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Lastly, it is important to decrease the emphasis on grades. Students aren’t students any more. They are walking GPA’s. Students aren’t going to school with the goal of learning. Students are going to school because that is what they must do to keep their grades up. The emphasis in school should be to learn and grow. Too often students are focusing only on the numbers and whatever it takes to increase them, including cheat. A system like that is discouraging. It fosters a direct emphasis on tests and points rather than learning and curiosity. Yes, grades are needed to track academic success, but they don’t need to be used are excessively as they are. I cannot remember the last time I went more than three days without a test or quiz, but it has been months since I asked a question about something that wasn’t going to be on the test.

Let’s not take away from the extraordinary success and accomplishments of MCPS. We are a diverse, growing and unique school system, but we have room to improve. We need to revisit the basics of school. We are here not just to pass a test. We are here to learn and explore. We learn not just because the teacher told us to. We learn because we are hungry for knowledge. We excel not only in school, but we take time to develop and mature in all aspect of our life after the bell rings.

Colin McLaughlin, Damascus High School

Colin is the third place winner of the MoCo Student’s Inaugural ‘Young Voices Matter’ Contest

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Musings: I don’t want my children to dread school every day like I did

Little do they know how much I hope that’s true. Arguing with your kids about getting out of bed in the morning is one thing, but I dread something much worse.

I had a terrible experience in school. I loved learning and even though I was a little shy, I enjoyed being around other children. Unfortunately, a quiet demeanor would ultimately place a target firmly on my back.

Primary school was a tough experience — I was always on the outside looking in.

If I was included, it was because other people decided I was okay that day, but most of the time I was on my own. It hurt seeing everyone else but me having a group of friends. They would invite each other to birthday parties and hang out after school.

I had one friend who I would see if she visited her grandmother, my neighbour, but even at that, I was never asked to come to her house or birthdays.

Primary school was still bearable though. Secondary, however, was a whole different story.

The couple of girls that I had been friendly with in primary went to a different secondary school. This meant starting from scratch; something I was actually looking forward to. I could cast off the previous school years and begin again.

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I found quickly that I fit in even less than ever. I was made fun of for just about everything. I was short. I was shy. I was pale. I had frizzy hair. I had never tried alcohol. I had never kissed a boy.

For the first year of secondary school, a bunch of older girls used to follow me home every day just to call me names. I had no one by my side to defend me. No one in my corner. I felt totally alone. I would cry when I got home from school wondering what was so wrong with me. I felt like the only person in the world that didn’t have a friend.

It persisted and I slipped into depression and completely shut down. I stopped interacting with everyone, even my family. My mental health suffered and I wondered if anyone would miss me if I were gone.

I then began to skip school to avoid being bullied. Eventually, it caught up with me and because I was afraid of speaking up about what was happening, I had to go back to school without anything changing.

The anxiety meant I couldn’t focus at school. My grades began to steadily slip, meaning that on top of fears about the other students, I was getting berated by my teachers for my school work.

Most days, I hid in the toilets having panic attacks and cried without anyone seeing me. I hated every moment of school and felt like I would be trapped there forever.

In second year, I decided to take part in a summer project that the school had arranged. It was a decision that would change everything.

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During the programme, I met girls from my year who felt similar to how I did. Some had been bullied, but others just felt like they didn’t fit in. We continued to keep in touch over the summer and when I went back to school for third year, for the first time, I had real friends.

I had people to sit with, friends to have lunch with. Friends to borrow notes from. Friends to go to the cinema with. Friends to go to the Debs with. Friends to text when life was tough.

I still got slagged off for being different. Wanting to listen to different music and dress differently seems to be the biggest offence you can make to your peers as a teenager apparently. I didn’t care though, because now I had people by my side and I wore my uniqueness with pride. I’m happy to say that they are still by my side.

Adopted aunts to my children and bridesmaids on my wedding day — I can’t begin to put into words how much I love and appreciate these women. They brought light into my darkest days and continue to brighten up my life.

I got through my school years and came out the other side, but I keep thinking it shouldn’t be that hard. Your school years are supposed to be carefree and fun, not filled with stress and anxiety.

As a parent, I was terrified when it came to my son starting school. I had visions of him being left out, just like I was. Every school drop-off, I had a knot in my stomach.

Fast forward to him starting fourth class and I’m delighted that his school experience has been so different from mine. He’s confident, outgoing and has a large group of friends. What really makes me proud though is how he looks after the other children and makes sure to include everyone. His natural instinct is to be kind. It’s a huge sense of relief to see that he isn’t being bullied, but also that he will never be the bully.

I do still worry about my daughter. She’s still a toddler but someday she will begin that journey and the fear rises in me all over again. I feel like a lot of the reason I was bullied was that I didn’t want to grow up as quickly as the other girls. I wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend or sneaking into nightclubs. I just wanted to be a teenager, not an adult and for that, I was ostracised.

I look at some of the younger generations in my family and I have hope that things are changing. I’ve seen my little sister and relations close to her age with gaggles of friends, enjoying transition year and class trips, without any sense of trepidation. It makes me happy and I hope my children can feel the same. I want them to love being teenagers and have good memories to look back on.

As parents, we always want better for our children than we had for ourselves. For my children, I hope they have a happy childhood. All children deserve to be happy and all children deserve the right to be children.

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Reframe A Common Teacher Anxiety — Educator Forever

Whether you’ve already started back at school or if you’ll start in the coming weeks, you’re likely feeling a variety of feelings about the new school year. If you’re not feeling excited about heading back to the classroom, you’re not alone. If the back-to-school dread has hit you, or you feel stuck in these feelings, try to uncover how you could take action to move forward.  

Back-to-school dread can hit for a variety of reasons. Maybe you’re wishing you could leave the classroom and find a flexible job in education. Maybe you’re moving to a new grade level, subject or school and feeling some extra anxiety or stress. Maybe you’re experiencing teacher burnout and know the new school year will bring new challenges.

No matter why you’re experiencing back-to-school anxiety, taking action is the best way to get unstuck, but it also can be hard to figure out exactly what to do. Don’t rush it! The most important thing is that you’re tuning into what you want and making a plan for getting it.

3 Ways to Reframe Back-to-School Dread

Ready to transform back-to-school dread into motivation to help you reach your goals? Don’t wait until next summer to get things done!  Instead, try to carve out tiny bits of time to propel you closer to your dreams. Even if you just make tiny bits of progress towards your goals, that’s still progress worth celebrating.  

Follow these three steps to get started and reframe any back-to-school teacher anxiety or stress you might be feeling. 

Get Clear on Your Feelings of Back-to-School Dread

Whatever you’re feeling, don’t ignore it. Instead, get curious about why you might be feeling that way. Try to uncover what your feelings are trying to tell you. First, write down or say aloud all the feelings you’re experiencing when you think about your back-to-school dread. 

Take your time as you try to get clarity on exactly what you’re experiencing. This can be easier said than done, so allow yourself to really investigate so that you can find ways to feel better. 

For example, maybe you’re feeling rundown, exhausted, and burnt out from teaching. Consider which feelings might go away with time and which feelings keep coming up. For example, maybe it’s inevitable that you feel run down and exhausted at the start of the school year. You’re working long hours and putting in extra work to make sure the beginning of the year kicks off well. But if these exhausted feelings persist throughout the year, then it’s time to think about action steps you could take to feel better. 

Lingering emotions, or emotions that keep coming back over and over again, often give us clues into what we need to change. 

Make a Plan 

Maybe you were hoping to leave the classroom, but find yourself teaching another year. Or maybe you were looking forward to the new year, but ended up having a rough start. If you’re feeling discouraged, the best approach is— you guessed it!— to take action. 

After getting clear on your feelings and what they’re telling you, make a plan for changing your circumstances. Maybe you decide that you don’t want to teach next year. Think about how much money you’ll need to have saved so that you can confidently take the leap beyond the classroom. 

Then make a plan for making that money. Consider picking up contract jobs or other small jobs that will help you build experience and a cushion for when you leave teaching.  

