The problem of the goals of education in pedagogy. Goals and values ​​of education in different historical eras

Labor is one of the most important means of education, in the process of labor the personality of the child is formed, as well as relationships with the team.

Labor education in different eras

Since ancient times, labor education of children has been given Special attention. So, in the days of the primitive communal system, the labor education of children was limited to the acquisition of skills collective labor. WITH early childhood children learned to hunt, fish, get and grow food, take care of animals.

Children also participated in holidays and rituals, adopted the traditions of their tribe. Thus, in the times of the primitive communal system, the skills and abilities acquired by children were necessary mainly in order to survive and raise offspring.

Much later, in ancient greece, namely in Sparta, the greatest attention in the upbringing of the younger generation was paid to physical and military training, since the goal of raising children was to grow warriors and slave owners out of them.

The Spartans believed that there was no need to transfer labor skills to the younger generation and raised children in contempt for work, believing that only slaves should do this.

But in Athens, the goal of education was the versatile development of the child, which included not only mental and moral development but also aesthetic and necessarily physical. At that time, it was believed that good labor education consisted in impeccable leadership of slaves.

In the Middle Ages, children were brought up in humility, patience and humility. During this period, both upbringing and education takes on a strongly religious character.

The growing sons of feudal lords learn to use weapons and ride, hunt, but it was not necessary for them to be literate. Girls are trained in nunneries or at home to grow up very religious, while learning to read and write, as well as needlework.

Thus, the labor skills of children and their upbringing directly depended on belonging to a noble family. Starting from the Renaissance (XIV-XVI century AD), the prerequisites for modern labor education are being created.

Talented philosophers and teachers of those times believed that it was necessary to accustom children to work, regardless of what class they belong to. Labor at this time becomes the most important means upbringing and development of the child, and develop not only physical forces, but also the mind, as well as morality is formed.

In the Age of Enlightenment (XVII-XVIII century AD), pedagogical thought continues its development, and labor education is considered in combination with moral, mental, aesthetic, physical, and it is labor education that plays a significant role.

The need to transfer labor skills

And finally, in the 20th century, it is the development of the child as a person that becomes the goal of education, and more and more importance is attached to labor education and discipline.

A. S. Makarenko (1888–1936), an outstanding Soviet teacher and writer, puts forward the basic principles of creating children's team and its management, substantiates the laws of life and activity of the collective, the stages and ways of its formation.

He designs modern methodology labor education, and is also one of the first teachers of the Soviet era who deals with the issue of family education.

Summing up, we can say that at all times the problem of labor education was given great attention, labor education of children in different eras started quite early and was very intense.

What has been characteristic of the upbringing of children throughout history?

It is natural and natural that the principles of education depend on the era and the historical period in which it is carried out. But still there is one rule or law that is preserved at all times - this is respect and assistance to elders. Even in the primitive communal system, each child actively participated in the process of collective (at that time understandable) labor. Girls learned women's wisdom, and boys received and strengthened the skills of men's duties. At the initial stage of human development, group and social labor was fundamental, since such a thing as “private life” did not exist at that time. This was due to the pronounced instincts of self-preservation and herding of primitive people, who had recently passed from the state of a wild animal-like creature to the starting human state. Just like labor the process of raising a child was also collective.

Primitive communal system

During the period when primitive people united in groups without regard to tribal affiliation, the structure of education was the most straightforward. Only with the advent of the stage of the tribal community, education began to become more complicated, since the labor formation of the personality gradually began to be introduced. Labor education consisted in familiarizing children with the names of animals and plants, in teaching them the principles of agriculture, animal husbandry and gathering. Also, the elders introduced the younger generation to the traditions, customs, history of the family, the exploits of the ancestors, to the family enemies, and almost always instilled in the children a sense of revenge and hatred towards them, explaining this as a sacred duty. Much attention at that time was paid to the sacred cult, which included rituals (dances, songs, games and sacrifices). The upbringing did not pass by the cultural development of children. Without fail, they were taught individual, inherent only in this area, songs, applied skills and, of course, legends.

