For the first time in many years, the humanitarian orientation of education received special attention at the state level. On behalf of President Vladimir Putin, the quality of humanities education in schools and universities must be improved. How important the goal is, we find out with the help of specialists from the Crimean Federal University. IN AND. Vernadsky.
As a professor of the Department of Russian History of KFU named after I. IN AND. Vernadsky Oleg Romanko, the president’s order has serious grounds, including in the Crimean education system.
“Having worked in education for many years, I have always seen a dismissive attitude towards the humanities,” he says. – We always had the impression that they underestimated the science of the story, although we always said that we were for the truth of the story.
According to Oleg Romanko, there is no trace of the traditional dispute between lyricists and physicists, and it has been replaced by the commercialization of science since the 90s of the last century.
“After the fall of the USSR, commercialization processes began, and this also extended to the scientific sphere,” notes Oleg Romanko. – Some gentlemen at the university level started to tell us, and now they tell us: “What is not for sale is not science. What you do at home are hobby groups. Now, if you invent a covid vaccine or some kind of smart olives that pick themselves from trees and pack them in boxes, that matters. And what you are doing, historians, philologists or journalists, is not science at all, it is so absurd.
As a professor of the Institute of Philology of KFU named after. IN AND. Vernadsky Vladimir Orekhov, investments in science are mandatory for the state.
- There is a law: the state, which does not develop basic science, sooner or later loses at the level of applied science, – he said. – Because applied science is always based on fundamental research. The state, which does not invest in the human sciences, becomes a consumer of someone else’s information. Such a consumer will certainly exist within the framework imposed on him from outside.
In turn, the head of the international affairs department of KFU named after IN AND. Vernadsky Alexander Mashchenko argues that if you do not develop your own humanities and build a sovereign educational humanitarian process, you will have to learn history from other people’s textbooks and be subordinated to another world that creates its own concept of the past, present and future. According to him, this is what happened to Russia and Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR.
- Only with Ukraine did this happen in absolutely catastrophic proportions, which we are now observing and trying to somehow neutralize, – says Alexander Mashchenko. – What is the SVO on the denazification of Ukraine? It is a kind of operation to bring humanitarian knowledge in Ukraine into line with what this country really was. The history of Ukraine is heroic, connected with the exploits of Tymoshenko, Rybalko, Kozhedub during the Great Patriotic War, and not with the story of a handful of idiots who hid in the caches of Bandera in the western Ukraine.
From the above, the interlocutor concludes that humanitarian education and humanitarian knowledge fall under the security of the state of the country.
- This is a question of survival, a question of the very existence of the state as such and in no way less, – Alexander Mashchenko is convinced of this. – We are celebrating the ninth anniversary of the reunification of Crimea with Russia. This reunification itself only became possible in many ways because the vast majority of Crimeans came to the referendum and voted as they voted. And this became possible because this public opinion was created, people were led by those who were still studying in the USSR. Without that, if we had spent 10 more years in Ukraine, there would have been nothing. A generation of those same people would grow up that now shouts “Heil, Bandera!” fight with us in Ukraine. Therefore, all those who underestimate liberal arts education, the humanities, all those who try to fund it on a residual basis, these are people who work against Russia, against the Russian state and against the Russian Crimea.
Addressing the question of the correct perception of the inextricable connection between Crimea and Russia, Vladimir Orekhov notes the importance of the meaning of Russian literature.
- To create a normal ideology, a normal worldview, you do not need to ideologize science, – he says. – It is enough just to objectively show the reality. As for literature, I encounter it at every turn. To show why Crimeans and all of Russia behaved this way in 2014, one must delve into how Russian literature has portrayed Crimea for 200 years. Crimea was not known to anyone until our scientists began to study it and describe it by our writers. Crimea as an ideologem is our product, a product of our Russian culture and literature.
