02.09.2024
Vladimir Legoida speaks on devaluation of knowledge and the dangers of pragmatization of education.
I can highlight two major problems of modern higher education: the internal and the externalones. The first one is the extreme pragmatizationof educational processes and general attitudes. The latter is the erasure of boundaries between professional knowledge and amateurism, which is associated with general cultural shifts in society.
Universities are increasingly becoming placeswhere students prepare not so much to understand the world and themselves, but to perform specific tasks. Education is reduced to the process of acquiring the necessary "practical skills". There is a fundamental error in the modern approach: education is not considered a value in itself, but only as a tool for achieving external goals.
The classical concept of education, though, used to assume that knowledge has an intrinsic valuethat went towards developing and shaping a personality, expanding the horizons of understanding the world.
The Greeks valued the process of intellectual and moral development, harmonious physical and spiritual education. Historically, European universities were a place where students achieved first and foremost an understanding of the world and man within it. Today, however, many students see education only as a way to obtain a diploma, which is needed to find a job (and this need is gradually dying out).
Pragmatization fundamentally distorts the nature of the educational process, leading, among other things, to the emasculation of humanities. Some universities, especially outside of Russia, are reducing or even closing philosophy, history, and literature tracks. But it is the humanities that help a person develop as an individual, form moral and civic guidelines, teach to think critically and make informed decisions.
On the other hand, all this leads to the illusion that possession of information is equivalent to knowledge. Moreover, disagreement with the opinion of a professional begins to be perceived as defending one's own opinion. The formula "this is my opinion, I am not imposing it on you, you may think differently" has become a sort of "smart-proof" right to safely utter any nonsense.
Amateurism penetrates all spheres of life. The successes of bloggers and influencers underminethe public perception of education and intellectual work. If knowledge and professionalism used to be highly valued, today many teenagers strive for easy success, because it is enough to simply film yourself contorting your body or unpacking high-end purchases to get millions of views.
But education, understood as the creation of personality, should again become the ideal it used to be. A person should not be a collector of likes, but a seeker of truth, goodness, beauty and love. ________________________________________
Source: "Kommersant"
