLY, THE IDEA THAT I should be even more determined in calling educators to motivate students to study the unknown realms of the world occurred to me when I was standing near the spectacular hotel and tourist center called Treasure Island in Las Vegas. Looking at the historical site with two vessels in the water, I suddenly remembered not only the fact that this hotel symbolizes Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of the same name but also the novel’s main characters, who participated in searching for gold hidden on a faraway island. The images of the young boy Jim Hawkins, Captain Smollett, Squire Trelawney, one-legged Long John Silver, Ben Gunn, the Admiral Benbow Inn, the tropical island, and the mutiny of bloodthirsty pirates instantaneously came to my mind. Treasure Island is one of my favorite historical novels, which I reread now and

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then. I have read it in English, Russian, and French, and each time I receive a specific aesthetic pleasure. I was so excited at finding myself so close to this historical complex that goose bumps appeared on my skin. Marveling at this complex, I thought to myself that each school student also has his or her own treasure, which is knowledge, and that much of it is yet unknown, hidden, like the gold that had been hidden on that island and then found by a brave team of people, including the adventurous adolescent Jim Hawkins. I thought, “Why not encourage students to go on a quest for the treasure that is only temporarily unknown and that will inevitably become known when found?” Visiting this magnificent entertainment site made my mind work deeper about other elevated phenomena, and I came to the following reflections. An important ingredient in a teacher’s professional competency is becoming aware of the fact that all things, both living and nonliving, are interconnected and intertwined on the global scale. With this in mind, it becomes very easy to come to a plain inference: As the Earth and the solar system belong to a greater system of stars that we call a galaxy, and as the latter is included in still larger heavenly supersystems, we humans, with our common home called Earth, are also closely intertwined with the entire, properly organized space-time continuum. Being prepared to study and reach the unknown places on earth and the visible and invisible realms in the cosmos is a sacred goal of this growing generation and the generations to come. As a conductor of knowledge and wisdom to young generations, an educator needs to be at the forefront in realizing this goal. What is the unknown? I assume that this phenomenon encompasses numerous undiscovered entities on Earth and beyond, those things that are, for the time being, unseen by the naked eye and indecipherable by the human brain. What is considered fantastic, mystic, or bizarre often represents phenomena that have not yet been scientifically explained, owing to a lack of sufficient knowledge and technology. What is not clear today may well be clarified tomorrow. Each year millions of young girls and boys finish school. Humanity cherishes the hope that the future science belongs to young graduates. Humanity is making strides in its progressive development. But within recent decades, its movement forward has not been marked by pervasive and fundamental breakthroughs like, for instance, inventing the wheel, the shooting weapon, electricity, the telegraph, and atomic power, and like the breakthrough into space in the 1960s. What we see is only an expansion, dissemination, and amelioration of what was created in the nineteenth and

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twentieth centuries. From a certain perspective, we may say that people just continue to invent better ways of communication by introducing mobile phones; they continue to modernize the possibilities of television and the Internet, and they continue to explore space. Sudden successes and novel developments, both in technological and humanitarian spheres, do not occur overnight. However, I assume that some educated people, even with high academic degrees, intentionally or out of ignorance, hinder the process of progressive development. For years I have been wondering at people involved in the natural sciences. The overwhelming majority of such people base their scientific tenets exclusively on the facts which have already been scientifically proven—that is, facts that scientists have already heard, touched, and seen for themselves or discovered using some modern apparatus such as, for example, the microscope or the telescope. Some scientists are even scared to listen to other people who claim that there may be a speed faster than light or that there may be a reasoning life on other star systems, a life that may be more advanced than that on Planet Earth. It seems that these scientists just wait for someone else to come and discover something new for them. Once I had a heated debate with Robert, an acquaintance of mine, who worked at the Department of Physics and Mathematics at a Moscow university. He is knowledgeable in physics and its laws that scientists have already discovered and lives by those laws. Below are some fragments of our conversation in the university cafeteria. “Robert, scientists are involved in studying the atom. Can an atom be the smallest representation of the universe, despite the fact that an atom is very, very tiny and visible only through a microscope?” “No one knows,” answered Robert. “Scientists have come to discover that the smallest particles in the atom are quarks. Nobody has ever gone deeper than that. I think an atom cannot be the smallest image of a universe.” “Well, let’s turn our minds to the cosmos,” said I. “Can there exist alien beings who are more intelligent and advanced technologically than we are?” “I think any idea about aliens is pure invention. There is no physical evidence of their presence in the solar system or elsewhere. Equally, scientists have not proven their visitations to Earth. They are trumped-up stories. Probably someone will ultimately find out something. I am of the strong opinion that life exists only on Earth. There is no proof that it may exist elsewhere.” “Robert, we seem to be approaching two fundamental problems diametrically opposing each other: the realm of the microcosm related to quantum

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theory and that of a macrocosmic world related to the theory of relativity.” “Right you are, my colleague.” Robert smiled and sipped his coffee. “The quantum theory sharply contrasts with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.” “What about other theories? For example, there exists the superstring theory premised on the idea that the universe originally started as a perfect ten-dimensional universe with nothing in it. The superstring theory gives humanity the first description that can unite four important forces into one framework: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak force that is responsible for radioactive decay. Dr. Michio Kaku is very specific about it.” “I believe only in the big bang theory. As for Einstein, he is a great person; nobody has yet surpassed him and proposed anything better.” Robert finished his coffee and put the cup aside. “Theories are theories,” I drawled. “Other theories will likely emerge in the future. But can we then find something common, some dialectical connectedness between these two realms—the cosmos and the atom?” “Probably someone ultimately will find out something. But to tell the truth, I am not sure of it. These two realms, as you call them, are greatly apart from each other.”

As is seen from the context of the conversation, my interlocutor avoided discussing the topics and ideas that had not been proven scientifically. Formal science, of which Robert is undoubtedly an ideal representative, is known to deny bizarre knowledge, but genuinely wise people know that this knowledge is only seemingly and temporarily remote from reality. It is in this unknown that real cognitive treasure is buried, and it is these “treasure islands” that “young Jim Hawkins” or our contemporary school graduates need to explore. There are many controversial areas and historical places in the world, which for years have remained enigmatic; they have drawn scientists and researchers who have not yet found sufficient clues to such mysterious entities. Next I present some yet-unknown enigmas that have been bothering the minds of thinking scientists. The Origin and Theories of the Universe. As readers know, I have already discussed this issue with my colleague Robert. I will add just a few assumptions about the big bang theory and string theory. The former pro-

