Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2014 number 3

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship of humanism and the humanitarian foundations of the Russian educational paradigm. The article deals with education as a mechanism for transmission of values, which expresses the relationship of humanism and the humanitarian bases of the Russian educational paradigm. The article notes that in today's globalized world there takes place a process of disintegration of traditional values, which is reflected in the education system. Education is understood as a mechanism for socio-cultural continuity of the society. Global crises require a revision of the way of progress and enlightenment, in which humanity is moving, so the problem of humanization of education becomes topical. The article covers the main approaches to the category of «humanism», gives its typology, the relationship of humanism with the processes of humanization and dehumanization in society. Humanism in contemporary Russian society is often understood as a utopia, which has not found adequate expression of its social ideals. The paper analyzes the main approaches to the humanization of education, discusses the main historical stages of the formation of humanitarian foundations of Russian education. The modern model of education in Russia was formulated during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment on the basis of the German model. It assumed that the system has a large cycle of humanities for the formation of human morality, as well as a cycle of natural-technical disciplines allowing cognition of the world through reason. Into the concept of «humanism» there was put a class deterministic sense displacing the universal and civilized content. In the post-revolutionary school, there was preserved a pedagogical team trained in humanities that could not easily and thoughtlessly join the state's political line in education. Education remains a major element of public humanistic practice, due to its nature of universality, independence of its content from the political and economic fluctuations and market conditions, in spite of all attempts to dismantle it. This social institution retains the elements of humanistic pedagogical technologies of the past; and it is exactly there where the search under way for new ways in the humanistic pedagogical paradigm. The article concludes that humanitarian basis of the Russian educational paradigm is the contradiction between the social and cultural needs of modern society and the education system that does not respond to them because of the loss of humanistic goals in society's ideology, outdated methodology and application of old techniques and methods in teaching.