Or maybe you’re feeling like you need to be more creative and decide that you want to learn more about curriculum development. Put aside a little time each week to work towards your goals. Block out time on your calendar and hold yourself accountable for sticking to the “appointments” you schedule with yourself. 

By taking control of your professional learning, you’ll likely find yourself feeling invigorated and inspired – and feeling a lot less back-to-school dread. 

Adopt a Summer Mindset 

Even if your plan involves working towards big moves in the future, there are things you can simultaneously do right now to feel better. Think about adopting a summer vacation mindset year-round. 

No matter how busy you might be, try to build in time for joy and relaxation. The work of a teacher is truly never going to be done, so make sure you’re prioritizing what you need. Spend time outside, with loved ones, and build empty space into your schedule so you have time to rest and relax.  

Practicing self-care for teachers might not do away with end-of-summer anxiety entirely. Let’s face it, the first day back to school for teachers (and sometimes the first few weeks back) can be tough! But if you prioritize time for the things that light you up, you’ll be able to find joy among the stress.

Ready to End Back-to-School Dread for Good?

What if your back-to-school stress sticks around all year? If you’re feeling perpetually down about teaching, it’s important to realize you have other options. 

You don’t need to stay in a position that consistently brings you down. There are many other ways you can make an impact in education while building a more sustainable and joyful professional life. Whether you dream of working as a curriculum developer or education writer, or want to start your own education business, the possibilities are truly endless when it comes to alternative careers for teachers.

Ready to discover how? Join the Beyond the Classroom course and learn how to get clear on what you want and land flexible jobs in education.  

Why We’re Dreading Going Back to School

As I walk into Target, I immediately see the gigantic “Back To School” signs and can practically smell all of the #2 pencils. I see kids with their parents going over their school supply list, making sure they got the correct number of notebooks and folders and the right brand of markers. The kids I see look happy and excited about doing their back-to-school shopping and do you know what? So do their parents. Without realizing it, I am staring at them and smiling, too. I can’t help it. Seeing the bright, smiling faces of today’s youth excited about going to school makes me happy, but my smile quickly fades when I am brought back to reality by my seven-year-old letting out a sigh and asking me, “Are we done yet?”

My child has attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD) and, for us, the words “back to school” create the opposite effect. Instead of excitedly counting down the days until the first day of school and being happy about starting another school year, my child has been crying every day as she sees the X’s on our calendar getting closer and closer to August 18, begging me not to make her go back to school.

My child is very smart, sometimes too smart, and I am not just saying that because I am her mother. My child was talking in full sentences before she could walk and she hasn’t stopped since. She says some of the most profound things I have ever heard, and she thinks outside the box. She is one of the most imaginative and creative people I know. Although her teachers have recognized these characteristics in her, they are not going to be measured, graded, or accounted for in school. She isn’t going to get A’s in Creativity or Thoughtfulness, that’s for sure.

On every report card last year, her teacher commented that my child needed to know her math facts better because she took too long to answer them. Despite spending extra time doing math drills with my child and getting her a math tutor, guess what? At the end of the year, she still wasn’t able to answer the teacher’s precious math facts as quickly as she would have liked. It’s not that she didn’t know the answer. It’s not that she didn’t know how to solve the problem. It’s that kids with ADHD have a difficult time focusing. They were born with these magnificent minds that allow them to think about several things at once. With time, hard work, and patience, they will learn how to manage and organize their thoughts to give their teachers (and, as an adult later, their bosses) what they want. I wish I could tell you exactly how they will do that, but ADHD affects everyone differently and so managing symptoms is different for everyone. My husband has ADHD and what worked for him as a child doesn’t work for our daughter.)

What breaks my heart is the fact that I know my daughter tries her absolute best in school, but, because of the way her mind works, she may be regarded by her teachers and classmates as unintelligent, lazy, and disrespectful. If she is treated like she is stupid, a troublemaker, or a bad kid, she will start believing it and begin behaving like it on purpose, because it’s the easier route. I would never describe my child as any of those words, but that is because I understand her mind and behaviors. If you’re lucky, your child may get a teacher that understands how ADHD affects children and will be willing to make accommodations for your child. If that is the case, consider yourself blessed. For the rest of you, your mamma bear claws will be coming out and you will be fighting every day to get that teacher to understand your amazing child the way you do. You are and always will be your child’s biggest advocate. Never be afraid to speak up and ask for the help your child needs and deserves.

[Free Download: The Big List of ADHD School Resources]

My child goes to a small private school and will be entering the second grade this year. These second graders have been at this school together for two years now and have already formed their own little cliques. Over the summer, my daughter wasn’t invited to at least two of her classmates’ birthday parties. My child has one good friend at her school. One. That is no surprise to me, though, because my daughter doesn’t have the best social skills. She gets angry and frustrated easily, she has a difficult time waiting her turn, and she is a bit immature for her age. Luckily for her, she is hilarious and she is a lot of fun to be around when she is in a good mood, so kids tend to gravitate to her at first.

However, if my daughter keeps interrupting them to shout something or gets mad at them when they don’t want to play what she wants, these kids leave. They don’t know she has ADHD or what ADHD is. They don’t understand why she acts the way she does and at this age, they are too busy being a kid to try to understand. My child’s best friend “gets” her, and I love her for that. For the kids that do stick around, they learn that my daughter is an amazing friend who they can count on to put a smile on their faces and is not afraid to stick up for them. They are definitely BFF-worthy.

With a new school year comes homework, something the parents of children with ADHD dread just as much as the children themselves. By the time my child gets home from school, she is drained. She has just spent seven hours at school trying her best to get her brain to focus to please her teachers and fit in with her classmates and now the teacher is requiring her to do math worksheets, language arts worksheets, spelling words, 20 minutes of reading, and review those damn math facts. The material is boring. She’s bored. I’m bored. She’s crying. I feel like crying. In fact, I feel like screaming and ripping my hair out, but I decide to take my own 3C’s advice to remain calm, cool, and collected.

Homework can take us hours to complete and, without the right tools, it is torture for us. What I have learned to do to keep my child interested, engaged, and stimulated during homework (and to make it go a hell of a lot faster) is to turn it into a fun game for her. You name it, and I’ve probably used it. From moving around Shopkins as math counters to me using a ridiculous Maleficent voice (her request) when quizzing her on her spelling words. If it makes her happy and gets her to do her homework without tears, I’m down. As time goes by, though, what has previously worked sometimes doesn’t cut it anymore, so I have to think of new ways to make homework fun. It’s time consuming, exhausting, and never-ending, but so is parenting. This is what my husband I signed up for seven years ago when we decided to become parents. Our baby being born with ADHD was what we were dealt with and now we’re just trying our best to play our cards right.

[The ADHD Homework System We Swear By]

After school is over for the day, I usually see other moms rushing their kids off to soccer practice or a Scouts meeting. My daughter has been begging me to let her join the Girl Scouts, but she is already in choir, a drawing class, and will be joining drama this year. I am afraid it will be too much for her to handle. Instead of taking my daughter to a Girl Scouts meeting, I am busy taking her to child psychiatrists to discuss her ADHD medication and child psychologists for behavioral therapy sessions. I am busy having her test out sitting on wiggly seats, using rubber bands on chairs, and holding fidget toys to see what is going to help her stay in her seat and focus best. I am busy sending e-mails to her teacher, asking how she did at school that day. I am busy role-playing with her in pretend social situations to help her become a better friend. I am busy reading her books about other children with ADHD, hoping she will relate to the characters and learn from them. I am busy researching all I can about ADHD. I am busy worrying about her. I am busy loving her. In other words, I am busy being her mother.

That, my dear friends, is what going back to school is like for parents of children with ADHD.

[Why Younger Friends May Be the Best Kind]

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Love Teaching But Dread Going Back? A Few Ideas –

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by Otis Kriegel

Summer vacation is about to screech to a sudden halt. You’re on the beach Tuesday and Wednesday you’re back to Staff Preparation Days.

What happened?