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poses that the universe was primarily dense and hot until a cosmic explosion occurred billions of years ago. Since then the universe has been expanding and cooling. Even though still popular among scientists, this theory does not explain what existed before the big bang. The advocates of the superstring theory hold that the universe originally started as a multidimensional universe with nothing in it. According to this explanation, the existing cosmos consists of a great many elementary forces and particles. The string theory “seems to be able to give rise to many different worlds, of which ours seems to be potentially one, but not even necessarily a very special one” (Greene, 2003, p. 73). Meriting attention is the genetic theory of the universe proposed by F. S. Teregulov (2006). The author concentrates on the idea that the universe is genetic, not only on the biological level but in all its fullness. All matter in the universe is a rhythm of space and time. Primarily, they embody two opposing sides disconnected from each other. Space and time come into contact when the borderline zone between them curves and when one opposing side is placed inside the other. Two manifestations of such placement are possible: first, when one polarity is placed inside the other, and second, when the second polarity envelops the first one. In such circumstances matter has to coordinate its even and steady development within these types of binary manifestation and eventually mold and shape a new, well-balanced formation. It is the problem of coordinating and balancing of space and time that constitutes the essence of the theory of universal genetics. Space Travel. We have all heard about how Yuri Gagarin, a Russian astronaut, first orbited the earth in 1961, and how Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon in 1969. Since then there have been a great number of manned space flights, but none has gone farther than the moon. Is it possible to fly to farther realms of space and can the human being surpass the speed of light? Regarding this latter issue, different controversial ideas have emerged in the scientific world. One interesting theory holds that space travel is possible through “wormholes”—tunnels produced by black holes. Black holes are formed when a star shrinks and becomes extremely dense, so that its gravitational field becomes in turn very strong. Nothing, not even light, can escape this field. At the heart of a black hole there is a singularity where the laws of quantum mechanics do not work and the measure of time disappears. Producing a wormhole, a black hole sends a great amount of energy into distant places of the universe or other universes. It is speculated that by entering a wormhole a space traveler may be able to instantaneously go to

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another part of the universe. It may be not only a tunnel through space, but a shortcut through time, both to the future and to the past. The Origin of Man. Even though standard textbooks and encyclopedias postulate that man has evolved from apelike ancestors, this issue is subject to broad speculation. The theories range from the earthbound to the cosmic. Based on some ancient artifacts and inscriptions, some theorists estimate that reasoning life on earth could have originated millions of years ago. Human beings could have lived alongside dinosaurs (Charroux, 1977). Reasoning life could also have been brought by alien beings from outer space. Historical Enigmas. One of the most backbreaking and head-scratching puzzles is related to Atlantis, an allegedly once-flourishing civilization, which perished thousands of years ago. Among the numerous legends about Atlantis, the most appealing to me is Arysio Nunes dos Santos’s (1997) story. Basing his account on Plato and later speculations, he postulates that this great civilization could have been located in the large territory of the Indonesian islands. The “sunken portion” of this continental extension now forms the shallow bottom of the South China Sea. In Santos’s view, the Atlanteans possessed superior technology, knew how to erect megalithic structures, and domesticated animals and plants that we use today. Approximately 11,600 years ago, Atlantis was destroyed by a cataclysm of an unprecedented scale, and most of the continent sank underwater. The survivors fled the land and founded the ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean region, Asia Minor, and the Americas. Another historical enigma is lying in Nazca Plateau, Peru, with thousands of drawings and lines clearly visible only from the air. The drawings represent huge geometrical figures, concentric circles, and animal patterns. Who created these figures? What plan did the creators pursue to construct the precise figures? Similar enigmas are many and varied. Among the puzzles that are difficult to understand and explain are the legends about the giants that lived in the past; the monolithic constructions such as the pyramids at Giza, Stonehenge, and the sites at Baalbeck; references to flying machines (for example, on vimanas in the ancient epics of India); and the fact that all the ants on earth weigh very roughly the same as all of humanity. I suggest that educators should realize several approaches to elicit students’ impetus to learn more about the undiscovered realms of our world:

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Empower your students with the thought that the frontiers of science are infinite. Encourage them to explore phenomena that have not yet been substantially investigated and explained by formal science. Most of the enigmatic and puzzling things that have been occurring throughout recorded history are nothing but the phenomena not having yet been scientifically proved. Ensure students’ understanding of the fact that contemporary young school graduates are required to be knowledgeable in many things. Knowing everything is impossible, but it is quite possible for a young man or a young woman to strive to understand as much as possible about our world and beyond. Identify the insufficiently explored and enigmatic topics within the subject area you are teaching and propose them to the students for investigation. Such topics will likely energize students’ curiosities to creative and exploratory pursuits. Recommend to your students the literary sources and websites containing various themes that might arouse their motivation to learn more about the less known and less explained.

In addition to scientific and formal approaches, there exist religious and the so-called metaphysical viewpoints of the world and its natural laws. Total ignorance of alternative viewpoints is unwise. Such viewpoints and approaches only temporarily remain beyond human intelligence and comprehension. Tomorrow’s school graduates may well get to the root of various alternative and nontraditional philosophies and viewpoints. To effectively cognize the objective reality, young people should have a base from prior education which, as I assume, must be fundamental and strong. I give reasons for this assumption in the following chapter.

Questions 1. What does the author understand by the phenomenon of the unknown? 2. We live in an epoch of rapid changes in many spheres of science, technology, and humanitarian thought. Nevertheless, why are scientists unable to make really huge breakthroughs, like the invention of the telephone in the nineteenth century and the flights into space in the 1960s? 3. Do you think that space travel is possible?

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4. Are you interested in historical enigmas? Are you ready to believe in the existence of a technologically advanced civilization in the past? 5. Why is it important to encourage students to dig into the unexplored and undiscovered realms of science? 6. Do you know any religious and/or esoteric explanations of the origin of man? To what extent do they differ from those of formal science?

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Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do. BENJAMIN DISRAELI

I will make several provisos. I am fully aware of the facts that (1) secondary education is only the first but mandatory stage of human development; (2) school graduates should be lifelong learners because it is impossible to remember everything one receives at school; (3) it is impossible to go through life with the education one receives at school; and (4) the contemporary epoch requires that we all continually innovate and renew our professional knowledge and information as well as knowledge about the world. As I provide these provisos, then, is the recommendation about the necessity of strong secondary education, expressed clearly in the title of this section, wrong? The answer is transparent: The proposed thesis is correct, and it is this thesis that has long been forgotten in education, mostly under pretense of the necessity of lifelong education. Theorists, education policy makers, and educators themselves began shattering and destroying the foundation of classic and strong education in the 1950s and later years by crying out slogans about the benefits of developing decision-making and social-action skills. Appreciation of such

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strategies began in Western countries and today has spread to almost all the known human cultures. For the most part, contemporary creeds of education are based on democratic principles necessitating that students need to learn, do, and create at their own will, should feel comfortable at school and at home, should feel a sort of satisfaction by the process of acquiring knowledge and performing some activity, and should acquire citizen-action, critical-thinking, and decision-making skills. Who is against developing citizen-action and decision-making skills? Nobody is. The truth is, however, that voices have long been echoing in favor of developing these and only these types of skills, to the detriment of developing a strong, lasting, and high-quality knowledge base and important humanistic values. We have started forgetting that any process of development of problem-solving, decision-making, and social-action skills requires that students possess a related knowledge base, well-known facts, and important and vital information. How will a graduate of a twenty-first-century American school be prepared to face the problems of the country if he or she has received a poor education in his or her first and most important alma mater—high school? How will a graduate of an American high school be able to come to adequate and correct decisions, undertake adequate actions, critically analyze various national and global situations, and orient himself or herself in the growing body of knowledge and information if he or she does not know ■

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who Clara Barton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ford, Jesse Owens, and Jack Palance were? at least a dozen other nationally acclaimed and famous people who have made a considerable contribution to the overall welfare of the nation? the main geographical facts of his or her country, state, and settlement? the most important facts and events related to the history of the United States? the main hazards challenging the contemporary globalizing era? the location of American states and their capital cities? how to favorably interact with an individual who was born and raised in a culture other than America? how the U.S. government with its three branches (executive, legislative, and judicial) works?