When the age of the primitive communal system was coming to an end, military science began to take root in the process of education. When the time came, all the boys and girls went through the rite of birth, which included the use of public tests of strength and endurance.

With the transformation of the social order educational process also became more and more structured and complex. A class division appeared, and besides this, society began to be divided into social groups i.e. the rich and the poor.

The process of raising a child in Antiquity. slave system

Antiquity is the era of the highest development of the slave system. This was especially evident in the example of such states as Rome and Greece. Now the rich were teaching their children how to govern and lead the lower strata of society. Slaves, on the contrary, were protected from knowledge. Their destiny was unquestioning obedience to the upper classes and excessive daily work on them.

But not all slaves agreed with such an existence. Trying to change their lives, they raised their children in the pursuit of freedom, instilling hatred for their oppressors.

Individual features of education affected not only individual states, but even different cities within this state. For example, in Sparta (Greece), newly born children were examined by the elders. They left strong children, and killed weak ones. In the period up to the age of seven, Spartan children were raised by a family.
There they were taught to be unpretentious in food and life, not to be afraid of the dark and easily endure hardships. From the age of seven to eighteen, boys were educated in public barracks-type educational institutions, where they slept on reed bedding on the floor at any time of the year, walked barefoot and lightly dressed, and also ate, to put it mildly, without surpluses. At the age of 14, young people began to be taught hard physical influence against the slaves, that is, their beating.

The girls were also given important role. They were also brought up morally and physically and prepared to reproduce strong and healthy offspring. In addition, they were responsible for guarding the city during the war period, when the men left for the battlefield, or went to watch the slaves.

Athens, compared to Sparta, was a democratic slave republic. It was the center of trade. Here the slaves belonged to specific slave owners, and not to the state as a whole. In Athens, the population was even granted, albeit limited, but the right to govern the state. Also, the Athenians had the opportunity to independently, in the family, raise children. Education in this city was versatile. Children were instilled with moral, aesthetic, physical and mental education. But it still had a class restriction, since only the children of slave owners could receive it. But note that in the list of all spheres of upbringing and education, labor was absent, since it was the lot of only the slave class.

As in Sparta, all Athenian children under the age of seven were brought up at home. But in rich families, they were engaged in wet nurses and nannies, that is, slaves. Already at that time, the children of slave owners were actively playing with tops, balls, dolls and horses, and of course Aesop's stories and fables sounded daily in the children's rooms. After seven years, the boys were sent to paid schools, where the process of raising a child consisted in deep mental and aesthetic development. And the girls led a reclusive lifestyle. They lived in a closed female quarter, where they were taught to read, write, play the musical instruments and housekeeping rules. The children of slaves were not allowed to attend school.

The term "school" is of Greek origin and translates as "peace" and "leisure". The term "teacher" is also of Greek origin and literally translated - "teacher".

Early Middle Ages

In the early Middle Ages, the dominant place was occupied by Catholic Church, which, accordingly, began to establish the rules for raising children. First of all, she completely removed all the principles of harmonious education instilled in antiquity. Something similar happened in Christianity, which promoted the birth of a child as an original sin, which can only be redeemed by raising children and living in the "fear of God." During this period, the so-called "charitable" institutions were widespread, in which children born out of wedlock and orphans lived. These were closed and charitable institutions.

Renaissance

This is the era of the revival of the principles of ancient education. Again, the harmonious development of children began to ascend to Olympus. Now Homo Sapiens itself becomes the center of the universe. Since that moment, the development of mankind has gone along the path of humanism. The emerging humanist teachers tried to nurture diversified and free-thinking people. They did not accept the "whip" method in any form and promoted respectful and careful attitude to the child, emphasizing that he is a person.

Although the humanistic doctrine had its shortcomings. One of the main drawbacks was the class division, which did not allow the children of the poor to be educated at the level with children from wealthy families.

The further history went, the more children could receive an education. The issues of upbringing have always been considered and directly depended on the era, class and characteristics of the personality of the parents. Fortunately, our modernity provides us with much more opportunities, which, if desired, can be used by everyone. But always people who did not look like the general mass were persecuted.

