Among the desecrated sciences, pedology perhaps occupies a special place. There are only a few witnesses to its heyday; We habitually judge the death by the well-known resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 4, 1936, the mention of which importunately migrates from one dictionary to another with constant remarks. Until recently, a closer and less orthodox view of pedology was perceived as slandering Soviet pedagogy, undermining its very foundations. In the modern historical situation, calls have appeared for the revival and development of domestic pedology. We will try to give an analysis of the development of pedology, its ideas, methodology and prospects for revival.
We can say that pedology had a relatively long prehistory, a rapid and complete history.
There are conflicting points of view on the starting date in the history of pedology. It dates back either to the 18th century. and is associated with the name of D. Tideman 1, or by the 19th century. in connection with the works of L.A. Quetelet and coincide with the publication of the works of the great teachers J.J. Rousseau, J.A. Komensky and others. “The wisest educators teach children this,” wrote J.J. Rousseau in the “Introduction to "Emil" in 1762 - what is important for an adult to know, without taking into account what children are able to learn. They constantly look for the person in the child, without thinking about what he is like before becoming a person."
The primary sources of pedology, therefore, are located in a fairly distant past, and if we take them into account as the basis for pedagogical theory and practice, then in a very distant past.
The formation of pedology is associated with the name of I. Herbart (1776–1841), who creates a system of psychology on which, as one of the foundations, pedagogy should be built, and his followers for the first time began to systematically develop educational psychology 2.
Typically, educational psychology was defined as a branch of applied psychology, which deals with the application of psychological data to the process of education and training. This science, on the one hand, must draw from general psychology results that are of interest to pedagogy, and on the other hand, discuss pedagogical provisions from the point of view of their compliance with psychological laws. Unlike didactics and private methods that solve questions about how a teacher should teach, the task of educational psychology is to find out how students learn.
In the process of the formation of educational psychology, in the middle of the 19th century, there was an intensified restructuring of general psychology. Under the influence of developing experimental natural science, in particular experimental physiology of the sense organs, psychology also became experimental. Herbartian psychology with its abstract-deductive method (reducing psychology to the mechanics of the flow of ideas) was replaced by Wundtian experimental psychology, which studies mental phenomena using the methods of experimental physiology. Educational psychology increasingly calls itself experimental pedagogy, or experimental educational psychology.
There are, as it were, two stages in the development of experimental pedagogy 3: the end of the 19th century. (mechanical transfer of the findings of general experimental psychology into pedagogy), and the 20th century. (learning problems themselves become the subject of experimental research in psychological laboratories).
Experimental pedagogy of that time reveals some of the age-related mental characteristics of children, their individual characteristics, the technique and economics of memorization and the application of psychology to learning 4,5.
Another, as it was believed, special science was supposed to give a general picture of the child’s life - the science of young age, 4 which, in addition to psychological data, required research into the physical life of the child, knowledge of the dependence of the life of a growing person on external, especially social conditions, and his upbringing. Thus, the need for a special science about children, pedology, was derived from the development of educational psychology and experimental pedagogy 3.
The same need also arose from child psychology, which, unlike educational psychology with its applied nature, grew out of evolutionary concepts and experimental natural science, raising, along with questions about the phylogenetic development of man, the question of its ontogenetic development. Under the influence of discussions in evolutionary theory, genetic psychology began to be created, mainly in the USA (especially among psychologists grouped around Stanley Hall), which considered it impossible to study the mental development of a child separately from his physical development. As a result, it was proposed to create a new science - pedology, which would be devoid of this shortcoming and would give a more complete picture of the age-related development of the child. "The science of the child or pedology - it is often confused with genetic psychology, while it constitutes only the main part of the latter - arose relatively recently and has made significant progress over the past decade" 6 .
Let us note, however, the fact that by the time pedology was established as an independent scientific direction, the stock of knowledge in experimental educational psychology, in childhood psychology, and in those biological sciences that could form the basis of ideas about human individuality was too sparse. This applies, first of all, to the state of nascent human genetics.
The originality of the isolated science, however, is demonstrated by its definitional apparatus and research methods. As a justification for the independence of science, 7 the analysis of its own methods is especially interesting.
Despite the fact that pedology was intended to give a picture of the development of the child and the unity of his mental and physical properties, using a comprehensive, systematic approach to the study of childhood, having previously dialectically solved the problem of the “bio-socio” relationship in research methodology, from the very beginning priority was given to psychological study child (even the founder of pedology, St. Hall, considers pedology to be only a part of genetic psychology), and this hegemony is maintained, naturally or artificially, throughout the history of science. Such a one-sided understanding of pedology did not satisfy E. Meiman 4, who considers the psychological study of a child alone to be incomplete and considers it necessary to have a broad physiological and anthropological justification for pedology. In pedology, he also includes pathological and psychopathological studies of child development, to which many psychiatrists have devoted their work.
But the inclusion of physiological and anthropological components in pedological research does not yet satisfy the existence of pedology as an independent and original science. The reason for dissatisfaction is illustrated by the following thought: “We must tell the truth: even now pedology courses actually represent a vinaigrette from the most diverse branches of knowledge, a simple set of information from various sciences, everything that relates to the child. But is such a vinaigrette a special independent science? Of course , no" 8. From this point of view, what E. Meiman understands by pedology is a “simple vinaigrette” (though 90% made up of homogeneous psychological material and only 10% from materials from other sciences). In this case, the question about the subject of pedology is posed in such a way that for the first time the work of the author himself, P.P. Blonsky, turns out to satisfy it to our understanding, or at least claims to be so, which, therefore, should be “the first stone in the building of true pedology.” .
In this regard, let us dwell on the understanding of the subject of pedology by prof. P.P. Blonsky. He gives four formulas for its definition, three of which mutually complement and develop each other, and the fourth (and last) contradicts them all and, apparently, was formulated under the influence of a social order. The first formula defines pedology as the science of the characteristics of childhood. This is the most general formula, previously found in other authors 9 .
The second formula defines pedology as “the science of the growth, constitution and behavior of a typical mass child in various eras of childhood.” Thus, if the first formula only points to the child as a subject of pedology, then the second says that pedology should study it not from one side, but from different ones; At the same time, a limitation is introduced: not every child in general, but a typical mass child is studied by pedology. Both of these formulas only prepare the third, which gives the definition its final form: “Pedology studies the symptom complexes of various eras, phases and stages of childhood in their time sequence and in their dependence on various conditions.” The content of the subject of pedology in the last formula is revealed more fully than in the previous ones. However, significant difficulties associated with the question of defining pedology as a science (fourth formula) remain unresolved.
They boil down mainly to the following: the child as a subject of study is a natural phenomenon no less complex than the adult himself; in many ways even more complex issues may arise here. Naturally, such a complex object from the very beginning required a differentiated cognitive attitude towards itself. Quite analogous to how when studying a person at all Since ancient times, scientific disciplines such as anatomy, physiology and psychology have arisen, studying the same subject, but each from its own point of view, similarly, when studying a child, from the very beginning these same paths were used, thanks to which anatomy, physiology arose and developed and psychology of early childhood.
With development, the differentiation of this knowledge always increases. In this regard, the child’s scientific knowledge has not yet completed its differentiation to this day. On the other hand, to understand many special functions and patterns of child development, a general concept of childhood is necessary as a special period in human onto- and phylogenesis, the provisions of which would guide the research of special sciences, the process of education and training.
In this understanding, pedology was given a special, and sometimes unjustifiably superior, place among other sciences that study the child 6.13. The sciences that study the child also explore the process of development of various aspects of the child’s nature, establishing eras, phases and stages. It is clear that each of these areas of a child’s nature does not represent something simple and homogeneous; in each of them the researcher encounters the most diverse and complex phenomena. Studying the development of these individual phenomena, each researcher can, should and actually strives, without going beyond the boundaries of his field, to trace not only the individual lines of development of these phenomena, but also their mutual connection with each other at different levels, their relationships and all that complex configuration , which they form in their totality at a certain stage of ontogenesis. In other words, even with a psychological study of a child, the researcher is faced with the task of identifying complex “age-related symptom complexes” in the same way as it is faced with an anatomical and physiological study of him. But these will be either morphological, or physiological, or psychological symptom complexes, the only peculiarity of which is that they will be one-sided, which does not prevent them from remaining very complex and naturally organized within themselves.
Thus, pedology not only considers the age-related symptom complex, but it must carry out a cumulative analysis of everything that is accumulated by individual scientific disciplines that study the child. Moreover, this analysis is not a simple sum of heterogeneous information, mechanically combined based on their affiliation. Essentially, this should be a synthesis based on the organic connection of the constituent parts into one whole, and not their simple connection with each other, in the process of which a number of independently complex questions may arise; those. pedology as a science should have led to achievements of a higher order, to the resolution of new problems, which, of course, are not any final problems of knowledge, but constitute only part of one problem - the problem of man.
Based on these provisions, it was believed that the boundaries of pedological research are very broad, and there is no reason to narrow them in any way 4.10. When studying a child as a whole, the researcher’s field of view should include not only the “symptoms” of certain states of the child, but also the very process of ontogenesis, change and transition of one state to another. In addition, an important task of the study was something average, typical, something that immediately covers a wide range of properties being studied. A huge variety of all kinds of characteristics - individual, gender, social, etc. – also seemed to be material for pedological research. The priority was considered to be the task of systematizing scientific data in various areas of child studies.
The above discussion of the definitional apparatus of pedology can be supplemented by two more definitions of pedology, which were in use before 1931: 1) Pedology is the science of factors, patterns, stages and types of socio-biological formation of the individual, 16 2) Pedology is the science of genetic processes, the development of new increasingly complex mechanisms under the influence of new factors, about the breakdown, restructuring, transformation of functions and the underlying material substrates in the conditions of growth of the child’s body.”
Thus, there was no consensus on pedology; the content of science was understood differently, accordingly, the boundaries of pedological research varied widely, and the very fact of the formation of an independent science was disputed for a long time, which is natural in the early period of the development of science, but, as will be seen from what follows, these problems were not resolved in pedology in the future.
A unique attempt to build a system of pedological methods is the work of S.S. Molozhavoy 12 . He proceeds from the following provisions: every act of a growing organism is a process of balancing it with the environment and can be objectively understood only from its functional state (1); this is a holistic process in which the organism is responsible for the environmental situation with all its aspects and functions (2); restoration of the disturbed balance of the human body with the environment is at the same time a process of its change, therefore, every act of the human body can be understood only dynamically, not only as an act of identification, but also as an act of growth, restructuring and consolidation of a system of behavior (3); it is possible to approach a type of behavior, its stable, more or less permanent moments only by studying a number of integral acts of human behavior, for only they are capable of revealing its available fund and its further possibilities (4); The moments of an organism’s behavior that are accessible to our perception are links in the chain of the reaction process: they can become indicators of this process only by comparing the environmental situation that initiates the process with the visible response that completes it (5).
These provisions of S.S. Molozhavoy were very actively challenged by Ya.I. Shapiro 13 .
The observation method was considered very promising among pedologists. In its development, a prominent place belongs to M.Ya. Basov and his school, which worked at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen. There were two types of methods of pedological work: the method of studying behavioral processes and the method of studying all kinds of results of these processes. Behavior was supposed to be studied from the point of view of the structure of behavioral processes and the factors that determine them. In this case, the behavior was usually the opposite of the experimental study. This opposition, however, is not entirely correct, since the experiment is also applicable to studying behavioral processes if we are talking about a natural experiment in which the child is in real-life situations.
The tendency of pedologists, who defended the independence of their science, to look for new methodological ways is manifested especially clearly in the heated debate around the issue of the method of psychological tests. Since in our country the use of this method was one of the reasons for the destruction of pedology, we should dwell on it in more detail. Numerous works devoted to the use of the test methodology put forward a huge number of arguments for and against its use in pedology 10, 14–20.
The fierce debate and widespread use of test methodology in public education in our country (almost every student had to go through a test assessment) led to the fact that even today pedology is most often remembered in connection with the use of tests with the “fear” of revealing oneself as a result of testing. A variety of tests were developed and used for the first time in the United States. The first broad review of American tests in Russian to identify mental giftedness and school success of children was given by N.A. Buchholz and A.M. Schubert in 1926. 19 Analysis of these tests, their tasks and results leads the authors to the conclusion that they are undoubtedly promising applications in pedology. Scientific psychological commission, which developed for 1919–1921. a series of “National Tests” known to this day, designed for use in all public schools in the United States, defined the purpose of these studies as follows: 1) to help divide children of different school groups into smaller subgroups: children who are mentally stronger and mentally weaker; 2) help the teacher navigate the individual characteristics of the children of the group with which this teacher begins to work for the first time; 3) help reveal those individual reasons due to which individual children cannot adapt to classroom work and school life; 4) to promote the vocational guidance of children, at least for the purpose of preliminary selection of those suitable for more highly qualified work 19.
In the mid-20s. tests are beginning to become widespread in our country, first in scientific research, and by the end of the 20s. are being introduced into the practice of schools and other children's institutions. Based on the tests, the giftedness and success of children are determined; forecasts of learning ability, specific didactic and educational recommendations of teachers are given; original domestic tests similar to Binet tests are being developed. Testing is carried out in natural conditions for schoolchildren, in the classroom 10,20,21; tests become widespread, and the results can be statistically processed. Test data allows us to judge not only the success of the student, but also the work of teachers and the school as a whole. For the period of the 20s. this was one of the most objective criteria in assessing the work of the school. An objective and quantitatively more accurate accounting of the success of children is necessary in order to monitor the comparative characteristics of different schools, the growth in the success of different children compared to the average growth in the success of the school group. In this way, the “mental age” of the student is determined, which makes it possible to transfer him to the group that best suits his intellectual development and, on the other hand, to form more homogeneous study groups. This contradicts the totalitarian tenets of egalitarian education, the failure of which has been experienced by several generations.
In American schools, individualization of learning is the basis for the formation of class groups to this day. Our formerly fierce, and now increasingly weakening, resistance to such an “attack” on the integrity of class groups, the desire to educate a person who is not really socially active, who would easily come into contact with any new group of people, would learn to understand and love not only a narrow circle, but and all people, to educate “philanthropists”, and not a socially closed individual in a collective, is apparently a consequence of the unitarity of the state, the dominance of authoritarianism, the closedness of the individual, and our thinking.
The test method was credited with the fact that “it transforms pedology from a science that speculates generally and subjectively into a science that studies reality” 3 .
Criticism of the test method usually boiled down to the following points: 1) tests are characterized by a purely experimental beginning; 2) they take into account not the process, but the result of the process; 3) the standardized bias at the expense of the statistical method was criticized; 4) tests are superficial, far from the deep mechanism of the child’s behavior.
The criticism was based on the rather strong initial imperfection of the tests. The practice of many years of using the test method abroad and in recent domestic psychodiagnostics has shown the inconsistency of such criticism in many positions and its insufficient validity.
Differences in the application of the test method in the theory and practice of pedology can be reduced to three main points of view:
1) the use of testing was fundamentally rejected 12,20;
2) limited use of tests was allowed (in terms of scope and conditions of implementation) with the mandatory primacy of other research methods 10,16,22;
3) the need for widespread use of tests in research and practice was recognized 18,19,23.
However, with the exception of some works 24, in Soviet pedology, primacy remained with psychological methods.
After becoming familiar with the subject and methods of science, it is necessary to consider the uniqueness of the main stages of its development.
The works of many authors during the formation of pedology in our country were devoted to a critical analysis of the development of pedology in the USSR 3,10,13,25. One of the first domestic pedological works is considered to be the study of A.P. Nechaev, and then his school. In his “Experimental Psychology in its Relation to Issues of School Education” 27 he outlined possible ways of experimental psychological research into didactic problems. A.P. Nechaev and his students studied individual mental functions (memory, attention, judgment, etc.). Under the guidance of prof. Nechaev in 1901, a laboratory of experimental pedagogical psychology was organized in St. Petersburg, in the fall of 1904 the first pedological courses in Russia were opened, and in 1906 the First All-Russian Congress on Educational Psychology was convened with a special exhibition and short-term pedological courses.
Work in this area also began to develop in Moscow. In 1911, G.I. Rossolimo founded and, at his own expense, maintained a clinic for nervous diseases of childhood, transformed into a special Institute of Child Psychology and Neurology. The result of the work of his school was the original method of “psychological profiles” 49, in which G.I. Rosselimo went further than A.P. Nechaev along the path of splitting the psyche into separate functions: to compile a complete “psychological profile” it is proposed to study 38 separate mental functions, according to ten experiments for each psychological function. The technique of G.I. Rosselimo quickly took hold and was used in the form of a “mass psychological profile.” But his work was also limited only to the psyche, without touching on the biological features of the child’s ontogenesis. The dominant research method of the Rossolimo school was experiment, which was criticized by contemporaries for the “artificiality of the laboratory setting.” The characterization of the child given by G.I. Rossolimo was also criticized, with the differentiation of children only by gender and age without taking into account their social and class affiliation (!).
The founder and creator of pedology in the USSR is also called V.M. Bekhterev 29, who back in 1903 expressed the idea of the need to create a special institution for the study of children - a pedagogical institute in connection with the creation of the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. The institute's project was submitted to the Russian Society of Normal and Pathological Psychology. In addition to the psychological department, a pedological department for experimental and other research was included in the number of departments, and a scientific center for the study of personality was created. In connection with the founding of the department of pedology, V.M. Bekhterev had the idea of creating a Pedological Institute, which existed first as a private institution (with funds donated by V.T. Zimin). The director of the institute was K.I. Povarnin. The institute was poorly provided for financially, and V.M. Bekhterev had to submit a number of notes and applications to government authorities. On this occasion, he wrote: “The purpose of the institution was so important and tangible that there was no need to think about creating it even with modest means. We were only interested in the tasks that formed the basis of this institution” 29 .
Bekhterev's students note that he considered the following problems urgent for pedology: the study of the laws of the developing personality, the use of school age for education, the use of a number of measures to prevent abnormal developments, protection from the decline of intelligence and morality, and the development of individual initiative.
Thanks to the tirelessness of V.M. Bekhterev, a number of institutions were created to implement these ideas: pedological and research institutes, an auxiliary school for the disabled, an otophonetic institute, an educational and clinical institute for neurologically ill children, an institute of moral education, and a children's psychiatric clinic. He united all these institutions into a scientific and laboratory department - the Institute for Brain Research, as well as a scientific and clinical department - the Pathoreflexological Institute. The general scheme of the biosocial study of the child according to Bekhterev is as follows: 1) the introduction of reflexological methods in the field of study of the child; 2) study of the autonomic nervous system and the connection between the central nervous system and endocrine glands; 3) comparative study of the ontogenesis of human and animal behavior; 4) study of the complete development of brain regions; 5) study of the environment; 6) the influence of the social environment on development; 7) childhood handicap; 8) child psychopathy; 9) neuroses of childhood; 10) labor reflexology; 11) reflexological pedagogy; 12) reflexological method in teaching literacy 30.
Work in the above-mentioned children's institutions was carried out under the guidance of professors A.S. Griboedov, P.G. Belskgo, D.V. Felderg. The closest collaborators in the field of pedology were first K.I. Povarin, and then N.M. Shchelovanov. Over the 9 years of the existence of the first Pedological Institute with a very small staff, 48 scientific papers were published.
V.M. Bekhterev is considered the founder of pedoreflexology in its main areas: genetic reflexology with a clinic, the study of the first stages of development of a child’s nervous activity, age-related reflexology for preschool and school ages, collective and individual reflexology. The basis of pedoreflexology included the study of the laws of temporary and permanent functional connections of the main parts of the central nervous system and parts of the brain in their sequential development depending on age data in connection with the action of hormones in a particular period of childhood, as well as depending on environmental conditions. 29
In 1915, G. Troshin’s book “Comparative Psychology of Normal and Abnormal Children” 31 was published, in which the author criticized the method of “psychological profiles” for excessive fragmentation of the psyche and the conditions in which the experiment was carried out, and proposed his own methodology based on biological principles studying a child, which has many similarities with the methodology of V.M. Bekhterev. However, the works of Prof. belong to the same period. A.F. Lazursky, deepening the observation methodology. In 1918, his book “Natural Experiment” 32 appeared. His student and follower is the already mentioned prof. M.Ya.Basov.
The study of the anatomical and morphological features of a growing person, along with the work of the school of V.M. Bekhterev, is carried out under the guidance of prof. N.P. Gundobin, specialist in childhood diseases. His book "Peculiarities of Childhood", published in 1906, summarizes the results of the work of him and his colleagues and is a classic 9.
In 1921, three pedological institutions were formed in Moscow: the Central Pedological Institute, the Medical Pedological Institute, and the psychological and pedological department of the 2nd Moscow State University. However, the Central Pedological Institute dealt almost exclusively with issues of childhood psychology; the very name of the newly organized department at the 2nd Moscow State University showed that its creators had not yet developed a clear idea of what pedology was. And finally, in 1922, the Medical-Pedological Institute published a collection entitled “On Child Psychology and Psychopathology,” the very first article of which states that the main task of the named institute is the study of childhood defectiveness.
In the same year, 1922, E.A. Arkin’s book “Preschool Age” 24 was published, which very fully and seriously covered the issues of biology and hygiene of the child and (again, there is no synthesis!) Very few issues of the psyche and behavior.
The First All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology, held in Moscow in 1923, with a special section on pedology, at which 24 reports were heard, brought great revival in the field of childhood studies. The section paid a lot of attention to the question of the essence of pedology. For the first time, A.B. Zalkind’s demagogic call was made for the transformation of pedology into a purely social science, for the creation of “our Soviet pedology.”
Soon after the congress in Orel, a special “Pedological Journal” began to be published. In the same year, 1993, M.Ya. Basov’s monograph “Experience in the Methodology of Psychological Observations” 33 was published as a result of the work of his school. Being to a large extent a continuator of the work of A.F. Lazursky with his natural experiment, M.Ya. Basov pays even more attention to the factor of naturalness in the study of a child, developing a methodology for conducting long-term objective observation of a child in the natural conditions of his life, which makes it possible to holistically characterize the living child's personality. This technique quickly won the sympathy of teachers and pedologists and began to be widely used.
