The teacher and editor Maria Dolgopolova about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, Maria Vergopolova, founder of the educational project Verba Academy, shares her stories about favorite books.
I began to read quite early: from my childhood I was drunk to reading and great novels. As it seems to me now, I did not take advantage of this superpower to the end - it would be possible to read much more and not be distracted by climbing trees. In general, for an ordinary proletarian family, we had a good library. You could find anything there: Mom was engaged in filling it, she constantly ordered books from somewhere, although it cannot be said that she read things very often. Dad, I, apparently, never in my life saw fiction - but there was talk that he had read so much at one time that he could no longer. Putting "Winnie the Pooh" aside, I immediately took up the "Wizard of the Emerald City". Then she read Charlotte Bronte’s novels, “snacks” them with Stendhal and Zola, and when she was tired, she switched to Belyaev with his “Island of the Dead Ships”. When she went to choose a new book and gained courage, she would definitely look into a gray and very creepy medical encyclopedia - so she was just with pictures.
Then I read the entire series of the ironic detectives John Chmelevsky - it seems that they had a great influence on me. Since then, I have suffered all my life from the fact that I would die if I didn’t tell someone who had just come up with terribly witty filth. What can we say about those detective agencies that we opened in our yard every summer and what cases they were investigating there! My dream is to learn Polish so that all this magnificence can be a reason to re-read.
A new era in reading came when I entered the university. At school, I constantly had to hang around on holidays to write some additional checklists - the teachers stubbornly believed in me and made me correct triples for fours. When I entered the pedagogical department, I decided that I wouldn’t fall for this bait anymore and would go as efficiently as possible - I would become an excellent student. Therefore, the first thing I got a subscription to the library. When I got there for the first time and saw all this number of books, angelic singing literally sounded in my head. Of course, because you could read even more and even more unsystematically! There, I re-read everything that somehow related to modern literature: Welbeck, Copeland and Kunder with Ulitskaya. Of course, half of this I would not like to recall now - at some point I began to treat everything modern with caution.
I dream to read every day an hour before bedtime, but I have no idea how it is. I can do something just binge. They alternate with me: for four months I listen only to music, for the next four months I watch only TV series and end the year with books. I do this, naturally, for 6-8 hours a day. Well, if I start, then I can not stop, I throw everything. The last book binge was non-fiction, and this is made up of purely fiction. The old injuries have healed, and I begin to re-acquaint myself with the modern: Jonathan Franzen, Emma Donohue, Martin Amis, Helen Simonson, the same Eugene Vodolazkin - so many new names, and so far no one has disappointed.
For reasons of convenience, I often use an e-book: after all, it is guaranteed to fit into the bag and there will always be something to read in it. But even with this approach, I have my own library. It happens that you wake up at that moment when suddenly you ordered ten books for yourself in some online store. Or I went into the usual buy a book as a gift and took three more. The situation is aggravated twice abroad and three times - in the second-hand book. In short, I already have a wardrobe. The only thing that upsets me is surprisingly ugly covers in about 90% of cases. Therefore, I would rather give preference to a second-hand edition than a new one. Of course, I admire the editions of Ad Marginem and Strelka Publisher. It seems that this is the minimum level of quality to which everyone should begin to strive. I also hope that they will soon come out of the captivity of the charm of soft covers.
I have one sporting interest: to collect one full-fledged bookshelf on pedagogy and education. Still, the pedagogical community is very conserved: teachers meet at all conferences and boast of monographs, but this rarely comes to an ordinary person interested in the topic. The problem is that good material is often written in a very specific, scientific language. Therefore, I literally have to collect my bookshelf by education. In this case, I do not even have anyone to rely on.
Anton Makarenko
"Pedagogical poem"
This is the only book that all teachers of my pedagogical high school advised to read in unison. I didn’t read it out of a sense of contradiction while studying, but right after graduation I bought a copy of a second-hand paper copy. I was sure that I would like it, but I didn’t think that it was so - now she is one of my favorites. The events unfolded in the early 20s, when Anton Semenovich (one of the classics of pedagogy) was instructed to reinstate the labor colony and figure out how to educate that “new man”. This book is, on the one hand, a chronological description of how one of the colonies was created, scattered throughout the country. On the other hand, it is a collection of the most difficult pedagogical tasks that are possible, with their clues. Probably, this is the best illustration of the fact that if you approach the matter with talent and with love, you will succeed in spite of obstacles. If you act without fanaticism, then “team upbringing” is the best that you can think of to become a person.
Alexander Rozhkov
"In the circle of peers: the life world of a young man in Soviet Russia of the 1920s"
The “pedagogical poem” was written in a rather peculiar language, the word “gubnaraboz” appears in the very first line - one of thousands of similar words that were used in the USSR. Such books are best read in a pair with difficulty, which would explain the context, and the monograph by Alexander Rozhkov for this purpose is excellent. The facts in the book show how stories from the Pedagogical Poem were spread. In short, this book is about the formation of the Soviet education system. About how the process of merging of women's and men's schools took place - according to surveys, the majority of boys thought that co-education was harmful for them, since girls a priori cannot study at the same level and will pull them back. The fact that the peasants did not see the point in devoting their children to education for more than two years. So, if in elementary school there were more than 40 children in classes, then 5-6 people from the whole educational institution reached the high school. And, of course, there are a lot of shocking facts. For example, did you know that about 75% of adults were in the habit of having sex in front of their children?