Over time, the attitude towards people, and even more so towards children, with developmental disabilities has changed. Gradually, they tried to socialize them, but as it turned out, this is not an easy task, and not all citizens in our society are ready and able to accept such people. It turns out that it is often necessary to educate not people with physical and mental developmental disabilities, but those who surround them.

We all know how much strength it takes to the process of raising a child, and they require several times more. But the most important thing is that the process of education should be filled with love and understanding. That is when it will bear fruit.

Love and appreciate your children, no matter what!

IN primitive society as a result of the strengthening of the division of labor and the expansion of empirical knowledge, the content of the education and upbringing of children gradually became more complicated, and its organizational forms took shape.

The first historical type of education, relating to primitive man, had a number of features. His hallmark was high efficiency and significant correspondence between the goals, means and results of education.

It can be said that life itself brought up; the natural environment demanded from a person only such behavior and actions that would allow him to survive.

IN given period the traditional nature of the orientation of children towards the reproduction of the activities of adults, whose experience was relatively small, was manifested.

Education in a primitive society was carried out along with the struggle for survival and required the constant assimilation of a vital number of skills, abilities and rituals.

Any kind of self-restraint that the child encountered was collective and mandatory.

In this type of upbringing, there is a unique experience of a person's striving from inability to ability, from ignorance to knowledge, as well as to the emergence of the need for knowledge of the world around.

As societies develop, the first attempts to generalize theoretical foundations education.

There is a gradual transition to the second type of education, when, in the conditions of accumulation of cultural experience and material values, both the differentiation of society into separate social groups and the emergence of different pedagogical tasks and learning goals take place.

Ancient Eastern civilizations provided the first examples of schools, the first ideas about the ideal of an educated person. Further development of the theory and practice of teaching took place in the era of antiquity, Greco-Roman antiquity. In the epic poems of Homer "Iliad" and "Odyssey" one of the first pedagogical ideals was reflected: the image of a perfect person, a personality developed mentally, morally and physically. In educational practice, this ideal was guided as a pedagogical goal.

At the same time, there were two models of training and education:

• 1. Spartan, focused on public and military physical education;
• 2. Athenian as focused on a comprehensive and harmoniously developed person.

The problem of training and education was given great attention by ancient philosophers. IN Ancient Greece pedagogical ideas was expressed by Democritus, one of the first to formulate the idea of ​​the need to conform education to the nature of the child.

Democritus believed that education leads to the possession of three gifts: "think well, speak well, do well." He believed that although the educator forms and changes a person, nevertheless, nature acts with his hands, because a person is part of the “microcosm”. He noted the importance of the need for parents to devote themselves to raising children. He condemned stingy parents who did not want to spend money on educating their children.

The process of education and training is hard but rewarding work that transforms human nature, Democritus argued. He believed that the main thing is not the amount of knowledge gained, but the education of the intellect.

Theorists of pedagogy were the great ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Socrates stood at the origins of the heuristic teaching method, which was aimed at a joint search for a solution to a particular problem.

Plato assessed education as the most important foundation of a person’s whole life: “In which direction one was brought up, this will be, perhaps, his entire future path.” Education must begin from an early age, since "in any business, the most important thing is the beginning, especially if it concerns something young and tender." According to Plato, education should ensure the gradual ascent of the student to the world of ideas. To carry out such education is capable, first of all, a mentor of advanced years. In the treatise "State" Plato singled out two long cycles - 10 and 15 years. Thus, it was about a life-long upbringing. The program included: rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, music.

In the treatise "Laws" Plato outlined his pedagogical views, especially highlighting social function upbringing - "to make a perfect citizen who knows how to obey or rule fairly."

Plato put forward the idea of ​​creating public school systems, thereby recognizing the need for state control of education and upbringing. This idea was developed by his student Aristotle, who, in addition, introduced a lot of new things into the problems of education and upbringing. In particular, he proposed to consider learning as organized in several stages.

