Psychology and Pedagogy - Systems Understanding
Few sciences, both in the past and today, are subject to such widespread public condemnation and accusations of pseudoscience like pedagogy and psychology. This is despite the fact that interest in these disciplines is steadily increasing. The need for solving psychological and pedagogical problems is becoming urgent and in many respects determining the future of mankind.
Few sciences, both in the past and today, are subject to such widespread public condemnation and accusations of pseudoscience like pedagogy and psychology. This is despite the fact that interest in these disciplines is steadily increasing. The need for solving psychological and pedagogical problems is becoming urgent and in many respects determining the future of mankind.
Perceptible changes in the landscape, human living conditions, the development of information technologies and exact sciences, on the one hand, and fragmentary knowledge about human nature, on the other hand. Let's try to figure out how objective the accusations of uselessness for modern people against psychology and pedagogy are.
What is Psychology?
The very word "psychology" consists of two Greek words - "soul" and "knowledge". As a science, psychology arose relatively recently - at the end of the 19th century, until that moment it was part of philosophy.
“Psychology is both a very old and still very young science - it has a 1000-year-old past behind it, and, nevertheless, it is still in the future. Its existence as an independent scientific discipline is counted only for decades, but its main problematics has occupied philosophical thought as long as philosophy has existed. The years of experimental research were preceded by centuries of philosophical reflection, on the one hand, and millennia of practical knowledge of people, on the other,”wrote the Russian psychologist S. L. Rubinstein in 1940.
Since its inception, psychology has been studying the characteristics and patterns of the emergence, formation and development of mental processes, and also explores mental states and mental properties of a person.
The subject of psychology from antiquity to the beginning of the 18th century was the soul, then the content of the subject of psychological science depended on its direction.
Thus, the English empirical associationist psychology of D. Hartley, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Ben, Herbert Spencer studied the phenomena of consciousness, Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of structuralism, considered the subject of psychology to the direct experience of the subject. Functionalists studied adaptability (William James), psychophysiology as the origin of mental activities (Ivan Sechenov), behaviorism - behavior (John Watson), psychoanalysis - the unconscious (Sigmund Freud), Gestalt psychology - information processing processes and the results of these processes (Max Wertheimer), humanistic psychology - a person's personal experience (Abraham Maslow, Karl Rogers, Victor Frankl, Rollo May), a system-activity approach in psychology (L. Vygotsky, P. Halperin, D. Elkonin, V. Davydov) calls the subject of psychology, currently relevant in Russian pedagogy, activity.
Psychologists use general scientific methods, for example, experiment, observation, polling, questioning, as well as psychological methods proper to conduct research, analyze the data obtained, and draw conclusions.
Modern psychology
Psychology today is a multi-colored kaleidoscope of various psychological directions, psychological techniques, theories and is divided into different branches: general, age, children's, social, pedagogical, history of psychology, personality theory, etc.
The practicing psychologist independently makes a choice, on the basis of which methodology he will work - psychoanalysis, gestalt therapy, cognitive psychology, the behaviorist approach, the Synthon method, neurolinguistic programming, etc.
Often, a psychologist is forced to do some kind of compilation of several psychological techniques in order to obtain a visible result of his activity. It should be noted that domestic psychologists are in a more difficult position than Western ones, since the 1936 decree "On pedological perversions in the system of the People's Commissariat for Education" eliminated pedology, which practically froze the development of psychological science in our country for several decades.
Only in 1966 were psychology faculties created at the country's main universities - Moscow State University and Leningrad State University, as well as the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at RUDN. However, the pressure from the ideology of Marxism-Leninism on psychology persists for a long time. Achievements, like the misconceptions of Western psychology, became widespread in our country in the mid-1980s.
Meanwhile, despite the stable growth and accumulation of knowledge, research in various branches of psychology as a whole, the feeling of a crisis in psychology is sharpening in society, since none of the directions of psychology fully and accurately explains the nature of man, the reasons for his behavior. All this gives rise to doubts about the scientific nature of psychology.
