The dynamics of humanitarian education in modern Russia
The article analyzes the status and tasks of humanitarian education in the contemporary cultural situation, which is described as a cultural crisis, anthropological catastrophe, post-culture. The author shows that the last decade has been marked by significant changes in the structure of Russian science and education. At the same time, the change in the criteria of their social significance is clearly recorded in the direction of strengthening the economic effect, orientation to technological and knowledge-intensive areas of knowledge. The reverse side of these processes is the emergence of myths of social consciousness about the «untimely» and «redundant» social and humanitarian knowledge, as well as the decline in the status of the intellectual - the humanities in Russian society. The author singled out several stages in the dynamics of liberal arts education in post-Soviet Russia. The first stage was a response to the world outlook crisis, the discrediting of communist ideology and the methodology of historical materialism. Humanitarian knowledge was to form a new picture of the world and realize the worldview function. The second stage of the development of humanities education has become a reaction to a new social demand associated with the constantly growing social and cultural diversity. The answer to this request was a new education paradigm. Its main goal was to form a person's notions of sociocultural reality as a space of unlimited opportunities for individual self-realization in various contexts - from political and professional to subcultural. The function of socialization has become predominant at this stage of the dynamics of humanities education. Finally, while only in the trend, the third stage is connected with the social demand for the widest spectrum of humanitarian knowledge on the part of the broadest masses of the population. At the same time, knowledge must be received instantly, in a simplified, accessible form. The main function of education at this stage is enlightenment. For the argumentation of the concept, the author uses the «theory of generations», as well as the concept of «tragic wisdom».