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how presidential elections are organized and which American president was elected to a fourth term? what Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Mikhail Gorbachev are famous for?

Knowledge is known to be changing, but there is knowledge that stays intact for years, centuries, and aeons. For example, the capital of the United States has been Washington, D.C., since 1800, Everest has been and is the highest summit, Columbus made his first voyage to the New World in 1492, and the author of Robinson Crusoe is undoubtedly Daniel Defoe. Tragically, a considerable number of graduates lack a fundamental knowledge base or core knowledge related to famous events or people. Making presentations and interacting with high school students from different cultures, I found out that some of them did not know elementary things. I remember an eleventh-grader from Moscow who could not show on a map the capitals of Japan and China, an eleventh-grader from Nice (France) who could not remember the author of The Three Musketeers, a high school student from Emmen (the Netherlands) who could not name the longest river on earth, an eleventh-grader from Las Vegas who did not know who John Wayne was, and a tenth-grader from Miami who did not know where the state of Washington was located. I agree with the viewpoint that acquiring and remembering all the material that schooling provides is impossible. However, it is quite possible for a twenty-first-century graduate to possess core knowledge, the pillar that will help him or her gain further knowledge and generate new ideas. By core or “backbone knowledge” I mean a body of lasting knowledge constituting the main component of the school curriculum. Such core knowledge includes, but is not limited to, the fundamental laws of physics, chemistry, and mathematics; principles of democracy and constitutional government; the most important events of national and world history; important places and places yet little known for the time being; acknowledged masterpieces of art and music; and noted personalities. I fully support the idea of a widely debated, lifelong education, but any effective goals and strategies for such a lasting, lifelong education should be based on a prior education. For most people worldwide, this prior education equates to secondary education. Some graduates continue their education at college or university; others have no access to further education and join the workforce. A considerable number of young women stay at home and raise children, working only part-time or never working for the

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rest of their lives. It is for those joining the workforce and for housewives that our thesis about the necessity of a strong secondary education remains particularly true. Every contemporary graduate needs a solid secondary education, regardless of his or her future profession or ways of living. In this connection, Alexander Solzenitsyn (2002), a Nobel Prize winner, writes: “Secondary education should be complete and full so that a person could live his life with a proud head, even without having a higher education. It [education] must be valuable and fundamental” (p. 107). Besides, I recollect a Japanese proverb saying: “Education is what is left after everything has been forgotten.” This wise statement also directs our minds to the thought that school education needs to be long-lasting and solid. If a graduate receives a superficial education, the following scenario may emerge and unfold some day after graduation. Ultimately the graduate is likely to become aware of the weak education received at school. The graduate will probably blame himself or herself for having been lazy and not persistent in fulfilling academic requirements—but he or she will also and inevitably blame the school as well as educators and the school administration for having been too indulgent of the graduate’s limited cognitive activity and possibly to his or her inadequate discipline. The graduate is likely to blame the overall state, governmental, and hierarchical structures for having built such a system of education that could not reach each student regardless of cultural background, modes of behavior, and ways of interaction at school and elsewhere. In reflecting on this past education, the graduate is likely to remember strict teachers who used to provide students with strong knowledge as well as to persistently and systematically teach them to be responsible and responsive members of their own country and the world. The cast-iron logic here is premised on the fact that any time the graduate puts blame on himself for the low level of his or her high school education, he or she is likely to blame also the school, teachers, parents, and, possibly, the government and the entire educational system. This is exactly the case when personal remorse is closely linked with resentment over the way the graduate was educated at school. Understandably, strong education requires strong, serious, and strict teachers. Most students often dislike strict and “fault-finding” educators and prefer teachers who do not strictly focus on classroom control, and who, out of compassion or other reasons, tend to give high grades. Normally, a teacher’s loyalty is appreciated if parents see high results for their children’s learning. Nevertheless, wise and serious parents tend to notice a

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teacher’s “extra loyalty” and often demand that the teacher treat their children more seriously. This type of joy over a teacher’s friendly attitude and over high grades resulting from such an approach appears to be temporary. School graduates become adults, and they tend to recollect their school years and teachers. Whether they experience remorse for their poor education at school or experience pride for having been high achievers, in any event, they tend to appreciate and stay thankful to those teachers who demanded strict discipline and were persistent in their demands, who did not pamper students with high grades, and who sustained close ties with parents and the local community. I often remember my history teacher, who was persistent in her demands on students. Even weak students who used to receive low grades in almost all subject areas knew her subject well. She rarely gave the highest grade, which, as was mentioned previously, is a “five” according to the Russian educational standard. At those times, when I was a high school student, history was a mandatory entrance exam for all entrants to higher institutions. I knew that other graduates who had been taught by this history teacher generally received one grade higher in history at their entrance exams, but I did not believe it until I myself received a five in history at my entrance exam for the university— whereas on my school certificate there was a four in history. To tell the truth, I do not remember ever receiving a five at her lessons. I used to get threes and fours. In the former Soviet Union entrance requirements for any higher schools included taking four mandatory examinations. They included exams on history; Russian language and literature (oral exam); Russian language and literature (written exam consisting of writing either a composition or transposition or dictation); and the basic subject area related to the future major of the applicant. Thus, thanks to my history teacher, I not only liked the subject of history but I also liked the very spirit of the history of humanity.

A high-quality and strong education has nothing to do with an authoritarian approach that means forcing one’s will upon students’ cognitive development. I wrote about an authoritarian approach in a previous chapter; therefore, here I will add just a few details. Advocates of an authoritarian education seldom consider the cultural, gender, social class, and linguistic background of students. Students’ individual cognitive characteristics are often neglected. This approach is oriented toward a highachieving student who normally serves as a model for other students. One