The Athenian system of education was an example of the education of a person in ancient Greece, the main task of which was to comprehensive and harmonious development of the individual. The main principle was competition in gymnastics, dancing, music, and verbal disputes.

The system of organized education was implemented in stages.

Until the age of seven, boys were brought up at home. From the age of seven to 16, they attended both music and gymnastic (palestra) schools, where they received mainly literary, musical and military-sports education and upbringing.

At the second stage (16-18 years old), young men improved their education and developed themselves in gymnasiums. The pinnacle of the achievements of a young man (18-20 years old) was considered to be in ephebia - a public institution for the improvement of military skills.

Thus, this system focused on mastering the “set of virtues”, which later became known as the program of the “seven liberal arts” (grammar, dialectics, the art of argument, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music).

This program has become a symbol of education for many generations and has gone down in history as a tradition of Greek learning.

The Spartan system of education pursued, for the most part, the goal of preparing a warrior - a member of the military community. Until the age of seven, the child was brought up in the family by nannies-breadwinners.

From the age of seven, the policy (city-state) took over the upbringing and training of the growing Spartans.

This process took place in three stages.

At the first stage (7-15 years old), children acquired writing and reading skills, but the main thing remained physical hardening, which was extremely diverse (walked barefoot, slept on thin straw bedding). From the age of 12, the severity of the upbringing of boys increased, who were taught not only to an ascetic lifestyle, but also to laconicism. At the age of 14, the boy, passing through severe physical trials, was initiated into the Eirens - a member of the community with the provision of certain civil rights. Over the next year, the Eirens were tested for stamina in the military detachments of the Spartans.

At the second stage of education (15-20 years old), singing and music training was added to the minimum literacy education. However, the methods of education became tougher. Teenagers were kept starving and taught to get their own food, physically punishing those who failed. By the age of 20, the Eirens were initiated into warriors and received full weapons.

During the third stage (20-30 years) they gradually acquired the status of a full member of the military community.

As a result of such upbringing, the warriors were fluent in the use of a spear, sword, dart and other weapons of that time. However, the Spartan culture of education turned out to be hypertrophied military training with the actual ignorance of the younger generation.

The educational tradition of Sparta during the VI-IV centuries. BC e. eventually came down to exercise and trials. It was these elements that became the subject of imitation in subsequent eras.

If in ancient Greece education was aimed at shaping people who would serve society, then in medieval Christian society it was aimed at shaping people to serve the Christian ideal.

The image of the ideal personality of the Middle Ages was presented as a religious person who loves and reveres God, as well as a person who values ​​his neighbor.

Especially strict upbringing given in monasteries, where they sought to achieve a perfect spiritual life, filled with the virtues of purity, noble poverty and humility.

The purpose of this upbringing was to develop good people and prepare them for the afterlife.

So, according to one of the fathers of the church - Augustine the Blessed - the goal of education is merging with God. The basis of the educational ideal was the educational ideal of the New Testament with its preaching of love, meekness, fear of God. The main emphasis in education was placed on the religious and spiritual development of a person. The body, bodily, was presented as the source of sin, which must be fought. The ideal of a harmoniously developed person has been lost, it was replaced by the ideal of an ascetic who seeks in God deliverance from the suffering of earthly life.

The idea of ​​the original sinfulness of a person and the teacher's attempt to set the right path also affected the methods of education in the Middle Ages: coercion, punishment.

The pedagogical ideal in the Renaissance found its expression in the ideal of chivalrous education, which assumed the mastery of various skills and abilities, a broad culture, high morality, it is in it that the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe versatile development of the individual is expressed.

From the end of the 15th century, the social situation in Europe, associated with the emergence of absolute monarchies, prompted a rethinking of the ideal of education. A person limited by the monarchical system, instead of civic activity, began to strive for solitude, subordinating himself to the cult of knowledge. The original humanistic ideal of the early Renaissance of educating a diversified, active personality began to turn into a formal literary education. However, the main line of development of the pedagogical ideal of that time was in the direction of educating a widely educated and critically thinking person. M. Montaigne reflected this ideal in his work.

