Personality Development (Vospitanie) in new generations: urgent issues
This is an abridged version of the paper the author gave at the session of the Russian Intellectual Club at Moscow University of the Humanities on May 25, 2016. The topic of the session was “Personality development (vospitanie) in new generations: from strategy to action”. The paper starts with explaining the conceptual approaches to personality development (vospitanie) of youth as formulated by the author and his colleagues at the Research Center (NITs) of Higher School of Komsomol, Moscow (subsequently renamed Institute of Youth, currently Moscow University for the Humanities). While at the NITs, the author worked on the draft version of the Youth Act, which in 1991 was subsumed into the Law of the USSR “On the general foundations of state youth policy in the USSR”), as well as in other drafts of legislation in the segment of youth policy. Public debates on this policy and its implications largely focused on the factor of vospitanie (personality development). Neglect of his factor led to the state completely abandoning vospitanie as an aspect of education. This can be seen in the example of the first post-Soviet law “On education” (1992), where education in Russia was formally defined as a “unified purpose-driven process comprising tuition and personality development (vospitanie)”, but not a word more on the latter. Moreover, the vospitanie as a component was discontinued in schools, universities and all educational institutions, while the press and academia now talked of socialization and adaptation, not vospitanie. To counter this trend, in 1995 we at the NITs of the Institute of Youth, under the author's supervision have prepared an analytical report for the Cabinet of Ministers of the Russian Federation, which later evolved into the concept of bringing up what we termed ‘viable generations'. After being reviewed at the Cabinet, the report was labelled ‘aspersive' and banned from circulation. In 2010, work began on a new version of the Federal Law “On education in the Russian Federation. The author and his colleagues took an active part in public discussions of the bill. Suggested amendments were forwarded to the State Duma, the Council of Federation and to President of Russia Vladimir Putin. However, the provisions related to personality development were not included into the final version of the act. Debates continued during the readings of the Strategy of advancing personality development (vospitanie) in the Russian Federation for the period through 2025. The strategy was adopted in 2015 and provided a new impetus for educational work with children and the youth. However, unless a number of conceptual issues are resolved, implementing the agenda of the Strategy may be rather problematic.