In January 1924, the Second Psychoneurological Congress took place in Leningrad. At this congress, pedology occupied an even more significant place. A number of reports on genetic reflexology by N.M. Shchelovanova and his colleagues were devoted to the study of early childhood.
In 1925, P.P. Blonsky’s work “Pedology” 35 appeared - an attempt to formalize pedology as an independent scientific discipline and at the same time the first textbook on pedology for students of pedagogical institutes. In 1925, P.P. Blonsky published two more works: “Pedology in a mass school of the first level” 36 and “Fundamentals of Pedagogy”. 23 Both books provide material on the application of pedology in the field of education and training, and their author becomes one of the most prominent promoters of pedology, especially its applied significance. The first book provides important material for understanding the process of learning to write and count. The second provides a theoretical basis for the pedagogical process.
At the same time, the publication of the brochure by S.S. Molozhavoy: “Program for studying the behavior of a child or a children’s group” 37, in which the main attention is paid to the study of the environment surrounding the child, and the characteristics of the child’s behavior in connection with the influence of the environment, but very little its anatomical and physiological features are taken into account.
By the end of 1925, the USSR had already accumulated a significant number of publications that can be classified as pedology. However, most publications lack the systemic analysis that M.Ya. Basov spoke about when defining pedology as an independent science. The authors of a small part of the studies are 10, 25,36,38 try to adhere to that synthetic level, which allows us to judge the child and childhood as a special period as a whole, and not from individual aspects.
Since pedology is a science about a person, affecting his social status, contradictions from the scientific often moved into the ideological sphere and took on a political overtones.
In the spring of 1927, a pedological meeting was convened in Moscow at the People's Commissariat of Education of the USSR(?), which brought together all the most prominent workers in the field of pedology. The main problems discussed at this meeting were: the role of environment, heredity and constitution in the development of the child; the importance of the team as a factor shaping a child’s personality; methods of studying the child (mainly discussion on the test method); the relationship between reflexology and psychology, etc.
The problem of the relationship between environment and heredity, studied by pedology, has caused particularly fierce debate.
The most prominent representative of the sociogenic trend in pedology, one of the first to promote the primacy of the environment in the development of a child, was A.B. Zalkind. A psychiatrist by training, a specialist in sex education, whose work was based solely on ideas about the sociogenic development of personality and Marxist phraseology.
The popularity of views on the bioplasticity of the body, especially the child’s body, was supported by “genetic reflexologists,” emphasizing the large and early influence of the cortex and the wide limits of this influence. They believed that the central nervous system has maximum plasticity and that all evolution is moving towards an increase in this plasticity. At the same time, there are types of the nervous system that are constitutionally determined. For the practice of education, it is important “the presence of this plasticity, so that heredity is not given the place that conservative teachers give it, and at the same time, taking into account the type of work of the nervous system to individualize education and to take into account, in terms of education of nervous hygiene, the constitutional characteristics of the nervous system.” 40.
The main objections that this trend has met with from a number of teachers and pedologists 3,10,24 boil down to the fact that recognition of the limitless possibilities of bioplasticity, extreme “pedological optimism” and insufficient consideration of the importance of hereditary and constitutional inclinations in practice lead to underestimation of individualization in education , excessively high demands on the child and teacher and their overload.
V.G. Shtefko gave his diagram of the interaction between the “constitution” of the organism and the environment in a report at a meeting in 1927. The constitution of the body is determined by: 1) hereditary factors that appear in the known laws of inheritance; 2) exogenous factors that influence gametes; 3) exogenous factors influencing the embryo; 4) exogenous factors that influence the body after birth 42 .
The trend of the determining influence of the environment on the development of the organism in comparison with hereditary influences, although clearly emerged at this meeting, but, thanks to the significant opposition of many researchers, has not yet become self-sufficient, the only acceptable one and has prevailed in our country for decades.
The second controversial issue was the problem of the relationship between the individual and the collective. In connection with the installation of the Soviet school “to renounce individualistic tendencies,” the question arose about a “new” understanding of the child, since the teacher’s target “in our labor school is not an individual child, but a growing children’s collective. A child in this collective is interesting insofar as he is endogenous stimulus of the collective" 22 .
On the basis of the latest understanding of the child, a new part of pedology was to develop - the pedology of the collective. The new direction was headed by the head of the Ukrainian school of children's researchers, prof. A.A. Zaluzhny, based on the following methodological socially ordered premise: pedagogical practice does not know the individual child, but only the team; The teacher gets to know the individual child through the team. For a teacher, a good student is a good student in a given children’s group, compared with other children who make up this group. Pedagogical practice pushes towards collectivism, pedagogical theory – towards individualism. Hence the need to “rebuild the theory” 21 . Like A.B. Zalkind, prof. A.A. Zaluzhny also advocated for a new “Soviet” pedology. Thus, the hitherto existing pedology and pedagogy, nurtured on the ideas of Rousseau and Locke, are declared reactionary, since they pay too much attention to the child himself, his heredity, the patterns of formation of his personality, while it is necessary in the collective, through the collective, to educate on The system needs team members - social cogs, spare parts for the system.
Issues of collective pedology were also dealt with by prof. G.A.Fortunatov 43 and G.V.Murashov with employees. They developed a methodology for studying children's groups. E.A. Arkin, mentioned above, also studied the constitutional types of children in a group. His classification of team members according to their tendency to be more extroverted in boys and more introverted in girls drew sharp criticism.
At a meeting in 1927, it was decided to convene the All-Union Pedological Congress in December of the same year with broad representation of all areas of pedology. In the preparatory period before the congress, a change in the balance of forces occurred. In just six months, the number of supporters of the sociologizing trend in pedology has increased significantly. Perestroika in pedology was in full swing, and the crisis was basically over by the congress. There may be several reasons for this, but they are all interconnected.
1. From unformulated, veiled, the social order became clearly formulated and proclaimed, on the basis of which the methodology of science was built. Maximum “bioplasticity” and the decisive transformative impact of the environment from the opinion of individual pedologists turned into the credo of pedology - “revolutionary optimism”. An illustration can be the statement of N.I. Bukharin, voiced a little later at the pedagogical congress, which is very indicative of that period, and which the authors risk citing in full, despite the cumbersomeness of the quotation:
“Supporters of the biogenetic law without any restrictions or those who are carried away by it suffer from the fact that they transfer biological laws to social phenomena and consider them identical. This is an undoubted mistake and stands in an absolutely undeniable connection with a number of biological theories (racial theory, the doctrine of historical and non-historical nations, etc.). We do not at all stand on the point of view of abstract equality, abstract people; this is a nonsense theory that cries to heaven due to its helplessness and contradiction to facts. But we are committed to ensuring that there is no division into non-historical and historical... Silent the theoretical prerequisite for this is what you, pedologists, call the plasticity of the body, those. the opportunity to catch up in a short time, to make up for what was lost... If we stood on the point of view that racial or national characteristics are such stable values that they need to be changed over thousands of years, then, of course, all our work would be absurd, because it was built would be on the sand. A number of organic racial theorists extend their theoretical framework to the problem of class. The propertied classes (in their opinion) have the best features, the best brains and other magnificent qualities, which predetermine and forever perpetuate their dominance of a certain group of people, certain social categories and find a natural scientific, primarily biological, justification for this dominance. Much research has not been carried out on this matter, but even if, which I do not rule out, we obtained superior brains from the propertied classes, at least from their cadres, than from the proletariat, then in the end does this mean that these theories are right? It doesn’t mean because it was like this, but it will be different, because such prerequisites are being created that allow the proletariat, under conditions of plasticity of the organism, to make up for what was lost and completely redesign itself, or, as Marx put it, to change its own nature... If it weren’t for this plasticity of the organism... Then the silent prerequisite would be slow change and relatively little influence of the social environment; the proportion between pre-social adaptations and social adaptations would be such that the center of gravity would lie in the pre-social adaptations, and social adaptations would play a small role, and then there would be no way out, the worker would be biologically tied to the convict wheelbarrow... Hence the question about the social environment and the influence of the social environment must be decided in such a way that the influence of the social environment plays a larger role than is usually assumed" 44.
2. The ideological conjuncture not only opened up a “green” street for all sociologizers of pedology, transforming it from a science that studies the child into a science that describes facts confirming ideological premises, and mainly studies the environment and its impact on the child, and not on him, but and disgraced any other scientific dissent: “He who is not with us is against us.”
3. The fundamental idea of “unity” in the country, behind which stood unitarity, extended to pedology, where the faster development of science required the unification of scientific forces; however, this explanation was accepted by the “tops” and was promoted and carried out among pedologists only under the banner of the primacy of environmental influences on the body.
The first pedological congress was intended to complete the transformation of pedology, give a demonstrative battle to dissent, and unite the disparate ranks of pedologists on a single platform. But if only these tasks had been set before the congress, it would hardly have been possible to carry it out according to a scenario reminiscent of the scenario of the famous session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The congress also faced other tasks, the relevance of which was understood by all pedologists without exception.
The following scientific problems required urgent analysis and solution:
the complete isolation of pedology from pediatrics, and hence the narrow medical and hygienic bias of pediatrics, on the one hand, and the underuse by pedology of the most valuable biological materials available in pediatrics, on the other; insufficient connection between pedology and teaching practice; lack of practical methods in many areas of research and insufficient implementation of existing ones.
There were also organizational problems: the unclear relationship of pedology with the People's Commissariat of Health and the People's Commissariat for Education, the boundaries of their functions were not defined; lack of planning on a state scale for research work in pedology, drift and disproportion of various areas of research; lack of staff positions for pedological practitioners, which was an obstacle to the creation of our own personnel; insufficient funding for pedological research;
ambiguity in the demarcation of the work of pedologists of various scientific and practical training, which led to difficulties in the university training of pedologists and a lack of stripes in their work; the need to create a central all-Union pedological journal and society that coordinates and covers the work 45.
Based on the problems posed before the congress, we can conclude that the congress envisaged internal and external formalization in pedology. The congress was organized by the scientific and pedagogical section of the Main Academic Council (GUS), the People's Commissariat for Education and the People's Commissariat of Health with the participation of over 2000 people. More than 40 leading experts in the field of pedology were elected to the presidium of the congress; N.I. Bukharin, A.V. Lunacharsky, N.K. Krupskaya, N.A. Semashko, I.P. Pavlov and others were elected to the honorary presidium.
The grand opening and the first day of the congress were scheduled for December 27, 1927 in the classroom building of the 2nd Moscow State University. The tragic death of academician V.M. Bekhtereva shocked the congress and delayed its start. V.M. Bekhterev had just graduated from the psycho-neurological congress and actively participated in the preparation of the pedological one. The congress was absorbed by the death of the academician; many of its employees withdrew their reports and went home. The first day of the congress was entirely dedicated to the memory of V.M. Bekhterev and his funeral.
The work of the congress took place from December 28, 1927 to January 4, 1928. A.B. Zalkind made an opening speech. He said that the tasks of the congress were to take into account the work done by Soviet pedologists, determine directions and groupings among them, link pedology with pedagogy and unite Soviet pedology “into a single team.” The plenum of the congress was held on December 28, 29, 30; from December 30 to January 4, seven sections worked in special areas. In the work of the plenary sessions of the congress, four main sections were identified: political and ideological problems, general issues of pedology, the problem of the methodology of studying childhood, pedology of labor.
Political and ideological problems were touched upon in the speeches of N.I. Bukharin and A.V. Lunacharsky. The speeches of N.K. Krupskaya and the report of A.B. Zalkind “Pedology in the USSR” were devoted to general issues of pedology. N.I. Bukharin mainly spoke about the relationship between pedology and pedagogy. In addition, he tried to smooth out, from his own position, the differences in the methodological plan of the schools of V.M. Bekhterev and I.P. Pavlov. A.V. Lunacharsky, like N.I. Bukharin, emphasized the need for a speedy union of pedagogy and pedology, their interpenetration. N.K. Krupskaya repeatedly spoke at the congress on the same occasion.
From a historical point of view, it is not without interest to cite excerpts from speeches at the congress of these historical figures who had a direct and indirect influence on the development of pedology.
N.K. Krupskaya: “Pedology, by its very essence, is materialistic... Modern pedology has many shades: those who simplify the issue and underestimate the influence of the social environment are even inclined to see in pedology some kind of antidote to Marxism, which is becoming deeper and deeper into the school; , on the contrary, goes too far and underestimates heredity and the influence of general laws of development.
A serious drawback hindering the implementation of the Gusov platform turned out to be its pedological lack of elaboration - the lack in science of sufficiently clear instructions about the educational capacity of each age, about its specific features that require age-specific individualization and a programmatic approach.
Even the little that pedology has done in the development of teaching and education methods shows what enormous prospects there are, how significantly it is possible to facilitate learning when using the pedological approach, how much can be achieved in educational terms" 46.
A.V. Lunacharsky: “The stronger the connection between pedology and pedagogy, the sooner pedology is allowed into pedagogical work, into contact with the pedagogical process, the sooner it will grow. Our school network can come closer to a truly normal school network in a socialist Marxist -a state that is scientifically building its culture, when it is thoroughly imbued with a network of sufficiently scientifically trained pedologists. In addition to saturating our school with pedologists, it is also necessary that in every teacher, in the brain of every teacher, there lives, perhaps, a small, but quite strong pedologist. And Another thing is to introduce pedology as one of the main subjects in teacher training, and seriously introduce it, so that it is taught by a person who knows pedology" 47 .
N.I. Bukharin: “The relationship between pedology and pedagogy is the relationship between theoretical discipline, on the one hand, and normative discipline, on the other; and this relationship is such that, from a certain point of view, pedology is the handmaiden of pedagogy. But this does not mean "that the category of a servant is the category of a cook who has not learned to manage. On the contrary, the position of a servant here is a position where this servant gives directive instructions to the normative scientific discipline she serves." 44
The main profiling report of the congress was A.B. Zalkind’s report “Pedology in the USSR”, dedicated to general issues of pedology, which summed up the work done, named the main directions of pedology that existed at that time, institutions engaged in pedological research and practice. The report practically summed up the results of all childhood research over the past decades, not just pedology. Apparently, this is why the congress itself was so numerous, because doctors, teachers, psychologists, physiologists, and pedologists were present and spoke at it.
The complex problem of childhood methodology was developed in the reports of S.S. Molozhavy, V.G. Shtefko, A.G. Ivanov-Smolensky, M.Ya. Basov, K.N. Kornilov, A.S. Zaluzhny and others.
In the debate on methodological reports, a negative attitude towards the exclusive importance of the physiological method was revealed, and a significant dispute arose between representatives of the Bekhterev and Pavlov schools about the understanding of mental phenomena.
Some of the speakers demanded the “destruction” of disagreements between the schools of V.M. Bekhterev and I.P. Pavlov and the “establishment” of practical conclusions on the basis of which further pedological work could be carried out.
In-depth study of general and specific issues of pedology took place in seven sections: research and methodological, preschool, preschool, school age (two sections), difficult child, organizational and program.
In general, the congress went according to the planned scenario: pedology received official recognition, “united” its disparate forces, demonstrating firsthand who the “future” of pedology belongs to, and outlined ways of cooperation with pediatrics and pedagogy as a methodological basis. After the congress, the voluminous journal “Pedology” began to be published, edited by prof. A.B. Zalkind, the first issues of which were mainly collected from reports given at the congress. Pedology receives the necessary allocations, and practically the period from the beginning of 1928 to 1931 is the heyday of “Soviet” pedology. At this time, the introduction of pedological methods into the practice of pedagogical work is underway, the school is replenished with pedological personnel, a program of the People's Commissariat for Education on pedology is being developed, and pedologists are being trained in pediatrics. But during this same period, increasing pressure is being put on the biological research of the child, because from here comes the danger for “revolutionary pedological optimism”, for the dominant ideology.
The 1930s were years of dramatic events in pedology. A period of confrontation of currents began, which led to the final sociologization of pedology. The discussion has flared up again about what kind of pedology our state needs, whose methodology is more revolutionary and Marxist. Despite the persecution, representatives of the “biologization” direction (this included those pedologists who defended Meiman’s understanding of pedology and its independence) did not want to give up their positions. If supporters of the dominant sociologizing trend lacked scientific arguments, then other methods were used: the opponent was declared unreliable. Thus, E.A. Arkin turned out to be a “militant minority and a Machist,” N.M. Shchelovanov was an “idealist,” and V.M. Bekhterev’s school was “reactionary.”
“On the one hand, we are seeing the same old academicism with problems and research methods divorced from today. On the other hand, we are faced with a serene calm that has not yet been eradicated when addressing the most pressing issues of pedology... With such indifference to the introduction of the Marxist method In pedology, we are not surprised by the indifference of the same departments and groups to socialist construction: a real “synthesis” of theory and practice, but a negative synthesis, that is, deeply hostile to the proletarian revolution” 48 .
From January 25 to February 2, 1930, the All-Union Congress on the Study of Man was held in Leningrad, which also became a platform for lively discussion in pedology and corresponding applause. The congress “went into battle with the authoritarianism of the former philosophical leadership, autogenetism, directly directed against the pace of socialist construction; the congress hit the idealistic concepts of the individual, which are always an apology for naked individualism; the congress rejected idealistic and biologizing-mechanical approaches to the collective, revealing its class content and its powerful stimulating role in the conditions of socialism; the congress demanded a radical restructuring of the methods of studying man on the basis of dialectical-materialist principles and on the basis of the requirements of the practice of social construction" 48 . And if at the First Pedological Congress scientific contradictions were still in circulation, here everything already takes on a political coloring and scientific opponents turn out to be enemies of the proletarian revolution. The witch hunt has begun. In fact, at this congress the reactological school (K.N. Kornilova) was destroyed, since “the entire theory and practice of reactology screams about its imperialist general methodological claims” and along the way “the ultra-reflexological perversions of V.M. Bekhterev and his school” were revealed, and the entire direction declared reactionary.
In the journal "Pedology" a new section appeared in 1931 - "Tribune", set aside specifically for exposing the "internal" enemies in pedology. Many swore allegiance to the regime, “realized” their “guilt” and repented. Materials are being published with a “radical revision of the pre-Soviet age standards” of childhood from the point of view of their much greater capacity and qualitatively different content among the children of the working masses in comparison with what our enemies wanted to admit. There was a revision of the problem of “giftedness” and “difficult childhood” along the lines of “those greatest creative riches that our new system opens up for worker-peasant children.” Methods of pedological research, especially the test method and laboratory experiment, were attacked. Blows were also dealt to “prostitution” in the field of pedological statistics. A number of serious attacks have been made on the “individualism” of pre-Soviet pedology. Quite eloquently, through the magazine “Pedology,” a parade of targets for bullying was held, and everyone was invited to participate in the “hunt” (including the “targets” too). However, the editors of the magazine did not take credit for organizing the persecution: “The political core of pedological discussions is in no way a special merit, a “super-merit” of pedology itself: here it reflects only the persistent pressure of the class pedological order, which in essence is always directly political, acutely party order" 48. Analyzing further the situation in pedology, A.B. Zalkind calls everyone to “repentance”... Differentiation within the pedological camp requires, first of all, an analysis of my personal perversions... However, this does not relieve us of the need to decipher the perversions in the works of our others leaders in pedological work... and our journal should immediately become the organizer and collector of this material. At a review of the pedological and psychological departments of the Academy of Communist Education, P.P. Blonsky spoke about the idealistic and mechanistic roots of his mistakes. Unfortunately, Comrade Blonsky has not yet provided a concrete analysis of these errors in their objective roots, in their development and in their real material, and we urgently await his corresponding speech in our journal. We invite our comrades to help P.P. Blonsky with articles and requests." The "comrades" were not slow to respond: in the next issue of the magazine an article about Blonsky's mistakes by A.M. Helmont "For Marxist-Leninist pedology" 49 is published.
The journal "Pedology" demanded "repentance" or, what happened more often, blasphemous denunciations against "insufficiently devoted scientists." They demanded “help from comrades” in relation to K.N. Kornilov, S.S. Molozhavoy, A.S. Zaluzhny, M.Ya. Basov, I.A. Sokolyansky, N.M. Shchelovanov. They demanded the “disarmament” of the outstanding teacher and psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, as well as A.V. Luria and others.
And these “criticism” and “self-criticism” were published not only in the journal “Pedology” itself, but also in socio-political magazines, especially in the journal “Under the Banner of Marxism” 21,50,51.
On the other hand, bullying in the form of “scientific criticism” has become not only a way of one’s scientific understanding, but also an opportunity to prove one’s loyalty to the regime. That is why so many “devastating” articles appear at this time, in almost all scientific journals, not to mention socio-political ones. What such “criticism” was like can be demonstrated by the example of M.Ya. Basov, whose persecution ended in a tragic ending. In the journal “Pedology” No. 3 for 1931, an article by M.P. Feofanov “Methodological foundations of the Basov school” 52 is published, which the author himself summarizes in the following provisions: 1) the reviewed works of M.Ya. Basov cannot in any way be considered responsible requirements of Marxist methodology; 2) in their methodological settings they represent an eclectic confusion of biologism, mechanistic elements and Marxist phraseology; 3) the main work of M.Ya. Basov “General Fundamentals of Pedology” is a work that, as a teaching guide for students, can only do harm, since it gives a completely incorrect orientation both to research scientific work on the study of children and adults, as well as to educate a person’s personality; its harmfulness is further enhanced by the fact that Marxist phraseology obscures the harmful aspects of the book; 4) the concept of the human personality, according to the teachings of M.Ya. Basov, is completely inconsistent with the entire meaning, spirit and guidelines for understanding a historical personality, a social-class person, which was developed in the works of the founders of Marxism; it is inherently reactionary.
