The Personal Choice Is More Reasonable than Collective

Review of the book: V. Radaev «Teaching in Crisis»

Abstract

The book by Vadim Radaev is a symbiosis of autobiographical writing and analytical processing of personal observations, statistics and sociological data, teachers’ statements and students’ claims about the learning process in higher education. In the first part of the book, Radaev detects a deep crisis in teaching, which is firstly caused by a new anthropological type of student with different ideas, views, demands (millennials and zoomers, without any significant experience in living in the USSR). Higher education has been gradually sinking into a crisis over the past decades (the undermining of narrative culture, the rejection of accumulation of cultural background, new requirements for the educational product packaging, the erosion of motivation, the distraction of attention, etc.), so the pandemic, isolation, forced distance learning formats have only accelerated this process. In the second part, Radaev proposes a program for overcoming the crisis, which is based on professional standards, personal pedagogical techniques, and the ethical position of a teacher, as distinguished to strongly worded prescriptions and instructions. A way out of the crisis is possible only when the personal position of the teacher is added to his or her awareness of the crisis, when the teacher reflects the meaning of his or her working activity. Radaev’s book raises many issues, leaves them open, pushes the reader for contemplations, denials, and discussion.