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of the major slogans of such an approach reads as follows: “John always receives excellent grades. Why can’t you, George, follow his example?” An authoritarian educator is unable or does not want to understand that John may be a talented boy; therefore he will probably always receive high grades. George, on the contrary, may suffer from some psychic or physical disease, experience a temporary socioeconomic problem, or just be a slowperforming student needing much more time to solve a given task. An authoritarian pedagogy also involves requiring unbearably strict discipline in class and the school environment. The principles of strong education also require discipline, but not resembling that of an authoritarian approach. Strong education requires a teacher to establish a “democratic order” under which a teacher is expected to continually feel high responsibility for child development, for creating a strong foundation of knowledge, and for providing quality education. In turn, students are expected to be accountable and responsible for enriching and sustaining their knowledge arsenal, skills, and attitudes that will enable them to become equal members of human society. Strong education is aimed at helping students to garner stable, fundamental, and lasting knowledge, proper attitudes, and essential skills they need to productively interact in a contemporary and interdependent world. Designing and implementing principles and strategies of strong education does not and should not necessarily lead to constant psychological frustrations and burnout. Student burnout occurs when students find themselves under excessive pressure from authoritative methods and styles of teacher-student interaction, unjustified reproaches, and an unwarranted amount of academic load. Also, giving learners a good and fair education does not mean that we should refuse to engender new ideas and implement experimental methods of teaching and classroom management. I propose to avoid excessive and nonstop experimenting but not to avoid experimenting at all. With all these thoughts in mind, I propose a set of suggestions for classroom educators: ■

Throughout the world, the quality of school education, especially in public schools, has decreased within recent decades. The causal factors are many and varying. People are used to saying there are now a range of threats and challenges facing humanity. I add the following assumption: The negligence of strong and lasting education is a major and gradually creeping threat to the whole of humanity. In a sense, it is a slow return to the Stone Age.

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Do not equate strong education with an authoritarian pedagogy, nor a proper academic order in class with principles of authoritarian classroom management. Create a productive and favorable learning environment for students to become accountable and responsible for their cognitive growth. Accentuate the fact that the development of social-action, decisionmaking, and critical-thinking capabilities is based on students’ prior knowledge and prior experience. An individual is unable to properly make decisions and express his or her own viewpoints on a given topic without being knowledgeable about what this topic and related issues represent. Keep in mind that there is a close linkage between teaching and classroom control. The more the teacher motivates and actively involves students in cognitive activity, the fewer problems may arise with discipline. Conversely, the more able is the teacher in handling discipline, the easier may be the process of teaching and learning.

The third millennium has burst into our lives as an action-packed and rapidly changing era requiring, in most cases, a new order of things. Who will be building this order and changing the world for the better? Undoubtedly, today’s girls and boys. In the next chapter, which closes the book, I seek to provide educators with some insights about why and how we must teach students to change the present world for the better.

Questions 1. Which of your schoolteachers come to mind when you remember your school years? Were they advocates of a high-quality and strong education? 2. Why is it necessary to strive to provide all students with a body of lasting knowledge? 3. Why should the development of problem-solving and criticalthinking skills be based on a good foundation of knowledge? 4. What does core knowledge include? 5. Why has the necessity of providing school graduates with strong and classic education sunk into oblivion in English-speaking and northern European countries? 6. Are you a proponent of strong and quality education? Give your reasons for your answer.

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This country will not be a good place for us to live in unless we make it a good place for us to live in. THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens.The sleeper must awaken. FRANK HERBERT

discussions, the current epoch is characterized by the shrinking of spiritual values, corruption in many spheres of life, socioeconomic polarization, the spread of terrorism, and the deterioration of children’s health. The world is becoming too materialistic and its people too practical and more corrupted. Who has not heard the following motto: “It is necessary to prepare a child for life”? At first glance the essence and content of this admonition educates. We must really prepare a child for life in the general sense of the word. According to this motto, a child is required to know that life, as we call it, has both happy and unhappy sides, and young ones should know this truth and be ready to meet the difficulties and hardships of life. There is, nevertheless, another side to this problem. For what kind of life should we prepare a child? For the one that is out-of-doors with crime, drug and alcohol abuse, juvenile delinquency, and prostitution? Should a young man and a young woman just see these ulcers, being unable to help at least one person in need? Or should we prepare the child for the good

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side of life—that is, for him or her to be a diligent citizen striving to find a job and build a good family? As life has a wide range of negative sides, we cannot just prepare a child for only life as it is, but we should prepare the child also and primarily for a life to be. For us, a prime goal then is to prepare the child so that he or she can change life for the better and serve humanity. Educational institutions, especially secondary schools, must function ahead of present-day life. In addition to the so-called survival skills and knowledge about the surrounding world, the child needs to become a philanthropically and empathetically minded personality by the time he or she graduates from school, the one who can ameliorate life’s dark aspects. To ensure that children understand that they have to make the world a better place to live and work in, teachers are expected to realize a set of objectives. Teachers should provide students with an understanding of the fact that we all live in one world, a small representation of which, in the form of a globe, can be found in an average geography classroom. I keep a globe in my office. Oftentimes, intentionally or unintentionally, I take a glance at it. Also, I whirl it slightly once in a while. Sometimes I imagine the earth as being a huge planet, and the town I live in a tiny locale. At other times I look at this round thing as being my home, and the waters and lands it contains as belonging to me. At still other times I visualize the globe as a cosmic entity with other alien beings watching us through a telescope from a distant realm of the Milky Way. Sad feelings sometimes occur to me. For instance, if some day my planet explodes and its parts are scattered, becoming numerous asteroids like those rotating between Mars and Jupiter and forming the asteroid belt, it will be only a small splash of fire for those alien beings. I calm myself by thinking that such an explosion will never occur. Therefore, let us take good care of this round house of ours and call pupils to organize life in the same manner. The teacher is expected to provide learners with the knowledge of the issues involving global concern, as I clearly indicated in the section devoted to enhancing educators’ global competency. Whatever profession they are preparing for, future school graduates should be taught to predict, prevent, and combat global hazards. Each graduate can play a role in combating the dangers of the new century such as poverty, the environmental worsening of the planet, the problems with water, and the violation of women’s and children’s rights. If one intends to change the world for the better, one cannot avoid fighting these and other threats humanity is faced with.

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Teachers should believe in and promote children’s inner potential. Each child possesses enormous latent possibilities and powers that need to be unraveled. “Each child has the potential to be a Mahatma Gandhi, an Abraham Lincoln or a Martin Luther King” (Council for Global Education, 1998, p. 3). These personalities did not seem to be bright as schoolboys by current standards, but they have greatly influenced human history. The potential of each individual must be diagnosed, recognized, and developed starting from his or her childhood. Each child possesses the following human possibilities: A Growing Intellectual Potential. Even though such a potential differs from child to child, all children and adolescents are able to develop their mental abilities to the fullest. For instance, one may solve a mathematical task slowly; another one, a bit faster; still another child may solve the same task in no time. All may solve the task, but only at a different speed. I again remind educators that in developing children’s intellectual, academic, and creative abilities it is important not to exceed the boundaries dictated by reason and entire human capacities. Creative Potential. In spite of being involved in studying a range of mandatory subject areas, almost every child has a particular liking for some particular subject area or activity. Some like science subjects, others have special abilities in learning languages, and still others enjoy dancing or playing the piano. Pedagogical Potential. This capability is inherent in man. Not all our children will become professional educators, but they all are likely to become mothers and fathers and, probably, elder brothers or elder sisters who are likely to take care of their younger brothers and sisters. Aesthetic Potential. Children are fond of things that are nice to look at. Some children start understanding the beautiful qualities of the surrounding reality at an early age and gradually develop a particular attitude and principles toward beauty. Thus, they may go into painting or architecture. However, an individual’s aesthetic potential is not confined only to these two spheres of activity. Social Potential. Even though some people succeed in a creative activity or in life by working individually, man is a social being. On the whole, people like to cluster in groups and to feel a sense of togetherness. Many great deeds in the human world were committed by large groups of people inspired by some great ideas. Philosophical Potential. From early childhood, children begin to get interested in various philosophical and spiritual problems. In middle and late childhood they tend to seek answers to questions such as these: “What is