These conclusions are made on the basis of the encyclopedic work of M.Ya. Basov in the field of pedology and references in this work to the world's most prominent psychologists and pedologists who had the “misfortune” of not being born in the USSR - and were not exponents of the ideology of the victorious proletariat. This and similar criticisms entailed a corresponding administrative reaction from the leadership of Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen, where M.Ya. Basov worked. M.Ya. Basov had to write a response article, but it was published already... posthumously. A few months before his death, M.Ya. Basov left the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute (hardly on his own initiative), where he headed pedological work. He goes to “realize his mistakes” at the machine, as a simple worker, and absurdly dies from blood poisoning. On October 8, 1931, the Institute’s newspaper “For Bolshevik Pedagogical Personnel” published a corresponding obituary and included M.Ya. Basov’s suicide note:
"To students, graduate students, professors and teachers of the pedology department and my Employees. Dear comrades!
An absurd accident, complicated by the difficulties of our brother taking over production, tore me out of your ranks. Of course, I regret this, since I could still work as needed for our great socialist country. Remember that any loss in the ranks is compensated by increasing the energy of those remaining. Forward to Marxist-Leninist pedology - the science of the laws of development of socialist man at our historical stage.
M.Ya.Basov" 53 .
He was 39 years old.
The “critical” work was further revived by J.V. Stalin’s letter “On Some Issues in the History of Bolshevism” to the journal “Proletarian Revolution”. In all scientific institutions, in response to this message, which called for an end to “rotten liberalism” in science, an ideological cleansing of personnel took place. Using the example of the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after A.I. Herzen, one can illustrate how it took place: in the newspaper “For the Bolshevik Pedagogical Personnel” dated January 19, 1932, in the section “The Struggle for the Party of Science” it was printed: “Comrade Stalin’s letter mobilized for increased vigilance, "to fight against rotten liberalism. In the order of deployment, the work was opened and exposed [listed by department]... in the pedology department: Bogdanovism, subjective idealism in the works of the psychologist Marlin and eclecticism, Menshevik idealism in the works of the pedologist Shardakov."
The purge also affected the leading pedological personnel. The leadership of the central press organ, the journal Pedology, has changed. A.B. Zalkind, despite all his ardor as a flagellant of himself and a flagellant of others, was removed from the post of executive editor: his “mistakes” in the first works on sex education were too serious, which he subsequently edited many times opportunistically, and later practically abandoned them , switching to purely organizational work. However, he turned out to be unbecoming of the building that he erected with such tenacity, although subsequently, right up to the defeat of pedology, he would still remain at the helm of pedology. Not only the editors of the journal are changing, but also the direction of work. Pedology becomes an “applied pedagogical science” and since 1932 has been defined as “a social science that studies the patterns of age-related development of children and adolescents based on the leading role of the patterns of class struggle and socialist construction of the USSR.” However, the practical benefits of pedology to education where the work of pedologists was carried out professionally and competently was obvious and determined the support of pedology from the People's Commissariat for Education. In 1933, a resolution was issued by the board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR on pedological work, which determined the directions of work and methods. N.K. Krupskaya and P.P. Blonsky 3 participated in the development of this resolution.
The result of this resolution was the widespread introduction of pedology into schools, the slogan appeared: “Every school has a pedologist,” which to some extent resembles the modern trend of psychologizing education. The opening of new schools specialized for certain groups of students was subsidized, including an increasing number of schools for mentally retarded and handicapped children. The practice of pedological examination, the distribution of children into classes and schools in accordance with their actual and mental age, which often does not coincide with the passport age, as well as the not always high-quality work of practicing pedologists due to their low qualifications, often caused dissatisfaction with parents and teachers in the local areas. This dissatisfaction was reinforced by the ideological indoctrination of the population. The differentiation of school into regular school and for different categories of children with mental retardation “violated” the ideology of equality and averageness of the Soviet people, which often reached the point of absurdity in its premises: statements that a child of the most advanced and revolutionary class should be worthy of his position, be advanced and revolutionary both in the field of physical and mental development due to the transformative impact of the revolutionary environment and the extreme lability of the body; the laws of heredity were violated, the negative influence of the environment in a socialist society was rejected. From these provisions it followed that a child could not be mentally and physically retarded, and therefore pedological examinations and the opening of new schools for mentally retarded and defective children were considered inappropriate; Moreover, they are a provocation on the part of bourgeois-minded, unreconstructed pedologists and the People's Commissariat for Education, who have taken them under their wing.
In this regard, in Pravda and other media there are calls to stop such provocations and to protect Soviet children from fanatic pedologists. Within pedology itself, the campaign continues to rebuild pedology into a truly Marxist science 55,56 But neither in the pedological press itself, nor in the pedagogical press, nor in the corridors of the People's Commissariat for Education is there any sense that the end is approaching. To criticism in the media and from some figures of the People's Commissariat for Education, who call for a ban on pedology or its return to the bosom of the psychology that gave birth to it, detailed answers are given, explaining the goals and results of the work, its necessity. It seems that the devastating resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks came as a complete surprise to many teachers and pedologists. This suggests that we need to look for the prohibition of pedology not only in its content, but also in a certain political game of the “top”. N.K. Krupskaya was at the tip of the “bayonet”.
A report on the implementation of this resolution was probably submitted to the Central Committee. Thus ended the brief history of pedology in the USSR. The baby is sacrificed to politics. The defeat of good undertakings is a “minor” political action directed against N.K. Krupskaya, N.I. Bukharin, A.V. Lunacharsky, V.M. Bekhterev, who actively supported Nadezhda Konstantinovna.
There are also purely internal reasons for this. First of all, there is a lack of unity in understanding the essence of science: not the distribution of ideas to take away, but their eclectic introduction from other areas of knowledge and even from areas of deep ignorance. True synthesis in thinking, as illustrated, has not occurred. Pedagogical dominance and later unjustified sociologization hid the main roots of pedology.
The only correct way, in our opinion, would be a path based on the creation of a doctrine about human individuality, about the genetic predetermination of individuality, on an understanding of how, as a result of the wide possibilities of gene combinatorics, a typology of personality is formed in the interaction “genotype - environment”. On deep penetration into the concept reaction norm genotype could develop a deep and lasting science of man. It could have been already then, in the 20-30s. to receive normal scientific development and practice of pedagogical activity, which to this day remains rather an art.
Perhaps society has not matured enough to understand the goals of science, as happened more than once, as happened in its time with the discovery of G. Mendel. However, the reason for this is the fact that the level of banal genetic thinking was inaccessible to a wide range of pedologists, psychologists and teachers, as, by the way, at the present time, although there were first contacts. Thus, M.Ya. Basov, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, is a man of high humanitarian culture, directing “pedological perversions” at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen, invited the famous scientist Yu.I. Polyansky to teach the relevant course. Meanwhile, on the one hand, this was a course in general genetics, but what was needed was a course in human genetics; on the other hand, it was a one-time event. You can take a course in genetics, but not absorb its essence, which is what happened with M.Ya. Basov himself. There was no textbook on human genetics at that time. Somewhat earlier (this is the task of a special and very important essay), the science of eugenics went out, and then genetics itself; the dramatic consequences of this in the country are still being felt.
The formula “We cannot wait for favors from nature! Taking them is our task!” And we take, we take, we take... ignorantly and cruelly, ruining not only nature itself, but also the intellectual potential of the Fatherland. “They took it”, but did not claim it. Did this potential survive after all the selective processes? We think optimistically - yes! Even with the modern outlandish pressure of environmental bungling, it is worth relying on the limitless possibilities of hereditary variability. Having applied various methods of early psychodiagnostics of a person’s individual characteristics, which turned out to be well developed in the West, it is worth thinking about how to demand from each person the maximum possible that he can give to society. Only now, perhaps, we shouldn’t call these thoughts pedology, it’s already been experienced.
NOTES
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8 Blonsky P.P.
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13 Shapiro Ya.I. Basic issues of pedology // Vestn. enlightenment. 1927. No. 5. pp.82–88; No. 6. pp.67–72; No. 7. pp.65–76.
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37 Molozhavyi S.S. A program for studying the behavior of a child or a group of children. M., 1924. 6 p.
38 Arkin E.A. Brain and soul. M.; L., 1928. 136 p.
39 Zalkind A.B. Revision of pedology of school age: Report at the III All-Russian Congress on Preschool Education // Worker of Education. 1923. No. 2.
40 Nevertheless, A.B. Zalkind wrote earlier: “Of course, by passing on trained characteristics by inheritance, since in one generation it is impossible to seriously change the properties of the organism...”.
41 Shchelovanov N.M. On the issue of raising children in nurseries // Issues. motherhood and infancy. 1935. No. 2. P.7–11.
42 Shtefko V.G., Serebrovskaya M.V., Shugaev V.S. Materials on the physical development of children and adolescents. M., 1925. 49 p.
43 Fortunatov G.A. Pedological work in preschool institutions // Education on transport. 1923. No. 9–10. P.5–8.
44 Bukharin N.I. From speeches at the First Pedological Congress // On the path to a new school. 1928. No. 1. P.3–10.
45 Materials of the First All-Union Pedological Congress. M., 1928.
46 Krupskaya N.K. From speeches at the First Pedological Congress // On the path to a new school. 1928. No. 1. P.3–10. Let us note that these statements by N.K. Krupskaya were not included in the “complete” collections of her works.
47 Lunacharsky A.V. Materials of the 1st All-Union Pedological Congress. M., 1928.
48 Zalkind A.B. On the situation on the pedological front // Pedology. 1931. No. 1. P.1–2.
49 Helmont A.M. For Marxist-Leninist pedology // Pedology. 1931. No. 3. pp.63–66.
50 Leventuev P. Political perversions in pedology // Pedology. 1931. No. 3. pp.63–66.
51 Stanevich P. Against excessive enthusiasm for the method of variation statistics and its incorrect application in anthropometry and psychometry // Pedology. 1931. No. 3. pp.67–69.
52 Feofanov M.P. Methodological foundations of Basov’s school // Pedology. 1931. No. 3. P.21–34.
55 Feofanov M.P. The theory of cultural development in pedology as an eclectic concept that has mainly idealistic roots // Pedology. 1932. No. 1–2. P.21–34.
56 Babushkin A.P. Eclecticism and reactionary slander against Soviet children and teenagers // Pedology. 1932. No. 1–2. P.35–41.
The development of human sciences caused at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. the emergence in Europe and America of new experimental methods of studying children - “child study”, later called the term pedology (translated from Greek - “science of children”), under which it spread in Russia. A deep analysis of the development of pedology in Russia was made by modern researcher E.G. Ilyashenko, based on his works, the material in this paragraph is presented.
A number of researchers associate the beginning of pedology with the name of the German doctor D. Tiedemann, who in 1787 published the essay “Observation of the Development of Mental Abilities in Children.” However, the beginning of the systematic study of children is considered to be the work of the German physiologist G. Preyer “The Soul of a Child” (1882). If Preyer is called by researchers of the history of pedology “the ideological inspirer of the pedological movement,” then the American psychologist S. Hall is considered the creator of this movement, the founder of pedology, who in 1889 created the first pedological laboratory, which grew into an institute of child psychology. Thanks to Hall, by 1894 there were 27 laboratories for studying children and four specialized journals in America. He organized annual summer courses for teachers and parents.
The term “pedology” itself appeared in 1893. It was proposed by Hall’s student O. Chrisman to designate a single science that summarizes the knowledge of all other sciences about children. Pedology was intended to combine a variety of data about the child accumulated by psychologists, physiologists, doctors, sociologists, lawyers, and teachers, and to give a more complete picture of the child’s age-related development. Exploring the history of the emergence of pedology, pedagogical historian F.A. Fradkin wrote that the new century required fundamentally new human qualities. In order to prepare a healthy, creative, intellectually developed person, capable of coping with enormous psychological and physical overloads, it was necessary to gain new knowledge about a person and how to prepare him for life. Certain sciences - medicine, psychology, physiology, pediatrics, sociology, ethnography, etc. - approached the child from their own positions. Fragments of knowledge that were not synthesized into a single whole were difficult to use in educational work. Therefore, the creation of a new science - pedology, which studies the child holistically at different age stages, was met with enthusiasm.
Within the framework of pedology, the physiological characteristics of the development of children, the formation of their psyche, and the peculiarities of the emergence and development of the child’s personality began to be studied. Pedological research was the prerequisite for the creation of an anthropological foundation for pedagogy.
Having spread in America, the pedological movement came to Europe, where it went deeper, setting itself the task of “developing the scientific foundations of pedagogy”, and began developing methods for studying children's nature.
Along with the term “pedology”, the following definitions were used as equivalent: childhood psychology, educational psychology, experimental pedagogy, educational hygiene and others, reflecting the specifics of the chosen area of research. Having put forward the task of studying the nature of the child, they began to widely use experiment and the method of systematic observation in studying the processes of mental life - experimental pedagogy. At the beginning of the century, the terms pedology, experimental pedagogy, experimental educational psychology, psychological pedology were understood mainly as synonyms.
In Russia, pedology fell on prepared ground. Ushinsky's ideas about the need for a comprehensive study of the educated person were reflected and continued in pedological research. It can be considered that in Russia pedology made an attempt to solve the problems of educational anthropology.
The first pedological studies in our country were carried out at the beginning of the 20th century. NOT. Rumyantsev, I.A. Sikorsky, G.I. Rossolimo, A.F. Lazursky, V.P. Kashchenko. But Professor Alexander Petrovich Nechaev (1870-1948) is considered the founder of Russian pedology. In 1901, in St. Petersburg, Nechaev created the first laboratory of experimental pedagogical psychology in Russia, where the mental characteristics of children of different ages were studied. In 1904, pedagogical courses were opened at this laboratory, where students learned the basics of anatomy, physiology, pediatrics, child psychology, and mastered the technique of conducting psychological research. In the same year, a pedological laboratory named after K.D. was founded at the pedagogical museum of military educational institutions in St. Petersburg. Ushinsky, who began to be considered “the first Russian pedologist.” Students who attended courses at the museum studied the child as a subject of education, gained knowledge about the functioning of the brain, the characterological qualities of the individual, studied statistics, psychology, the history of pedology and pedagogy, i.e. studied the foundations of sciences, which Ushinsky called anthropological.
Similar courses were organized in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara. In 1907, Nechaev transformed permanent pedological courses into the Pedagogical Academy, where people with higher education studied physiology, psychology, pedagogy, and learned methods of teaching many disciplines. In the same year, doctor and psychologist V.M. Bekhterev organized the Pedological and Psychoneurological Institutes in St. Petersburg.
All this testified to the acceptance by the public consciousness of the ideas of Ushinsky’s pedagogical anthropology about the importance of knowledge about the basic laws of the formation and development of the child’s body and psyche for successful pedagogical activity, about the need for holistic ideas about man for upbringing and teaching.
The expansion of the pedological movement in Russia is also evidenced by the fact that in 10 years (1906-1916) two All-Russian congresses on educational psychology (1906, 1909) and three All-Russian congresses on experimental pedagogy (1910, 1913, 1916) were held, the main merit in whose organizations belong to Nechaev. At three subsequent psychological congresses, called congresses of experimental pedagogy, issues of experimental research of personality, pedagogical problems, school hygiene, and methods of teaching individual academic subjects in their relation to psychology were discussed. As a result of the work of the congresses, the holistic study of personality, and not just individual functions, was placed at the forefront.
A.P. Nechaev called for freeing the school “from the deadening chains of pedagogical techniques that are not based on an accurate knowledge of the child’s nature,” since only with complete and comprehensive knowledge of the student’s personality can it be guided and educated. In the work “Modern experimental psychology in its relation to issues of school teaching,” Nechaev wanted to bring together experimental psychology and pedagogy, connect the data of experimental psychology with the most important provisions of modern didactics, and find out the importance of experimental psychological research techniques for the successful development of didactics.
For the whole world, the first decade of the 20th century. became a time of expansion and organizational formation of the international pedological movement. Most of the first generation of pedologists in Russia were doctors. They were attracted primarily by “exceptional children,” gifted, defective, educationally difficult children. A significant phenomenon among studies of such issues was the two-volume work “Anthropological Foundations of Education. Comparative psychology of normal and abnormal children” G.Ya. Troshin, in which “the anthropological foundations of education are studied... on the comparative psychology of normal and abnormal children,” which was at that time a completely new way of studying the problems of children. Troshin speaks out against the indifferent attitude towards unsuccessful children, which, in his opinion, has become entrenched in Russian pedagogy. He writes that essentially there is no difference between normal and abnormal children: both are people, both are children, both develop according to the same laws, and the difference lies only in the method of development. In his opinion, children's abnormality in the vast majority of cases is a product of abnormal social conditions, and the degree of participation in abnormal children is one of the indicators of social well-being.
Focusing on the rapidly developing natural sciences at that time, pedology initially concentrated research issues around the psychophysiological features of the development of the growing personality, paying little attention to the social and sociocultural problems of man as a subject of education. Over time, it was the psychological side of research that began to come to the fore, and gradually pedology began to acquire a pronounced psychological orientation. Pedagogical issues were no longer a random conclusion from psychological studies of childhood, but the starting point for them.
But the development of pedology followed a slightly different line than Ushinsky assumed when formulating his ideal of pedagogical anthropology. He interpreted pedagogical anthropology as a science that, based on the synthesis of scientific knowledge about man, will determine a new approach to his education from the internal laws of development, i.e. he saw educational anthropology as a link between pedagogy and other sciences that study man. Pedology, having concentrated on the study of the child, and to a greater extent his psychophysiology, did not reach the level of studying a person in application to his upbringing.
In 1921, the Central Pedological Institute was opened in Moscow, which existed until 1936, whose task was the systematic and organized study of the child from the standpoint of psychology, anthropology, medicine and pedagogy with the aim of properly influencing his development and upbringing. Since 1923, the “Pedological Journal” began to be published, published by the Oryol Pedological Society under the editorship of the famous pedologist M.Ya. Basova.
The research of doctors, psychologists, and physiologists involved in pedology, which began before the revolution, continued. Developing the problem of an individual approach to personality education in a clinic for difficult children, doctor Vsevolod Petrovich Kashchenko (1870-1943) already then predetermined the theory and practice of humanistic pedagogy and psychotherapy. Alexander Fedorovich Lazursky (1874-1917) sought to create a typology of personalities to develop, on its basis, pedagogical aspects of interaction between teacher and student.
However, the attitude towards this group of pedologists has changed. They began to be criticized for studying the child outside the context of environmental factors, they were required to take a class approach, to prove that the “proletarian child” is better and superior to children from other social groups, and were accused of functionalism.
Reflexologists took the opposite position to psychologists - I.A. Aryamov, A.A. Dernova-Yarmolenko, Yu.P. Frolov. They viewed the child as a machine, an automaton, reacting to stimuli from the external environment, and considered mental activity in connection with nervous processes.
On the one hand, reflexology attracted people with its natural scientific basis and pronounced materialistic attitudes, but, on the other hand, according to the famous psychologist and teacher P.P. Blonsky, her mechanistic materialism reduced the study of such complex phenomena of human life as labor, political activity or scientific research, only to reflexes. This approach instilled a view of the child as a passive being, ignoring his activity.
Blonsky himself consistently developed the biogenetic concept of child development, arguing that a child in his ontological development repeats all the main stages of biological evolution and stages of the cultural and historical development of mankind. Thus, biogeneticists believed that infancy and early childhood correspond to the phase of primitive society. The harmony of the physical and mental development of a 9-10 year old child, his belligerence and pugnacity represent a reproduction in special forms of the phase of development of human society, reminiscent of the life of a Greek metropolis, and the alienation and gloom of a teenager are an echo of medieval relations between people, youthful maximalism and individualism are traits of people New time. But supporters of biologism did not take into account historical experience, which showed that not all peoples go through the phases of development identified by biogeneticists and that in different cultures the age characteristics of children manifest themselves differently. In addition, the idea of biogenetics came into conflict with political and ideological guidelines - to lead peoples to socialism, bypassing the historical stages of social development.
Sociogeneticists - S.S. Molozhavyi, A.S. Zaluzhny, A.B. Zalkind - focused on the determining role of external factors in the upbringing and formation of personality. They exaggerated the role of the environment in the upbringing of the individual, thereby belittling the role of upbringing in the process of child formation. This exaggeration made it possible to justify pedagogical failures by reference to objective conditions and to underestimate the age and individual characteristics of children. In addition, the exaggeration of the role of the environment in education denied pedology as a science, making it unnecessary to study the process of child development taking into account all internal and external factors.
In the 1920-1930s. pedology in Russia developed actively: studies of various age periods of children were conducted (P.P. Blonsky, L.S. Vygotsky, M.M. Rubinshtein, N.A. Rybnikov, A.A. Smirnov), studies of higher nervous activity in children (N.I. Krasnogorsky); the child’s cognitive processes were studied; the interests and needs of children were identified, including in children's groups (P.L. Zagorovsky, A.S. Zaluzhny, N.M. Shchelovanov). M.Ya. Basov and A.P. Boltunov developed methods for pedological research. Attempts were made to theoretically comprehend the data obtained in order to develop a general theory of child development (M.Ya. Basov, L.S. Vygotsky, A.B. Zalkind). And although at this time the name of the founder of educational anthropology K.D. Ushinsky was practically not mentioned; the idea of the need to study a child for his upbringing was continued in the works of Russian pedologists.
Participating in the work of the first congress of pedologists (1928) were N.K. Krupskaya and A.V. Lunacharsky, who in his report said that “in the head of every teacher there should be a small but strong enough pedologist.” He believed that pedological knowledge is needed by the teacher to make the lives of children more joyful, more interesting, and to develop their social instincts and abilities , and pedology should become the scientific support of educational and educational processes.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (1869-1939) drew the attention of the congress participants to how important it is to place the child at the center of the pedagogical process. It is not discipline itself, nor the methods of working with children, that should worry teachers in the first place, she believed, since methods of education can contribute to the development of a child, but they can also inhibit the formation of his mental and physical strength. Pedology should give teachers deep knowledge of the child, his desires, moods, motives and interests. The principle of “starting from the child,” in her opinion, should become the main principle of working with children, and here pedology can play a huge role.