Did it go by too fast? Did you forget to read that book or clean out the storage bin? Don’t worry. You’re life isn’t over because you’re heading back to work. I completely understand the complicated feelings that go with heading back to school. But that dread is easy to shirk off with a change of attitude. Nothing will bring back those beach days, but there are a few ways to maintain a sunny disposition.

And they are in order so you can do them one at a time as you get ready to enter back into your “school life.”

8 Ideas To Smooth A Teacher’s Transition Back To School

Reach out to a colleague to connect, not complain

A few days before you return, give a colleague you like a call or shoot them an email, just to say hi. Share some stories about your summer and avoid too much talk about school life. Begin to renew that camaraderie that many of us truly enjoy. As a teacher, the majority of your work is in the classroom, but we are all small pieces of a greater whole, trying to help educate children and make communities better. This work takes a team and it is fun and rewarding. Remind yourself of that by reaching out to rekindle your collegial friendships.

Change your routine

For the past five years have you gotten up at the same time? Did you eat the same thing for breakfast, or worse, skip it?  Did you wear the same shoes every day? Look, I have my routines that I love and trust me, I am not changing all of them. Yet sometimes, if you are feeling the dread of returning to school, a little switch in an everyday ritual might make the day more interesting. Eat something new for breakfast. Get to school earlier and leave earlier. Take a different route to work. Change the music you listen to, or check the weather on a different website.

Do something unusual, not to exhaust your mind but to break that potential rut of feeling like you have been doing the same thing, over and over again, for years. Change it up.  Keep it different. It doesn’t have to be life shattering but enough of am adjustment to make your life feel a little different.

Learn something new

Even if you only have a couple of weeks left until the first bell rings, learn something new. Read a book that interests you. See a museum exhibition. Try a new type of food or enroll in a one-night class. Remember what it’s like to learn and to be exposed to something fresh and captivating. This is what your students feel like when you inspire them. It’s a very powerful feeling. And the best way to remember that is to find it in yourself.

No one likes to end summer vacation. (Trust me, I would love another few weeks.) But try a few of these routine changers. They might help you to shed the dread and get more excited about returning to school. After all, isn’t that how you want to feel?

Change work outfit

Make it more than just your shoes. Add something to what you wear, whether it be a watch, a necklace, different earrings, or a bracelet, something that you put on or keep in your desk that makes you feel different. How about a new haircut? Maybe you use a new belt, or rotate wearing a few items?

Whatever it is it should make you feel slightly different, not the same old self that has been dragging themselves to work wearing the same old thing. Your colleagues might notice, too. Maybe it will inspire them to mix things up.

Make a new friend

Reconnecting with a colleague before you return is always a good plan but reaching out to someone new at school can be really refreshing. I enjoy a quality conversation or even a passing quick chat with some of my fellow teachers during the work day, which usually has nothing to do with work. It’s a great break from the teaching day, even if only for 5 minutes.

Teaching can be very isolating, spending hours without adult contact.  Find someone new at the school with whom you can casually socialize. It has been great over the years to have lunch with the same people everyday or to eat and work in your classroom alone, but mixing up your social life at school will act as another tool to shed the dread of returning back to the classroom.

I completely understand the sadness of ending summer break. No one likes to leave the beach! But don’t think about your curriculum just yet. Put a little energy into yourself and you’ll feel better about getting back to your classroom!

See you at school!

Otis Kriegel is the author of Starting School Right: How do I plan for a successful first week in my classroom? (ASCD). Kriegel has taught elementary and middle school students for 15 years. He has taught in dual language (Spanish/English and German/English), monolingual, and integrated coteaching classrooms. To support your back to school efforts, ASCD is offering a free e-book download of Otis Kriegel’s Starting School Right. Download it here.”

The Dread of Watching Your Kid Start School

The Dread of Watching Your Kid Start School

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The Hard Part

Writer Amil Niazi’s monthly meditations on the highs and lows of parenting — and every feeling in-between.

The Hard Part

Writer Amil Niazi’s monthly meditations on the highs and lows of parenting — and every feeling in-between.

Photo-Illustration: by the Cut; Photos Getty Images

I hated school — despised it, really. The homework, the expectation of sitting still for hours on end, the false pretense that I was going to use this complicated math ever again … I disliked all of it, but it was the whole socializing thing that really got me. I felt woefully out of touch with what everyone else was doing, awkward in my own body and my own mind.

Other kids knew the rules to certain games, had a shared language around play, that, as a recent immigrant, I had to play catch-up on. I felt like someone who was just figuring out life while others were far ahead. Like they’d handed out the guidebook for how to be a person in kindergarten and I missed it because my parents always dropped me off at school super-late. Even in high school, I struggled to make sense of who I was inside my own forged-together friend group, always wondering if I really fit in.

As a young adult, I did eventually settle into a version of myself that was less insecure and nervous, and I enjoyed a rich (and sordid) social life. I gleefully left all those years of primary- and high-school discomfort long behind me. Then I got older and had kids.

Now that my 4-year-old son has started kindergarten, I am flooded with memories of those years, some incredibly visceral and overwhelming. The time when I was 8 that I finally made it to school in the appropriate outfit for whatever special-color day it happened to be and my classmate Frances vomited all over me as soon as the national anthem started and I had to walk all the way home by myself to change into the only clean shirt I could find, which of course didn’t fit the theme. Some are silly, like when, coming out of the bathroom during recess in third grade, my skirt was accidentally tucked into my tights and a group of older girls laughingly pointed it out. I’m almost 40 now, but I still check my skirts and dresses diligently when I leave a toilet stall — silly and haunting. Others are more pointy. Thinking about the depression that hit me at 16 and alienated me from most of my friend group still makes me feel like I could lose my friendships any time I start to show vulnerability, like a spell of bad fortune or injury could mean those closest to me will simply move on. These things embed in you, shape you in tiny yet permanent ways, leaving you just a little bit changed forever.

Now I’m merely imagining his days instead of living them together with him, which is both freeing and incredibly painful.

The thought of those little indignities, those small, sharp pains already shaping my son, kills me.

In some ways, we’re both going back to school. He’s learning to exist in a new social sphere, and so am I. Every morning we each face the gauntlet of new people, people who will be in our lives for the next eight years. As I watch my child struggle to integrate into the pack, I worry he gets his shyness and reserve from me, like I’ve passed on something faulty. (Did I mention that parent cliques are already forming? A social hierarchy is taking place, and I’ve returned to a state of awkward adolescence I thought I’d abandoned almost 30 years ago. )

The daily school drop-off has become a kind of ritualistic torture for me, gawking at my child and hanging around just a little too long as he walks into the playground, full of nerves, tearfully waving at us from the other side. I’m aware that part of what I’m feeling is my own bruised recollection of wanting to belong, of longing for something you think other people already intrinsically understand, something you feel like you will never grasp. A social master key you just never got. I know acutely what it is to feel those feelings I think he’s feeling. I also know that much of what I’m feeling is my own projection.

But isn’t it just a little bit heartbreaking that after years of protecting and nurturing and teaching this person how to be alive in the world, I’m simply sending him off to be molded by strangers? I can’t be there, the way I was for those first years of his life, to prevent anything bad from happening or kiss his literal boo-boos as they swell and form. Now I’m merely imagining his days instead of living them together with him, which is both freeing and incredibly painful. Some days he comes home exuberant, delighted and exhausted by everything he did that day. Other days he says he was lonely or nervous. I can’t help but obsess over what it means for such big, important feelings to be felt by such a tiny little person. The total crush of remembering those feelings is nothing compared to the thought of him feeling them, too.

There are so many important things about school that are changing him for the better too, building an independence that is surprising and endearing and inspiring. Still, nothing really prepared me for how this part of it would feel, for how much it seems like I’m suddenly parenting myself, or rather a younger version of me, healing old wounds and trying to prevent new ones.

I have to constantly remind myself that there is another side and I’m standing on it, scathed but fine, happy in fact. It still doesn’t change how strange and sometimes sad it is to watch someone else go through many of the same things you did in what often feels like slow motion. Because it’s not happening to me, it’s happening to someone I love intensely, each wound, each rejection feels as though it’s occuring twice. Knowing I can’t stop it or really change what’s going to happen to him inside that school building has been the hardest part of parenting so far. The best I can do is wait for pick-up and hope he’ll tell me something good about his day. Today, he said he and a new friend were “playing puppy dogs.” His glee was infectious, and I finally let myself relax, just a little.