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truth?”“What is the essence of man?”“What is love and how should we approach this phenomenon?”“What is religion and who is God?”“How should we interpret the paradoxes of everyday life?”“Are there any other reasoning beings in space?” “What can I do to be useful for my nation?” “What can I do to make my personal contribution to the amelioration of life on earth?” Physical Potential. Each young girl and young boy possesses a physical potential that can be developed and used for the good of humanity. Physically healthy high school graduates are likely to work to full effect in whatever profession they choose. Physical development at school age is characterized by both quantitative and qualitative changes. Each pupil follows a specific growth curve. It becomes necessary for teaching personnel to provide opportunities for students to engage in physical activity as they mature with age. Each age level, ranging from middle childhood (ages six to ten) to early adolescence (ages ten to fourteen) and on to late adolescence (ages fourteen to eighteen), makes its own demands on children’s physical development. And last, educators should view each child as potentially a light to the world. Such an approach will inevitably help the educator believe in the great potential that each learner possesses and do everything possible that the lights not be extinguished but continue shining much brighter, stronger, and further for the benefit of all mankind. Concluding our discussion, I recommend educators pay attention to the following suggestions: ■

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Recognize the fact that the world is changing both for the better and, in some spheres, for the worse. Characterized by the growing contradictory tendencies in political, economic, and social development, the new era poses novel requirements to school, college, and university graduates. Contemporary graduates should not only be prepared to live and work in the world that surrounds them. They must be prepared to make their contribution to change it for the better. All the slogans centering on preparing a child only for the life that is unfolding outside our homes seem to belong to the previous century. Love, trust, and strive to find a key to the soul of every child, despite his or her cultural, linguistic, gender, and social class background. Strive to develop children’s inner potential. Each child possesses enormous intellectual, philosophical, creative, pedagogical, aesthetic, social, and physical possibilities.

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View each child as a light to the world. If you view your students as unique and bright rays of light, if you believe in and develop children’s inner aptitudes and talents, and if you strive to develop their global competencies, there is convincing evidence that your graduates will be able to illuminate your nation and the entire human race with the newest ideas and practical deeds.

Only educators who themselves are eager and psychologically prepared to contribute to the bettering of the world will be able to teach children to realize the same objective. The world of fauna and the world of flora need to be protected, saved, and sustained. The human world needs to be improved. Let us undertake concrete efforts and measures to turn our entire planet into a better place to live, to work, and to realize our best plans.

Questions 1. Do you agree with the statement “We must prepare a child for life”? Whatever answer you have, provide your reasons for your opinion. 2. What does the author understand by saying that educators should “view each child as potentially a light to the world”? 3. How do you understand the idea of changing the world for the better? 4. What kinds of inner potential does each child possess? 5. The author has named seven points related to students’ inner potential. Can you name other forms of children’s possibilities that educators need to unravel and develop? 6. Why is it important to open and develop children’s and adolescents’ overt and covert abilities?

Conclusion

on some important suggestions and recommendations that may be useful for teachers and educators in dealing with contemporary students in specific educational situa-

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tions. I believe that an educator should develop a child both as an individual and as a social being. As an individual the child has the right to be free, independent, and happy; as a social being the child is responsible for his or her deeds and for making a positive contribution to the welfare of human society. I also believe that the uppermost essence of the educational process is an interaction of two living systems—the educator and the students. All other components are additional and supplementary. I propose that educators treat students in the same way as they deal with their own children. The contemporary epoch necessitates that schoolteachers, parents, and all social institutions work as one close-knit team aimed at developing in children and adolescents a concern for all that exists and occurs on earth. For a school graduate, this planet begins not in a faraway, overseas place but quite near, in his or her home, school premises, and the local community. Humanity has reached unprecedented progress in some sociopolitical, economic, cultural, and educational spheres of life, but, still, not all is going well on our planet. Therefore, among other vital objectives, educators are obliged to prepare the young generation to change the world for the better. We all need to hurry, with due reason, in fulfilling this sacred objective. Walking this road we, the people involved in education and child rearing, have to try to overtake and surpass each other in implementing generous and noble deeds. 225

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I have come to the end of this book. I am open to direct communication with educators and readers from all walks of life. I also intend to continue my implicit communication with the readers. If any of these ideas or suggestions happen to inspire readers’ interest to further ameliorate the issues of education, then I will consider that this manual has not been written in vain.

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Index

abuse, 133, 139 accountability, 132 accreditation, bribery and, 50 achievement, 152 action: careless, 162, 163; citizen, 214; dignity v., 142 administration: educators v., 50; school, 46 advertising, sexualization of, 130–31 affection: culture v., 127; sexual harassment v., 129 air, 67, 202 Aivazovsky, Ivan, 24 Akhiyarov, K. S., 95 alcohol, 11, 42, 108, 117–18 Alexander the Great, 65 aliens, 207, 210, 221 anxiety, 124, 138 apathy, tolerance v., 138 archetypes, 61 Aristotle, 199 Armstrong, Neil, 209 Arnold, M., 194 assessment, 63, 151–52, 154 atmosphere: church v. school, 42–43; of classroom, 41–46, 100, 194–95; learning style and, 97; of schools, 41–46, 74, 76. See also environment

atoms, 207–8 attention: attractiveness v., 130; overcrowding v., 144 attitude, 89, 135, 139 attractiveness, 129–30; discrimination and, 132 Aubanova, A., 141 Augustine, Saint, 134 authoritarian education, 73–74, 217, 218–19 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 23 Balzac, Honoré de, 9 Banks, J. A., 88 Batista, E., 10 Batmanghelidj, F., 68, 70 beauty, 129–30 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 23 behavior, 59, 149; authoritarian education and, 74; diversity of, 90–91; of educators, 156–57; forcible sexual, 129; health v., 107–8; hereditary factors of, 117; imitation of, 156; indecent, 157; student, 42, 63; suicidal, 118; tolerance v., 138 beliefs, 62 Benchley, Robert Charles, 35 233

234

INDEX

Bernstein, Leonard, 23 Bible, 83–84 bicycling, 66, 198 big bang theory, 208 bilingual education, 89 Bill of Rights, 12 Bingham, Hiram, 29 biodiversity, 199 biography, 22, 25 bisexual, 128–29 black holes, 209 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 47 borders, of countries, 15–16 brain: development, 176; maturation of, 188; oxygen of, 178; storming, 98 bribery, 48–50, 123 British Empire, 37 Broadribb, V., 124 Buller, A. H. Reginald, 205 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G., 141 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 24, 43 burnout, 163, 169, 218 Buscaglia, L., 121 bussing, 195 Byron, Lord, 53 Calvino, Italo, 162 Carlyle, Thomas, 22 Carter, Jimmy, 81 Carter, Rosalynn, 110 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 149 Chichén Itzá, 30 child development, 218, 223; environmental factors of, 114–15, 119; folk pedagogy and, 101–2; hereditary factors of, 114, 117; holidays and, 105; language and speech in, 189; physical activity for, 105; religion and, 104–5 child rearing, 10–11, 74, 85, 101, 104, 138, 157 children: abnormal v. normal, 123; alternative health, 125; assessing,

