Sergey Volkov: “Do what you don’t need!”

Psychologies: Our magazine has existed for 10 years: exactly so many students study at school. Now, however, even 11 students are already studying, but this does not change the essence of the question: in your opinion, have children in our country changed a lot over the past decade?

Sergei Volkov: I would say no. Working at the school for almost 25 years, I am more and more convinced that children are always almost the same. Times are different, life is different, you read essays written 20 years ago, and you see that the structure of the text is different, the train of thought has changed … But still there are more similarities. Children remain children. And school is school. And perhaps, no less than knowledge, it is important that at school for 10 years they get at their disposal a certain number of adults who agreed to rather difficult things.

Well, for example, children grow teeth, and they start to bite – and see what it’s like to bite adults? They want to argue, and they need someone to be with. They want to be loved. To understand them, to talk to them. They learn from us – how to be ironic, how to be rude (and what will happen for that). At some point, they realize that they will die, and this makes them feel hard and sad. And they come with questions: how then to live, why – and what is the point? It seems to me that at all times children are the same in this. And this thought makes me very warm. This means that we, teachers, are dealing with something not temporary, but eternal, essential.

But you yourself say that even the train of thought has changed.

SV: Yes, but if we talk about these differences, it seems to me that their border does not pass in the middle of the 2000s, but rather along the border of two centuries. Recently, a flash mob took place on Facebook – everyone posted their photos from the 90s. I looked at the photographs of my graduates of those years – and saw how much has changed since then. During the same 2000s, the subject environment around us has not changed very much. But compared to the 90s – almost dramatically. In those photographs, for example, no one is staring at mobile phones, as today in the classroom.

Well, mobile phones can be taken away by the teaching authorities?

SV: It’s not about that. Gadgets affect perception. Children now have difficulty reading long linear text. For them, text in which you cannot click on a hyperlink is already a problem. Today’s children are accustomed to exist simultaneously in several layers of reality. Yes, adults too. I myself find myself sitting in a meeting, but at the same time I can check mail from my mobile, see what people write on Facebook, receive text messages – and plus stay in real life. But I console myself with the hope that as an adult I am able to turn on when needed.

And children, it seems to me, already feel disadvantaged if for some time they exist in only one life layer. This is stressful for them. After all, even advertising now teaches – the faster and more information is pumped through you, the cooler you are. And suddenly being alone with a book or with yourself is a serious test. Although these children still exist. I’m teaching math guys in a strong school. And how is it there? Children are given a piece of paper with tasks, they bend over it – and solve, one by one. They still have this culture, it is preserved. But I understand that for the most part this is a problem for children.

But after all, the same gadgets give us access to information that used to take weeks and months to get to?

SV: Yes, and this should not be ignored. Previously, the school was a source of knowledge, people came there for them. Now knowledge is everywhere, and you don’t have to go anywhere to get it, but you just need to press one or two buttons on the computer. This creates the illusion that it is no longer necessary to appropriate any knowledge. Everything is there – reach out and take it. And it’s even harmful to appropriate, because you can’t appropriate everything anyway. So it’s better to let it lie on the shelves “in the cloud storage”, it will be necessary – we’ll take it. In my opinion, this leads to some important deformation, the essence of which I cannot accurately determine, but which I feel very much. Because there are things that can be understood only by appropriating, passing through oneself.

I regularly ask children to memorize poems. Why? Because this is what will stay with you, inside you. It will live in your inner world, emerging at the right moment, rhythmically organizing the inner space. Not to mention that even today there are situations when not only the Internet, but even electricity is not available to you.

Does that mean you still need to learn poetry?

SV: Necessarily. I have my own experience in this regard. When I was in intensive care and realized that there was only me and everything that I had inside. All that I managed to accumulate – and nothing more. There are even worse experiences. I was struck by the recollections of a former employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the 30s he was arrested. And he was beaten during interrogations, and some sonnet by Vyacheslav Ivanov, which he learned at school in literature lessons, helped him survive. He began to read it to himself – and it was as if some kind of dome was erected above him, which protected him from nightmarish reality, did not let it inside. They beat him, and he read poetry to himself, you understand? And he survived and wrote these memoirs. Which had a great effect on me. Because just shortly before that, for some reason, I was thinking about Vyacheslav Ivanov. Here I fall asleep over his poems.

And it’s a little ashamed, and it’s incomprehensible: he nourished himself with culture all his life, he learned many languages, but I am a philologist! I’m reading and I’m bored. And suddenly I get such an answer from space. How a person was saved by the poem of this “supercultural, but boring” poet during interrogations in the NKVD. It justifies everything. But just for this, it was necessary to take the poem into itself, to appropriate it. If you hope that everything lies somewhere outside, this will not happen. And in this sense, in the current educational situation, I feel a bit conservative. It seems to me that a person still needs to learn the multiplication table, learn a certain number of texts. Must do this routine work of appropriation of knowledge.

Is it true that today’s children have a harder time accepting the classics?