The main work of Montaigne "Experiments" considers a person as the highest value. A child from birth has a primordial purity, which is then “corroded” by society. The child turns into a person not so much due to the knowledge gained, but by developing the ability to make critical judgments. Montaigne condemned hypertrophied verbal learning.

E. Rotterdam put forward one of the first postulates about the proper public education, proclaimed the attitude to work as a measure of morality. In his main work - "On the Primary Education of Children", he stated the need to combine ancient and Christian traditions in the development of pedagogical ideals, put forward the principle of the pupil's activity (innate abilities can only be realized through hard work). A definite step forward was his views on women's education.

In general, the Renaissance placed man at the center of the universe. Humanism preached harmonious development free personality, through which he sought to transform society, which the Enlightenment later inherited from him.

It is necessary to say about the features of the pedagogical ideal of a person that existed in Russian pedagogy.

Thanks to the adoption of Christianity, the ancient Slavic culture was united with the mature Eastern Christianity of Byzantium, the goals of education in which differed from the medieval concept of Western Christianity by greater attention to the bodily qualities of a person.

From the very beginning, literacy and faith education were perceived as a single process - this explains strong influence almost until the twentieth century, the church on education in Russia.

The Orthodox Church, in contrast to the Catholic Church, proclaimed a negative attitude towards rational knowledge, the belief that it does not need knowledge, “philosophy”, since all truths in the highest incarnation are contained in the Bible, in the works of the holy fathers and teachers of the church.

That's why main task education and upbringing of children for parents and teachers was considered the task of moral and religious education.

What is childhood and what does it depend on, how it was, is and will be?

Probably, first of all, on how adults treat the child, how they evaluate him and what place he occupies in their lives. And on how people of a given epoch and culture, a given social system and class assess the age-related capabilities of children, what requirements are placed on a child, into what periods his life is divided. And from how they feed, dress the baby, what toys they give, for what they punish and for what they encourage. And of course, from how the child himself understands and experiences what adults do to him, as well as from many, many other things ...

In other words, childhood is a complex organism in which each cell performs its own task, unique to it, and makes its own contribution. An organism that arose some time ago and, gradually becoming more complex, reached the state in which we see it now. An organism that has its own history. It is this story, the history of childhood, that we are going to talk about.

To know the history of childhood means, first of all, to compare modern European childhood and childhood that belonged to other historical epochs, other cultures and peoples. And such a comparison is necessary: ​​it will help us better understand the organism of childhood, understand its mechanisms, and possibly learn how to regulate them. After all, like any complex organism, childhood does not always work well, smoothly. And who knows if the history of childhood will not give us the opportunity to take a different look at such burning problems. modern education as a psychological crisis of a teenager, the relationship of parents and children, students and teachers; take control of some important cells of this organism?

Subbotsky E.V. The child discovers the world. - M., 1991. - S. 139-140.

History tells us that the life of a child was not always protected by law, and infanticide was considered a crime. The ancient inhabitants of Carthage sacrificed children to their deity Moloch. In the excavations of the city of Gezer, a whole cemetery of newborns who died a violent death was found. Biblical Abraham, without hesitation, is ready to sacrifice his son. The inhabitants of ancient Sparta threw into the abyss children who were born physically weak or defective. Among the ancient Romans, on the fifth day of life, a child was laid at the feet of his father. If he averted his eyes, the baby was killed or left in crowded places where others could pick him up. If the father raised the child, he thereby made a vow to raise him. In pagan Iceland, people with many children often abandoned newborns in a deserted place, and the heroes of the Icelandic sagas often disposed of the lives of children as their own property.

Subbotsky E.V. The child discovers the world. - M., 1991. - S. 142.