Frida Vigdorova
"My class"
Literary debut of school teacher Frida Vigdorova. My Class describes times later than the books above. Frida Abramovna graduated from the university in 1937, so when she entered the class on September 1, Anton Semenovich Makarenko was already subjected to persecution with might and main, was engaged almost exclusively in literary activities (and two years later died suddenly). In My Class, a little less deprivation is shown (the author at least did not have to make desks together with his students), and the narration is focused on the main thing in the teaching profession, attention to people. I love this book very much because of its a bit of fabulous primitiveness: the little kind teacher copes with all her troubles no matter what. This book served as material for another monograph written by a group of authors, “Islands of Utopia: Pedagogical and Social Design of the Post-War School (1940-1980s)”. It cannot be said that education and book publishing in our country are developing and generally going somewhere, so publishing a serious book on pedagogy is a stunning thing.
Bel Kaufman
"Up the stairs leading down"
In fact, the English version of "My Class." In the role of the narrator, the same teacher of language and literature, it all begins with the same September 1 and a timid way to class. Where the guys ask for more books for extracurricular reading, most of Kaufman did not read one to the end. Although it seems that children are the same everywhere - just the teachers have a different mentality. The main feature of the book Kaufman - this feed. The story is told with the help of notes that the teachers send each other, circulars, announcements, letters and those papers that fall into the "Suggestion Box". I read this book in the original in the electronic version - I don’t like to wade through tiring word games for a long time, but for some reason I wanted to. I bought the paper version in Russian as a keepsake, and the publication turned out to be extremely good - the publisher was not too lazy to transfer even an ant lion from little notes to the pages.
Bill bryson
"A brief history of life and privacy"
One of my latest hobbies is the story of everyday life. And it seems that the best book in this genre managed to write to Bill Bryson. About why our homes (well, not ours, but the British) look the way they look, the journalist decided to tell on the example of his usual Victorian home. Starting from the hallway, which once turned out to be home, Bill Bryson weaves thousands of fascinating stories into his story - from why the plug has four cloves, why there was a tax on windows and they were cut through the house as needed and why beer was watered even by children. Thanks to this book, I know more than all the school humanitarian subjects combined - that’s how to teach. I liked her so much that I try to impose it on all people who are more or less pleasant to me. The last brother took it, alternating it with tricks on a skateboard - but now it is immediately clear that the book was read.
Karin Calvert
"Children in the house"
Another book on the history of everyday life - about the habits and customs in the upbringing of children. Oh, what they just did not do. For example, the size of children was considered something shameful. They did everything possible to hide the build and anatomical features of babies. They sewed dresses to the floor (when you wear it on your hands, it is unclear how long this very baby is) and all indiscriminately swaddled tight-tight - so that the “curved legs” were in the most straightforward position possible. Incredibly fascinating reading. You wonder how mankind still managed to live up to the present stage of development and how many children were ditched along the way.
Vladimir Plungyan
"Why are languages so different?"
The linguist and scientist wrote one of the most intelligent non-fiction books on linguistics - in general, they say, it is for schoolchildren, but it is also ideal for people like me who just walked past. After reading, I looked at the master's programs in linguistics for a long time and did not miss a single open lecture on the topic. I believe that the best teacher is the one who can simply and relatively briefly talk about his complex subject.
Lev Tolstoy
"Childhood. Adolescence. Youth"
When I am asked about my favorite writer, I always confidently answer that it is Leo Tolstoy. Probably, Anna Karenina bribed me at one time, as one of my former colleagues says, “the favorite book of girls of all times and peoples.” But in general, Tolstoy takes its scale: you begin to read some books and immediately you are worried that it will not be long enough. No, with Tolstoy these fears can be safely cast aside. For me, the trilogy "Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" is a closer version of another favorite book, "The Catcher in the Rye." Only with true Russian spirit. By the way, I imagine my ideal old age in the following way: at the dacha in a hammock I read in parallel the diaries of Leo and Sofia Tolstoy. Because at all I can not imagine where to take so much time to read diary notes with pleasure.
Lectures of Nabokov
When, after school, I finally allowed myself to read and fall in love with the Russian classics, I searched for auxiliary aids that would help me better comprehend it. And now Nabokov helped me a great deal with this - although I understand that, probably, many people do not share his views. I am not a special fan of his works of art, there are much more devoted fans, but I like the lectures with all my heart. It is also a good edition, with photos from a notebook - it is very funny to look at the Nabokov scheme of the car in which Anna Karenina traveled from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
Ken robinson
"Find your calling"
You probably watched the most popular video in the entire history of TED - Ken Robinson's performance on how schools kill creativity. If not, look immediately. In addition to the jokes on TED, he also has books - this is an expanded version of his cross-cutting idea that schools teach as if everyone should become professors and that for some reason everyone is used to treat their bodies as vehicles for their heads. It seems that the book gives some kind of NLP and other "get it!", But if you abstract, it remains only an important problem. Ken Robinson makes you think that the status quo is not the norm. With education, we really are not very good - with the exception of several well-known schools. Most children across the country do not connect what they are taught with reality, and the profession is most often chosen by parents. In the meantime, a bunch of adults are learning to live with their unloved work, or they are recruiting courage right now to start over.