Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 5

At present a new ideology of education development is being formed in pedagogy. The basis of this ideology is the world level of cultural development strengthening globalization processes. Taking into account the idea of the dialogue of culture, the importance is placed on the mechanism of cultural selection, which is a peaceful borrowing of progressive experience of different countries. To realize this task it is necessary to philosophically digest cross-culturalness, which will allow painless entrance of this phenomenon into the educational process of the Russian Federation’s higher education. The paper presents a brief review of some theories of cultural development of society (circle development, cultural pluralism, humanistic theories of personality, theory of local civilizations) emphasizing the dialogue merging into the polylogue of cultures. At the end of the XXth century the idea of universalization of world cultures was being actively discussed. This idea results from the theory of the equality of cultures of nations not only in a separate country but in the whole world. Such a thought reasonably worried the UNESCO ideologists, who stressed that the process of universalization of all cultures would lead to global stagnation. Today the aim of cooperation of nations can be defined as saving cultural diversity in the process of multi-faceted activity within the bounds of the polylogue of cultures with due regard for the principle of cross-culturalness. The author understands the principle of cross-culturalness as realization, acceptance and taking account of peculiarities of interworking cultures by participants of this interaction process. One should also follow the principle of cross-culturalness in the sphere of global education fulfilling the two main functions: formation of social basics of a person and formation of social community. The phenomenon of cross-culturalness has brought into existence the cross-cultural approach to the analysis of diverse processes initiated and progressing in different social layers, in the sphere of education in the first place. The characteristics of the cross-cultural approach in education are the following: polylogue of cultures; moral value of knowledge; interdisciplinary approach to teaching; upbringing teaching of culture. Formation of cross-cultural literacy of an individual is one of the most important tasks of polycultural education under modern context. To solve this task, the higher education institution should pay special attention to creating tolerant educational environment. At the same time, maintaining one’s own cultural identity is the criteria of a polycultural personality. One refers humanity, civic consciousness, cross-cultural literacy, communication culture and self-identity of a person to the traits of a holistic polycultural personality. Building a polycultural personality on the basis of the cross-cultural approach in education is a complex and multi-level but topical and necessary process under modern context of globalization.