Leonid Rotshtein
Jerusalem
School Model Oriented to Making Personality
The crisis of modern system of education as evidenced by lots of facts and researches brings into existence alternative models. Among such models one can find “society without school”, Internet schools, various versions of Waldorf school, schools of foreign languages, schools of teaching computers and mathematics at primary classes, intensive teaching schools and various versions of “humanitarian” schools.
For the most part the suggested school models consider the intensification of instruction as their principal task. As this takes place problems of good breeding or, in a general science, problems of making up young man’s personality are either put to the parents’ shoulders or are disregarded whatsoever. Indeed neither the traditional school nor suggested modern models of school have any real single-minded set of instruments for making up a personality. In effect the education of modern youth is left to itself. As this takes place the lack of a single-minded educational influence shows itself not only as a rapid growth of criminality and narcomania among teenagers as a general moral degradation, but as a spreading of the so-called youth subculture characterized by its perverted system of treating social values. As to the intellectual elite of schools one may refer to Robert Shternberg, the leading world specialist on intellect, who in his monograph writes about a number of cases when intellectuals fail. The reasons of such failures are, as a rule, rooted in some personal defects of man such as inability to carry his doings through, deficiency of purposefulness, inability of meeting people, etc.[1].
Thus the main drawback of both traditional and modern school models is, to my mind, the lack of conditions and instruments of purposeful influence on the personality of the child. Neither class leaders nor presence of the psychologist at school or lots of educational measures conducted at modern schools cannot replace systematic purposeful activity on developing personality in every child. The situation is aggravated by the fact that the modern family which, according to the opinion of school leaders, should bear a complete responsibility for the child’s education cannot cope with the task in view of constant business of parents.
The suggested school model considers the problem of making personality in child as the basic one and the whole teaching and educational process is founded on this basis. Running of a class body is administered by an expert in personality development who at the same time is a tutor-guide of the wards. The tutor-guide performs the following functions:
The work on making pupils’ personality is carried on five planes:
The work of the tutor-guide begins half a year before the child starts school, and it keeps going on for the whole period of the child’s school attendance.
Unlike any conventional subject “personality making” is pursued not only within the precincts of the school (theory and training) but at home, at sports competitions, at receptions, during specially organized military games, etc. as well. A special attention is paid to develop resourcefulness and adaptively in the personality, ability to enter into any role, to develop stamina and diligence.
The suggested school model essentially alleviates the problem of intellectual development of the pupil because the instruction rests on a thorough personality diagnosing of the child, on taking into account the motives of his behavior, peculiarities of his perception, physical and emotional characteristics. Thus, the activities of subject teachers become much more proficient here than at a conventional school. Even at present it is possible to approbate this school model in case some organizational matters are solved. Computer simulation can essentially decrease the laboriousness of the problem solution on diagnosing children’s personalities and makes possible realization in practice of the suggested school model.
References:
Purpuri, Minsk, 2000