SV: Partly yes. The psychological gap between children and what they read is growing. Children, apparently, have become much more infantile, and the psychological situations described in the literature are more difficult for them to understand. In addition, they have fewer words in the language to, for example, describe and express their feelings. Earlier, in the pre-EGE era, we taught children to write essays. The problem with the USE is that the more individualized a student’s text is, the more difficult, longer and more inconvenient it is to check and compare it with others. It’s non-technological. And in this sense, with the introduction of the Unified State Examination, we have lost the attitude towards a more complex expression of ourselves.

Together with a number of other reasons, this leads to a series of consequences, up to children not knowing many words, which also becomes an obstacle to reading classical literature. Not only a psychological, but also a linguistic gap. Remember, this task, ridiculed by many generations, but at the same time extremely difficult for today’s schoolchildren, is an essay on the topic “How I spent the summer”. Because it’s necessary to find the words. It is necessary to understand the subject of the conversation in general. And he is not only in the fact that I was somewhere this summer, but also in the fact that something happened to me, I somehow changed. Something for the first time felt, learned. And here is a palette of words to describe her feelings, she is very poor today.

You seem to be very calm about it. Isn’t that a reason to tear your hair out?

SV: Well, that way you will become bald overnight. But seriously, then, firstly, the children did not get worse. Time has changed. And today’s children may not know some Russian words, but they almost certainly know a foreign language, and often more than one. In addition, they are much freer. And they really have amazing abilities to find information. And secondly, two proverbs that I heard at different times from two different women, simple peasant women, help me a lot in life, and for some reason these two proverbs rhymed internally. One, it seems to me, expresses in general everything that happens in the world. It sounds like this: “No matter how you turn, but the ass is behind.” A very sobering thought: gives understanding of everything that is happening and calm pessimism. And another proverb – “Get ready to die, but this is bread.” Here they work together for me. We need to understand where the back is, and that our efforts are ultimately meaningless. But you still need to apply them.

It seems that the ancient Greeks formulated these principles a little more sublimely: “Do what you must, and come what may.”

SV: Yes, but our proverbs warm me more. And Chekhov’s experience is also very important to me. He surprisingly knew how to equip the space around him in such a way that it received a powerful impetus for future development. So he buys, as it were, a dacha in Melikhovo. What do we do when we buy a cottage? We erect a fence so as not to see anyone, and we break the beds. And he lived in Melikhovo for only 7 years and built roads, a post office, a school, a fire shed, treated peasants – over the years he cured more than 3000 people for free. He equips this piece of land simply because the people there, in his opinion, do not live properly.

I came to Melikhovo for the first time at the moment when local officials and officials from the Ministry of Culture were just discussing how to preserve and revive with the help of the state what Chekhov had done alone. The dispensary he opened, for example, outlived him by half a century. And the second example is Yalta. Chekhov arrived there already very sick. I bought a slope of land and started planting trees. It is now almost more luxurious there than in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden. Cedars, olives. Cedar lives 500 years, and olives and up to one and a half thousand. And he planted them with twigs – knowing for sure that he would not even live to see some kind of relative flowering. Why did he think it was necessary? What drove him? But something was driving. I think it happens to all of us. It seems that everything is in vain, the seeds do not sprout, nothing will come of it. Then you look – some twigs still stick out. And the forest has already grown there.

Psychologist Claudio Naranjo believes that our civilization is in crisis¹. And only a complete restructuring of education can save it – with an emphasis on humanitarian values. For example, he is convinced that a doctor can heal better and an engineer can design better if they read more poetry. Do you agree with this?

SV: One hundred percent. First, the more a person looks at life, the better. And literature gives this latitude. And secondly… Secondly, Chekhov again. As soon as routine starts to drag you in, as soon as you start to limit yourself to only what is directly related to your specific duties or tasks, it’s a disaster. This is a very bad sign. A sign that you have fallen into a rut, like Chekhov’s characters, and will soon ask with them: “How did it happen that everything turned out wrong?” And on this path, it is already inevitable that at some point you start to treat worse, and to design. If symptoms start, don’t wait, run immediately, zigzag, do something that you don’t really need to do. This is the struggle with the process of rebirth, into which life is slowly but surely dragging us. Literature is an unnecessary subject. It has no practical meaning. And that is why it gives salvation from the rut.

Everyone and always?

SV: Well, it is desirable to be lucky with the teacher. A teacher of literature, from my point of view, is a person who has experienced the pleasure of having encountered a large number of people who have long passed away, but remained in the texts. And he knows that dialogue with them can be interesting. And even more interesting – to share experienced and felt with children. Do not load them with your knowledge, like a guru, do not express yourself and do not compensate at their expense. And go to the lesson with the motive: “I’m interested, look how great it is, maybe you will be interested in it too.” And if this motive exists, then in any era and in any conditions there will be children who will follow the teacher. Apparently it’s the law.

For the most part, efforts are meaningless, and everything goes to the sand. But on the other hand, every time the universe tells you: but no. Still, what you do makes sense. And I can also remember an outstanding psychologist – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi with his flow theory² as the most optimal experience that captures the whole person. When you forget about food, drink, about time and about yourself, and only what you are doing remains. And when the bell rings, and the students look at you in surprise: “How? Already?” It means there was a flow. So the lesson has been learned.

¹ K. Naranjo “The revolution we were waiting for” (Klass, 2013).

² M. Csikszentmihalyi “Flow. Psychology of optimal experience” (Alpina non-fiction, 2015).