Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 3

Cognition of the essence of consciousness and discovery of its regularity is one of the most difficult tasks of philosophy, social sciences and humanities. Hence the purpose of the article is to analyse the essence and the crisis phenomena of awareness and education as interrelated processes, which form the basic contradictions of modernity. Today, in the conditions of globalization, it is increasingly claimed that consciousness is formed either by the dominant social groups in society, or consciousness is a product of the entire social history. In the first case, consciousness is the result of ideological influence of a particular class; in the second, the consciousness is closely connected with practice, depends on it and determined by it. This article attempts to explore the nature of consciousness and its manifestations in the periods of society transition, as well as the methods of analysis of consciousness during the crisis of the education system. In the article, education is regarded as the leading force of modern times, which today is in need of radical qualitative changes that meet the realities of the present. The transition period of society identified two global contradictions between the education system of the society as a cultural social institution and the expectations of society from education. Lagging behind of the spiritual sphere of society, which includes education, from the rapid changes in the economy raises a question about the place and role of upbringing in the educational institution. The crisis phenomena in education are not just something negative, devastating, but also promising, innovative. On one hand, education and upbringing are rooted in the depths of national identity; on the other hand, they form the identity of the student through spiritual and manual “making”. In today's conditions there is required a combination of traditional and innovative forms and methods of teaching, education and administration, where didactic and heuristic components are balanced in their potencies and reveal huge reserves of the psychosomatic and spiritually-moral origins in the human being. The fast pace of life and the conservatism of consciousness are the problematic components, the contradictions between which should be resolved in the context of the educational and social processes in the conditions of crisis. Today, the educational institution, along with the family, is a basic social institution, where the healthy, active individual is formed as well as the cultural, moral personality. The student and the teacher today are two leading forces of the education itself, interaction between which should be further examined by the society undergoing crisis. In the article, the author raises the question of the labor as a way of obtaining knowledge and transforming the world inside the person and around him/her.