<…>The death of a child among the natives of Australia was usually perceived as a misfortune only by parents and closest relatives, the funeral rite, as well as the number of people participating in it, was minimized or even absent. Unlike the murder of an adult, the murder of a child was not considered a crime in which society as a whole was interested in punishing. Parents could take revenge, they could not do it. If a mother (or father) killed a child (such exceptional cases are recorded in the literature), everyone around was frankly indignant, but the team as a whole did nothing to punish. Whether the person who committed such an act would be punished or not - it depended on the personal feelings and relationships of the child's relatives. Within the group, the life of adults, whatever they were, was valued much higher than the life of children. Until the age of six or seven, children were completely controlled by parents and close relatives (often a maternal uncle), their actions found a certain assessment in public opinion, but there were apparently no more stringent methods of control. The child is a member of the family, but not yet a member of a larger association.

<…>Many ethnographers who have worked among the aborigines in various regions also report infanticide. This usually happened in crisis periods: during famine or drought, most often in desert zones. Newborn babies were sometimes killed if the mother already had one. infant: in the conditions of a semi-wandering lifestyle of hunters and gatherers, it was almost impossible for two babies to go out almost simultaneously. They also killed one of the twins for the same reasons, or both - for reasons related to superstitious fear of a relatively rare phenomenon. In many areas, children were killed who were born with some kind of pathology; in some tribes, the children of unmarried women, and sometimes also the children of women who died during childbirth. At the same time, some facts give reason to believe that the murder of a newborn was not considered a crime even when the living conditions are quite favorable, and the newborns are not freaks, not twins, and their mothers do not have other small children. A woman who, immediately after giving birth, strangled her baby, could be blamed by other women. Her husband could have beaten her, but both could not have happened.

<…>Buludya, a woman from the Mungari tribe (Arnhem Land), in an autobiographical story recorded by N. Thoneman, says that she killed her first child as soon as he was born: “I just pinched his nose with my fingers - that’s all.” She did the same with the second. She had heard and seen other women do it; raising a child seemed too burdensome for her, and, in addition, she wanted to participate in long journeys with her husband and other young couples. But she was persuaded to leave her third child, she became attached to him, then she gave birth and safely raised six more. And everyone in the tribe considered Buludya an exemplary mother, because she tried to ensure that the children were always full and looked after them well.

Apparently, a child who has just been born, according to the concepts of the natives, is not yet a person. Nevertheless, under traditional conditions, according to the most authoritative researchers, infanticide never took on any significant proportions anywhere.

Artemova O.Yu. Children in Australian Aboriginal Society. Ethnography of childhood. Traditional Methods education of children among the peoples of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia. - M., 1992. - S. 19-21.

<…>IN European countries The child is a full human being. His life and health are protected by law and tradition. And even if the baby was born sick or mentally retarded, this does not detract from his value in the face of law or morality. This is the wisdom and maturity of culture.

“But it’s natural,” you say. “Could it be otherwise?”

Let's get a look. Yes, the rights of children, very insignificant at the beginning of this century, have increased dramatically due to progressive socio-economic transformations. True, these rights apply only to children who have already been born. But what about the baby who has not yet been born? It is also a value, but of a different kind. A valuable material from which only in the future will a person be made.

In other words, European morality and law draw a clear age limit, beyond which a child is born not only physically, but also as a full-fledged legal entity. And if we take into account that there are no strictly scientific grounds for drawing this boundary, our humane attitude towards newborns will seem not so natural.

Indeed, why do we not consider a 5-month-old fetus a human being, but accept a child born at 7-month-old into our human family? Doesn't this suggest that the indicated line can be drawn elsewhere? Suppose we consider a child who is 1 month old, 1 year old, 10 years old from birth as a full-fledged person? Or consider a child a person only after he was given a name?

Subbotsky E.V. The child discovers the world. - M., 1991. - P.142.

I. Kon.<…>The first ethnographic studies of childhood began in the 1920s and 1940s and were conducted mainly in pre-class and early class social formations in Africa, America, and Oceania. Then it seemed that in such a society (it is customary to call it traditional) childhood is easy. This supposedly simplicity gave rise to the temptation of easy generalizations such as a “model personality”, a national character.

N. Zhukovskaya. Hoped that traditional society will give the rest of the world reference, "chemically pure" formulas of childhood?