Much attention at the congress was also paid to pedological tools - all kinds of tests, questionnaires, questionnaires, statistical methods aimed at measuring intelligence, emotional and behavioral reactions, the physical development of the child, his memory, imagination, attention, perception, attitude to the world. After this congress, the position of a pedologist who studied children was introduced in schools, and the journal “Pedology” began to be published.
In order to become an independent science, pedology had to define its subject, develop a methodology, and find a place in the system of scientific knowledge. However, the subject of pedology was not clearly defined from the very beginning. The only task was set - to collect and systematize all information related to the life and development of children, but the principle uniting this information was not found. And in this, the fate of pedology is similar to the fate of educational anthropology, which failed after the death of its founder K.D. Ushinsky to become a science with clearly defined content and methodology.
Considering pedology to be the science of child development, Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) tried to substantiate the methodological basis of pedology. He derived the laws of child development, considering it a process that occurs cyclically over time, in which certain aspects of the child develop unevenly and disproportionately. Each aspect of a child’s development has its own optimal period of development.
Calling pedology the science of the age-related development of a child in a certain socio-historical environment, P.P. Blonsky believed that pedology should use the achievements of not only psychology, but also other sciences, synthesizing data about the child and analyzing them for the purpose of applying them in the process of education.
Developing the methodology of pedology, Blonsky, paying tribute to the ideology of those years, refers to Lenin’s formulation of the dialectical path to knowledge of truth: from living contemplation to abstract thinking and from there to practice. He believes that the study of child development should begin with observation of specific facts of this development. But the observation must be scientific - expedient, consistent and planned, with the goal of solving a scientific problem. In cases where it is necessary to learn more deeply about the experiences of the subject being studied, Blonsky suggests using introspection (introspection), giving the subject being studied the opportunity to freely talk about his experiences, and then move on to asking questions of interest to the researcher. Blonsky considers the use of certain memories of adults about their childhood to be a unique form of using introspection in pedology. But observation methods, in his opinion, are imperfect. Blonsky also calls statistics, which provides a quantitative description of mass phenomena, an important method of pedology.
The testing method has become widespread in pedological research. Test results were considered sufficient basis for psychological diagnosis and prognosis. Gradually, the absoluteization of this approach led to the discrediting of the test method for many years.
Mikhail Yakovlevich Basov (1892-1931) paid great attention to the popularization and introduction of the observation method into pedagogical practice. In his work “Methods of Psychological Observations of Children” (1926), he proposes observational schemes and a methodology for analyzing empirical data obtained during observation in a natural experiment. Basov’s research traces a connection with Ushinsky’s ideas about the importance of knowing the laws of the society in which a person lives and develops.
In general, all pedologists agreed that the subject of pedology study is the child. Pedology studies the child as an integral organism (A.A. Smirnov), as a single whole (L.S. Vygotsky), its properties, patterns of development in its entirety and relationships (P.P. Blonsky), basic conditions, laws, stages and types of biological and social development of a specific historical child (G.S. Kostyuk). The possibility of such a study was seen in the integration of anatomical, physiological, psychological, and social knowledge about the child. However, pedology never became such an integrative, comprehensive science about the child. Modern researchers of the history of pedology see the reason for this in the fact that all those sciences on which it was based were either still experiencing a new period of their formation (psychology, pedagogy, etc.), or were completely absent in our country (sociology, etc.) ; Essentially, the integration of interdisciplinary connections has not yet begun.
The state of pedology was affected by the ideological pressure that intensified by the early 1930s and the complex atmosphere that was developing in the scientific community. Blonsky wrote that “the pedologist proposes to replace pedagogy and psychology with his science, the teacher drowns pedology, and the psychologist claims to replace both pedology and pedagogy with his educational psychology.” In addition, pedology was not ready for the practical use of its results, as the time demanded. There were not enough trained personnel.
According to modern researchers of the history of pedology, the decline of the pedological movement in Russia occurred already in 1931-1932. After 1932, the journal “Pedology” ceased publication. It was finally banned on July 4, 1936 by a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party. (b) “On pedological perversions in the Narkompros system.” All pedological research was stopped, the works of pedologists were withdrawn from use. As an academic discipline, it was excluded from the curricula of pedagogical institutes and pedagogical technical colleges; pedology departments, pedological classrooms and laboratories were liquidated. P.P.’s textbooks were banned. Blonsky “Pedology for pedagogical universities”, A.A. Fortunatova, I.I. Sokolov “Pedology for Pedagogical Colleges” and others, the works of pedologists were removed from all libraries. Many scientists were repressed.
Among those repressed was Albert Petrovich Pinkevich (1883/4-1939), a prominent scientist who made a worthy contribution to the development of national pedagogical science. In 1924-1925 His two-volume “Pedagogy” was published, in which education was considered as promoting the development of innate human properties. In the best textbook on pedagogy at that time, a large place was occupied by the presentation of information about the development of children of different ages. He was one of the first to draw attention to the close connection between pedagogy and the physiology of higher nervous activity, noting the great importance of the works of I.P. Pavlova to develop a number of pedagogical problems.
Originating as a holistic science about the educated person, trying to find a continuation in pedology, a new branch of knowledge - educational anthropology - broke up into separate ones: developmental psychology, developmental physiology, educational psychology. The main idea on which not only pedology, but also Ushinsky’s pedagogical anthropology was based - the idea of a holistic study of man - has disappeared. Researchers began to be guided by the specific, limited task of studying one or another aspect of a child’s life. However, the main achievement of pedology - the consolidation of an integrated approach to the study of the child as a methodological principle - is again becoming relevant in modern human studies.
Control questions
1.What did pedology do? Why is it considered a scientific branch of educational anthropology?
2.What strengths and weaknesses emerged in the process of developing pedology as a scientific discipline?
I What are the reasons for the ban on pedology in 1936?
LITERATURE
1.Ananyev B.G. On the problems of modern human science. M., 1977.
2. Berdyaev N.A. About the purpose of a person. M., 1993.
3. Bekhterev V.M. Problems of human development and education. M., 1997.
4.Bim-Bad B.M. Educational anthropology. M., 2003.
5. Blonsky P.P. Pedology. M., 2000.
6. Boguslavsky M.V. The genesis of the humanistic paradigm of education in domestic pedagogy at the beginning of the 20th century. // Pedagogy. 2000. No. 4. P. 63-70.
7.Vakhterov V.P. Fundamentals of new pedagogy // Izbr. ped. op. M., 1987.
8.Ventzel K.N. Free education. M., 1993.
9. Vygotsky L.S. Lectures on pedology. Izhevsk, 2001.
10.Hesse.S.I. Fundamentals of Pedagogy: Introduction to Applied Philosophy. M., 1995. The mental life of children. Essays on educational psychology / Ed. A.F. Lazursky, A.P. Nechaeva. M., 1910.
11.Zenkovshy V.V. Problems of education in the light of Christian anthropology. M., 1996.
12.Ilyashenko E.G. Domestic pedology in the context of the development of pedagogical anthropology (the first third of the 20th century) // Proceedings of the Department of Pedagogical Anthropology of the URAO. Vol. 17. 2002. pp. 59-76.
13.Ilyashenko E.G. Development of anthropological and pedagogical ideas in Russia (second half of the 19th - first third of the 20th century) // Bulletin of URAO. 2003. No. 3. P. 104-149.
14. Kant I. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. St. Petersburg, 1999.
15. Kapterev P.F. M., 2002. (Anthology of humane pedagogy).
16. Kornetov G.B. Humanistic education: traditions and prospects. M., 1993.
17. Kulikov V.B. Pedagogical.anthropology. Sverdlovsk, 1988.
18.Lesgaft P.F. Anthropology and pedagogy // Selected articles. ped. op. M., 1988. pp. 366-376.
19. Makarenko A.S. Collection cit.: In 8 vol. M., 1983.
20.Montessori M. Method of scientific pedagogy applied to children's education in orphanages. M., 1915.
21. Pirogov N.I. Questions of life // Selected articles. ped. op. M, 1985.
22.Romanov A.A. A.P. Nechaev. At the origins of experimental pedagogy. M., 1996.
23. Slobodchikov V.I., Isaev E.I. Fundamentals of psychological anthropology // Human psychology: Introduction to the psychology of subjectivity. M., 1995.
24. Sukhomlinsky V.A. M., 1998. (Anthology of humane pedagogy).
25. Ushinsky K.D. Man as a subject of education. Experience of pedagogical anthropology // Pedagogical works: In 6 volumes. T. 5, 6. M., 1989.
27.Fradkin F.A. Pedology: myths and reality. M., 1991.
28. Chernyshevsky N.G. Anthropological principle in philosophy. M., 1948.
29. Chistyakov V.V. Anthropological and methodological foundations of pedagogy. Yaroslavl, 1999.
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Pedology (from the Greek rbydt - child and the Greek lgpt - science) is a direction in science that aims to combine the approaches of various sciences (medicine, biology, psychology, pedagogy) to the development of a child.
The term is obsolete and currently has only historical meaning. Most of the productive scientific results of pedological research have been assimilated by childhood psychology.
Story.
In the world. The emergence of pedology was caused by the penetration of evolutionary ideas into psychology and pedagogy and the development of applied branches of psychology and experimental pedagogy. The first works of a pedological nature date back to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. - G. S. Hall, J. Baldwin, E. Meyman, V. Preyer, etc. The term “pedology” was proposed in 1893 by the American researcher Oscar Chrisman.
Pedology in Russia and the USSR. In Russia, the ideas of pedology were adopted and developed by V.M. Bekhterev, G.I. Rossolimo, A.P. Nechaev and others, while I. Pavlov and his school were very critical.
In the USSR, pedology was at the peak of its development in the 20-30s of the 20th century, especially after the support of L.D. Trotsky, when pedology was “crossed” with Freudianism. In schools, there was an active introduction of the practices of psychological testing, classroom staffing, organization of the school regime, etc., institutes of Soviet “psychoanalytic pedology” corresponding to the “Children’s Home” were created in Moscow and Petrograd (A. Luria, V. Schmidt, E. Adler).
However, the strong bias in the activities of pedological laboratories towards sorting students on the basis of their intellectual qualities was not consistent with the line of the Communist Party on the equality of all representatives of the working class in receiving education, nor was it consistent with the ideology of universal equality embodied in the practice of “group education”. In addition, the illiterate implementation of the “psychoanalytical” bias in raising children showed the complete inconsistency of the union of pedology and psychoanalysis that had long existed at state expense. Active struggle against pedology was led by A.S. Makarenko and K.I. Chukovsky.
The result of this was the defeat and collapse of pedology, which came after the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On pedological perversions in the system of People's Commissariat of Education” (1936).
However, along with pedology, the development of some productive branches of psychology as a natural science discipline was frozen for many years.
Since the 1950s a gradual return of some ideas of pedology to pedagogy and psychology begins.
Since the 1970s active work has begun on the use of tests in pedagogy and the education system.
The main representatives of Soviet pedology: P.P. Blonsky, M.Ya. Basov, L.S. Vygotsky.
One of the prominent trends in modern Russian pedagogy reflects the desire to experimentally explore various pedagogical issues and phenomena. Experimental pedagogy goes hand in hand with experimental psychology and shares the same fate with it: whoever in the field of studying mental phenomena attaches great importance to the experimental method will be inclined to seek solutions to pedagogical issues in the same experimental way. The fact is that both psychological and pedagogical experiments are related, closely related to each other, although each of these types has its own, somewhat special tasks and its own methodology: psychological experiments are laboratory experiments, divorced from life, very abstract in task, but very accurate; pedagogical - complex, more vital, carried out at school in ordinary school conditions, and therefore less accurate. Anyone who is not a fan of experimentation in psychology is unlikely to give it a wide place in pedagogy. But there is still a debate about the meaning of experimental psychology, about the limits of its application, about the value of the data it obtains; there is still no agreement in opinions; Experimental pedagogy is in the same position. The dispute, in fact, can be reduced to this basic question - are we talking about new sciences or only about new methods of research in science? Defenders of experiments in the study of psychological and pedagogical phenomena often claim that they are the heralds of a new truth, a new science, that the old psychology and pedagogy are already something outdated, old, scholasticism, all this old stuff must be forgotten, there is no benefit from it, but it is necessary to start anew, to build new, experimental psychology and pedagogy. Such a negative and contemptuous attitude towards previous psychology and pedagogy is completely wrong and is the result of an understandable passion for the new direction in science. It is impossible to throw overboard the old psychology and pedagogy, because experimental psychology and pedagogy are only new methods of research in science, and not new sciences. In order to study something experimentally, you must already be familiar with this area of phenomena, understand its significance and the need for more careful study of it; the very setting up of the experiment, i.e., the selection of a known particular phenomenon for study, presupposes an analysis of the complex of which it is included as an element; Drawing conclusions from an experiment and scientifically evaluating them also require general considerations and discussions. In a word, each experiment is a small piece of a great whole, which you need to have an idea about before you start experimenting with the mind and consciousness. Experimental studies are usually very detailed analytical studies, the comprehension of which requires a broad synthesis, and in pedagogy in particular, the concepts of goals and ideals, judgments about good and bad, expedient and inexpedient, their degrees, which are usually not given by simple factual knowledge, like no matter how it was acquired - experimentally or otherwise.
To judge the value of this or that pedagogical system, it is not enough to know that, according to experimental testing, the student began to remember easier, judge more accurately, his imagination became more vivid, etc., you need to know that he generally became the best or the worst person. And for this we need a broad sociological test of all human activity, and not a partial experimental one.
“To speak in favor of some goal, some purpose or intention is to declare that this goal is better than another goal, that this purpose is more worthy than another, that this intention is more valuable than another. But if there is anything included in the concept of science itself, it is the unwavering recognition that in the world of scientific facts nothing is good or bad, valuable or worthless, worthy or unworthy: of a scientific fact we can only say that he is" 1.
Quite rightly, one of our most prominent representatives of experimental psychology and pedagogy argues that “the first merit (and in our opinion, the most important P.K.) of experimental psychology over didactics is the brightly demonstrated ideal of accuracy and evidence in the study of issues of school education . Instead of unfounded statements and general (not always definite) impressions, she introduces precisely described facts and scientifically verified provisions into didactics. At the same time, sometimes it is brilliantly confirmed what many teachers have agreed on for a long time, but sometimes the incorrectness of the prevailing didactic premises is revealed” 2.
The old psychology, and, in connection with it, pedagogy, was based on self-observation and observations of others, the new, experimental one - on experiment. Thus, at their very core, old and new psychology and pedagogy seemed to be essentially different. The old ones had close connections with philosophy, logic, and ethics, and the closest friends of the new ones were physiology, hygiene, and anthropology. "Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are." And the friends of old and new psychology and pedagogy are very different. But upon closer examination of the issue, the differences are not so great.
If one psychology and pedagogy were based on observation, and the other on experiment, then there is no need to contrast observation and experiment. They are undoubtedly different, but not opposite; there is a natural connection between them. Experiments are carried out not only by man, but also by nature, when it discovers the same property under different conditions, in different degrees of strength and with unequal shades, when, in a word, it modifies the property depending on the conditions. People who do not want to experiment and even, perhaps, have not heard anything about experiments, setting other new conditions for activity, are encouraged to modify their properties and activities, that is, they experiment without suspecting it, as often happens in the field of education, when New techniques and methods of education and training are introduced when the pedagogical environment surrounding the students changes, when a new teacher arrives. This gives rise to the concept of a natural experiment, that is, the observation of a phenomenon under various conditions, proposed by some defenders of experimental psychology and pedagogy. Let children and young people indulge in sports, games, gymnastics, manual labor and not suspect that at this time they are subjected to the most careful observation, taking into account all the manifestations of mental life scheduled for recording. Such systematic observation of complex manifestations of the mental life of children in the ordinary conditions of their home or school environment, carried out according to a pre-drawn up plan, is a natural experiment. According to the results, the accuracy is lower than laboratory research, but higher than simple unsystematized observation 3.
Of course, this is true, nature (if it is only permissible to personify it) performs experiments, but a person learns natural experiments by a process designated in logic by the name of observation, not experiment. A person himself can indeed experiment quite often without knowing it, although his unintentional experiments will be very lax and therefore not entirely accurate.
If careful observation (natural experiment) is of serious importance for experimental psychology and pedagogy, then self-observation is no less important for them. Even in some types of psychological experiments, when it comes to studying elementary sensations, introspection does not play a significant role and the subject being experimented turns to a certain extent into a simple, as if dead, instrument of experience, whose life experiences during the experiment the experimenter has nothing to do with. But a completely different situation occurs in cases where complex phenomena are being studied, and pedagogical experiments concern ordinary complex phenomena. It is impossible to understand the answers to questions about such complex phenomena if you do not pay attention to the experiences that accompany them, to the mental environment in which they arise and which determines their character. And the experimenter can report about the mental experiences corresponding to a given phenomenon, about the mental environment of a known phenomenon, only by introspection. The more accurate and sharp the latter, the more valuable and fruitful the experiment will be; The narrower and vaguer the introspection, the darker the meaning and significance of the experimenter’s testimony. The meaning of a word can be understood by considering it separately; but we can correctly understand its exact meaning in a certain place in the writer only when we take the given word in context, that is, in a whole sentence, in a given period, in a passage. Experiments on the meaning of individual, isolated words are psychological, laboratory experimentation; experiments on the meaning of words taken in context, in connection with a whole passage, are pedagogical experimentation.
Thus, for any experiments relating to more or less complex phenomena, and especially for pedagogical ones, observation by the experimentees themselves of their states is an essential factor in the value of the experiment. Consequently, in the experiment, the psychology and pedagogy of introspection, the old, and the psychology and pedagogy of experience, the new, meet and act together.
Therefore, there can be no talk of denying the previous psychology and pedagogy, of recognizing them as empty scholasticism and replacing them with new ones. The connection between the old psychology and pedagogy and the new ones is preserved, the new ones are the further development of the old ones, mainly from the methodological side. The significance of experimental psychology and pedagogy as new research methods in science is indisputable and serious.
By the very essence of knowledge based on simple observation, even many years and carefully, it does not have complete accuracy and clarity. Simple observation is under great pressure from the prevailing views and skills; observation often confirms the existence of something that does not actually exist, which exists only in the mind of the observer, which arouses strong faith in him. Experience is very little subject to such distortion by preconceived ideas and faith, it is colder and stricter, it tests subjective assumptions with measure and weight, with precise instruments that are dispassionate, which are alien to love and hatred. Therefore, experimental research, no matter what it is applied to, disperses fog and uncertainty, it brings light and clear outlines everywhere. When applied to the study of children's personality, the same thing happens. But such research is just beginning, and there are very few independent Russian works in this direction. To a certain extent, the publication of a publication by the Pedagogical Academy entitled “The Mental Life of Children” can serve as an indicator of the success of experimental research on children in the preschool period of their lives. In this issue of two articles N.E. Rumyantsev “How has the mental life of children been studied and is being studied?” and “Character and personality of the child.
Study of Personality" the reader can get acquainted with the previous and current methods of studying children's personality, with the history of the emergence of child psychology, with the classification of children's characters, compilation of characteristics, etc. In addition, the following issues are considered in this issue: about heredity and environment as factors in education ; about memory; about attention; about the development of imagination in children; about children's games; about the development of children's speech; about the main periods of development of the mental life of children. All these are very important, very significant questions of child psychology, without a thorough resolution of which it is impossible to build a correct theory of family education of children. It is only necessary to note that articles on the study of the above-mentioned aspects of the mental life of children are not so much independent experimental studies as an introduction to the work of foreign experimenters in the field of child psychology. But it is difficult to expect the emergence of independent research in this field of science until a thorough acquaintance with foreign works and their critical assimilation. It is therefore clear that the study of the mental manifestations of children continues through systematic observations; systematic and extensive plans for such observations are published by figures in the field of experimental psychology themselves (see, for example, the work of A.F. Lazursky “Personality Research Program” and G.I. Rassolimo “Plan for the study of a child’s soul in a healthy and sick state.” M., 1909).
Interest in new methods of research in the field of psychology and pedagogy in the Russian educational and pedagogical world is quite large, as evidenced by two congresses on educational-experimental psychology and two on experimental pedagogy, held in recent years in St. Petersburg - all four were very crowded, attracting a lot of participants from all over Russia; psychological and pedagogical experimental rooms created to conduct scientific experimental research in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa and some other cities; psychological classrooms at gymnasiums, designed to demonstrate experiments in teaching psychology; courses in experimental psychology and pedagogy at the Pedagogical Academy in Petrograd; quite rapidly growing literature on these branches of knowledge, however, mainly translated.
With the spread of interest in experimental research and the creation of psychological classrooms in secondary educational institutions, the question naturally arose about the possibility and feasibility of practical applications of experimental research in schools during teaching and education. Heated debates took place on this issue at congresses on experimental psychology and pedagogy. Some fans of experimental pedagogy assumed that it is already possible to use new psychological data to solve practical pedagogical problems, that with the help of simple psychological cabinets and simple experiments with calculations it will be possible to penetrate into the recesses of mental life, to find out the essence of a person, the level of his talent, his general direction and inclinations in the future, etc. Obviously, all these are exaggerated hopes, ardent hobbies. Experimental psychology is a new scientific direction that is just beginning to develop its own paths, poses questions to itself, and tries to solve all kinds of and sometimes very difficult and confusing problems. It is in a period of searching and experimentation; it is groping for tasks and methods. New and new horizons are opening up before him, very vast and very complex. Of course, little has been achieved so far in deciding anything firmly, in establishing any new truths and provisions of experimental psychology, which is completely natural, and therefore the naive confidence in the possibility of finding practical applications of experimental psychology today does not have sufficient grounds. While this scientific direction is the work of scientists, not practitioners, and psychological classrooms at gymnasiums, according to the resolution of the last congress on experimental pedagogy in Petrograd, should serve to demonstrate new research methods, and not at all to solve practical pedagogical problems.
