Agricultura 4: 4- (2006)
Copyright 2006 By University of Maribor
Educational work in higher institutions today
t.P. BolDyReva and o.D. guShiNa*
Russia Kursk State University
In modern Russian educational literature there are different interpretations of the concept of “education”, but they are not comparable. This enables us to state that “education” today is one of the most disputable and contradictory categories in the pedagogical theory and practice.
At the same time, it is evident that vocational training of a specialist cannot be reduced only to teaching, to his functional training. It demands purposeful education, which can act only in the context of defnite culture of a defnite people.
Therefore, education of a person is the element of the given culture.
That is why we consider education in agricultural institutions in the context of cultural, spiritual and other values of one or other people.
The concept of “culture”, as well as the concept “education” has many different interpretations. Some Russian scientists think that all the numerous determinations of culture can be divided into three large groups:
1.  Culture is the aggregate of practical, social and spiritual achievements of people, which implies traditions, values, skills, aggregate of rules and ways of behavior. A man from this position is interpreted in the respect of the accordance to the accepted norms and this corresponds to such categories as “personality” that means a person behaving himself as he must behave.
2.  Cultural level is a high level of something or a high level of carrying out some activity. In this case the categories “competence”, “qualifcation”, “professionalism”, i.e. everything that expresses a person’s individuality, come near to the category “cultural level”.
3. Cultural level is the existence of some values and the ability to express these values in practice. The use of complex culturological approach in up-bringing helps expose main directions in forming in students of agricultural universities the following types of culture: cognitive, professional, labour, political, psychological, law, economic, ethic, communicative, ecological, aesthetic, valeological.
Constant monitoring of student environment helps teachers of Higher Professional education use adequate pedagogical forms, methods, ways to prevent a confict of “fathers-sons”, which, according to the opinion of some scientists, is the expression of the crisis in modern civilization.
*Correspondence to:
Boldyreva T.P. and Gushina O.D.
Agricultural Academy, 305021 Karl Marx str.70, Kursk, Russia
tel: +7 4712 50 01 41, fax: : +7 4712 50 01 41, email: ka_tatiana@pub.sovtest.ru
The teachers of agricultural universities see their aim not to enforce their values on students, but to teach them to form their own values.
In this system of values we stress, on the frst place, the skill to form relations with environment, which helps young people be more tolerant and fexible. But fexibility presupposes, frst of all, a high level of training in theory.
When studying problems of student life modern educators note the fact, that nowadays young people who enter agricultural universities are more educated than 20 years ago. But this knowledge is not to some extent structural, it is chaotic. Therefore, it is necessary to teach students to control information, to teach them not to get lost in information environment. For this purpose it is advisable to form fexible thinking. It is studying of abstract theoretical subjects that allows to educate mind and power, which helps to manage not only a huge volume of information but also one’s feelings and emotions, what is so necessary for our generation.
The forming of paradigmatic consciousness based on theoretical science also enables to overcome fear in front of complexities of the modern world and tomorrow:”…today’s science changes and renews the way of reality description fundamentally. Our mental notions must follow these paradigmatic changes”.
So if former scientifc and technical culture of a specialist supposed frst of all the presence of operating thinking, at present the leading feature of it is forming of paradigmatic thinking adapted to the modern world reality, which is instable, contradictory and fast changing. Modern teachers of high school try not to put fnished patterns of thoughts and fnished solutions of problems into future engineers’ minds but aim at forming in them fexibility, self-dependence and independence of thinking as well as the spirit of an enterprise. The given task is being solved mainly through such branches of science that give students the opportunity to understand the world, they live in, better: geopolitics philosophy, psychology, history, intercultural contact and etc.
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