Between Science and Pseudoscience
Psychology is closely related to natural science, medicine, ethnography, sociology, cultural theory, art history, mathematics, logic, linguistics. Yes, it is so interconnected that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between psychology itself.
Moreover, psychological methods are poorly described and studied. The patterns identified by psychologists are not always the case. Many psychological theories are not confirmed in practice. Psychologists work on solving problems, and should help avoid them.
This prompts psychologists to look for effective recipes for working with people, for example, in astrology, esoterics, which allows, for example, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Deputy Director of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences A. V. Yurevich to conclude: “Psychology occupies an intermediate position between science and parascience.
A few words about pedagogy
Pedagogy literally translated from Greek means "childbearing", since in Ancient Greece a slave was called a teacher who was assigned to a student.
The need for the emergence of a science that studies the laws of upbringing and education of a person arose with the accumulation of knowledge by society and the need to understand the methods of successful transfer of social experience from generation to generation.
If psychology studies a person, his psyche, then pedagogy is a system of pedagogical phenomena associated with the development of an individual.
How to raise a child, reveal his talents, give education, instill social norms, and contribute to the formation of a personality? What changes occur in the human psyche under the influence of training and education?
Pedagogy is designed to answer these questions in order to provide an opportunity to foresee and manage the educational process, to understand how to properly develop a personality.
However, by and large, today pedagogical science is not much different from everyday knowledge in the field of education and training, since it consists of disparate facts, theories that have little confirmation in practice. Pedagogy is increasingly reminiscent of quackery in medicine.
Social pedagogy
Social pedagogy is a branch of pedagogy that studies how the social environment influences the formation of the personality and how best to organize socialization. It is designed to help solve psychological and pedagogical problems in practice, in modern realities. Social pedagogy examines only the field of education carried out by society and the state.
A. V. Mudrik writes in the textbook "Social Pedagogy": "Social pedagogy is a branch of knowledge, having studied which one can learn, firstly, about what will inevitably happen or can happen in the life of a person of a particular age in certain circumstances. Secondly, how can you create favorable conditions for human development, to prevent "failures" in the process of his socialization. And thirdly, how can you reduce the effect of the influence of those unfavorable circumstances in which a person falls, the effect of the undesirable that happens in the process of human socialization."
Social pedagogy and psychology are very close. Checking a child's psychological readiness for school is psychology, but preparing him for school is already pedagogy.
Thus, it is assumed that the psychologist should only state, explain, recommend, but to really influence the behavior of a person, his psyche is already the task of the teacher. Hence, the emergence of psychological and pedagogical faculties and the specialty of a teacher-psychologist becomes understandable.
At the same time, the need not only to provide direct psychological assistance to people, but also to prevent problems and their prevention increases every year.
However, again, instead of effective methods, we see general recipes, erased to holes:
if you want to solve a problem - get to know yourself (including your past lives); do not stop in your development - continuous education is waiting for you; don't be a victim - be the author of your life; do not be a consequence - become the cause of everything that happens around you; appreciate life, watch your health; love children first, and then bring them up; your thoughts are your life …
The appeals are correct in meaning. Well, for some reason they don't work. Thinking doesn't change. A lump of social contradictions, hatred, anger, aggression, a decline in morality are growing, the number of people who do not feel the joy of life is increasing.
Formulas similar to incantations - "must", "must", "must" - dissolve in the vacuum of psychological illiteracy, hanging in the air of topical questions about human nature.
System-vector psychology
And if you were told that a long-awaited breakthrough has occurred in psychology, would you? Not. And rightly so. Because all the provisions of real psychological science do not need to be taken on faith, as well as to create special conditions in order to see how it works. Her theory is inseparable from practice. She is life itself.
So, the newest achievement in the world of psychology is the System-Vector Psychology of Yuri Burlan, which for the first time makes it possible to accurately differentiate people according to their innate inclinations and reveals the meaning of socialization (familiarizing a person with culture).
All people are initially born with given properties - vectors that determine a person's way of thinking, his life values, desires. Properties are given by nature, but their implementation and development are not predetermined in advance. It depends on the landscape, society in which a person falls.