One of the types of research practiced by new psychologists and teachers is questionnaires, that is, questionnaires addressed to the masses. You can ask individuals about known objects, selecting them by gender, age, education, cultural living conditions, or without any selection - every acquaintance you meet; you can offer questions to an entire audience or class at once, asking them to prepare answers by a certain deadline; You can send out printed questionnaires, distributing them in tens of thousands of copies. The method is simple, but it also requires caution. You must always skillfully and thoughtfully pose questions, briefly, accurately and at the same time accessible. Quite often questionnaires sin against these basic rules and reduce the value of the questionnaire. Interviewees must be selected or responses grouped; lumping together the answers of adults and children, educated and uneducated, men and women means depriving the questionnaire of any scientific value. Finally, you need to be sure that the questions posed were understood by those answering, that in answering they did not receive help from anywhere, for example, children - from adults. Here are two very interesting questionnaires conducted by domestic teachers.
One Russian researcher became interested in the question of the physical-geographical ideas of children, for which purpose he sent out corresponding questionnaires to educational institutions, male and female, in the cities of Kiev, Vilna, Zhitomir and Glukhov. Pupils and female students of preparatory classes aged 9-11 years were surveyed. 500 responses were sent. The questions on the questionnaires were as follows: did the respondent see the rising sun, morning dawn, open horizon, valley, ravine, gully, stream, springs, pond, water meadow, swamp, eared field, field work, loamy soil, black soil, ice drift, sign whether he is picking mushrooms in the forest, boating on the river, swimming in the river, whether he knows the countries of the world. In addition, it was required to report whether he traveled by rail, by ship, walked outside the city, whether he lived in the countryside or in other cities. It turned out that on average only half of the students saw and have an idea about these phenomena; With some words (for example, soil), only a third of the respondents connect real ideas. Knowledge of individual natural phenomena and activities ranges between 25% (ice drift) and 80% (picking mushrooms in the forest). Dividing the proposed questions according to their content into three groups, we get the following percentage of affirmative answers:
1) astronomical ideas: horizon, sunrise, dawn, cardinal points - 44.3%;
2) physical-geographical: valley, ravine, ravine, stream, spring, pond, swamp, water meadow, eared field, loamy or chernozem soil - 52%;
3) general acquaintance with nature, including the following activities: picking mushrooms in the forest, field work, boating, swimming in the river - 68.7.
17.6% (88 people out of 500) took country walks on foot, traveled by boat or by rail, 50.8% (254 people) did not take country walks on foot, 38.2% (191 people) did not go by boat, 11.4% (57 people) did not travel by rail. From the same questionnaire it turns out that out-of-town walks constitute the main condition for a wide range of physical-geographical ideas: the world of physical-geographical ideas of children who have not walked outside the city is not only poor in quantity, but also very unique in composition.
From this point of view, the article by N.V. is very interesting and instructive. Chekhov "On the threshold to and from school." (What knowledge and skills do illiterate children come to school with? How do they approach school activities and what do they take away from school? See the 10th issue of the collection “Issues and needs of teaching”). This article was compiled on the basis of a questionnaire conducted in the summer of 1909 among students of the Moscow summer teacher courses. All answers concern students in rural schools. The total number of answers, classified and counted, was 174. There were a lot of questions posed (49), we will focus on the answers only to the most important questions.
In everyday life, do children freely understand the questions of adults (and teachers) and can they give sensible answers to them? 144 responses were received, which are distributed as follows:
They don’t understand the questions, 44 (31%)
Most do not understand, 23 (15%)
Understand, but cannot answer, 46 (32%)
Understand and give sensible answers, 31 (22%)
Can they tell a coherent story about what happened to them and what they saw?
Can't, 97 (67%);
A minority can, 20 (13%);
Can, 27 (20%).
Thus, in half of the schools, all or the majority of students upon entering school do not understand the teacher’s questions, nor are they able to answer intelligently “due to inability to speak.” Four-fifths of students cannot coherently tell what happened to them or what they saw.
Most, but not all, know their name and the name of their village. In half of the schools, children do not know either their middle name or last name.
How many can they usually count to? In most cases, children entering school can count to 10. Children in 19 schools can only count to 10, and in others they count further, namely: up to 20 in 21 schools, from 20 to 100 in 43 schools. They can count in pairs in 38 schools, but not in 79; heels - they can do it at 20 and can’t at 97; They count in tens at 27 and cannot count at 70. Thus, in most schools children can count to 10 or 20, in a minority - up to 100, and in approximately 1/3 of schools they can count in pairs, heels and tens. Children entering school have knowledge of measures and coins, for example, in most schools they know coins, only in 20 schools they do not.
Acquaintance with nature - with animals, birds, fish, insects, plants, etc. found in a given area. In most cases, the number of animals known to children of one school is very limited, and often they do not know the most common ones. For some orders of animals, many children have only common names. In any case, in any alphabet there will be a much larger number of animal names, and, therefore, a significant part of these names will be unknown to children, although perhaps they will know this animal, but under a common name with related ones. According to the number of names mentioned in the answers, the first place belongs to birds, then trees, fish, flowers, insects, wild mammals and, finally, reptiles. In this sequence, children apparently develop an interest in living nature. In some places, specific names are used instead of generic names (for example, in the Kuban, children call all trees oaks, in the Kazan province - birches, in the Tambov province - willows).
There is no doubt that all elementary school didactics and methods should be based on such thorough examinations of the mental and moral baggage of children that they bring to school. It’s funny to start teaching counting from one, and stop at a detailed study of the numbers of the first ten, when children can count to 10, 20, 100, they can count in pairs, with heels; It is useless to require children to repeat the teacher’s story when they do not understand his simple question and cannot, even if they did understand, answer it. Gymnasium pedagogy should have the same basis - a detailed scientific examination of the physical and spiritual personality of children entering the gymnasium.
Regarding the methodological perfection of the above two questionnaires, the following should be noted: in the first, the questions are clearly posed, the answers are selected, but it remains unknown how the forms were filled out, whether there were any conversations, help, etc. at that time. It is impossible not to notice that The children interviewed lived not in one area, but in four different ones, as a result of which local conditions could influence the answers and thereby reduce the value of the questionnaire. The second questionnaire was conducted among teachers who came from 41 provinces of Russia and Finland, therefore, from areas with different nature, language of inhabitants and different cultural backgrounds. This circumstance alone significantly weakens the scientific value of the questionnaire, and it is complemented by the breadth of some questions. For example, what does the question mean: can children tell a coherent story? What are the criteria for skill and incompetence? One teacher could consider some as such, and another could consider others as such. The first question is just as broad and vague: do children freely understand adults’ questions in everyday life and can they give sensible answers to them? There are different degrees of understanding and cleverness; understanding and cleverness can often come into contact with misunderstanding and stupidity, as a result of which the same answer can be assigned to opposite groups - intelligent and stupid. At the same time, teachers answered the second questionnaire not at home, but in Moscow, having gathered for courses, therefore, from memory, without proper certificates and preparation, all this cannot but negatively affect the value of the questionnaire.
The most characteristic method of research by new psychologists and teachers is, of course, experiment. To clarify the use of experiment to solve psychological and pedagogical issues, we will present two Russian experimental studies aimed at resolving two very important problems, namely, the mental characteristics of the blind and methods for determining personal characteristics. The first study belongs to A. Krogius, the second - G.I. Rossolimo.
The work of A. Krogius is only part of the work devoted to the study of perception processes in the blind; The second part will include a study of the blind processes of representation, memory, thinking and emotional-volitional life. Thus, the entire spiritual world of the blind was supposed to be subjected to experimental examination. The essence of the first half of the work already done can be stated as follows: from the physical side, the blind are characterized by insufficient development of the muscular system, a weakening of general nutrition, and their entire physical development seems weak and delayed; height is mostly below average, the skeletal system is thin and fragile. Traces of rickets, an abnormally large head, curvature of the lower limbs and spine, thickening of joints, etc. are often observed. The activity of the heart, lungs, gastrointestinal and other internal organs is often weakened. Due to the general weakening of the vital functions of internal organs, blind people are overly susceptible to various infectious diseases and are unable to fight them. Both morbidity and mortality among them are very high. Of those born blind and blind in childhood, only a few survive to old age. Nervous diseases are also common in the blind. In general, the picture of the physical condition of the blind is disappointing. One of the main reasons for the poor physical development of the blind is their lack of mobility. Fearing that they will encounter obstacles, the blind involuntarily limit their movements, which is expressed in the entire figure of the blind: the position of the blind person’s body is mostly bent, the head is stretched forward, they move hesitantly, with concentration; the face of the blind man is inactive, there is no facial expression. Sometimes it gives the impression of a marble statue. Blind games are rarely live. For little blind people, the game often consists of jumping up in place and raising their arms up. But their automatic movements significantly develop: pointing with the head, the whole body, spinning in one place, various contractions of the muscles of the upper and lower extremities. They especially often experience pressure on the eyeball.
In almost all works on the psychology of the blind, there is a remark that the blind perceive sound stimuli better than the sighted. According to the author's experimental studies, blind people are better at determining the direction of sound than sighted people: with the same experiments, the total number of errors for the blind was 365.5, and for the sighted - 393.5. For the blind, the voice of speakers has the same meaning as a face for the sighted: it is a conductor for them of spiritual properties and changes in the mood and consciousness of the speakers; by their gait and voice they recognize people they have heard for a long time. “If the eyes are the mirror of the soul,” one blind woman noted, “then the voice is its echo, its breath; the voice reveals the deepest feelings, the most intimate movements. You can artificially create an expression on your face, but it’s impossible to do it with your voice.” Instead of insufficient vision, the blind are gifted with a special “sixth sense”. What does it consist of? It consists in the ability to recognize, indoors and outdoors, while moving and standing, whether the blind person is in front of any object, whether the latter is large, wide or narrow, separate with a gap or a continuous solid obstruction; a blind person can even find out, without touching an object, whether there is a wooden fence, a brick wall or a hedge in front of him; and does not confuse shops with residential buildings, can indicate doors and windows, regardless of whether they are open or closed. One blind man was walking with his sighted friend and, pointing to the palisade that separated the road from the field, said: “This fence is a little lower than my shoulder.” The sighted man replied that he was taller. The fence was measured and found to be three fingers below the shoulder. The height of the fence was determined by the blind man at a distance of four feet. If the lower part of the fence is made of brick and the upper part of wood, then this can easily be determined by a blind person in the same way as the dividing line. Irregularities in the heights, projections and recesses of walls can also be recognized.
What is the source of the “sixth sense”? Some previous researchers tried to look for it in the surviving remains of vision, but numerous facts decisively refuted this hypothesis.
In modern times, three assumptions have been put forward on this issue:
1) the “sixth sense” is caused by auditory sensations and has its source in them;
2) the “sixth sense” comes down to the tactile sensations of the face, is associated with tactile sensitivity and rests on its sophistication;
3) the “sixth sense” is caused primarily by temperature sensations of the face - the absorption of radiant heat from surrounding objects and its release to these latter. The author of the work in question adheres to the third hypothesis, which he created. The main arguments for it are as follows:
Weakening of the “sixth sense” when wetting the blanket that covered the subject’s face during experiments. In this case, the thermal transparency of the bedspread decreases, but its gas permeability remains without much change, as with the dryness of the bedspread;
Preserving the “sixth sense” when using a wax paper bedspread; with a slight change in the thermal transparency of the blanket and complete blocking of the air flow by it, the function of the “sixth sense” both when walking and in a resting state decreases only slightly - corresponding to a slight decrease in thermal transparency;
The presence of a “sixth sense” in a calm position of both the object acting on the test object and the test subject himself;
An increase or decrease in the “sixth sense” when the temperature of the stimulus increases or decreases;
Dependence of the “sixth sense” on the amount of radiated heat.
The following facts can be cited against the theory of auditory sensations as the source of the “sixth sense”:
1) localization of the “sixth sense” in the face (not a single blind person localized it in the ears);
2) preservation of the “sixth sense” with tightly closed ears;
3) the presence of a “sixth sense” in the deaf;
4) a gradual decrease in the “sixth sense” depending on the thickness of the bedspread;
5) inability to perceive objects approaching from above and behind.
Based primarily on temperature sensations, the “sixth sense” finds support in auditory and all other sensations received by the blind. A change, for example, in auditory perceptions from approaching objects is sometimes extremely important for a blind person. This change is a signal irritation, already warning the blind person from afar about the presence of an obstacle and forcing him to pay special attention to irritations acting on the skin of the face, i.e. thermal and tactile.
The tactile and tactile-motor perceptions of the blind are worse than those of the sighted. Various experiments carried out in this direction always gave the same result - a greater number of errors in perception in the blind than in the sighted. Vision plays the role of a teacher of tactile impressions - with its presence, tactile perceptions receive greater accuracy and certainty.
The spatial perceptions of blind people are quite different from the spatial perceptions of sighted people, which is understandable. In distinguishing spatial forms, the most prominent place in the blind is occupied by active touch, which occurs during the movement of the touching finger and during converging palpation, that is, with several parts of the body at once. It happens slowly and is accompanied by quite significant inaccuracies. Objects that are very large and distant are inaccessible to the direct perception of a blind person, and it is difficult for a blind person to recognize small familiar forms that appear in a slightly different form. If a blind person has become acquainted, for example, with a plaster model of some animal, then he is unable to recognize another model of the same animal, depicting it in a different position. He knows physical objects by one or two characteristics, especially outstanding ones, for example, by horns, beak, etc., and therefore he easily confuses: he confuses a bear with a dog, the head of Venus de Milo with the head of a horse. In the perception of space itself in a blind person, the main role is played by the sequential addition of elements, in the perception of a sighted person - their simultaneity. Therefore, the space of the blind is more abstract than the space of the sighted, and numerical verbal symbols and reduced diagrams play a very noticeable role in it. When educating the blind, these techniques should be brought to the fore, since they give the blind the opportunity to form a simultaneous, holistic idea of spatial relationships. Large objects and large models greatly interfere with the emergence of blind holistic ideas in the mind.
Research by G.I. Rossolimo concerns psychic profiles. A profile is a special personality type that is studied using specially designed tasks. The number of mental processes studied is 11: attention, will, accuracy of perception, memorization of visual impressions, elements of speech, numbers, meaningfulness, combinative ability, sharpness, imagination, observation; There are 38 separate research groups, because mental processes are studied from various angles, for example, attention in relation to stability:
a) simple,
b) with a choice,
c) with distraction and in relation to volume;
Accuracy of receptivity of visual impressions:
a) with sequential recognition,
b) with simultaneous judgment,
c) during subsequent reproduction and recognition of colors, etc.
Each group of studies contains 10 experiments, and a total of 380 experiments. A graphic profile is expressed by a curve: a diagram is drawn in the form of 38 equal-sized vertical lines, each divided into 10 equal parts. To determine the height of each process, the principle of positive and negative responses to 10 tasks belonging to each group was used.
If all 10 problems are solved correctly, then a dot is placed on the tenth division on the vertical line corresponding to this group; if only four out of 10 problems are solved correctly, then a dot is placed on the fourth division. At the end of the study, the experimenter connects the points placed on each of the 38 perpendiculars with straight lines - and the psychological profile is ready.
The author suggests that his profiles can be widely used: to develop the question of the types of mental individuals; for comparative study of the same individual; to solve various general pedagogical issues, etc.
It is obvious that the author's method involves painstaking and extremely tedious experimental work, with a lot of diagrams and lengthy digital calculations. How well the author chose 11 processes to characterize the psychological profile is a big question; he left many important things without research, and essentially the same activity is examined several times under different names, for example, meaningfulness, ingenuity, combinational activity. In general, the theoretical foundations of the method and the choice of precisely the listed processes, and not any others, perhaps more characteristic of the individual, are not indicated. In the case of quick work, the author spends 3 1/2 hours to carry out all 380 experiments, distributing this time over 4 days or more; but sometimes he had to rush and do all the research work in one day. Not to mention such emergency work in one day, which strongly resembles an ordinary hasty school exam, but even in 4 days it is difficult to correctly and confidently detect a person’s spiritual face; after all, in this short period of time, he may be in a somewhat special state, imperceptible and unknown to the researcher, be slightly excited or depressed, experience an approaching illness, be under the influence of some event, etc. Therefore, for real penetration into the human soul and its correct characteristics, a psychological profile must certainly be compiled several times, especially during transitions from one age to another, and compiled slowly and thoughtfully. In any case, the G.I. method Rossolimo is interesting, largely developed, and a lot of work has gone into improving it. Rossolimo’s “profiles” deserve attention also because this method is widely used in practice.
Despite the youth and natural imperfection of experimental psychological and pedagogical research, they managed to have a beneficial effect on the organization of school education in one significant respect - the desire to separate from ordinary schools children who are incapable, retarded, and poorly developing. It is known what a burden the listed groups of students place on the classroom; This was known, of course, for a long time, but the exclusion of those deprived by nature was considered a natural remedy against evil. With the spread of careful study of the personality of students, they came to the conclusion that all these so-called incapable and retarded children are not so bad that nothing could come of them. The trouble is that they cannot study successfully in ordinary schools for normal children; but if schools were created that were adapted to their characteristics, to the level of their abilities, then perhaps there would be success. They made an attempt, it was successful, and following the example of the so-called Mannheim system, they began to talk about the need to divide schools:
1) to regular schools - for normal children,
2) for auxiliary ones - for the retarded
3) for repetition - for the weakly gifted.
In Moscow there are already parallel departments for retarded children at city schools. The organization of such departments is based on the following principles: a limited number of students (from 15 to 20); strict individualization of education; the pursuit not so much of the quantity of information as of its quality processing; special attention to physical education (good nutrition, staying in the yard for at least an hour, frequent changes of activities due to the rapid fatigue of children, gymnastics, modeling, drawing); development in children with the help of appropriate exercises of observation, attentiveness, etc. There are similar departments for retarded children in Petrograd - at city schools, the private institution of Dr. Malyarevsky, etc. In view of the importance of this issue, a whole a number of reports on the study of personality traits in general and determining the degree of intellectual disability of children in particular, mainly based on foreign samples, and even discussed some specific questions about how best to educate the less capable - in a boarding school or in the community, in what ratio should there be reports in such schools scientific information and exercises in the craft, is it possible to indicate simple and practical ways to recognize such children, etc. Finally, the opposite question arose: shouldn’t gifted children be singled out from the general mass of schoolchildren? (Report by V.P. Kashchenko). Gifted children often perform in schools almost as poorly as those with little ability, only for slightly different reasons, although, in the end, the reason is essentially the same - the discrepancy between teaching and personal abilities and needs. If it is now considered a duty of justice to single out the less capable from the general mass of schoolchildren, then isn’t it an even greater moral duty to single out gifted children from the crowd of mediocrity? In Moscow there is already a society in memory of Lomonosov, which aims to promote the receipt of secondary, higher, general and special education by gifted children from the peasant class. The society has already begun its activities, it has to select children, it uses the G.I. method. Rossolimo.
The third technique in the new approach to the study of issues of psychology and pedagogy is based on a combination of experiment and observation. We find it in the study of the question of personality, its properties, which G.I. Rossolimo tried to solve it strictly experimentally.
To conduct such research, it is very important, first of all, to understand the methods leading to solving the problem, to collect, indicate the most appropriate among them, and practically test them. Such work was performed by a group of employees of the laboratory of experimental pedagogical psychology in Petrograd, and then processed and presented by one of the members of this circle, Mr. Rumyantsev. The circle set out to indicate the simplest methods that do not require the use of complex equipment, and at the same time the most reliable. Noting the main precautions when performing experiments, the circle described methods for studying sensations, perception, and memorization. For more complex mental phenomena - processes of judgment, imagination, manifestations of feelings and will - it was more difficult to indicate methods than for simple phenomena, since they are less amenable to experimentation, but some instructions were given in this area.
Compiled by F.E., the methodological significance is similar. Rybakov “Atlas for experimental psychological research of personality” (M., 1910), the purpose of which is to provide an opportunity for “teachers, doctors and in general persons who have contact with someone else’s soul, without the help of any tools, to explore the features of the mental life of a chosen person”, and this refers primarily to the manifestations of higher processes. The atlas contains many tables (57) for examining the ability to perceive attention, observation, memory, suggestibility, fantasy, etc., notes on research methods, description and explanation of the tables.
The actual study of personality using a new method was carried out by a group of people working under the leadership of A.F. Lazursky. This study is interesting not so much from the results side as from the method side. It was carried out in two ways: careful observation of selected individuals and experiments on them. Observations were carried out on cadets of the 2nd St. Petersburg Cadet Corps (11 people). The age of those observed is 12-15 years. The observations were carried out by the corps’ teachers, before whose eyes the students’ entire lives passed. A diary was kept about the pupils selected for observation from day to day for about a month and a half, and the basis was a certain, pre-developed research program, and observations were recorded with all possible objectivity and at the same time with all the accompanying circumstances, often of great importance for analysis and assessment of individual manifestations of personality. After a month and a half, keeping the diary was stopped, and only from time to time any outstanding facts were recorded, especially brightly illuminating one or another aspect of the mental life of the observed person. After some time, additional information about those observed was collected and recorded from memory: in accordance with the program, various sections were discussed - about sensations, associations, memory - and the diary data was supplemented with recalled facts, the reliability of which the person reporting was confident that his memory was not deceiving him. When all the material was collected, a profile of this individual was compiled.
Many zealous and ardent experimenters are distrustful and even contemptuous not only of introspection, but also of psychological observations, trusting only experiment, tables, curves, and arithmetic averages. The work mentioned above was carried out under the pressure of a different view: the researchers had a high opinion of the characteristics compiled in the described manner and of all the extracted material; they were convinced that the collected material “has no less a degree of reliability than the results of the experimental study,” which is even permissible “ verify the experiment by observation." The study is careful, well-founded, its methodology, in general, is completely correct, although some of the details of the observations may be criticized not in their favor.