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The most terrible school in the world

Adults have rather vague memories of school times. Change of shoes, recess, cool magazines, go for chalk, mop the floors in the classroom. The first call, bows, flowers on the windowsills. The place of memories of your school years is occupied by the problems of your child at school. Donate money for another repair or a gift to the teacher. And behind the word “school” there are many sounds, smells. Chalk creaking on the board, the floorboard creaking, the sound of the ball in the gym, the smells of lunch, old mats, the perfume of classmates …

Imagine that they took an ordinary Soviet school, removed all the students and teachers from there, threw them in almost 30 years. The result is a very dark place. As if overnight everything stopped and people disappeared somewhere, leaving things to lie in their places. Actually it was, because this story about a school in the ghost town of Pripyat …

13 photos

Photos and text by Anton Petrus

1. We ended up in Pripyat in March 2014 – probably the darkest month of the year, along with November. Light rain, gloomy weather only added drops of darkness to the atmosphere of this place. I don’t know if I could walk there on my own, knowing that there was no one else around. Probably could, but with shaking arms and legs and gray hair. Pripyat is the scariest place I have ever been. And the places where crowds of children used to run – a kindergarten, a school – are especially striking. It seems that if you listen, you will hear children’s voices …

2. This is a typical high school, with typical classrooms, desks and a ruler yard. But years later, it turned into a stronghold of horror and despair. In a few decades, it will collapse, and flowers will grow on piles of stones, as a memory of the past.

3. But for the time being, the school is a place of pilgrimage for all those who have been beaten by Stalker and who have studied Roadside Picnic. There are a lot of them here, guys who want to walk around places familiar from a computer game. I confess, I played. But in our group there were those who said “and I studied here” … I don’t know what is going on in the soul of people who see their home in such a state, the place where a happy childhood passed. For example, even now I do not like to go to my old school, there is no need to wake up old memories. And then to see what happened to the house, the yard, the native desk in the classroom. It’s definitely hard.

For many years the interiors in schools, kindergartens, shops have been practically destroyed by soldiers, marauders, and then by tourists who want to create an installation for “greater horror” with their own hands. There are many of them, and you can immediately understand that this doll in the chair is seated by the hands of a tourist, or maybe a guide. That’s how the cash register ended up in the school.

4. Once upon a time, delicious cutlets and borscht were cooked here, it smelled of delicious bread. With what anticipation I waited for the school lunch! We were always fed well and for free – the Chernobyl zone after all. And the attendants came here, 15 minutes before the call from the lesson and set the table for their class. Or maybe a line of hungry kids lined up for distribution …

5. Children from recess rushed along this corridor, shouting, jumping – trying in every possible way to relieve tension after tedious geometry. And after the lessons, everyone hurried home faster, and then to the yard, to play with friends. No iPhones, X-boxes or iPads. Everyone wanted to play football, somewhere behind the houses with knives, steal somewhere a piece of carbide. And then it all stopped in just one day. And now only the wind runs along this corridor.

6. Various textbooks, filmstrips, samples of plants and minerals are surprisingly well preserved in the classrooms. Even some conservation remained. There is a suspicion that these tomatoes in the jar were also brought by someone. Everything in the rolled up jars has rotted away for a long time, but for some reason not under the plastic lid.

7. Cool photo album. Photos – “We are going, we are going, we are going” and “Before boarding the bus.” Hundreds of photographs rot in the school for years. History disappears, only memories remain.

8. For me, such a picture is blasphemy in its purest form. Trample books, roll their dust – is simply unthinkable. And yet the floor of many classes is simply littered with textbooks, books of classics. It is very difficult to see such a sight.

9. Another installation from tourists – the main condition is that a gas mask must be present. Nearby lies the book “Lenin’s course of the world”, a plate with Ilyich’s speeches, children’s drawings. But this is not a movie, this is reality. A terrible phantasmagoria that has long been part of our world. We are used to the fact that there is an exclusion zone nearby, a cemetery of memories and unfulfilled hopes. And we live with it.

10. Pioneer truth. Who was the pioneer? I was already accepted into the Ukrainian pioneers, such an atavism of the Soviet past. I don’t know if there is a pioneer organization in Ukraine now.

11. Schoolyard, once covered with asphalt. Lines were held here, chants were shouted, and they swore to the cause of Lenin. And years later – almost a forest. A few more years will pass and the dense forest will hide the platform under its branches. There will be even more wild boars, hares, the city will return to the bosom of nature.

12. Pripyat is not just an abandoned city, it is a large open-air museum. Museum of the Soviet past, frozen time. And a museum of human tragedy. More importantly, it is a monument to family grief. The inhabitants of Pripyat experienced a lot, leaving their homes, “only for a few days” in the end, never returning there. For those who often go to Pripyat, there is a taboo – not to go into residential buildings. It’s like invading someone’s life, even if it’s been frozen in the City years ago.

13. Also see “Pripyat – Silent Hill” and “What could be bought for 1 ruble in the USSR. ”

Tags: HD, puppets, ghosts, Chernobyl, school boloto-deti-uchilis-v-uzhasnykh-usloviyakh-17931499.html

School swamp: children studied in terrible conditions at a rural school in North Kazakhstan region – photo

School swamp: children studied in terrible conditions at a rural school in North Kazakhstan North Kazakhstan region – photo

Parents of schoolchildren turned to the media and social networks with a complaint that their children are forced to study in a damp school with moldy walls and rotten… 23.08.2021, Sputnik Kazakhstan

2021-08-23T20:43+0600

2022-02-01T14:05+0600

/html/head/meta[@name=’og:title’]/@content

@name=’og:description’]/@content

https://sputnik.kz/img/07e5/08/17/17930867_0:762:2048:1920_1920x0_80_0_0_d

society, regions, education, North Kazakhstan region, school

PETROPAVLOVSK, August 23 – Sputnik. In the North Kazakhstan region, schoolchildren from a rural school were forced to study for many years in an emergency school with a leaking roof, moldy walls and rotten floors, Sputnik Kazakhstan correspondent reports.

© Photo : Courtesy of residents of the village of Ilyich in the North Kazakhstan region Leaking ceilings, moldy walls and rotten floors are the conditions under which children study in the village of Ilyich in northern Kazakhstan

Leaking ceilings, moldy walls and rotten floors – in such conditions children study in the village of Ilyich in northern Kazakhstan

© Photo : Courtesy of residents of the village of Ilyich, North Kazakhstan region turned to the media and social networks.

Do schoolchildren and students need to wear masks in educational institutions

School with streams and mold

“It’s just a cry from the bottom of our hearts. Why are only city schools being repaired, but what about village schools? In Ilyichevsk secondary school, not once during its existence (and it was built back in Soviet times) was a major overhaul done. When it’s raining, water flows in a stream from the second floor to the first, the walls are damp and covered with mold, the ceiling is swollen, the floor is rotting. There is nothing to breathe in the school from dampness, it’s just some kind of swamp, not a school, “complain the parents of rural schoolchildren.

© Photo : Provided by the residents of the village of Ilyich, North-Kazakhstan region In the Ilyichevsk secondary school, no major repairs have been done during the entire period of its existence (and it was built back in Soviet times)

In the Ilyichevsk secondary school, not once during the entire period of its existence (and it was built back in Soviet times) they did not make major repairs

© Photo : Provided by residents of the village of Ilyich, North Kazakhstan region

conditions for children is simply impossible.

Head of the Department of Education of the North Kazakhstan region Gulmira Karimova, answering a question from a Sputnik Kazakhstan correspondent, noted that the department is aware of this problem.

“Children of the Ilyichevsk school should study under normal conditions, they are no worse than students of other schools. Therefore, we decided to start repairs at the school without waiting for the results of the republican examination, since the design and estimate documentation is being prepared for a very long time,” she informed Karimov.