63, 151–52, 154; attractiveness of, 130; dignity of, 142; family and, 104; genealogy of, 111, 114–20; gifted, 13; health of, 3, 106, 107; imitation of educators, 156; inner potential of, 222–24; intuition and, 63; IQ of parents v., 115; labeling of, 126; love of, 72–77; memory of, 176–77; motivation of, 33, 149–55; obesity of, 109; parents of disabled, 124; parents v., 119, 130, 138–39; physical activity of, 105; preparation of, 220–24; roots of, 151; self-worth of, 125; vocabulary v. parents of, 188; worth v. disease of, 122. See also student(s) cinematography, 38 cities, 30–33 citizen action, 214 civilization: ancient, 210; prehistoric, 81; urban v. rural, 197 civil rights movement, 87 Clarke, W. G., 47 classroom: atmosphere of, 41–46, 100, 194–95; control, 218, 219; discussions, 187; environment, 92; management, 91; mixed-age, 195; overcrowded, 143–44 climate, 144, 200; health v., 110 cognitive activity, memory v., 150–51 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 187 collective unconscious, 61 communication, 36, 160, 187, 188, 191, 207; disorders, 190–91; global, 37; mistakes, 163 community, 151; educator interaction with, 158; relationships in rural, 194–95; rural education and, 196–97 competency: global, 16, 18–20, 34, 221; multicultural, 87–93, 145; professional, 185, 206; of students, 214–15; students tasks v., 150

INDEX

complaints, written, 49 computers, 2, 41, 42; health v., 172 concentration, 177–78 Confucius, 9–10 consciousness, 190 content integration, 88 control, classroom, 218, 219 corruption, 47–52 Cortés, Hernán, 104 countries: borders of, 15–16; Englishspeaking, 37; laws of, 51 culture, 81, 89–90, 135, 150–51; affection v., 127; English language and, 38; folk pedagogy and, 106; health v., 111–12; heritage of, 62; learning styles and, 95–96, 99; marriage v., 127–28; rural education and, 196–97; school, 88; time v., 56 curriculum, 196, 215; health in, 107; knowledge v., 184–85; religion v., 83–84 Cushner, K., 84, 94 customs, 62, 89–90, 196–97 Darwin, Charles, 65 Davies, Samuel, 134 Dawson, P., 156, 158 democracy, 12, 45, 87; corruption v., 51 democratic education, 12–13, 73 demographic metamorphoses, 2 demographics, 18–19 depersonalization, 169 depression, 110, 124, 131, 138 Dewey, John, 12–13, 23, 72–73, 98–99 diary, 192 didactic aid, 44–46, 85; mistakes of, 163–64 Diderot, Denis, 94 diet, 67, 108, 111–12, 143, 198 dignity, 141–46; action v., 142; truth v., 141

235

Diller, Phyllis, 168 direct instruction, 97–98 disabilities, 123–25 discipline, 85, 144, 218; strong v. authoritarian, 218–19 discrimination, attractiveness v., 132 discussions, 187 disease(s), 108–9, 122, 143; Alzheimer’s, 176; genetic, 115–16; inherited, 111, 115–16; sexually transmitted, 11; sun-related, 110; water and, 68 Disraeli, Benjamin, 213 distance, time v., 54–55 distraction, 56 diversity, 18, 193; attitude toward, 89; of behavior, 90–91; of students, 41, 63, 81–86, 91, 99, 112, 134, 138 divorce, 104 Dooren, Rita van, 66–67 Down syndrome, 115, 122 dreams, 61 dress, of educators, 158–60, 163 dropouts, 195–96 drugs, 11, 42, 108 duty, of educators, 158 eating disorders, 124, 131 economy, English language and, 37 Edison, Thomas Alva, 101 education, 102; authoritarian, 73–74, 217, 218–19; bilingual, 89; classical, 101; coeducational v. single-sex, 131; democratic, 12–13, 73; emotion and, 150; environment of, 11; experimental, 170–72; famous personalities of, 23; gender, 127–33; global, 16, 17–18, 88; government v., 4, 74; health, 107–13; historical breakthroughs in humanity and, 16–17; international standards of, 142; lifelong, 215; local material for, 150–51;

236

INDEX

multicultural, 85, 87–93; negligence of, 218; nonviolence, 73; policy, 84, 85, 139, 191, 198; religious, 74–75; rural, 160, 193–98; self, 20, 91–92; sex, 128–29; strong, 213–19; superficial, 216; upbringing v., 85, 101; values v., 10 educational collective, 95 educational progressivism, 72–73 educator(s), 4; administration v., 50; attention, overcrowding v., 144; attitude of, 135, 139; behavior of, 156–57; bias of, 1, 130, 132; children’s imitation of, 156; depersonalization of, 169; disability terminology, 124–25; discrediting, 50; dress of, 158–60, 163; duty of, 158; educative arsenal of, 183–85; elementary school, 111, 191; expectations of students, 170; favoritism of, 48–49; financial support of, 143; global changes and, 19; global competency, 18–19, 221; health, 44–45, 143; inner voice of, 59–64; interactions with community, 158; interactions with students, 157; interruptions of, 137; mission of, 76; mistakes of, 162–67, 182; multicultural competency, 87–93, 145; multiple, 99; nicknames of, 185; parents’ relationship with, 126; preparation of, 157; prime task of, 20; professional competency of, 185, 206; psychological challenges of, 44–45; relationships between, 43–46; roles of rural, 195, 197; rural, 160, 193–98; schedule of, 55; self-esteem, 142, 145; selfevaluation, 164–67; self-respect, 141, 142, 145; sex with student,

123; strictness of, 216–17; students, love of, 72–77, 122–23; talking of student v., 187–92; treatment of students, 225 Einstein, Albert, 61, 208 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 28, 59 emotions, 144, 145, 150, 154 endorphins, 117–18 energy, 121, 202 English language, 2, 17, 34, 35–40, 82, 137 environment, 3, 67–68, 99, 119; academic, 46; of childhood, 114–15; of classroom, 92; for disabled students, 123–24; educational, 127; knowledge of, 151; learning styles and, 96, 97; natural, 104; protection of natural, 199–204; rural education and, 196–98. See also atmosphere equity pedagogy, 88 error(s): grammatical, 136–37; language, 188–89; tolerance v. correction of, 136–37; trial and, 135 European Union, 15–16, 32 evil, good v., 141–42 exams, bribery and, 48–49 exercise, 66, 70, 108, 143, 171–72, 178 exhaustion, 169 expectations, responsibility v., 170 experimentation, 170–71, 218 expression, of educator v. student, 187–92 extrinsic motivation, 149–50 Eyck, Jan van, 24 fairy tales, 103 family: children and, 104; health history of, 110–11, 112 favoritism, 48–49