As for the experiments themselves, the researchers used the following:
1) placing dots on white paper;
2) counting out loud;
3) choosing a letter from printed text;
4) memorizing a poem;
5) composing phrases from several given words.
Obviously, the experiments are very simple and easy to use and do not require any special skills on the part of the testers. At the same time, they touched upon very different aspects of mental life: speed and coordination of movements, mental performance, attention, memory, etc. It turned out that in some cases the results of the experiments largely coincided with observational data, while in others there were no coincidences was. A more detailed analysis of the data obtained showed that the experiments dealt with slightly different aspects of mental activity than those that were initially meant during observations. But the experiments highlighted and emphasized with particular clarity such features of the mental life of the subjects, regarding which educational diaries and additional information could only provide general, more or less summary data. Ultimately, the researchers became convinced "of the need for both experimental methods and systematic external observation."
Using this method - a combination of experiments with observation - many private studies were carried out on individual issues of psychology and pedagogy, such as, for example, the development of memory, its types, the susceptibility to suggestion depending on its form and the age of the subject, the tediousness of various educational subjects, the mental performance at various times of the day. Between these particular questions, the attention of Russian researchers was attracted by a very interesting and important question about the characteristics of the mental work of men and women. This problem has been studied in relation to primary school children, adults, male and female students.
Children aged 11-12 years who studied in Petrograd city schools were examined. The children under study (no more than 20 per class department) were interviewed together, at once, in the classroom, for which they were selected according to age, the social environment to which they belonged, and were generally matched as much as possible. In each classroom department surveyed there were equal numbers of boys and girls. Tests were conducted on muscle strength, active attention, mental speed, memory, judgment, associative processes and creativity. Most experiments were repeated five times. The results were as follows:
1) in terms of muscular strength (squeezing the dynamometer with the right and left hand), boys, as one would expect, are superior to girls, as well as
2) in active attention. The final test involved finding and crossing out one or two icons from eight different ones. A total of 1,600 icons were printed on 40 lines. The difference between the icons was only in the direction of a small additional dash. On average, one girl looked at 96.8 lines in 50 minutes and made 37.8 omissions. During the same time, one boy looked at 97 lines and made 25.4 omissions. If we take the average number of absences for a boy to be 100, then for a girl there will be 148. “The speed of work for both (that is, for boys and girls) is the same.”
In the speed of mental processes, girls are ahead of boys, without harming the quality of work. “Typically, the same phenomenon is noted in the group of younger children, who also show superiority in the work of girls over the work of boys.” This conclusion seems to us not entirely consistent with the previous one: in order to quickly and correctly add and subtract numbers (57+28 = ? or 82-48 = ?, etc.), active attention and volitional effort were necessary. And the previous result indicates its relative weakness in girls compared to boys. Moreover, the third result indicates a greater speed of mental processes in girls compared to boys, and the conclusion on the second question states that both work at the same speed. 4) Girls remember better than boys (slightly better: out of 10 two-digit numbers, boys remember on average 4.45, and girls 5.0) and 6) In formulating judgments, in associative processes and creativity, boys are ahead of girls, with the exception of associations with symbols like letters where girls take over boys. From his research, which, of course, requires verification and indicates physical and mental differences between boys and girls, the author drew a conclusion about the benefits and desirability of joint education. This last question requires extensive and thorough research for a correct solution.
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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
"SAKHALIN STATE UNIVERSITY"
INSTITUTE OF PEDAGOGY
Department of Psychology
Reshedko Elena Nikolaevna
The emergence and development of pedology. The fate of domestic pedology.
Test on the history of psychology
5th year correspondence students
specialty 050706.65 Pedagogy and psychology
Checked: Art. Rev.
Repnikova A.R.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
2011
Content
Introduction………………………………………………………… …………………………...3
1. The formation of pedology as a science……….……………………………………………………….4
2. The activities of domestic scientists in the field of pedology and the fate of domestic pedology………………………………………………………….…………… ….……7
2.1. A.P. Nechaev…………………………………………………………………… …….….7
2.2. V.M. Bekhterev………………………………………………………………..8
2.3. L.S. Vygotsky……………………………………………………………….10
2.4. P.P. Blonsky…………………………………………………………………...11
2.5. The decline of domestic pedology………………… ………………………………14
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..15
Bibliography…………..…………………………………. ….16
Introduction
Pedology is the science of an integrated approach to the study of the physical and mental development of a child in connection with his constitution and behavioral characteristics. I would not like to follow many historians in looking for the roots of this science far in the West, and especially overseas. After all, pedology did not arise out of nowhere. Its spread in Russia was prepared by the ideas and works of K.D. Ushinsky (1824 - 1870) and P.F. Lesgaft (1837 - 1909) on pedagogical anthropology, and K.D. Ushinsky’s book “Man as a Subject of Education. The Experience of Pedagogical Anthropology” absorbed all the basic things that were later revealed in pedology. Yes, and the sound of the very name of this science is quite indicative: the word “pedology” is a “truncated” version of the term “pedagogical anthropology.”
Pedology included information about the child’s constitution, his biological age, behavioral characteristics and a system of tests assessing the level of development and professional orientation (profile) of abilities.
Each science has its own development cycles and does not tolerate voluntaristic shouting or pushing in the back. The official ban on pedology in the USSR had a number of negative consequences in the fate of not only individuals, but also pedagogy, child psychology, as areas of theoretical knowledge in general. If pedology were given democratic freedoms, it would undoubtedly find a new path for its development, overcome the difficulties that arose and join the integrative anthropological sciences.
1. The formation of pedology as a science.
Pedology had a relatively long prehistory, a rapid and complete history. There are conflicting points of view on the starting date in the history of pedology. It dates back either to the 18th century. and is associated with the name of D. Tideman, or by the 19th century. in connection with the works of L.A. Quetelet and coincide with the publication of the works of the great teachers J.J. Rousseau, J.A. Komensky and others. “The wisest educators teach children this,” wrote J.J. Rousseau in the “Introduction to "Emil" in 1762 - what is important for an adult to know, without taking into account what children are able to learn. They constantly look for the person in the child, without thinking about what he is like before becoming a person."
The primary sources of pedology, therefore, are located in a fairly distant past, and if we take them into account as the basis for pedagogical theory and practice, then in a very distant past.
Let us note the fact that by the time pedology was established as an independent scientific direction, the stock of knowledge in experimental educational psychology, childhood psychology, and those biological sciences that could form the basis of ideas about human individuality was too sparse. This applies, first of all, to the state of nascent human genetics.
The founder of pedology is recognized as the American psychologist S. Hall, who created the 1st pedological laboratory in 1889; the term itself was coined by his student - O. Chrisment. But back in 1867, K. D. Ushinsky, in his work “Man as a Subject of Education,” anticipated the emergence of pedology: “If pedagogy wants to educate a person in all respects, then it must first know him in all respects.”
In the West, pedology was studied by S. Hall, J. Baldwin, E. Maiman, V. Preyer and others.
The founder of Russian pedology was the brilliant scientist and organizer A.P. Nechaev. V.M. made a great contribution. Bekhterev, who organized the Pedological Institute in St. Petersburg in 1907. The first 15 post-revolutionary years were favorable: normal scientific life continued with heated discussions in which approaches were developed and the growing pains inevitable for a young science were overcome.
Subject Pedology., despite numerous discussions and theoretical developments of its leaders (A. B. Zalkind, P. P. Blonsky, M. I . Basov, L.S. Vygotsky, S.S. Molozhavyi, etc.), was not clearly defined, and attempts to find the specifics of pedology, not reducible to the content of related sciences, were unsuccessful.
Pedology sought to study the child, and to study it comprehensively, in all its manifestations and taking into account all influencing factors. Blonsky defined pedology as the science of the age-related development of a child in a certain socio-historical environment. The fact that pedology was still far from ideal is explained not by the fallacy of the approach, but by the enormous complexity of creating an interdisciplinary science. Of course, there was no absolute unity of views among pedologists. However, four basic principles can be distinguished:
- A child is an integral system. It should not be studied only “in parts” (some by physiology, some by psychology, some by neurology).
A child can only be understood by taking into account that he is in constant development. The genetic principle meant taking into account the dynamics and trends of development. An example is Vygotsky’s understanding of a child’s egocentric speech as a preparatory phase of an adult’s inner speech.
A child can be studied only taking into account his social environment, which influences not only the psyche, but often also the morphophysiological parameters of development. Pedologists worked a lot and quite successfully with difficult teenagers, which was especially important in those years of prolonged social upheaval.
The science of the child should be not only theoretical, but also practical.
2. The activities of domestic scientists in the field of pedology and the fate of domestic pedology.
2.1. A.P. Nechaev
One of the first domestic pedological works is considered to be the study of A.P. Nechaev, and then his school. His “Experimental Psychology in Its Relation to Issues of School Education” outlined possible ways of experimental psychological research into didactic problems. A.P. Nechaev and his students studied individual mental functions (memory, attention, judgment, etc.). Under the leadership of Professor Nechaev, a laboratory of experimental educational psychology was organized in St. Petersburg in 1901, the first pedological courses in Russia were opened in the fall of 1904, and in 1906 the First All-Russian Congress on Educational Psychology was convened with a special exhibition and short-term pedological courses.
Work in this area also began to develop in Moscow. In 1911, G.I. Rossolimo founded and, at his own expense, maintained a clinic for nervous diseases of childhood, transformed into a special Institute of Child Psychology and Neurology. The result of the work of his school was the original method of “psychological profiles”, in which G.I. Rossolimo went further than A.P. Nechaev along the path of fragmenting the psyche into separate functions: to compile a complete “psychological profile” it is proposed to study 38 separate mental functions, up to ten experiments for each psychological function. Methodology G.I. Rossolimo quickly took hold and was used in the form of a “mass psychological profile.” But his work was also limited only to the psyche, without touching on the biological features of the child’s ontogenesis. The dominant research method of the Rossolimo school was experiment, which was criticized by contemporaries for the “artificiality of the laboratory setting.” The characterization of the child given by G.I. was also criticized. Rossolimo, with differentiation of children only by gender and age, without taking into account their social and class affiliation
2.2. V.M. Bekhterev
The founder and creator of pedology in the USSR is also called V.M. Bekhterev, who back in 1903 expressed the idea of the need to create a special institution for the study of children - a pedagogical institute in connection with the creation of the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. The institute's project was submitted to the Russian Society of Normal and Pathological Psychology. In addition to the psychological department, a pedological department for experimental and other research was included in the number of departments, and a scientific center for the study of personality was created. In connection with the founding of the department of pedology, V.M. Bekhterev had the idea of creating a Pedological Institute, which existed first as a private institution (with funds donated by V.T. Zimin). The director of the institute was K.I. Povarnin. The institute was poorly provided for financially, and V.M. Bekhterev had to submit a number of notes and applications to government authorities. On this occasion, he wrote: “The purpose of the institution was so important and tangible that there was no need to think about creating it even with modest means. We were only interested in the tasks that formed the basis of this institution.”
Bekhterev's students note that he considered the following problems urgent for pedology: the study of the laws of the developing personality, the use of school age for education, the use of a number of measures to prevent abnormal developments, protection from the decline of intelligence and morality, and the development of individual initiative.
Thanks to the tirelessness of V.M. Bekhterev, a number of institutions were created to implement these ideas: pedological and research institutes, an auxiliary school for the disabled, an otophonetic institute, an educational and clinical institute for neurologically ill children, an institute of moral education, and a children's psychiatric clinic. He united all these institutions into a scientific and laboratory department - the Institute for Brain Research, as well as a scientific and clinical department - the Pathoreflexological Institute.
The general scheme of the biosocial study of a child according to Bekhterev is as follows:
1) introduction of reflexological methods into the field of studying the child;
2) study of the autonomic nervous system and the connection between the central nervous system and endocrine glands;
3) comparative study of the ontogenesis of human and animal behavior;
4) study of the complete development of brain regions;
5) study of the environment;
6) the influence of the social environment on development;
7) childhood handicap;
8) child psychopathy;
9) neuroses of childhood;
10) labor reflexology;
11) reflexological pedagogy;
12) reflexological method in teaching literacy.
Work in the above-mentioned children's institutions was carried out under the guidance of professors A.S. Griboyedova, P.G. Belskgo, D.V. Felderga. The closest collaborators in the field of pedology were initially K.I. Povarin, and then N.M. Shchelovanov. Over the 9 years of the existence of the first Pedological Institute with a very small staff, 48 scientific papers were published.
etc.................
P.Ya. Shvartsman, I.V. Kuznetsova. Pedology // Repressed science. Issue 2. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1994, pp. 121-139.
Among the desecrated sciences, pedology perhaps occupies a special place. There are only a few witnesses to its heyday, but we habitually judge its death by the well-known resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 4, 1936, the mention of which importunately migrates from one dictionary to another with constant remarks. Until recently, a closer and less orthodox view of pedology was perceived as slandering Soviet pedagogy, undermining its very foundations. In the modern historical situation, calls have appeared for the revival and development of domestic pedology. We will try to give an analysis of the development of pedology, its ideas, methodology and prospects for revival.
We can say that pedology had a relatively long prehistory, a rapid and complete history.
There are conflicting points of view on the starting date in the history of pedology. It dates back either to the 18th century. and is associated with the name of D. Tiedemann 1, or by the 19th century. in connection with the works of L.A. Quetelet and are timed to coincide with the publication of the works of the great teachers J.J. Russo, Y.A. Komensky and others. “The wisest educators teach children this,” wrote Zh.Zh. Rousseau in his “Introduction to Emile” in 1762 - what is important for an adult to know, without taking into account what children are able to learn. They constantly look for a person in a child, without thinking about what he is like before becoming a person.”
The primary sources of pedology, therefore, are located in a fairly distant past, and if we take them into account as the basis for pedagogical theory and practice, then in a very distant past.
The formation of pedology is associated with the name of I. Herbart (1776-1841), who creates a system of psychology on which, as one of the foundations, pedagogy should be built, and his followers for the first time began to systematically develop educational psychology 2.
Typically, educational psychology was defined as a branch of applied psychology, which deals with the application of psychological data to the process of education and training. This science, on the one hand, must draw from general psychology results that are of interest to pedagogy, and on the other hand, discuss pedagogical principles from the point of view of their compliance with psychological laws. Unlike didactics and private methods that solve questions about how a teacher should teach, the task of educational psychology is to find out how students learn.
In the process of the formation of educational psychology, in the middle of the 19th century, there was an intensified restructuring of general psychology. Under the influence of developing experimental natural science, in particular experimental physiology of the sense organs, psychology also became experimental. Herbartian psychology with its abstract-deductive method (reducing psychology to the mechanics of the flow of ideas) was replaced by Wundtian experimental psychology, which studies mental phenomena using the methods of experimental physiology. Educational psychology increasingly calls itself experimental pedagogy, or experimental educational psychology.
There are, as it were, two stages in the development of experimental pedagogy 3: the end of the 19th century. (mechanical transfer of the findings of general experimental psychology into pedagogy), and the 20th century. (learning problems themselves become the subject of experimental research in psychological laboratories).
Experimental pedagogy of that time reveals some of the age-related mental characteristics of children, their individual characteristics, the technique and economics of memorization and the application of psychology to learning 4,5.
Another, as it was believed, special science was supposed to give a general picture of the child’s life - the science of young age, 4 which, in addition to psychological data, required research into the physical life of the child, knowledge of the dependence of the life of a growing person on external, especially social conditions, his upbringing. Thus, the need for a special science about children, pedology, was derived from the development of educational psychology and experimental pedagogy 3.
The same need also arose from child psychology, which, unlike educational psychology with its applied nature, grew out of evolutionary concepts and experimental natural science, raising, along with questions about the phylogenetic development of man, the question of its ontogenetic development. Under the influence of discussions in evolutionary theory, genetic psychology began to be created, mainly in the USA (especially among psychologists grouped around Stanley Hall), which considered it impossible to study the mental development of a child separately from his physical development. As a result, it was proposed to create a new science - pedology, which would be devoid of this shortcoming and would give a more complete picture of the age-related development of the child. “The science of the child or pedology - it is often confused with genetic psychology, while it constitutes only the main part of the latter - arose relatively recently and has made significant progress over the past decade” 6.
Let us note, however, the fact that by the time pedology was established as an independent scientific direction, the stock of knowledge in experimental educational psychology, in childhood psychology, and in those biological sciences that could form the basis of ideas about human individuality was too sparse. This applies, first of all, to the state of nascent human genetics.
The originality of the isolated science, however, is demonstrated by its definitional apparatus and research methods. As a justification for the independence of science, 7 the analysis of its own methods is especially interesting.
Despite the fact that pedology was intended to give a picture of the development of the child and the unity of his mental and physical properties, using a comprehensive, systematic approach to the study of childhood, having previously dialectically solved the problem of the “bio-socio” relationship in research methodology, from the very beginning priority was given to psychological study child (even the founder of pedology, St. Hall, considers pedology to be only a part of genetic psychology), and this hegemony is maintained naturally or artificially throughout the history of science. Such a one-sided understanding of pedology did not satisfy E. Maiman 4, who considers the psychological study of a child alone to be inferior and considers a broad physiological and anthropological justification for pedology necessary. In pedology, he also includes pathological and psychopathological studies of child development, to which many psychiatrists have devoted their work.
But the inclusion of physiological and anthropological components in pedological research does not yet satisfy the existence of pedology as an independent and original science. The reason for dissatisfaction is illustrated by the following thought: “We must tell the truth: even now, pedology courses actually represent a vinaigrette from the most diverse branches of knowledge, a simple set of information from various sciences, everything that relates to the child. But is such a vinaigrette a special independent science? Of course not." 8 From this point of view, what E. Maiman understands by pedology is a “simple vinaigrette” (though 90% made up of homogeneous psychological material and only 10% from materials from other sciences). In this case, the question about the subject of pedology is posed in such a way that for the first time the work of the author himself, P.P., turns out to satisfy our understanding of it, or at least claims to do so. Blonsky, which, therefore, should be “the first stone in the building of genuine pedology.”
In this regard, let us dwell on the understanding of the subject of pedology by prof. P.P. Blonsky. He gives four formulas for its definition, three of which mutually complement and develop each other, and the fourth (and last) contradicts them all and, apparently, was formulated under the influence of a social order. The first formula defines pedology as the science of the characteristics of childhood. This is the most general formula, previously found in other authors 9 .
The second formula defines pedology as “the science of the growth, constitution and behavior of a typical mass child in various eras of childhood.” Thus, if the first formula only points to the child as a subject of pedology, then the second says that pedology should study it not from one side, but from different ones; At the same time, a limitation is introduced: not every child in general, but a typical mass child is studied by pedology. Both of these formulas only prepare the third, which gives the definition its final form: “Pedology studies the symptom complexes of various eras, phases and stages of childhood in their time sequence and in their dependence on various conditions.” The content of the subject of pedology in the last formula is revealed more fully than in the previous ones. However, significant difficulties associated with the question of defining pedology as a science (fourth formula) remain unresolved.
They boil down mainly to the following: the child as a subject of study is a natural phenomenon no less complex than the adult himself; in many ways even more complex issues may arise here. Naturally, such a complex object from the very beginning required a differentiated cognitive attitude towards itself. Quite analogous to how when studying a person at all Since ancient times, scientific disciplines such as anatomy, physiology and psychology have arisen, studying the same subject, but each from its own point of view, similarly, when studying a child, from the very beginning these same paths were used, thanks to which anatomy, physiology arose and developed and psychology of early childhood.
With development, the differentiation of this knowledge always increases. In this regard, the child’s scientific knowledge has not yet completed its differentiation to this day. On the other hand, to understand many special functions and patterns of child development, a general concept of childhood is necessary as a special period in human onto- and phylogenesis, the provisions of which would guide the research of special sciences, the process of education and training.
In this understanding, pedology was given a special, and sometimes unjustifiably superior, place among other sciences that study the child 6.13. The sciences that study the child also explore the process of development of various aspects of the child’s nature, establishing eras, phases and stages. It is clear that each of these areas of a child’s nature does not represent something simple and homogeneous; in each of them the researcher encounters the most diverse and complex phenomena. Studying the development of these individual phenomena, each researcher can, should and actually strives, without going beyond the boundaries of his field, to trace not only the individual lines of development of these phenomena, but also their mutual connection with each other at different levels, their relationships and all that complex configuration , which they form in their totality at a certain stage of ontogenesis. In other words, even with a psychological study of a child, the researcher is faced with the task of identifying complex “age-related symptom complexes” in exactly the same way as it is faced with an anatomical and physiological study of him. But these will be either morphological, or physiological, or psychological symptom complexes, the only peculiarity of which is that they will be one-sided, which does not prevent them from remaining very complex and naturally organized within themselves.
Thus, pedology not only considers the age-related symptom complex, but it must carry out a cumulative analysis of everything that is accumulated by individual scientific disciplines that study the child. Moreover, this analysis is not a simple sum of heterogeneous information, mechanically combined based on their affiliation. Essentially, this should be a synthesis based on the organic connection of the constituent parts into one whole, and not their simple connection with each other, in the process of which a number of independently complex questions may arise; those. Pedology as a science should have led to achievements of a higher order, to the resolution of new problems, which, of course, are not any final problems of knowledge, but constitute only part of one problem - the problem of man.
Based on these provisions, it was believed that the boundaries of pedological research are very broad, and there is no reason to narrow them in any way 4.10. When studying a child as a whole, the researcher’s field of view should include not only the “symptoms” of certain conditions of the child, but also the very process of ontogenesis, change and transition of one condition to another. In addition, an important task of the study was something average, typical, something that immediately covers a wide range of properties being studied. A huge variety of all kinds of characteristics - individual, gender, social, etc. - also seemed to be material for pedological research. The priority was considered to be the task of systematizing scientific data in various areas of child studies.
