Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2014 number 2

Currently, the acuteness of the problems of upbringing (especially of the new, young generation) is conditioned by a number of reasons, including, for example, the lack of control over the flows of information in the conditions of globalization of social processes. Today we are often confronted with open propaganda of the libertinism of morals, the cult of violence, individualism and pragmatism. The urgency of the upbringing problems in this context is associated with the fact that into the educational process there are sometimes thoughtlessly and unnecessarily introduced foreign models of education and, therefore, upbringing. Thus, instead of intercultural dialogue aimed at developing modern outlook and taking into account national culture and mentality, there takes place imposition of the Euro-American system of values and life orientations. In the present article, the notion of “upbringing potential” is considered as a social and philosophical category. The definition of the scientific status of this category is connected with the dialectic movement of analyzing the concept from the general through the specific to the particular: potential - social potential - culture - spiritual potential - upbringing potential. Thus, the authors substantiate the essence and the specifics of the upbringing potential, which is commensurate only with the positive culture-forming energy (capacity), while the social potential can characterize also the negative properties of social phenomena bearing the charges of aggression, violence and other negative properties. The upbringing potential can be characterized as the optimal variety of the upbringing possibilities of manifestations, establishment, functioning and development of social-pedagogical organizations and the society as a whole, providing, to a greater or lesser degree, the social well-being of its own members as well as environment, partners and the object of relations. It is the social well-being of each and every social subject, object in the area of life of the system or having connection to it, is the main criterion for its social potential and social values. Into the foundation of the concept of «new» upbringing as the goal-oriented development of personality, there are laid the principles of socialization (the meaning of which is the formation of citizen, a member of the society); the principle of pragmatism (as the basis of upbringing) and the principle of modernization, that is, radical changes taking into account the fundamentally new needs of the society (firstly, the industrial and, then, the post-industrial one).