INDEX

federal reorganizations, 142–43 feedback, 153, 154 feelings, 60 Felder, R. M., 94 females, sexual objectification of, 130–31 Feodorovna, Elizaveta (grand duchess), 41 Fine, Dr. Benjamin, 168 First Amendment, 74 folk music, 102–3 folk pedagogy, child development and, 101–2 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier, 181 food, 67, 70, 89–90, 111–12, 198 Ford, Gerald R., 187 fossil fuels, 202, 203 Franklin, Benjamin, 156 freedom, 12, 87, 142 freshwater, 201 Freud, Sigmund, 107, 150 friendship, marriage v., 131–32 future, 55 Gagarin, Yuri, 209 games, 102 Gandhi, Mahatma, 73 gender, education, 127–33 genealogy, 111, 114–20 genetics, 114–20, 124; sexual orientation v., 128; suicide and, 118 genome, 119 geography, 19, 221 Gergiev, Valery, 25 Gibbon, Edward, 28 global changes, educators and, 19 global competency, 16, 18–21, 33, 34 global education, 16, 17–18, 88 globalization, 2, 16, 17, 142 global knowledge base, 18, 19, 20 global warming, 3, 200, 201, 202–3

237

goals, 150 God, 36, 74–75, 84, 199, 223 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 121, 199 good, evil v., 141–42 Gorbet, F., 136 government, education v., 4, 74 grades, 95, 152–53, 164; accuracy of, 216–17; bribes for, 48–49; learning styles v., 97 grammar, errors of, 136–37 grandparents, 151 greenhouse effect, 202–3 guilt, self-criticism v., 166 Gurdin, Vera, 182 Gurtskaya, Diana, 123 Hall, E. T., 56 Hall, M. R., 56 harassment, sexual, 129, 133 health, 13, 63, 65–71; alternative, 125; behavior v., 107–8; children’s, 3, 106, 107; climate v., 110; computers v., 172; culture v., 111–12; education, 107–13; of educators, 44–45, 143; love and, 121; mental, 109–10; of students, 112; sun v., 110 Hemingway, Ernest, 25 Henriques, E. R., 94 Herbert, Frank, 220 heredity, 114–15, 117, 124; suicide and, 118 Higham, Sir Charles, 87 history, 22; of English language, 37–38; enigmas of, 210 holidays, 105 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 114 homosexuality, 128–29 honesty, 13 hope, health v., 65 Hugo, Victor, 127

238

INDEX

human(s): environment v., 199–204; origin of, 210; rights, 87, 145; speech and, 192 humanity, 206, 225; diversity of, 81–82, 86 humiliation, 142 Iacocca, Lee, 149 income, 33 indecent behavior, 157 independence, responsibility v., 144–45 information, retention of, 176 inner voice, of educator, 59–64 instruction: balance of, 99–100; language and, 36 intellectual potential, 222 intelligence, 115 Internet, 2, 38, 69, 96, 196, 207 intrinsic motivation, 149–50, 154 IQ, hereditary factors of, 115 John-Steiner, V., 95 Jonson, Ben, 35 judgment, 166 Jung, Carl, 61 Kaku, Dr. Michio, 208 Kelly, W., 169 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 87 Kierkegaard, Søren, 72 Klinefelter’s syndrome, 115 Knibbe, Robyn, 81 knowledge, 90; of body, 65–66, 69; classroom as shrine of, 41–46; construction process, 88; core, 215; curriculum v., 184–85; of environment, 151; of life, 220–21; of self, 57; travel and, 34; of the unknown, 205–12; unsaid, 181–86 Knudsen, William S., 94 Kokhba, Bar, 26 Komensky, Jan Amos, 23 Kusniarov, Ramzy, 195

labor, 49, 194 language(s), 35–40, 139, 170–71, 187; categorization in, 84; development, 188; disorders, 190–91; diversity of, 82–83; English, 2, 17, 34, 35–40, 82, 137; errors, 188–89; French v. English, 137; memory and, 179; mistakes, 164, 188–89; policy, 135–36; speech v., 189; thought v., 36, 189–90; vile, 157, 163. See also bilingual education Latin, 39, 83 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 53 law, 46, 47, 48, 51 learning styles, 94–100, 135; folk pedagogy and, 106; tolerance of, 139. See also education Lee, H. F., 124 Lewis, Jerry, 22 life: knowledge of, 220–21; rural, 84, 144, 160, 177, 193–98; urban v. rural, 84 Linn, Denise, 60–61 local material, 150–51 long-term memory, 176 love, 72, 121–26, 132, 223 Makarenko, Anton, 95 man, nature v., 104 Manikan, Ruby, 127 marriage: culture v., 127–28; friendship v., 131–32; partner, love of, 10 materialism, 10 material rewards, 152 media, rural education v. information, 196 memorization, motivation v., 177 memory, 62, 175–80; cognitive activity v., 150–51 mental health, 109–10, 123–24; genetics of, 124; hereditary factors of, 118

INDEX

Metrodorus of Chios, 205 Miller, R., 73 mission, of educators, 76 mistakes, 135–36; communication, 163; didactic, 163–64; educators, 162–67, 182; in grammar, 136–37; language, 164, 188–89; organizational, 163; phobia of, 137 mobile phone, 207 money, 10, 33, 47 monogamy, 128 Montessori, Maria, 23 motivation, 33, 149–55, 177 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 23–24, 54 music, 23–24, 25, 38, 102–3 Native American(s): holidays, 105; songs, 103; students, 95–96 natural disasters, 143 natural wonders, 19 nature. See environment neglect, 139; attractiveness v., 130 nepotism, 47–48, 51 nervous system, 70 Netrebko, Anna, 25 New Seven Wonders of the World, 28–30 Nicholas II (czar), 116–17 noise, at schools, 42 nourishment, 114 nutrition, 67, 178 Nye, J. S., 47 obesity, 66, 109 omens, 60 organizational mistakes, 163 overcrowding, 143–44 oxygen, 178, 201 Paine, Thomas, 15 “paper creation” activity, 143

239

parents, 151, 152; bribery from, 123; children v., 119, 130, 138–39; of disabled children, 124; educator relationship with, 126; IQ of children v., 115; talkative v. quiet, 188 Parker, Frances, 73 past, 55, 62, 150–51 patience, 134, 135, 139 pedagogy: equity, 88; folk, 101–6; Tolstoy on, 12; U.S. v. Russian, 85 personality development, 3–4, 22, 95, 114–15 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 23 Petra, 29 Pettinger, T., 166 physical activity, 42, 66; of children, 105; labor v., 49 phytoplankton, 201 Picasso, Pablo, 24 planet, understanding of, 20 planning, 57 play, 102 pollution, 200, 201, 202 polygamy, 128 Pope, Alexander, 162 population, 2, 18–19; rural student, 194 potential, 222–24 pregnancy, teen, 11 prejudice reduction, 88 preparation: of children, 220–24; of educators, 157 present, 55 pressure, academic, 168–74, 218 procrastination, 56 profession, love of, 10 psychology, 59, 60; learning styles and, 97 public schools, 41; religious education v., 74 punctuality, 76 punishment, reward and, 152–53