The above discussion of the definitional apparatus of pedology can be supplemented by two more definitions of pedology, which were in use before 1931: 1) Pedology is the science of factors, patterns, stages and types of socio-biological formation of the individual, 16 2) Pedology is the science of genetic processes, the development of new increasingly complex mechanisms under the influence of new factors, about the breakdown, restructuring, transformation of functions and the underlying material substrates in the conditions of growth of the child’s body.”
Thus, there was no consensus on pedology; the content of science was understood differently, accordingly, the boundaries of pedological research varied widely, and the very fact of the formation of an independent science was disputed for a long time, which is natural in the early period of the development of science, but, as will be seen from what follows, these problems were not resolved in pedology in the future.
A unique attempt to build a system of pedological methods is the work of S.S. Youthful 12. He proceeds from the following provisions: every act of a growing organism is a process of balancing it with the environment and can be objectively understood only from its functional state (1); this is a holistic process in which the organism is responsible for the environmental situation with all its aspects and functions (2); restoration of the disturbed balance of the human body with the environment is at the same time a process of its change, therefore, every act of the human body can be understood only dynamically, not only as an act of identification, but also as an act of growth, restructuring and consolidation of a system of behavior (3); it is possible to approach a type of behavior, its stable, more or less permanent moments only by studying a number of integral acts of human behavior, for only they are capable of revealing its available fund and its further possibilities (4); The moments of an organism’s behavior that are accessible to our perception are links in the chain of the reaction process: they can become indicators of this process only by comparing the environmental situation that initiates the process with the visible response that completes it (5).
These provisions of S.S. Molozhavoy were very actively challenged by Ya.I. Shapiro 13.
The observation method was considered very promising among pedologists. A prominent place in its development belongs to M.Ya. Basov and his school, which worked at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen. There were two types of methods of pedological work: the method of studying behavioral processes and the method of studying all kinds of results of these processes. Behavior was supposed to be studied from the point of view of the structure of behavioral processes and the factors that determine them. In this case, the behavior was usually the opposite of the experimental study. This opposition, however, is not entirely correct, since the experiment is also applicable to studying behavioral processes if we are talking about a natural experiment in which the child is in real-life situations.
The tendency of pedologists, who defended the independence of their science, to look for new methodological ways is manifested especially clearly in the heated debate around the issue of the method of psychological tests. Since in our country the use of this method was one of the reasons for the destruction of pedology, we should dwell on it in more detail. Numerous works devoted to the use of the test methodology put forward a huge number of arguments for and against its use in pedology 10, 14-20.
The fierce debate and widespread use of test methodology in public education in our country (almost every student had to go through a test assessment) led to the fact that even today pedology is most often remembered in connection with the use of tests with the “fear” of revealing oneself as a result of testing. A variety of tests were developed and used for the first time in the United States. The first broad review of American tests in Russian to identify mental giftedness and school success of children was given by N.A. Buchholz and A.M. Schubert in 1926. 19 Analysis of these tests, their tasks and results leads the authors to the conclusion that their use in pedology is undoubtedly promising. Scientific psychological commission, which developed for 1919-1921. a series of “National Tests” known to this day, designed for use in all public schools in the United States, defined the purpose of these studies as follows: 1) to help divide children of different school groups into smaller subgroups: children who are mentally stronger and mentally weaker; 2) help the teacher navigate the individual characteristics of the children of the group with which this teacher begins to work for the first time; 3) help reveal those individual reasons due to which individual children cannot adapt to classroom work and school life; 4) to promote the vocational guidance of children, at least for the purpose of preliminary selection of those suitable for more highly qualified work 19.
In the mid-20s. tests are beginning to become widespread in our country, first in scientific research, and by the end of the 20s. are being introduced into the practice of schools and other children's institutions. Based on the tests, the giftedness and success of children are determined; forecasts of learning ability, specific didactic and educational recommendations of teachers are given; original domestic tests similar to Binet tests are being developed. Testing is carried out in natural conditions for schoolchildren, in the classroom 10,20,21; tests become widespread, and the results can be statistically processed. Test data allows us to judge not only the success of the student, but also the work of teachers and the school as a whole. For the period of the 20s. this was one of the most objective criteria in assessing the work of the school. An objective and quantitatively more accurate accounting of the success of children is necessary in order to monitor the comparative characteristics of different schools, the growth in the success of different children compared to the average growth in the success of the school group. In this way, the “mental age” of the student is determined, which makes it possible to transfer him to the group that best suits his intellectual development and, on the other hand, to form more homogeneous study groups. This contradicts the totalitarian tenets of egalitarian education, the failure of which has been experienced by several generations.
In American schools, individualization of learning is the basis for the formation of class groups to this day. Our formerly fierce, and now increasingly weakening, resistance to such an “attack” on the integrity of class groups, the desire to educate a person who is not really socially active, who would easily come into contact with any new group of people, would learn to understand and love not only a narrow circle, but and all people, to educate “philanthropists”, and not a socially closed individual in a team, is apparently a consequence of the unitarity of the state, the dominance of authoritarianism, the closedness of the individual, and our thinking.
The test method was credited with the fact that “it transforms pedology from a science that speculates generally and subjectively into a science that studies reality” 3 .
Criticism of the test method usually boiled down to the following points: 1) tests are characterized by a purely experimental beginning; 2) they take into account not the process, but the result of the process; 3) the standardized bias at the expense of the statistical method was criticized; 4) tests are superficial, far from the deep mechanism of the child’s behavior.
The criticism was based on the rather strong initial imperfection of the tests. The practice of many years of using the test method abroad and in recent domestic psychodiagnostics has shown the inconsistency of such criticism in many positions and its insufficient validity.
Differences in the application of the test method in the theory and practice of pedology can be reduced to three main points of view:
- the use of testing was fundamentally rejected 12,20;
- limited use of tests was allowed (in terms of coverage and conditions) with the mandatory primacy of other research methods 10,16,22;
- the need for widespread adoption of tests in research and practice has been recognized 18,19,23.
However, with the exception of some works 24, in Soviet pedology, primacy remained with psychological methods.
After becoming familiar with the subject and methods of science, it is necessary to consider the uniqueness of the main stages of its development.
The works of many authors during the formation of pedology in our country were devoted to a critical analysis of the development of pedology in the USSR 3,10,13,25. One of the first domestic pedological works is considered to be the study of A.P. Nechaev, and then his school. In his “Experimental Psychology in its Relation to Issues of School Teaching” 27 possible ways of experimental psychological research into didactic problems were outlined. A.P. Nechaev and his students studied individual mental functions (memory, attention, judgment, etc.). Under the guidance of prof. Nechaev in 1901, a laboratory of experimental pedagogical psychology was organized in St. Petersburg, in the fall of 1904 the first pedological courses in Russia were opened, and in 1906 the First All-Russian Congress on Educational Psychology was convened with a special exhibition and short-term pedological courses.
Work in this area also began to develop in Moscow. G.I. In 1911, Rossolimo founded and, at his own expense, maintained a clinic for nervous diseases of childhood, transformed into a special Institute of Child Psychology and Neurology. The result of the work of his school was the original method of “psychological profiles” 49, in which G.I. Rosselimo went further than A.P. Nechaev along the path of fragmenting the psyche into separate functions: to compile a complete “psychological profile” it is proposed to study 38 separate mental functions, ten experiments for each psychological function. The technique of G.I. Rosselimo quickly took hold and was used in the form of a “mass psychological profile.” But his work was also limited only to the psyche, without touching on the biological features of the child’s ontogenesis. The dominant research method of the Rossolimo school was experiment, which was criticized by contemporaries for the “artificiality of the laboratory setting.” The characterization of the child given by G.I. was also criticized. Rossolimo, with differentiation of children only by gender and age, without taking into account their social and class affiliation (!).
V.M. is also called the founder and creator of pedology in the USSR. Bekhterev 29, who back in 1903 expressed the idea of the need to create a special institution for the study of children - a pedagogical institute in connection with the creation of the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. The institute's project was submitted to the Russian Society of Normal and Pathological Psychology. In addition to the psychological department, a pedological department for experimental and other research was included in the number of departments, and a scientific center for the study of personality was created. In connection with the founding of the pedology department at V.M. Bekhterev came up with the idea of creating a Pedological Institute, which existed first as a private institution (with funds donated by V.T. Zimin). The director of the institute was K.I. Povarnin. The institute was poorly provided for financially, and V.M. Bekhterev had to submit a number of notes and applications to government authorities. On this occasion, he wrote: “The purpose of the institution was so important and tangible that there was no need to think about creating it even with modest means. We were only interested in the tasks that formed the basis of this institution” 29.
Bekhterev's students note that he considered the following problems urgent for pedology: the study of the laws of the developing personality, the use of school age for education, the use of a number of measures to prevent abnormal developments, protection from the decline of intelligence and morality, and the development of individual initiative.
Thanks to the tirelessness of V.M. Bekhterev, to implement these ideas, a number of institutions were created: pedological and research institutes, an auxiliary school for the disabled, an otophonetic institute, an educational and clinical institute for neurologically ill children, an institute of moral education, and a children's psychiatric clinic. He united all these institutions into a scientific and laboratory department - the Institute for Brain Research, as well as a scientific and clinical department - the Pathoreflexological Institute. The general scheme of the biosocial study of the child according to Bekhterev is as follows: 1) the introduction of reflexological methods in the field of study of the child; 2) study of the autonomic nervous system and the connection between the central nervous system and endocrine glands; 3) comparative study of the ontogenesis of human and animal behavior; 4) study of the complete development of brain regions; 5) study of the environment; 6) the influence of the social environment on development; 7) childhood handicap; 8) child psychopathy; 9) neuroses of childhood; 10) labor reflexology; 11) reflexological pedagogy; 12) reflexological method in teaching literacy 30.
Work in the above-mentioned children's institutions was carried out under the guidance of professors A.S. Griboyedova, P.G. Belskgo, D.V. Felderga. The closest collaborators in the field of pedology were initially K.I. Povarin, and then N.M. Shchelovanov. Over the 9 years of the existence of the first Pedological Institute with a very small staff, 48 scientific papers were published.
V.M. Bekhterev is considered the founder of pedoreflexology in its main areas: genetic reflexology with a clinic, the study of the first stages of development of a child’s nervous activity, age-related reflexology for preschool and school ages, collective and individual reflexology. The basis of pedoreflexology included the study of the laws of temporary and permanent functional connections of the main parts of the central nervous system and parts of the brain in their sequential development depending on age data in connection with the action of hormones in a particular period of childhood, as well as depending on environmental conditions. 29
In 1915, G. Troshin’s book “Comparative Psychology of Normal and Abnormal Children” 31 was published, in which the author criticized the method of “psychological profiles” for excessive fragmentation of the psyche and the conditions in which the experiment was carried out, and proposed his own methodology based on biological principles studying a child, which has many similarities with the methodology of V.M. Bekhterev. However, the works of Prof. belong to the same period. A.F. Lazursky, deepening the observation methodology. In 1918, his book “Natural Experiment” 32 appeared. His student and follower is the already mentioned prof. M.Ya. Basov.
The study of the anatomical and morphological features of a growing person, along with the work of the school of V.M. Bekhterev, is carried out under the guidance of prof. N.P. Gundobin, a specialist in childhood diseases. His book “Peculiarities of Childhood,” published in 1906, summarizes the results of the work of him and his colleagues and is a classic 9 .
In 1921, three pedological institutions were formed in Moscow: the Central Pedological Institute, the Medical Pedological Institute, and the psychological and pedological department of the 2nd Moscow State University. However, the Central Pedological Institute dealt almost exclusively with issues of childhood psychology; the very name of the newly organized department at the 2nd Moscow State University showed that its creators had not yet developed a clear idea of what pedology was. And finally, the Medical-Pedological Institute in 1922 published a collection entitled “On Child Psychology and Psychopathology,” the very first article of which states that the main task of the named institute is the study of childhood defectiveness.
In the same year, 1922, E.A. Arkin’s book “Preschool Age” 24 was published, which very fully and seriously covered the issues of biology and hygiene of the child and (again, there is no synthesis!) Very few issues of the psyche and behavior.
The First All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology, held in Moscow in 1923, with a special section on pedology, at which 24 reports were heard, brought great revival in the field of childhood studies. The section paid a lot of attention to the question of the essence of pedology. For the first time, the demagogic call of A.B. Zalkind about the transformation of pedology into a purely social science, about the creation of “our Soviet pedology.”
Soon after the congress in Orel, a special “Pedological Journal” began to be published. In the same year, 1993, a monograph by M.Ya. was published. Basov “Experience in the methodology of psychological observations” 33, as a result of the work of his school. Being largely a continuator of the work of A.F. Lazursky with his natural experiment, M.Ya. Basov pays even more attention to the factor of naturalness in the study of a child, developing a methodology for conducting long-term objective observation of a child in the natural conditions of his life, which makes it possible to holistically characterize a living child’s personality. This technique quickly won the sympathy of teachers and pedologists and began to be widely used.
In January 1924, the Second Psychoneurological Congress took place in Leningrad. At this congress, pedology occupied an even more significant place. A number of reports on genetic reflexology by N.M. Shchelovanova and his colleagues was devoted to the study of early childhood.
In 1925, the work of P.P. appeared. Blonsky “Pedology” 35 is an attempt to formalize pedology as an independent scientific discipline and at the same time the first textbook on pedology for students of pedagogical institutes. In 1925 P.P. Blonsky publishes two more works: “Pedology in a mass first-level school” 36 and “Fundamentals of Pedagogy.” 23 Both books provide material on the application of pedology in the field of education and training, and their author becomes one of the most prominent promoters of pedology, especially its applied significance. The first book provides important material for understanding the process of learning to write and count. The second provides a theoretical basis for the pedagogical process.
The publication of S.S.’s brochure dates back to the same time. Molozhavoy: “Program for studying the behavior of a child or a group of children” 37, in which the main attention is paid to the study of the environment surrounding the child and the characteristics of the child’s behavior in connection with the influence of the environment, but very little is taken into account its anatomical and physiological characteristics.
By the end of 1925, the USSR had already accumulated a significant number of publications that could be classified as pedology. However, most publications lack the systemic analysis that M.Ya. Basov spoke about when defining pedology as an independent science. The authors of a small part of the studies 10,25,36,38 try to adhere to that synthetic level, which allows us to judge the child and childhood as a special period as a whole, and not from individual aspects.
Since pedology is a science about a person, affecting his social status, contradictions from the scientific often moved into the ideological sphere and took on a political overtones.
In the spring of 1927, a pedological meeting was convened in Moscow at the People's Commissariat of Education of the USSR(?), which brought together all the most prominent workers in the field of pedology. The main problems discussed at this meeting were: the role of environment, heredity and constitution in the development of the child; the importance of the team as a factor shaping a child’s personality; methods of studying the child (mainly discussion on the test method); the relationship between reflexology and psychology, etc.
The problem of the relationship between environment and heredity, studied by pedology, has caused particularly fierce debate.
The most prominent representative of the sociogenic trend in pedology, one of the first to promote the primacy of the environment in the development of a child, was A.B. Zalkind. A psychiatrist by training, a specialist in sex education, whose work was based solely on ideas about the sociogenic development of personality and Marxist phraseology.
The popularity of views on the bioplasticity of the body, especially the child’s body, was supported by “genetic reflexologists,” emphasizing the large and early influence of the cortex and the wide limits of this influence. They believed that the central nervous system has maximum plasticity and that all evolution is moving towards an increase in this plasticity. At the same time, there are types of the nervous system that are constitutionally determined. For the practice of education, it is important “the presence of this plasticity, so that heredity is not given the place that conservative teachers give it, and at the same time, taking into account the type of work of the nervous system to individualize education and to take into account, in terms of education of nervous hygiene, the constitutional features of the nervous system.” 40.
The main objections that this trend has met with from a number of teachers and pedologists 3,10,24 boil down to the fact that recognition of the limitless possibilities of bioplasticity, extreme “pedological optimism” and insufficient consideration of the importance of hereditary and constitutional inclinations in practice lead to underestimation of individualization in education , excessively high demands on the child and teacher and their overload.
V.G. gave his diagram of the interaction between the “constitution” of the organism and the environment in a report at a meeting in 1927. Shtefko. The constitution of the body is determined by: 1) hereditary factors that appear in the known laws of inheritance; 2) exogenous factors that influence gametes; 3) exogenous factors influencing the embryo; 4) exogenous factors that influence the body after birth 42 .
The trend of the determining influence of the environment on the development of the organism in comparison with hereditary influences, although clearly emerged at this meeting, but, thanks to the significant opposition of many researchers, has not yet become self-sufficient, the only acceptable one and has prevailed in our country for decades.
The second controversial issue was the problem of the relationship between the individual and the collective. In connection with the installation of the Soviet school “to renounce individualistic tendencies,” the question arose about a “new” understanding of the child, since the teacher’s target “in our labor school is not an individual child, but a growing group of children. A child in this group is interesting insofar as he is an endogenous irritant of the group” 22.
On the basis of the latest understanding of the child, a new part of pedology was to develop - the pedology of the collective. The new direction was headed by the head of the Ukrainian school of children's researchers, prof. A.A. Zaluzhny, based on the following methodological socially ordered premise: pedagogical practice does not know the individual child, but only the team; The teacher gets to know the individual child through the team. For a teacher, a good student is a good student in a given children's group, compared with other children who make up this group. Pedagogical practice pushes towards collectivism, pedagogical theory - towards individualism. Hence the need to “rebuild the theory” 21. Like A.B. Zalkind, prof. A.A. Zaluzhny also advocated for a new “Soviet” pedology. Thus, the hitherto existing pedology and pedagogy, raised on the ideas of Rousseau and Locke, are declared reactionary, since they pay too much attention to the child himself, his heredity, the patterns of formation of his personality, while it is necessary to educate in the collective, through the collective The system needs team members - social cogs, spare parts for the system.
Issues of collective pedology were also dealt with by prof. G.A. Fortunatov 43 and G.V. Murashov and his staff. They developed a methodology for studying children's groups. E.A. Arkin, mentioned above, also studied the constitutional types of children in a group. His classification of team members according to their tendency to be more extroverted in boys and more introverted in girls drew sharp criticism.
At a meeting in 1927, it was decided to convene the All-Union Pedological Congress in December of the same year with broad representation of all areas of pedology. In the preparatory period before the congress, a change in the balance of forces occurred. In just six months, the number of supporters of the sociologizing trend in pedology has increased significantly. Perestroika in pedology was in full swing, and the crisis was basically over by the congress. There may be several reasons for this, but they are all interconnected.
1. From unformulated, veiled, the social order became clearly formulated and proclaimed, on the basis of which the methodology of science was built. Maximum “bioplasticity” and the decisive transformative impact of the environment from the opinion of individual pedologists turned into the credo of pedology - “revolutionary optimism”. An illustration can be the statement of N.I. Bukharin, voiced a little later at the pedagogical congress, which is very indicative of that period, and which the authors risk citing in full, despite the cumbersomeness of the quotation:
“Supporters of the biogenetic law without any restrictions or those who are carried away by it suffer from the fact that they transfer biological laws to social phenomena and consider them identical. This is an undoubted mistake and stands in an absolutely undeniable connection with a number of biological theories (racial theory, the doctrine of historical and non-historical peoples, etc.). We do not at all stand on the point of view of abstract equality, of abstract people; this is a nonsense theory that cries to heaven due to its helplessness and contradiction with the facts. But we are committed to ensuring that there is no division into non-historical and historical peoples... Silent the theoretical prerequisite for this is what you, pedologists, call the plasticity of the body, those. the opportunity to catch up in a short time, to make up for what was lost... If we stood on the point of view that racial or national characteristics are such stable values that they need to be changed over thousands of years, then, of course, all our work would be absurd, because it was built would be on the sand. A number of organic racial theorists extend their theoretical framework to the problem of class. The propertied classes (in their opinion) have the best features, the best brains and other magnificent qualities, which predetermine and forever perpetuate their dominance of a certain group of people, certain social categories and find a natural scientific, primarily biological, justification for this dominance. Much research has not been carried out on this matter, but even if, which I do not rule out, we obtained superior brains from the propertied classes, at least from their cadres, than from the proletariat, then in the end does this mean that these theories are right? It doesn’t mean because it was like this, but it will be different, because such prerequisites are being created that allow the proletariat, under conditions of plasticity of the organism, to make up for what was lost and completely redesign itself, or, as Marx put it, to change its own nature... If it weren’t for this plasticity of the organism... Then the silent prerequisite would be slow change and relatively little influence of the social environment; the proportion between pre-social adaptations and social adaptations would be such that the center of gravity would lie in the pre-social adaptations, and social adaptations would play a small role, and then there would be no way out, the worker would be biologically tied to the convict wheelbarrow... Hence the question about the social environment and the influence of the social environment must be decided in such a way that the influence of the social environment plays a larger role than is usually assumed” 44.
2. The ideological conjuncture not only opened up a “green” street for all sociologists of pedology, transforming it from a science that studies the child into a science that describes facts confirming ideological premises, and mainly studies the environment and its impact on the child, and not on him, but and disgraced any other scientific dissent: “He who is not with us is against us.”
3. The fundamental idea of “unity” in the country, behind which stood unitarity, extended to pedology, where the faster development of science required the unification of scientific forces; however, this explanation was accepted by the “tops” and was promoted and carried out among pedologists only under the banner of the primacy of environmental influences on the body.
The first pedological congress was intended to complete the transformation of pedology, give a demonstrative battle to dissent, and unite the disparate ranks of pedologists on a single platform. But if only these tasks had been set before the congress, it would hardly have been possible to carry it out according to a scenario reminiscent of the scenario of the famous session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The congress also faced other tasks, the relevance of which was understood by all pedologists without exception.
The following scientific problems required urgent analysis and solution:
the complete isolation of pedology from pediatrics, and hence the narrow medical and hygienic bias of pediatrics, on the one hand, and the underuse by pedology of the most valuable biological materials available in pediatrics, on the other; insufficient connection between pedology and teaching practice; lack of practical methods in many areas of research and insufficient implementation of existing ones.
