Children, The Family and Health: What it Takes to Give Children Long Life
The Hawaii Workshop: International Pacific Women’s Association of South-Eastern Region “Children; Family and Health”
The subject of report: “The role of folk pedagogics in family education in modern Russia”
The author is Olga Shmelkova, a chief of children’s club “Lada”, a member of the Relief Fund of Education and Creativity (named after M. V. Lomonosov).
I am greeting all the participants of the Conference, its subject is a concern of every woman. The heart is happy to see that women of all nationalities are united in order to bring happiness, peace and prosperity to the mankind. One thinker said: “Oh, wise men, all your efforts will be in vain, unless a woman will give you her hand and you will bring up the generation of heroes.” Women give birth to children and day by day all life they devote time to them as they are their main tutors. Son respects Mother for her love, wisdom, selflessness. Husband respects wife as she is Mother of children and housekeeper. Unfortunately, the evil still exists in the world and there is a real threat to the existence of humanity. Women, who realize that, try to keep not only their families, but also Peace as Home for all mankind. And may God help us.
Today Russia goes through very difficult transition period. The crisis is in all areas-economical, social, cultural, educational. That reflects on spirltuai well-being of the family, on spiritual and physical health of the children. Vladivostok is a city in Russia, which goes through all these difficulties, especially hard, as it is very far from the heart of Russia. Vladivostok has about 800 thousands citizens. There are 99 state kindergartens, 89 public schools, 42 colleges. The system of private schools and kindergartens has started to work since 1990, it is small in number and not stable. The economical problem is important, but the problem of ideological education is more important. The loss of values of socialistic world brought to preaching totally different ideas. New social requirements seem to be impossible for the teachers, because neither State nor society can formulate them. In this connection, it is not by chance we address to the idea of God.
Referring to the tradition of the world human pedagogic, to the Russian folk pedagogic leads to revival of human values, which are the base in forming personality.
Nowadays, we are gradually bringing back our old traditions. We have a new attitude towards the old holidays, folk music, artistic trade, arts and crafts, in which Russian people gave the most valuable place in the world.
We can’t say that our teachers didn’t understand and didn’t use that in their teaching. Children’s understanding of the Russian culture was superficial and not full. May be it happened, because the goals were formulated in general. For example,” develop in yourself love towards the Motherland, your native town, village “and etc. The methods and the means for reaching these goals were not indicated, and the teachers didn’t have the necessary materials. The environment, especially in the city, denied children access to folk culture. Besides, forgotten and not used in colloquial speech Old Slavonic words and aphorisms, we don’t always use proverbs and sayings and Russian is so full of them. Things, met in folk works, hardly exist in modern life. That’s why many teachers don’t use words and expressions from folk literature, because they don’t know their meanings or can’t explain them.
We lost traditions of family education in many ways. Unfortunately, the pace of modern life takes apart parents and children, giving children for bringing up to kindergartens and grandparents. Though in Russian tradition the most important moment was a close connection between a child and parents. It was the base of folk pedagogic. Old people say:” Father and Mother would say no rude word, but children were afraid even to look at them. They didn’t beat children, but tried to convince them. But old people used to pet their grandchildren. Today, grandparents are busy with the traditional education and they keep in memory their childhood, trying to give their grandchildren love towards the Russian word, and to develop in them the habit to work. When a child becomes seven he enters a new stage of life, it is the school time which starts to be the main part of their life. Today it is so popular in Russia to leave children in school from the very morning up to 16-17 hours per day. In the evening the family often spends time watching TV. The bonds between parents and children become weaker. In old Russia they used to say:” if you could give birth to a child, you should be able to educate him.”
The tradition of Russian family education is a fount of wisdom, a mine of pedagogic thought and spiritual health. Folk pedagogic is different in that way, because it puts real goals for education and it reaches them in a very soft way, using pedagogic of work, games and holidays, individual and collective creativity. It is very important today to revive family and social traditions of education, their merging into modern life harmonically.
In 1994 I created the club of Russian culture” Lada” in the form of my elder daughter Katya (she was 11 and my younger daughter Nastya was 4). Today our club has many children of different ages from 7 up to 14. The main task of the club is educational activity. The means of realization of this task are through folk pedagogic and Russian traditional culture.
The main directions of the club work:
1. The main idea about the life of ancient Slovyan.
2. Works of literature (oral and written).
3. Folkmusic.
4. Mythology of Slovyan.
5. Costume- symbols, ornaments, etc.
6. Architecture.
7. Culture, family style of life.
8. Holidays, ceremonies.
9. Arts and crafts: making costumes, modelling of toys etc.
10. The connections with the cultures of different nations.
We involved different people to work in the club such as a specialist in making toys from clay, a scientific worker from folk and ethnography lab, participants of folk group “Tradisiya.” The classes were held in school number 18 and the museum M.K.Arsenyev in “Russian izba.” The environment of the house made in old Russia tradition gave children special emotions and feelings. Here children participated in traditional Russian evenings , where they were dressed in national costumes, they sang songs, round danced, played Russian folk games. The costumes of children were decorated with beads, ornaments, woven belts. On week-ends children went out to the country to “Silver springs”, they called them springs of “live” and “dead” water, as if giving them a fairy meaning. Here we meet Spring, calling it, burning a straw doll, which is a symbol of Winter. In summer the favorite holiday of children is solstice, which is called “the day of Ivana Kupala.” There are many traditions, ceremonies, beautiful folk songs connected with holidays in Russia. There is a form of the folk song called chastooshka ( two-line or four-line folk verse, usually humorous and topical, sung in a lively manner). Sometimes they might be lyrical “suffering” (to suffer means to love).
Children also like to make toys from clay. The ancient Russian art is something we are proud of. These are paints, things from metal with interesting ornaments, things from ceramic, carving and many other different things. In our club we leaned three ways of making things from clay and have some progress in that area. You should see the faces of children and how glad they are and how proud they are of their works when they see them exhibited in the Regional Museum.
Of course, it isn’t possible to revive traditional education only by working in club. But giving children access to folk, making healthy and spiritual environment in their life, we try to connect modern life with the past, we try to bring love to Motherland, we try to fulfill standards and instructions of our ancestors and heroes, who were kind, courageous, ready to serve their Motherland. At the same time we open the whole world to the children, telling them about the different peoples on the Earth, their cultures, traditions, myths, fairy tales, holidays etc. And children can see, that Russia is a part of the planet Earth and Russian culture is organically involved in the culture of the human being.
We are glad, that the interest in the folk pedagogic in Russia can be characterized as a mass process and it becomes a tendency. In general, there are more and more clubs, folk groups, centers and schools of national culture and organizations like this in Russian society, families, among teachers. Literature is being actively published. In 1991 Russian Folk Unit was created, which unites about 500 creative groups from among 50 regions of Russia. In 1998 a new connections appeared in Internet, it is devoted to Russian traditional culture. The name of the connection is “Folk” http://www.accessnet.ru/folk/ ( may be next year you’ll have to look for us: http://www.folk.ru/), E-mail: folk@accessnet.ru.
We may say that we turn past into present and the happiness of the present helps us to direct energy into the future.
Last Modified: November 29, 2002