240

INDEX

rape, 129 Rasputin, Grigori, 116–17 reality: diversity of categorization of, 84; objective, 149, 168, 211; theory v., 207–8 rebellion, 26 recycling, 201 regional reorganizations, 142–43 Reis, Piri, 18 relationships, 42, 131–32, 169; educator, 43–44, 46; of parents, 138–39; in rural communities, 194–95; teacher-student, 72–77 religion, 82, 89–90, 128; child development and, 104–5; learning styles and, 95, 99; schools v., 83–84 religious education, 74–75 renewable energy, 202 resources: private use of school, 49; rural, 195; treatment of, 76 respect, 13, 142 responsibility, 12, 45, 76, 132; expectations v., 170; independence v., 144–45; law and, 51 revolution, 26 reward, punishment and, 152–53 Robertson, Morgan, 61 role(s): model, educator as, 156–61; playing, 98; of rural educators, multiple, 195, 197 Romanov, Dmitri, 117 Rome, 29, 30–31 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 26 Roosevelt, Theodore, 193, 220 Rottier, J., 169 Ruffini, Giovanni, 41 Russia, 95; downfall of, 117; pedagogy in, 85; royalty of, 116–17; rural schools of, 196 Santos, Arysio Nunes dos, 210 sayings, 103, 185

school(s): administration, 46; atmosphere of, 41–46, 74, 76; culture, 88; elementary, 111, 191; religion v., 83–84; resources, private use of, 49; of Russia, rural, 196; transportation, 195. See also classroom science, 207; English language and, 38; frontiers of, 211 self: criticism, 166–67; education, 20, 91–92; esteem, 142, 145; esteem of educators, 145; evaluation, 164–67; knowledge, 57; reflection, 166; respect of educators, 141, 142, 145; worth, 125 sex, 11, 42; education, 128–29; educator-student, 123; marriage v., 128; unprotected, 108 sexual harassment, 129, 133 sexualization, 130–31 sexual orientation, 128 Shakespeare, William, 58 short-term memory, 176 signs, 60, 63 skills, 91 small-group discussion, 98 smoking, 11, 108 socialization, 3–4 social potential, 222 society, 81 solar energy, 202 Solzenitsyn, Alexander, 216 Sorokin, Piterim, 121 space, time v., 61, 210 space travel, 209–10 Spartacus, 26 speech: disorders, 190–91; habits, 191; inner, 190; language v., 189–90 standardized testing, 151 Stanhope, Philip Dormer (fourth earl of Chesterfield), 213 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 205

INDEX

Stravinsky, Igor, 23 stress, 169 strong education, 213–19 student(s): assessment of, 63, 151–52, 154; attitude toward educators, 135; behavior, 42, 63; cognition of the unknown, 205–12; competence v. task, 150; competency of, 214–15; diversity of, 41, 63, 81–86, 91, 99, 112, 134, 138; dropout, 195–96; educator’s interactions with, 157–58; educator’s love of, 72–77, 122–23; emotions of, 150; environment for disabled, 123–24; expectations of, 170; experimentation on, 170–72; feedback for, 153–54; global competency of, 20, 34; health of, 112; inner potential of, 222–23; labor v., 49; learning preference of, 97–99; Native American, 95–96; pampering, 217; population, rural, 194; right path of, 184; sex with educator, 123; suicide and, 118; talking of educator v., 187–92; treatment of, 225; types of, 97; unloved, 121–26. See also children subjects, moderation of, 172 suicide, hereditary factors of, 118 superficial education, 216 superstring theory, 208–9 support, 44–46 Sykhomlinsky, Vasily, 121 Tagore, Rabindranath, 59 talking, educator v. student, 187–92 tasks, 154; student’s competence v., 150 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr, 23 teachers. See educator(s) teamwork, 44–46 technology, 2, 10, 69; evolution of, 206–7; learning styles and, 96

241

television, 69, 108, 207 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 181 Teregulov, F. S., 209 terminology, of disabilities, 124–25 testing: memory, 178; standardized, 151 theory, reality v., 207–8 thought, language v., 36, 189–90 time, 53; culture v., 56; management, 55–58; relativity of, 54; space v., 61, 210 tolerance, 134–40; behavior v., 138 Tolstoy, L. N., 4, 12, 73, 102, 121 Tomhave, W. K., 169 training, memory, 175–80 trial and error, 135 Trifonovitch, G., 84 trust, 138, 223 truth(s): dignity v., 141; imparting, 185 tutoring, corruption and private, 50–51 Twain, Mark, 25 universe, origin of, 208–9 unknown, student’s cognition of, 205–12 upbringing, 9–10; education v., 85, 101 value(s), 9–14; dignity and, 142; of human, intrinsic, 141; sexualization of, 130–31 van Gogh, Vincent, 24, 31 Vasey, C., 68 Velázquez, Deigo Rodríguez de Silva, 24 Victoria (queen), 116 vocabulary, parents v., 188 Volkov, Gennady, 101, 102 Vygotsky, Lev, 20, 23, 102, 131, 150, 152, 175, 176, 178, 189, 190

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INDEX

waste, 201 water, 67–69, 70 weapons, 42 Wells, H. G., 15 Wildenberg, Dr. Esther van den, 118 Wilder, Thornton, 72 wind energy, 202 wisdom, 181–86 wonders: man-made, 28–34; natural, 19 Woodson, Charles R., 9 word(s): meaning of, 189–90; moderation with, 185; order, 136

work, 105 working memory, 176 world, changing of, 220–24 The World Health Organization, 110 worldview, 17 wormholes, 209–10 worth, 125; of children, disease v., 122; inherent, 141 writing, 192; mistakes, 188–89 Yusupov, Felix (prince), 117 Zubova, Margarita, 90–91

About the Author

Ilghiz M. Sinagatullin is the department chair of pedagogy and elementary education at Birsk State Socio-Pedagogical Academy (Bashkortostan, Russia). He received his doctorate from the Moscow Pedagogical State University in 1995. His areas of research are global/international/crosscultural and multicultural education; teacher education for multicultural/bilingual settings; developing global competency of preservice and in-service teachers; language policy in a globalizing and multicultural society; and folk pedagogy, ethnopedagogy, and ethnopsychology. His name is gaining weight on the international level among educators, teachers, and university faculty. Since the 1990s he has been studying the issues of education and teacher training on both sides of the Atlantic. As a recipient of three research grants sponsored by the U.S. government, he has traveled extensively across the United States, studying American culture and its educational system, doing library research, visiting educational institutions of different types, making presentations, and sharing insights with American educators and students on various topics of educational theory and practice. Professor Sinagatullin is a frequent contributor to the professional development of educators through writing, consulting, and workshops. He is the author of more than ninety publications.

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