8 million tenge was allocated for the purchase of building materials so that the school would be ready by September 1st. According to her, 70 percent of the repair work, both external and internal, has been completed. The head of the educational department promised that the school would be ready by the beginning of the year. And when the design and estimate documentation is ready, the repair work will be fully completed in accordance with the project.

© Photo : Provided by residents of the village of Ilyich, North Kazakhstan region0003

When it rains, water flows in a stream from the second floor to the first, the walls are damp and covered with mold, schoolchildren’s parents wrote – Vishnevskaya school and Tayynshinskaya school (both are located in the Tayynshinskiy district of the region).

“They have been considered emergency for the past three years. It is no longer possible to repair them, so a decision was made to build new schools. The construction of the Vishnevskaya school has already begun, and for the Taiynshinsky school, an examination at the exit, as soon as the documents are received, the construction of this school will begin” Karimova assured.

School 2021: new rules

Only four students per school

By the way, the North Kazakhstan region is distinguished by a large number of small schools, that is, schools with a small number of students. There are 361 small schools in the region, which is 78% of the total number of schools.

“Today, six primary schools (one in Akzhar district, one in Akkayyn, one in Esil, two in Zhambyl and one in Kyzylzhar districts) were closed, in which only four students in grades 1-4 studied. To ensure access to quality education for children, students will be transported,” Karimova informed.

Starting September 1, it is planned to transport 2,074 children from 298 settlements, including 1,261 students with daily transportation, and 813 with weekly transportation. To upgrade the fleet, 42 vehicles were purchased in 2020, and another 18 units in 2021.

How a wonderful Soviet school gave rise to a terrible Unified State Examination – Teacher’s newspaper

In any tough conflict, the truth is that both sides are right – only they are not ready to admit the existence of the other side of the same coin.

Photo from the “UG” archive

Discussing the fashionable concept of “quality of education” for the Soviet school and for the modern one, the participants in the discussion rarely think about the concept of “education”. And it is very meaningful. I now define it as “coordination of pictures of the world.” When teaching, you can simply learn what is required by the program, but not build it into a holistic view of the world around you. If you just need to pass an exam, it’s enough to remember what you were taught, what tasks you were coached on. But no one bothers to build this “knowledge” into your picture of the world – then it is easier to understand the meaning of tasks and solve non-standard tasks, and not just typical ones.

Education – that is, the conscious construction of his own picture of the world – a person will be engaged only if the learning process meets his educational request. What is the request – such is the teaching. That is why for one teacher in one class, one torturedly crawls “for a C”, and the other wins at the Olympiads. That is why I taught my children that the quality of an educational organization is determined not so much by teachers as by classmates. Where classmates “for a walk”, there Einstein in teachers will not help much. And where classmates “repair engines on the go”, there a serial lecturer is not a hindrance to development.

In the Soviet school, the standard educational request was in the logic of famous films – “a ticket to life”. The preparatory stage for life is school. Life is a factory or an institution. Therefore, as the school graduation date approached, the student picked up guidelines on where to go next – on them, an educational request matured. The school and everyone around lived in this logic and expected manifestations of this request from the teenager, supported him to the best of his ability. I omit the situation when adults impose their opinion – this is a perversion of logic, but even it fits into this scheme, albeit crookedly.

As long as the balance of request and offer was normal, everything worked fine. But over time, the balance is off. In Soviet society, the prestige of higher education was very high, and compulsory military service caused more and more fears. Therefore, there was a shortage – a hallmark of “developed socialism”, brightly castigated by Arkady Raikin. As in all other spheres of life in Soviet society, the problem of the shortage of places in universities was solved in an ugly way.

Part of the entrants did what they deserved, but at a considerable cost, both nerves and money. Oohs and aahs around nerves at the Unified State Examination – fairy tales at a children’s matinee compared to Soviet admission to a university. That is why there was a request for preparation for university exams instead of the previous request “preparation for life”. Not for everyone, but for many. Even for those who consciously chose their path to the future, the request to prepare for the entrance exams was extremely important.

At a certain stage, the level of complaints in society about the procedure for entering a university required major changes. Everyone saw the solution in the creation of an independent unified exam, which would eliminate corruption and hassle in the transition from school to university. And so the USE was born. As a solution to the problem that the Soviet school and the Soviet university gave rise to.

It would seem that everything should be resolved – but now we know that the USE has become a bogey to this day, although it suits many people quite well. The main reproach is now not education, but coaching. To a large extent, this is true. Not for everyone, but for many. The saddest thing is that not only parents with children, but also teachers were involved in this process. Moreover, it is precisely for teachers that a clear focus on passing the exam successfully turned out to be more beneficial than the same smart GEFs focused on development. GEF got into conflict with the Unified State Examination, where he won the Unified State Examination. This is natural, but initially it was not obvious. What the request wins.

With the advent of the Unified State Examination, the student no longer needed to form an educational request to prepare for the future path. The USE, with the ability to apply to different universities, allows you to postpone the task of choosing a path for an indefinite period. Moreover, the future path is now chosen not according to one’s deepest desire, which must first be born, but according to the university one managed to get into. And given the new realities of lifelong learning, it becomes indifferent where to start: what happens, we’ll start with that. And then life will lead.

So it turns out that both sides of the dispute about the Unified State Examination are right:

– Some turned a blind eye to the Soviet games with a shortage of places in universities. They remember the choice of a life path at the exit from school, how the teachers tried to help with the choice, with the preparation of the choice. Choice is a manifestation of activity and initiative of a student/graduate. They are deservedly outraged by the race for the USE score and the massive stories of cheating on the USE, police cordons to prevent abuse.

– Others remember the broken fortunes of the Soviet admissions, thieves Soviet students who did not study, but took the places of those who were unfairly flunked at the entrance. They quite rightly believe that today it is much easier for those who have chosen their path to act. At a minimum, those who have not scored points can enroll in paid education.

The fact is that in the Soviet logic it was necessary to form an educational request through the formation of a choice of a future path – school was a preparation for later life. And in modern logic it’s easier not to bother. It’s easier to make the highest possible USE score with an educational request, and then we’ll see. And therefore education as a coherent picture of the world is no longer necessary for the vast majority: memorized-passed-forgotten.

And where is the way out? It is foolish to go back to old problems. And leaving the exam with new problems is also stupid.

If we realize that there is no full-fledged education without an educational demand, we need to come up with a model where we cannot do without it. In this sense, it is worth keeping the Soviet school in mind. But the bacchanalia with admission to the university must be excluded. Since education is rarely limited to studying at one university, it is better to start not with just any one, but with one chosen according to interest. Even if later interests change, knowledge is not superfluous – but a conscious choice and motivated teaching.

I believe the solution is to remove the boundaries between school and university. The initial courses of the university, and even the entire educational cycle of the undergraduate level, could merge with the senior school into a conditionally “profile school”. There, in the logic of teaching the school, it would be possible to form a certain profile of its own, which would allow, at the level of transition to a conditional “magistracy”, to pass through the required input profile. The transformation of the institute of the Unified State Examination into an external independent test structure for the control/formation of a profile recruited on uniform conditions would allow maintaining the flexibility and independence of the current situation, returning the task of a meaningful educational request.

A flexible profile will allow you to continue further stages of education without a rigid focus on a single university. Graduates of creative universities have already been allowed to receive another higher education free of charge. The time is not far off when the state will encourage any education without restrictions. But education is not like any fact of studying at a new university, but as a fact of successful qualifications and building up a profile, regardless of the university. Moreover, it is possible to maintain different prices for different elements of the profile in order to stimulate exactly those that the state needs most.

One obstacle on this path is military service with a gap of a year from life. If we forget about the army, then the school I described lives its own life without reference to age: when I matured to something, then I went to master it, confirm it in an independent center with entry in the profile, receive compensation for expenses and live on until the next impulses to learn. And if the army is made in the manner of a Swiss one with episodic short-term training camps for a lifetime, then the problem is removed. The military part of the training can be added to a separate profile and mastered in the same logic.