I. Kon. Like that. But the hopes for isolating such eternal “childhood constants” in a society not yet “disconnected by the corrosion of modern civilization” dissipated rather quickly. And when childhood among industrialized nations became the subject of research, it turned out that such standards do not exist outside of historical time and socio-cultural space. It turned out that both parental attitudes and real pedagogical practice are not the same in different social strata and at different stages of the development of society.

It quickly became clear that the very concept of childhood is inseparable from the kind of society that seeks the meaning of this concept. The well-known psychohistorian L. Demoz believes, for example, that the attitude towards childhood in the history of mankind has undergone six transformations, each of which had its own style of education, its own principles of relations between parents and children. From antiquity to the 4th c. AD, according to Demos, there was a so-called "infanticide" style, which was characterized by legalized, and often mass infanticide, violence against children. Demos called the image of Medea the symbol of this style.

V. Levin. Isn't this era too gloomy? Let us recall the religions and worldviews of antiquity, in which infertility was considered a curse, and childbearing was a gift from the gods.

I. Kon. Yes, humanity, like any biological species, has always given great importance procreation, childbirth was everywhere formalized by special sacred rituals, and many religions considered and still consider infertility the most terrible divine punishment. Indeed, all peoples take care of their offspring in their own way. But from the instinctive need for procreation to individual love for the child, whose well-being becomes the meaning of the parents' own existence, there is a huge distance. And if we ignore the emotions about the definition of Demos, then we can say that it does not suffer from exaggeration. Almost all anthropologists, demographers, historians associate infanticide primarily with low level material production. A primitive tribe, wandering in search of food, living by hunting and gathering, simply physically cannot feed a large offspring. The transition to a manufacturing economy, of course, softened infanticidal traditions, but did not discard them. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, and the founder of gynecology, Soranus of Ephesus, are calmly and businesslike discussing which newborns deserve the right to life.

S. Arutyunov. It is no coincidence that in ancient society, infanticide began to be considered a crime only under Emperor Constantine - in 318.

I. Kon. And he was equated with homicide only in 374.

From the 4th to the 13th centuries, according to Demoz, the "throwing style" dominated in relation to childhood. This style already recognizes that the child has a soul, sharply reduces the manifestations of infanticide, but does not prohibit getting rid of the child - selling him from the hands of a nurse, to a monastery, to be raised in a strange family. The symbol of this style can be Griselda, who leaves her children to prove her love for her husband. The time from the 14th to the 17th centuries, according to the researcher, is characterized by the so-called "ambivalent" style - the child is already allowed to enter the life of his parents in an independent spiritual existence. The typical pedagogical style of this era is "sculpting" the character, as if the child were made of soft wax or clay. A child who resists such modeling is beaten mercilessly, knocking out self-will as an evil inclination.

The eighteenth century, according to Demos, is the founder of the "obtrusive" style. The child is no longer considered a dangerous creature or a mere object. physical worries, parents become much closer to him. However, this is accompanied by an obsessive desire to completely control not only behavior, but also inner world, thoughts and will of the child.

Demoz considers the entire 19th and half of the 20th centuries to be the time of a “socializing” style, which makes the goal of education not so much the conquest and subordination of the child, but the training of his will, preparation for the future. independent living. The child is thought of as an object rather than a subject of socialization.

Our time, according to Demos, is the time of the "helping" style. It is assumed that the child knows better than parents what he needs at each stage of life, so parents tend not so much to discipline or “shape” children, but to help individual development. Hence - the desire for emotional contact with children, for understanding, sympathy, etc.

V. Levin. One gets the feeling that if we discard the times of infanticide and the early Middle Ages, then all historical styles of education in one way or another, to one degree or another, are present in our time.

I. Kon. And there is nothing surprising in this. As our childhood is in ourselves, so is the history of society present in modern society.

But I have cited only one, and very controversial, of the classifications of the existing periodizations of the history of childhood, only to illustrate the thesis that there is not and cannot be a single concept of childhood. It is historical.

How to build your "I" / Ed. V.P. Zinchenko. - M., 1991. - S. 24 - 26.