Russian School: Developing Civic Consciousness in Students

Abstract

Lev Lyubimov, Ph.D. in Economics, Professor in the Subdepartment of Macroeconomic Analysis, Deputy Director of Research and Development at National Research University — Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation. Email:  lubimov@hse.ru 

From the author’s point of view, growing individualism, globalization leading to mass cosmopolitanism, and increase in migration pressure have exacerbated erosion of civic consciousness, national identity and patriotism in dozens of countries, This is one of the most significant challenges the society faces today. The author speculates on the background for low civic consciousness among Russians and for the erosion of Russian national identity.

Developing civic consciousness is considered one of priority goals of school education system. The author identifies and describes the key features of national values which, as he believes, should form the basis for developing value-oriented attitudes in students. The study investigates into the aspects of education and socialization that develop civic consciousness, national identity and patriotism in school students. It is argued that value-oriented educational programs will have more success if they are presented in the form of an evolving discourse encouraging children to share and use freely their own sociocultural and internal experience. It is underlined that activity-based education and involvement into social life enable students to understand processes going on in their local community, to make decisions, to follow them, and to share responsibility for them, thus developing a positive attitude towards active citizenship.

A focus is given to the special role that the state and its institutions play in developing civic consciousness, as well as to the relationship between this pedagogy and characteristics of a specific society, whether basic or reasonably expected.