Terrible school of life – Journal room

embankment” the word “fear” is mentioned 17 times … Adjective
“terrible” … 14 times, and only once – the key word
“terror”.

Semyon Ekshtut.
“Yuri Trifonov”

Yuri Trifonov could not complain about the lack of critical attention and
literary critics – all 35 years of his active writing, he was in sight. Could not complain in the next 35 years after his
death, if he knew: what he wrote remains in the center of heightened attention.
The following spoke about him: Roy Medvedev and Caroline de Magde-Soep,
Vadim Kozhinov and Yuri Oklyansky,
Alexander Shitov and Natalia Ivanova, Olga Miroshnichenko and … I mention
only those who, in his book about Yuri Trifonov, published in a small series
“ZhZL”, Semyon Ekshtut refers.

Refers. But it doesn’t repeat. Nobody. Ekshtut –
an analyst of a completely different, new profile. Or, as Akhmatova would say,
a different direction.

Firstly, in the Trifon field, Ekshtut is younger than all his predecessors. For one or even
two generations younger. And he sees things differently than they do. Secondly, he is not
literary critic and historian. More precisely, he is a sociologist, historian,
archivist. And again, he reads the text differently than the critics read. Thirdly, in his
book found a new approach not only to Trifonov
heritage, but to the era that has remained behind us.

Born – a year after Stalin’s body was placed in the Mausoleum.
I went to school when the body was taken out of the Mausoleum. It seems to have never missed a day
Stalin era. But the era has risen and hung over the memory of the first post-Stalinist generation – either in blinding flashes, or lapses into darkness.

Meanwhile, life went on as usual. Studying in the fifth year of philosophical
Faculty of Moscow State University (and already getting used to the idea that quotations from early Marx should be
truncate so as not to stick out across the obligatory Soviet ideology), Ekshtut read in the “New World” Trifonov’s
“Another Life” and found there motives that have nothing to do with
orthodox Marxism. And how did Trifonov succeed? Approach of the observer
object continued. A year later, Ekshtut finished
graduate school, defended his dissertation and began to look for work. Looking after a place in one
from provincial universities, tried to get a job, but soon figured out the fee:
before dealing with your own problems, you will have three
year “plow” on the head of the department. This situation Ekshtut
recalled, reading in “Friendship of Peoples” Trifonov’s “House
on the embankment” (and already trying on the role of a literary critic?).

Entering this role, in his book about Trifonov he naturally and without any effort
inscribed his hero in a macro-literary context,
placing in the right places references to Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and at the same time
excerpts from Innokenty Annensky, who was Trifonov’s favorite poet.
The modern context Eckstuth wrote, citing such luminaries,
like Nathan Eidelman and Aron Gurevich, not to mention Nikolai Fedorov. And this highly learned plan is butt to the most insightful
knowledge of texture, no, not mental, but most everyday.
For example: how much in Khrushchev’s times did they get change from the “troyak” when they took
“for three” half a liter, and what could be obtained from a snack for this change
(processed cheese, gentlemen, processed cheese!). And next to this “cheese mass”
– links to little-known
reference books of the city police of tsarist times, to “lists of headquarters officers for
seniority “and other rare sources, known only purely
“approved” professionals. A wonderful junction of “top” and “bottom”! Weighing
historical realities, Ekshtut is not without a provocative
humor notices that the income and expenditure book of a cook from the time of the Great French
revolution is no less valuable for comprehending that time than
unknown autograph of Napoleon.

So what is more important for Eckstuth? Both!
The color of the ribbons on the folders in which Trifonov put the first manuscripts. And then
with what pen did he write the first story: “duck”, “asterisk” or “horseshoe” …
He wrote – on office paper, which those pens mercilessly tore! And others in
wartime was not available.

This textural scrupulousness is important not only in itself, but in Eckstuth it is strongly associated with the official parameters of the era,
and the biography of his hero is literally nailed to these points. Who are the parents…
hurry, comrade readers, slow down: this questionnaire question smells not only
the blood of kinship, but the blood of torture and execution.

Specifically. The writer’s father is a prominent figure in revolutionary times,
organizer of the Red Army – should be responsible for the era that went to
inheritance to his son? After all, activists also put Yury Trifonov on the bill
liberal pores: the tearful bitterness of the people’s sadness was de
is inaccessible to him … Ekshtut does not quote such philippics,
and I’ll take a chance:

“He (Trifonov. – L.A. .) belonged to –
class, by birth – not to victims, innocent victims of “revolutionary
storms”, and not even to “fellow travelers”, but to the revolutionary nomenklatura,
who first made this damn revolution, and then rode it,
admiring and disputing something over trifles, but still
admiring more: when on a horse, when under a horse, but still at a gallop, without dismounting
from this Budyonnovsk cavalry…”

Well, how was Yuri Trifonov supposed to justify himself for
his father, Valentin Andreevich Trifonov, commander of the revolutionary
vigilantes and an exiled settler who collaborated with Stalin himself?

The Stalinist state security itself resolved this issue by shooting Trifonov Sr. in 1938.
Balanced red and black… So
Trifonov Jr. had the right not to be responsible for his father’s Bolshevik affairs – era
answered her father. The only thing left for the son was a certain “hitch”, or, as he himself
later determined that a certain “bagpipe” – when filling out questionnaires, or rather – when
filling the vacuum while searching for the meaning of that terrible era.

But, digressing for a second from this “bagpipe”, I will now say about
disagreement with Ekshtut, which somewhat breeds
me with him in understanding the fundamental laws of history.

Following Trifonov (that is, imbued with his
attitude) Ekshtut believes that the horror of our
totalitarian era comes from the adopted “untruncated”
Marxism, and that in the basis of the world wars that warped and split humanity
in the twentieth century, lies the greed of the ruling classes and the brutality of governments, not
managed to divide the colonies. I myself grew up in this belief: I believed that
humanity will be freed from horrors if it accepts the only true teaching.

But – in the course of long doubts – tried to reverse the causes and
consequences: what if the basis of history is an irrevocable aggressive
human nature, which the human tries to cope with
or stupidity? What will the only true doctrine do here? If you take
the last two centuries: as soon as the peoples of Europe intuitively felt the approach
deadly fight, so the warlike spirit began to “wander through Europe” –
starting with the Germans, squeezed from all sides by the British, French, Slavs …
Communism as a pseudonym for militancy and all kinds of socialism as ways
to mobilize: national socialism, international socialism, etc. On the basis of these
total mobilizations – the initially aggressive nature of man, which with
labor restrain (or serve) certain beliefs, and she, nature,
takes its toll on a local, then on a global scale … This
– context for any biography of any time, and even ours … Following Trifonov
I save the word “terror”…

The problem is purely philosophical, and I, noting its controversial and unsolvable,
– I now return to the biography of Yuri Trifonov, as Semyon Ekshtut comprehends it, and in particular, to that “bagpipe” that spoiled
Trifonov’s life.

The matter is as follows. On the first rise of the fame of the author of “Students” around
envious people stirred. We found out that Trifonov, joining the Komsomol, hid ,
that his father is an “enemy of the people”: when asked about his father, an aircraft factory worker answered evasively:
“Father died at 1941 years old.

Hid? Or just didn’t answer the question he wasn’t asked? And
reproduced the official version: “The certificate issued by the NKVD stated that V.
A. Trifonov died in 1941. In those years (reminds me of Ekshtut)
there was an unspoken official instruction: relatives of persons shot in
1937-1938, when issuing certificates, provide fictitious dates of death of their relatives
and hide the fact of the execution.

Is this “tacit instruction” itself an oversight? Is it from thoughtlessness
authorities? From the laziness of executive bodies? Yes, both
enough: both thoughtlessness and laziness. But for the functioning of the totalitarian system
and it was not necessary: ​​unfeasible, impractical, unnecessary – wholesale survey
everyone who went by the stream: who was allowed to conduct business, that was translucent
through, and everyone else (including aircraft factory workers) was let through
abbreviated questionnaire.

So one had to feel where the steel of the total system is, and where is the crack of normal existence. The system knew where
savings can be stopped. A person with
intelligence and talent.

