Sudden publicity: Why did the school become the information guide of the year
Dmitry Kurkin
If there was a topic in 2018 that did not fall out of the current agenda all twelve months, then this is the "school". Literally: episodes from the category of "a pupil came to school with a knife" began in January and did not stop until December. And against their background, such mundane phenomena as harassment and psychological pressure from teachers, going far beyond their authority, even faded into the background - but did not disappear anywhere. If you study a selection of news, you will get the full impression that the school is a social-Darwinian camp, where children are not allowed to leave the toilet and are forced to brush their teeth in front of the class, where they are intimidated and humiliated. Add to this the scandalous incidents in kindergartens, and the picture will turn out completely unsightly. What a golden childhood there is.
The Russian school was accustomed to living according to the laws of a regime object - not as closed as the other two opaque structures, the prison and the army, but close to that - and missed the moment when its walls became glass. Today, it is enough to just turn on the camera of a mobile phone so that bullying of students immediately becomes known not only outside the class, but across the country. One post of an indignant parent in social networks can launch a massive flash mob, the waves of which will roll much further than the local gorono. The old school omerta and the habit of resolving conflicts still remain in their circle (for example, a Muscovite who has decided to put an end to the bullying in her son’s class), but the children and their parents are not so easy to lynch.
This is good in its own way: the psychological scars left from the school bench do not heal for many people for years, go deep and make themselves felt in ten, and twenty years later. Publicity, on the other hand, turns out to be a powerful - and in many cases the only - tool to fight lawlessness behind closed doors. Practice shows that schools as a fire are afraid to get the mark of a "bad school" - this is one of the few public institutions in the country where it is customary to value reputation.
To declare a class a prison, and teachers as sadists is easier than ever, but this is a dead-end strategy that no one benefits from
However, there is a downside: they write about the school only when something bad or very bad is created in it, and this by default gives distorted optics. Thanks to the parental posts and videos that the students themselves post on the social network, we can see the school life through their eyes, but we almost never see it through the eyes of education workers. Russian schools are often funded on a residual basis, and the average teacher’s salary among those about whom they say in anecdotes: “Thieves counted, wept and returned” (according to official data of Rosstat, in the regions it is about twenty thousand rubles a month, according to teachers themselves - even less). Moreover, teachers are also expected to fulfill the duties of school psychologists, forgetting that this is actually a separate profession and it also needs to be adequately paid for (now their rate is from five to fifteen thousand rubles - it is clear why none of the professionals are torn work as a psychologist in educational institutions). To declare a class a prison and teachers as sadists is easier than ever, but this is a dead-end strategy that no one benefits from.
Only the school itself can improve the school’s image, and the first step to this is that the realization that attempts to silence the problem will fail more and more often, the principle “what happens within the school’s walls remains within the school’s walls” is no longer valid, and every single example of persecution, psychological blackmail or harassment casts a shadow on the entire education system (therefore the school in this text so often goes in a single, nationwide number). When you are revealed, there is nothing left but to open yourself. And in this sense, the suddenly fallen publicity is not the enemy of the school, but its friend.
Photo: Elnur - stock.adobe.com, Nigel - stock.adobe.com