There were also organizational problems: the unclear relationship of pedology with the People's Commissariat of Health and the People's Commissariat for Education, the boundaries of their functions were not defined; lack of planning on a state scale for research work in pedology, drift and disproportion of various areas of research; lack of staff positions for pedological practitioners, which was an obstacle to the creation of our own personnel; insufficient funding for pedological research;
ambiguity in the demarcation of the work of pedologists of various scientific and practical training, which led to difficulties in the university training of pedologists and a lack of stripes in their work; the need to create a central all-Union pedological journal and society that coordinates and covers the work 45.
Based on the problems posed before the congress, we can conclude that the congress envisaged internal and external formalization in pedology. The congress was organized by the scientific and pedagogical section of the Main Academic Council (GUS), the People's Commissariat for Education and the People's Commissariat of Health with the participation of over 2000 people. More than 40 leading experts in the field of pedology were elected to the presidium of the congress; N.I. was elected to the honorary presidium. Bukharin, A.V. Lunacharsky, N.K. Krupskaya, N.A. Semashko, I.P. Pavlova and others.
The grand opening and the first day of the congress were scheduled for December 27, 1927 in the classroom building of the 2nd Moscow State University. The tragic death of academician V.M. Bekhtereva shocked the congress and delayed its start. V.M. Bekhterev had just graduated from the psycho-neurological congress and actively participated in the preparation of the pedological congress. The congress was absorbed by the death of the academician; many of its employees withdrew their reports and went home. The first day of the congress was entirely dedicated to the memory of V.M. Bekhterev and his funeral.
The work of the congress took place from December 28, 1927 to January 4, 1928. A.B. made an opening speech. Zalkind. He said that the tasks of the congress were to take into account the work done by Soviet pedologists, determine directions and groupings among them, link pedology with pedagogy and unite Soviet pedology “into a single team.” The plenum of the congress was held on December 28, 29, 30; from December 30 to January 4, seven sections worked in special areas. In the work of the plenary sessions of the congress, four main sections were identified: political and ideological problems, general issues of pedology, the problem of the methodology of studying childhood, pedology of labor.
Political and ideological problems were touched upon in the speeches of N.I. Bukharin, A.V. Lunacharsky, N.K.’s speeches were devoted to general issues of pedology. Krupskaya and report by A.B. Zalkind "Pedology in the USSR". N.I. Bukharin mainly spoke about the relationship between pedology and pedagogy. In addition, he tried to smooth out from his position the differences in the methodological plan of V.M.’s schools. Bekhterev and I.P. Pavlova. A.V. Lunacharsky, like N.I. Bukharin, emphasized the need for a speedy union of pedagogy and pedology, their interpenetration. N.K. repeatedly spoke on this issue at the congress. Krupskaya.
From a historical point of view, it is not without interest to cite excerpts from speeches at the congress of these historical figures who had a direct and indirect influence on the development of pedology.
N.K. Krupskaya: “Pedology, by its very essence, is materialistic... Modern pedology has many shades: those who simplify the issue and underestimate the influence of the social environment are even inclined to see in pedology some kind of antidote to Marxism, which is becoming deeper and deeper into the school; who, on the contrary, goes too far and underestimates heredity and the influence of general laws of development.
A serious drawback hindering the implementation of the Gusov platform turned out to be its pedological lack of elaboration - the lack in science of sufficiently clear instructions about the educational capacity of each age, about its specific features that require age-specific individualization and a programmatic approach.
Even the little that pedology has done in the development of teaching and education methods shows what enormous prospects there are, how significantly it is possible to facilitate learning when using the pedological approach, how much can be achieved in educational terms” 46.
A.V. Lunacharsky: “The stronger the connection between pedology and pedagogy, the sooner pedology is allowed into pedagogical work, into contact with the pedagogical process, the sooner it will grow. Our school network can approach a truly normal school network in a socialist Marxist-scientific state building its culture when it is thoroughly imbued with a network of sufficiently scientifically trained pedologists. In addition to saturating our school with pedologists, it is also necessary that in every teacher, in the brain of every teacher, there lives, perhaps, a small, but quite strong pedologist. And one more thing - to introduce pedology as one of the main subjects in teacher training, and to introduce it seriously, so that it is taught by a person who knows pedology" 47 .
N.I. Bukharin: “The relationship between pedology and pedagogy is the relationship between a theoretical discipline, on the one hand, and a normative discipline, on the other; Moreover, this relationship is such that, from a certain point of view, pedology is the handmaiden of pedagogy. But this does not mean that the category of maid is the category of a cook who has not learned to manage. On the contrary, the position of the servant here is one in which this servant gives directive instructions to the normative scientific discipline she serves.” 44
The main profiling report of the congress was the report of A.B. Zalkind “Pedology in the USSR”, dedicated to general issues of pedology, which summarized the work done, named the main directions of pedology that existed at that time, institutions engaged in pedological research and practice. The report practically summed up the results of all childhood research over the past decades, not just pedology. Apparently, this is why the congress itself was so numerous, because doctors, teachers, psychologists, physiologists, and pedologists were present and spoke at it.
The complex problem of childhood methodology was developed in the reports of S.S. Molozhavoy, V.G. Shtefko, A.G. Ivanov-Smolensky, M.Ya. Basova, K.N. Kornilova, A.S. Zaluzhny and others.
In the debate on methodological reports, a negative attitude towards the exclusive importance of the physiological method was revealed, and a significant dispute arose between representatives of the Bekhterev and Pavlov schools about the understanding of mental phenomena.
Some of the speakers demanded the “destruction” of disagreements between V.M. schools. Bekhterev and I.P. Pavlov and “establishing” practical conclusions on the basis of which further pedological work could be carried out.
In-depth study of general and specific issues of pedology took place in seven sections: research and methodological, preschool, preschool, school age (two sections), difficult child, organizational and program.
In general, the congress went according to the planned scenario: pedology received official recognition, “united” its disparate forces, demonstrating firsthand who the “future” of pedology belongs to, and outlined ways of cooperation with pediatrics and pedagogy as a methodological basis. After the congress, the voluminous journal “Pedology” began to be published, edited by prof. A.B. Zalkind, the first issues of which were mainly collected from reports given at the congress. Pedology receives the necessary allocations, and practically the period from the beginning of 1928 to 1931 is the heyday of “Soviet” pedology. At this time, the introduction of pedological methods into the practice of pedagogical work is underway, the school is replenished with pedological personnel, a program of the People's Commissariat for Education on pedology is being developed, and pedologists are being trained in pediatrics. But during this same period, increasing pressure is being placed on the biological research of the child, because from here arises a danger for “revolutionary pedological optimism”, for the dominant ideology.
The 1930s were years of dramatic events in pedology. A period of confrontation of currents began, which led to the final sociologization of pedology. The discussion has flared up again about what kind of pedology our state needs, whose methodology is more revolutionary and Marxist. Despite the persecution, representatives of the “biologization” direction (this included those pedologists who defended Meiman’s understanding of pedology and its independence) did not want to give up their positions. If supporters of the dominant sociologizing trend lacked scientific arguments, then other methods were used: the opponent was declared unreliable. So E.A. turned out to be a “militant minority and a Machist.” Arkin, “idealist” - N.M. Shchelovanov, “reactionary” - the school of V.M. Bekhterev.
“On the one hand, we are seeing the same old academicism with problems and research methods divorced from today. On the other hand, we are faced with a serene calm that has not yet been overcome in addressing the most pressing issues of pedology... With such indifference to the introduction of the Marxist method in pedology, we are not surprised by the indifference of the same departments and groups to socialist construction: a real “synthesis” of theory and practices, but the synthesis is negative, i.e. deeply hostile to the proletarian revolution" 48 .
From January 25 to February 2, 1930, the All-Union Congress on the Study of Man was held in Leningrad, which also became a platform for lively discussion in pedology and corresponding applause. The congress “went into battle with the authoritarianism of the former philosophical leadership, autogenetism, directly directed against the pace of socialist construction; the congress hit hard at idealistic concepts of personality, which are always an apology for naked individualism; the congress rejected idealistic and biological-mechanical approaches to the collective, revealing its class content and its powerful stimulating role under socialism; The congress demanded a radical restructuring of the methods of studying man on the basis of dialectical-materialist principles and on the basis of the requirements of the practice of social construction” 48. And if at the First Pedological Congress scientific contradictions were still in circulation, here everything already takes on a political coloring and scientific opponents turn out to be enemies of the proletarian revolution. The witch hunt began. In fact, at this congress the reactological school (K.N. Kornilova) was crushed, since “the entire theory and practice of reactology screams about its imperialist general methodological claims” and, along the way, “the ultra-reflexological perversions of V.M. Bekhterev and his school,” and the entire direction was declared reactionary.
In the journal “Pedology” a new section appeared in 1931 - “Tribune”, set aside specifically for exposing “internal” enemies in pedology. Many swore allegiance to the regime, “realized” their “guilt” and repented. Materials are being published with a “radical revision of the pre-Soviet age standards” of childhood from the point of view of their much greater capacity and qualitatively different content among the children of the working masses in comparison with what our enemies wanted to admit. There was a revision of the problem of “giftedness” and “difficult childhood” along the lines of “those greatest creative riches that our new system opens up for worker-peasant children.” Methods of pedological research, especially the test method and laboratory experiment, were attacked. Blows were also dealt to “prostitution” in the field of pedological statistics. A number of serious attacks have been made on the “individualism” of pre-Soviet pedology. Quite eloquently, through the magazine “Pedology,” a parade of targets for bullying was held, and everyone was invited to participate in the “hunt” (and the “targets” too). However, the editors of the magazine did not take credit for organizing the persecution: “The political core of pedological discussions is in no way a special merit, a “super-merit” of pedology itself: here it reflects only the persistent pressure of the class pedological order, which in essence is always directly political, acutely party order" 48 . Analyzing further the situation in pedology, A.B. Zalkind calls everyone to “repentance”... Differentiation within the pedological camp requires, first of all, an analysis of my personal perversions... However, this does not relieve us of the need to decipher the perversions in the works of our other leaders in pedological work... and our journal must immediately become the organizer and collector of this material. At the review of the pedological and psychological departments of the Academy of Communist Education P.P. Blonsky stated the idealistic and mechanistic roots of his mistakes. Unfortunately, Comrade Blonsky has not yet provided a concrete analysis of these errors in their objective roots, in their development and in their real material, and we urgently await his corresponding speech in our journal. We invite our comrades to help P.P. Blonsky with articles, requests.” The “comrades” were not slow to respond: the next issue of the magazine publishes an article about the mistakes of A.M. Blonsky. Helmont “For Marxist-Leninist pedology” 49,
The journal Pedology demanded “repentance” or, what happened more often, blasphemous denunciations against “insufficiently devoted scientists.” They demanded “help from comrades” in relation to K.N. Kornilov, S.S. Molozhavoy, A.S. Zaluzhny, M.Ya. Basov, I.A. Sokolyansky, N.M. Shchelovanov. They demanded the “disarmament” of the outstanding teacher and psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, as well as A.V. Luria et al.
And these “criticism” and “self-criticism” were published not only in the journal “Pedology” itself, but also in socio-political magazines, especially in the journal “Under the Banner of Marxism” 21,50,51.
On the other hand, bullying in the form of “scientific criticism” has become not only a way of one’s scientific understanding, but also an opportunity to prove one’s loyalty to the regime. That is why so many “devastating” articles appear at this time, in almost all scientific journals, not to mention socio-political ones. What such “criticism” was like can be demonstrated using the example of M.Ya. Basov, whose persecution ended in a tragic ending. The journal “Pedology” No. 3 for 1931 published an article by M.P. Feofanov “Methodological foundations of the Basov school” 52, which the author himself summarizes in the following provisions: 1) the reviewed works of M.Ya. Basov cannot in any way be considered to meet the requirements of Marxist methodology; 2) in their methodological settings they represent an eclectic confusion of biologism, mechanistic elements and Marxist phraseology; 3) the main work of M.Ya. Basov’s “General Fundamentals of Pedology” is a work that, as an educational guide for students, can only do harm, since it gives a completely wrong orientation both to research scientific work on the study of children and adults, and to the education of a person’s personality; its harmfulness is further enhanced by the fact that Marxist phraseology obscures the harmful aspects of the book; 4) the concept of human personality, according to the teachings of M.Ya. Basov, is completely inconsistent with the entire meaning, spirit and guidelines for understanding a historical personality, a social-class person, which was developed in the works of the founders of Marxism; it is inherently reactionary.
These conclusions are drawn based on the encyclopedic nature of M.Ya.’s work. Basov in the field of pedology and references in this work to the world's most prominent psychologists and pedologists who had the “misfortune” of not being born in the USSR - and were not exponents of the ideology of the victorious proletariat. This and similar criticisms entailed a corresponding administrative reaction from the leadership of Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen, where M.Ya. worked. Basov.
M.Ya. Basov had to write a response article, but it was published... posthumously. A few months before the death of M.Ya. Basov leaves LGPI (hardly on his own initiative), where he headed pedological work. He goes to “realize his mistakes” at the machine, as a simple worker, and absurdly dies from blood poisoning. On October 8, 1931, the institute’s newspaper “For the Bolshevik Pedagogical Personnel” published a corresponding obituary and included a suicide note from M.Ya. Basova:
“To the students, graduate students, professors and teachers of the pedology department and my Employees. Dear comrades!
An absurd accident, complicated by the difficulties of our brother taking over production, tore me out of your ranks. Of course, I regret this, since I could still work as needed for our great socialist country. Remember that any loss in the ranks is compensated by increasing the energy of those remaining. Forward to Marxist-Leninist pedology - the science of the laws of development of socialist man at our historical stage.
M.Ya. Bass "53.
He was 39 years old.
The “critical” work was further enlivened by a letter from I.V. Stalin “On some questions of the history of Bolshevism” in the magazine “Proletarian Revolution”. In all scientific institutions, in response to this message, which called for an end to “rotten liberalism” in science, an ideological cleansing of personnel took place. Using the example of Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen can illustrate how it took place: in the newspaper “For Bolshevik Pedagogical Personnel” dated January 19, 1932, in the section “Struggle for the Party of Science” it was printed: “Comrade Stalin’s letter mobilized for increased vigilance, for the fight against rotten liberalism. In the order of deployment, the work was opened and exposed [listed by department]... in the pedology department: Bogdanovism, subjective idealism in the works of the psychologist Marlin and eclecticism, Menshevik idealism in the works of the pedologist Shardakov.”
The purge also affected the leading pedological personnel. The leadership of the central press organ, the Pedology magazine, has changed. A.B. Zalkind, despite all his ardor as a flagellator of himself and a flagellator of others, was removed from the post of executive editor: his “mistakes” in the first works on sex education were too serious, which he subsequently edited opportunistically many times, and later practically abandoned them, switching to purely organizational work. However, he turned out to be unbecoming of the building that he erected with such tenacity, although subsequently, right up to the defeat of pedology, he would still remain at the helm of pedology. Not only the editors of the journal are changing, but also the direction of work. Pedology becomes an “applied pedagogical science” and since 1932 has been defined as “a social science that studies the patterns of age-related development of children and adolescents based on the leading role of the patterns of class struggle and socialist construction of the USSR.” However, the practical benefits of pedology to education where the work of pedologists was carried out professionally and competently was obvious and determined the support of pedology from the People's Commissariat for Education. In 1933, a resolution was issued by the board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR on pedological work, which determined the directions of work and methods. N.K. participated in the development of this resolution. Krupskaya and P.P. Blonsky 3.
The result of this resolution was the widespread introduction of pedology into schools, the slogan appeared: “Every school has a pedologist,” which to some extent resembles the modern trend of psychologizing education. The opening of new schools specialized for certain groups of students was subsidized, including an increasing number of schools for mentally retarded and handicapped children. The practice of pedological examination, the distribution of children into classes and schools in accordance with their actual and mental age, which often does not coincide with the passport age, as well as the not always high-quality work of practicing pedologists due to their low qualifications, often caused dissatisfaction with parents and teachers in the local areas. This dissatisfaction was reinforced by the ideological indoctrination of the population. The differentiation of school into regular school and for different categories of children with mental retardation “violated” the ideology of equality and averageness of the Soviet people, which often reached the point of absurdity in its premises: statements that a child of the most advanced and revolutionary class should be worthy of his position, be advanced and revolutionary both in the field of physical and mental development due to the transformative impact of the revolutionary environment and the extreme lability of the body; the laws of heredity were violated, the negative influence of the environment in a socialist society was rejected. From these provisions it followed that a child could not be mentally and physically retarded, and therefore pedological examinations and the opening of new schools for mentally retarded and defective children were considered inappropriate; Moreover, they are a provocation on the part of bourgeois-minded, unreconstructed pedologists and the People's Commissariat for Education, who have taken them under their wing.
In this regard, in Pravda and other media there are calls to stop such provocations and to protect Soviet children from fanatic pedologists. Within pedology itself, the campaign continues to rebuild pedology into a truly Marxist science 55,56 But neither in the pedological press itself, nor in the pedagogical press, nor in the corridors of the People's Commissariat for Education is there any sense that the end is approaching. To criticism in the media and from some figures of the People's Commissariat for Education, who call for a ban on pedology or its return to the bosom of the psychology that gave birth to it, detailed answers are given, explaining the goals and results of the work, its necessity. It seems that the devastating resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks came as a complete surprise to many teachers and pedologists. This suggests that we need to look for the prohibition of pedology not only in its content, but also in a certain political game of the “top”. At the tip of the “bayonet” was N.K. Krupskaya.
A report on the implementation of this resolution was probably submitted to the Central Committee. Thus ended the brief history of pedology in the USSR. The baby is sacrificed to politics. The defeat of good undertakings is a “minor” political action directed against N.K. Krupskaya, N.I. Bukharin, A.V. Lunacharsky, V.M. Bekhterev, who actively supported Nadezhda Konstantinovna.
There are also purely internal reasons for this. First of all, there is a lack of unity in understanding the essence of science: not the distribution of ideas to take away, but their eclectic introduction from other areas of knowledge and even from areas of deep ignorance. True synthesis in thinking, as illustrated, has not occurred. Pedagogical dominance and later unjustified sociologization hid the main roots of pedology.
The only correct way, in our opinion, would be a path based on the creation of a doctrine of human individuality, the genetic predetermination of individuality, and an understanding of how, as a result of the wide possibilities of gene combinatorics, a typology of personality is formed in the interaction “genotype - environment.” On deep penetration into the concept reaction norm genotype could develop a deep and lasting science of man. It could have been already then, in the 20-30s. to receive normal scientific development and practice of pedagogical activity, which to this day remains rather an art.
Perhaps society has not matured enough to understand the goals of science, as happened more than once, as happened in its time with the discovery of G. Mendel. However, the reason for this is the fact that the level of banal genetic thinking was inaccessible to a wide range of pedologists, psychologists and teachers, as, by the way, at the present time, although there were first contacts. Thus, M.Ya. Basov, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, is a man of high humanitarian culture, leading “pedological perversions” at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen, invited the famous scientist Yu.I. Polyansky to teach the corresponding course. Meanwhile, on the one hand, this was a course in general genetics, but what was needed was a course in human genetics; on the other hand, it was a one-time event. You can take a course in genetics, but not absorb its essence, which is what happened with M.Ya himself. Basov. There was no textbook on human genetics at that time. Somewhat earlier (this is the task of a special and very important essay), the science of eugenics went out, and then genetics itself; the dramatic consequences of this in the country are still being felt.
The formula “We cannot expect favors from nature! Taking them is our task!” And we take, we take, we take... ignorantly and cruelly, ruining not only nature itself, but also the intellectual potential of the Fatherland. “They took it”, but did not claim it. Did this potential survive after all the selective processes? We think optimistically - yes! Even with the modern outlandish pressure of environmental bungling, it is worth relying on the limitless possibilities of hereditary variability. Having applied various methods of early psychodiagnostics of a person’s individual characteristics, which turned out to be well developed in the West, it is worth thinking about how to demand from each person the maximum possible that he can give to society. Only now, perhaps, we shouldn’t call these thoughts pedology, it’s already been experienced.
Notes
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- Molozhavyi S.S. The science of the child in its principles and methods // Pedology. 1928. No. 1. P.27-39.
- Molozhavyi S.S.. About the child study program // Education on transport. 1925. No. 11. P.27-30.
- Shapiro Ya.I. Basic issues of pedology // Vestn. enlightenment. 1927. No. 5. P.82-88; No. 6. P.67-72; No. 7. P.65-76.
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- Neurology, neuropathology, psychology, psychiatry: Sat., dedicated. 40th anniversary of scientific, medical and pedagogical activity of prof. G.I.Rosselimo. M., 1925.
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- Arkin E.A. Brain and soul. M.; L., 1928. 136 p.
- Zalkind A.B. Revision of pedology of school age: Report at the III All-Russian Congress on Preschool Education // Worker of Education. 1923. No. 2.
- Nevertheless, A.B. Zalkind previously wrote: “Of course, by passing on trained characteristics by inheritance, since in one generation it is impossible to seriously change the properties of an organism...”.
- Shchelovanov N.M. On the issue of raising children in nurseries // Issues. motherhood and infancy. 1935. No. 2. P.7-11.
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- Bukharin N.I. From speeches at the First Pedological Congress // On the path to a new school. 1928. No. 1. P.3-10.
- Krupskaya N.K. From speeches at the First Pedological Congress // On the path to a new school. 1928. No. 1. P.3-10. Let us note that these statements by N.K. Krupskaya were not included in the “complete” collections of her works.
- Lunacharsky A.V. Materials of the 1st All-Union Pedological Congress. M., 1928.
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- Babushkin A.P. Eclecticism and reactionary slander against Soviet children and teenagers // Pedology. 1932. No. 1-2. P.35-41.