(This is also how Yuri Gagarin, who survived the German occupation in the eight-year
age, ten years later, with a matriculation certificate in his pocket, not going to college
leaned, and in the “craft” – so as not to write in the questionnaire,
that his sister was taken to work by the Germans.)

And this is at all levels of the then existence. Are you having an affair with
actress of the Bolshoi Theater, and rumors are crawling around Moscow that the Bolshoi Theater
received a list of artists who were taken to Beria for erotic pleasures. Well
do? Break up with your loved one? Revolt against the all-powerful voluptuary?
Or ignore this special horror and with your beloved
a woman to live like you don’t know anything!

So you need to feel where this steel colossus leaves gaps into which
a man mobilized from head to toe must still manage to breathe!

And even be happy? I, like everyone in my generation, believed in
happiness, and certainly – in the world. In the course of life
something else was thought: no final happiness will be for any individual
grains of sand, not a total monolith (communism there, democracy or something), but
there will be an endless struggle between human consciousness and human nature. So that
you have to prepare for everything.

Did Trifonov know this? Felt confused? But he knew something else: that in the era
totality, you have to think with whom you are and against whom. Two options, and only then
– slots …

Traditionally, Russian thought accepted exactly two options. Or are you a hero
or a trembling creature (Any hero becomes our hero …). Smart option:
either you are a critically thinking person, or a tradesman (philistine, philistine, –
adds Ekshtut). And for the heroes – a choice: either Themis,
or Nemesis. Or do you, together with the warring people, know where
true, or together with him you punish apostates.

Trifonov absorbed this “dichotomy” “with his mother’s milk” (mother, from a family
revolutionaries who built this “damn power” – fell under the same rink
repression).

I embraced this total ambiguity of truth – along with my generation
“sixties”, – in which Trifonov also fell (by age
he was older, he asked for a military school – from a defense plant in 1942 he did not
released, and if released, would you return from the front?). Fate kept in
generation of rescued children of war, and doomed for life
together with the “sixties” to comprehend the era, to look in it for ways out to the “simple
human dignity” and not to accept either the role of executioners or the share of
victims – both were replenished with people of the same psychological type. I was looking for
Trifonov between these squeezed edges … what? human potential. clenched
nature. Saved from the horror of the essence.

The real essence is no longer between mobilization and death, but… “between the thaw
and stagnation.” Hidden in the “crevices” at the next shift
changing slogans and historical events.

“One historical event is replaced by another, and the private life of people goes
in its turn. ”

“The past is connected with the present by an indefinite chain of events arising
one from the other.”

By the power of intuition and talent, Trifonov felt in this black-red-white
pandemonium of its deep, original, natural basis.

At the time when he felt it, the intellectuals were still torn in soul
between the poles of faith: either Soviet, or anti-Soviet, or Stalin, or …
post-Stalin generation. I also felt what
It cost Trifonov such an intuitive insight.

“After fear disappeared from people’s lives, it was necessary to somehow enter
the recent past – the revolution, the Civil War, repression – into your picture
world and its value system. Enter, comprehend – and not go crazy … “

Don’t go crazy! This is Ekshtut’s formulation.
Trifonov in his formulations always returns to the main fatal
the concept – no, not “terror”, but – “fear”.

Not the “fear” that turns a person into a coward, but the one that
has long been specified in the concept of “the fear of God. ” That is, the fear of falling out of that
inevitability, in which a person is inscribed by the total will of the era, the inescapable will
destiny, people, country.

“Trifonov was the first and almost the only thinker who looked
on the contemporary situation in the big time of history… First,
who not only fixed the phenomenon, the “oscillatory state”
authorities, but also studied in detail the phenomenon of fear in Russia – whether it be fear
authorities in anticipation of another attempt on the life of the Narodnaya Volya on the king or fear
of the townsfolk before government or revolutionary terror.

Fear of being out of action by a belligerent power. Fear of being renegades and
outcasts of the warring era. Fear of losing a sense of reality – fluctuating,
shuddering, tossing reality. In conditions
which had to find in itself both courage and insight – not to hide from
terrible reality and still remain human.

Although to understand what it is: to remain human in the era of the total,
militant dehumanization – you can only
“trial and error” method.

What Yuri Trifonov learned from the great artist’s intuition. What can
feel, reading it, the current heirs.

Ekshtut finds stylistically in Trifonov
whimsical, but amazingly accurate formula of this state:

“Life is a terrible thing and at the same time the best school.”

Excursion in the broken school of Beslan – how many people died in the attack | 29.ru

When you come here, goosebumps run down your spine

Photo: Igor Frolov

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On September 3, the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Beslan and Solidarity in the Fight against Terrorism, Severodvinsk resident Igor Frolov tells how he visited the very school where hostages died in 2004, as well as intelligence officers who tried to save children and teachers. The quiet city today keeps a terrible tragedy in its history, which our fellow countryman touched – he showed what the school looks like today, which has become a museum of sorrow, and talks about why this museum is necessary.

We arrived in Beslan in the morning, probably at 9-11 o’clock. The weather was very cloudy, there were not very many people at all, and the city seemed quiet and calm.

A terrorist act in Beslan, a city in North Ossetia, took place on September 1, 2004: hostages were taken at school No. 1. The terrorists did it in the morning, right during the solemn line. For two and a half days they held more than 1,100 hostages in a mined building. Mostly they were children, as well as parents and school staff. The hostages were rescued by storm when an explosion thundered in the gym and the building began to collapse. Most of them were rescued, but as a result of the terrorist attack, 314 people died, of which 186 were children. In total, including rescuers, 333 people died, at least 783 were injured of varying severity.

Photo: Igor Frolov

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I was interested in this topic, I read a lot about it, perhaps, this is one of the global tragedies that simply cannot be forgotten. Tourists also came to the school with us this morning, parents brought their children here. Maybe one of them came from the service from the church, which is very close by.

Photo: Igor Frolov

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The most eerie thing is the ringing silence.

As quiet as possible: a cat was walking nearby, you could hear him stepping with soft paws. And when in such silence you see real traces of shots, collapse after explosions, then, of course, it becomes scary.

It happened right here. Hell was right there.

Photo: Igor Frolov

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Only the basketball ring says that this is a gym where children worked out

Photo: Igor Frolov

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org/Person”> Photo: Igor Frolov

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Why is such a museum needed? And I wouldn’t really call this place a museum.

Photo: Igor Frolov

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The word for this place is strange… They don’t just look here, they mourn. And why this place is needed, in my opinion, is obvious. Firstly, those who lost loved ones in the terrorist attack need it, this is one – terribly large – tombstone. And this, perhaps, is paramount. Secondly, it is let hurting, but knowledge. This should not be forgotten, should not be repeated and allowed. And new and new generations will learn about it here today. It’s one thing on the internet. And another thing is like this – through a personal touch on grief. Thirdly, it is history through facts. Pure documentary.

Photo: Igor Frolov

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org/Person”> Photo: Igor Frolov

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Overwhelmed by a feeling of gloomy confusion and incomprehension, how this could have happened at all.

A feeling of great injustice and intolerance for frighteningly cold cruelty.

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Igor Frolov

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Problem 1.

Lack of specialized education

The first problem of modern education is that most educational programs involve equal study of the humanities, exact and natural sciences. The interests and inclinations of a particular child are not taken into account. Each subject teacher considers his discipline to be the main one and tries to load students to the maximum.

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Usually only high school students have the opportunity to choose a profile, and even then not in all schools. Children waste time on hateful and unnecessary subjects – this is a significant drawback of modern school education.

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The family form of education allows you to focus on core disciplines. For example, a student of Foxford, Yesenia Prokopyeva, is engaged in academic vocals and wants to connect her life with art, so she pays more attention to the humanitarian profile.

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Read the full interview with Yesenia Prokopyeva →

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“In an ordinary school, I had to spend most of the day on subjects that would not be useful to me – physics, chemistry, computer science. Online school allows you to do what you love. At Foxford, I can focus on the subjects that I need – Russian, Literature, History and English. I study unnecessary subjects to a minimum, only for certification.

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Problem 2. Race for performance

Each school has its own rating. The higher it is, the more preferences the educational organization has. The rating is made up of many indicators, in particular, the “average score” of students and the results of the Unified State Examination. This leads to the next problem of general education schools.

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Often, grades do not correlate with real knowledge. Moreover, for many students, marks give rise to complexes and become a reason for bullying and other learning problems at school. Here is what Sofya Golova, a student of the 8th grade at Foxford, says about the five-point system.

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Read the entire interview with Sofya Golova →

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“In an ordinary school, you are judged by grades. No one wants to talk to a doppelgänger. In the fourth grade, we had an excellent student. Whenever I was called to the blackboard and I got a “four” or “three”, I thought I was embarrassed because I studied worse than her. I would cancel the ratings – they only spoil the mood and spoil us. Without grades, if the task is not given right away, you think, “Well, I will try better,” and with an assessment, “That’s it, I’m stupid!”.

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Problem 3. Bureaucracy

Formalism pervades all areas of school life – from electronic journaling to the notorious “four cells down two to the right.” From the first grade, a child is taught the rule “You are an insect without a piece of paper” and forced to follow dozens of unnecessary rules, giving rise to new problems in the field of education.

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Natalia Fuks transferred her daughter to family education in order to save her from the pressure of the school education system. Studying at the Foxford online school became a time machine trip for them.

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Read the full interview with Natalia and Liya Fuchs →

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“The quality of education is much higher compared to a regular school. Liya now clearly lacks school knowledge, she has to google. Moreover, I note that Liika always studied well. This is precisely the difference in the depth of the material. Absolutely love the teachers. Young (mostly), cheerful, positive, enthusiastic, not exhausted people! The efficiency of family education differs from school education tenfold. Not a single minute is wasted on nonsense like “Where did you sit down ?!”, “Stop talking!”, “Didn’t you forget your head at home?”, “Where is the magazine?”. No deductions for handwriting, strikethrough, boxes, and indentation.”

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Problem 4. Different levels of students’ preparation

Some parents themselves prepare their children for school, others believe that this is the responsibility of teachers. Some children read and count at the age of three, others barely add syllables and numbers at seven. And then 30-40 completely different guys gather in one class.

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It is not surprising that leaders and laggards appear, and this is also a kind of problem for the modern school. The classical school system, unlike the home school, does not take into account the interests of either one or the other. The guys who quickly grasp the material get bored in the classroom, and those who need a special approach are in constant stress.

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Both children of Ksenia Yarysh went to Foxford Home School because the state lyceum did not take into account their individual characteristics – this problem of education exists in ordinary schools, and in gymnasiums and lyceums.

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Read the full interview with Ksenia Yarysh →

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“Everything went wrong with my son from the first day. What is called, did not fit. A conflict arose with a mathematics teacher: it was difficult for Sasha to solve problems at a fast pace and in a pressured atmosphere (at home he coped with them easily and quickly). At the end of the third quarter, the son refused to solve mathematics at all, as the teacher said that he would still fail.”

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Problem 5. Less effective class

A classic school lesson lasts 45 minutes. Of these, 10–15 is spent on organizational issues (is everything in place, who is on duty, and so on), another 10–15 is spent on checking and explaining homework. 15-20 minutes are left for the submission of new material, provided that the class is calm and none of the students sabotages. This regime negatively affects the quality of school education.

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Elena Yanyshina moved to Foxford Home School because every lesson at her old school was like a zoo. The children stood on their ears, and the teachers, instead of explaining the material, tried to calm them down. Getting knowledge in such an environment became a problem, and Lena decided to try an online school.

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Read the full interview with Elena Yanyshina →

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“I feel more responsible at Foxford. I myself get up in the morning, sit down for lessons myself, do homework myself or read a textbook. No one is forcing you: either you study or you don’t – it’s your choice.”

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Problem 6. Large homework assignments

Everything that did not have time to pass in the lesson goes into work at home.

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According to SanPin, homework in elementary school should take 1.5-2 hours, in grade 6 – 2.5, in grade 9-m – 3.5 hours. The real numbers are much higher. Homework is often so voluminous that the lessons have to stay up late. Especially if the child is not independent and is waiting for mom and dad to come home from work and help with assignments. This topical problem of modern education worries many parents.

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Family education teaches children to be independent. Externs learn to manage their time especially quickly. Foxford student Vasily Poltoratsky is finishing 11th grade this year, although he should be only 8th by age.

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Read the full interview with Vasily Poltoratsky →

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“During the year of external study, I fully mastered self-education and began to enjoy learning at home. Down with the rises at six in the morning and hour-long trips to the subway with two transfers! The main advantage of an external student is a flexible schedule. If you did little today, you will catch up tomorrow.

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Problem 7. Poor training of young teachers

Weak interest in learning outcomes is manifested by both young and experienced teachers. This is a common problem of the modern school system in Russia.

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The first to get a decent salary, you have to take more hours, class guidance and tutoring. The quality of education, however, leaves much to be desired. Teachers have no time to prepare for lessons, a large workload inevitably leads to physical and emotional burnout.

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The mother of Foxford Home School graduate Irina Fomicheva spoke very precisely about this problem in the education system. By the way, she herself is a teacher in the past.

Read the full interview with Irina Fomicheva →

“There are a lot of random people at school. First, they accidentally end up at the Pedagogical Institute (it often becomes an alternate airfield for those who did not get points in top universities), then they also accidentally start teaching.

A teacher is a vocation. But his work should be paid adequately. Otherwise, the fire in the eyes will quickly go out. Young teachers are drowning in reports and manuals. Paperwork and routine kill interest in the subject, do not leave time for self-development. Add to this the lack of material incentives, and you will understand why typical school lessons are so boring that it hurts your teeth.

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Problem 8. Outdated working methods

Older teachers often cannot adapt to electronic document management, and most importantly, they do not understand the values ​​of generation Z. Therefore, they go to work, just to “finish until retirement”, and sometimes openly demonstrate their dissatisfaction with life. But such teachers are in the majority, and their approach, of course, is a shortcoming of modern education.

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In the family of Foxford Home School student Timofey Kozhin, the decision to switch to family schooling suddenly ripened. Mom was afraid that her son would be discouraged from studying.

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Read the full interview with Daria Gorbacheva →

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“Despite the proud title of the lyceum, Tim often encountered hostility from teachers. The son did not like the formal approach to explaining the material, and the teachers did not like his desire to study topics in depth, to get ahead of himself. And we left.”

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Problem 9. Lack of preparation for the OGE and the Unified State Examination

Preparation for the main and unified state exams runs counter to the daily educational activities of schools. OGE and USE are format exams. It is not enough to understand the subject, rather specific skills are required from students: to correctly interpret tasks, write answers in strict accordance with the assessment criteria, and correctly fill out the forms. The main problem of studying at school is that this is not taught in the classroom – you have to hire tutors or attend preparatory courses.

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At Foxford Home School, preparation for the USE and the USE is part of an individual program for students. For example, ninth-grader Vyacheslav Kostyushko adds OGE preparation classes to his daily plan and gradually looks through them.

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‍Read the entire interview with Vyacheslav Kosciuszko →

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“The main thing is not to be afraid and be honest with yourself when preparing. The OGE is not a monster, but an ordinary test, only in a special format. If you attended classes and did not cheat, everything will be fine.

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Problem 10.

Extracurricular workload

A modern general education school does not perform an educational function – only an educational one, but must necessarily organize extracurricular activities for students.

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Voluntary-compulsory attendance of additional classes, classroom hours, tea parties and concerts is not liked by most children and parents. Especially when the child has his own clubs and sections of interest. And for many students, this problem in education is relevant.

Children in family education do not suffer from a lack of socialization. On the contrary, there is more free time. So, a student of the Foxford Home School, Stepan Pavlovskikh, from the age of three was engaged in choreography, taekwondo and an artist. And when I went to school, I had to practically forget about mugs – there was not enough time.

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‍Read the full interview with Stepan Pavlovskikh →

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“Foxford Home School has a really good schedule.