Nobody is born a criminal or a genius. Yes, initially each child is different from the other, but how his innate abilities will be realized and developed (and they always are) is a question for parents, teachers, society.
System-vector psychology defines eight vectors: anal, cutaneous, muscular, urethral (lower vectors), oral, olfactory, sound, visual (upper vectors). Every modern person has several vectors, since the landscape changes, and sometimes contradictory properties are required to adapt to it.
Accordingly, the more drastic changes occur in the living conditions of people, the more multi-vector (different already in starting opportunities than their own parents) children are born.
Today we are clearly seeing children of the "information formation", unlike previous generations. The gap between them and us is colossal. Sharp on the agenda is the question of how to understand the child, how to help him reveal his abilities to the fullest and become happy.
The basics of child psychology
The psychology of a child under one year old is simple. He is born with the given basic properties, which he has to develop until the end of puberty (approximately 12-15 years). Then you can only correct all those states that "come from childhood."
The main thing on which the parents of a baby under one year old need to concentrate is to maintain his life. In this period, the baby eats a lot, grows quickly and takes the first steps in knowing the world around him. His character is clearly visible, and this must be reckoned with.
For example, a dermal baby, quickly adapting to changes, easily tolerates trips, eats calmly on the road, but an anal toddler, endowed with a rigid psyche, difficult to endure changes, will worry, show anxiety, a new environment for him is stress (even when you change him). By understanding the vector set of their child, parents will be able to provide him with the sense of security necessary for his full development.
The psychology of a child at 2 years old changes - he begins to walk, the zone of his mastery of the world is expanding, in addition, the baby is constantly replenishing his vocabulary, showing an active interest in his own body. Individuality, differences from other children are manifested more and more clearly. So, the dermal baby is active in games, loves new games, toys, and the anal baby sits quietly and draws, looks at books for a long time, shows conservatism in games.
At the age of three, a child often unexpectedly changes - an obedient daughter becomes a stubborn obstinate, "reluctant", does everything in spite of her parents. The crisis of three years known in psychology is the birth of a child's “I”, when he begins to separate himself from the world around him, to become aware of his desires and needs.
This is the first step towards self-reliance. For many parents, the three-year-old crisis is a test of their parental aptitude. Will they be able to agree, will they learn to effectively cope with the baby's tantrums, direct the child's energy in the right direction?
A systematic approach makes life much easier for parents: after the training, they understand what kind of baby is in front of them and what he really wants. The urethral child must be given freedom, neither prohibitions, nor praise, nor punishment will affect him. It is important to praise the anal toddler for real deeds, to adequately limit the skin, to build a clear system of prohibitions and rewards.
At the age of three, communication with peers becomes an urgent need for children. For the successful socialization of the child, the development of the necessary communication skills, it is worth sending him to kindergarten.
It is there, in the children's collective, a kind of model of the primitive flock, that he will pass the ranking, find his place in the society, the collective.
A 4-5-year-old child continues to actively explore the world, begins to ask more and more questions. Some children develop obsessive fears - they are afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone. From the point of view of Yuri Burlan's System-Vector Psychology, the state of fear is a manifestation of the visual vector, and until a certain time the fact that a child is afraid to sleep alone at night is quite normal, this is the archetype of the visual vector, which is to develop from fear into love. Fear of death is at the root of visual phobias.
It is important for parents to understand what and why is happening to the child in order to adequately respond to his archetypal behavior. For example, it is dangerous for the psyche to drive the viewer into great fear, to dwell on this state by reading scary tales where fictional characters eat each other. It is extremely harmful to hit a leather worker with a belt for what seems to us to be petty theft, but in his perception he simply took what he needed to hide, make a supply for a "rainy day", or punish the oralist for swearing.
We subconsciously feel how painful it is to punish the baby: we close the viewer in the closet, hit the mouthpiece on the lips, scream at the soundman, beat the skinny, don't let the urethral out of the house, drive the anal … And then all these sins of parenting remain anchors in the psyche of adults.
In the psychology of a 6-7 year old child, the concept of sexuality arises. During this period, children go through primary puberty, so it is very common for children of this age to become victims of pedophiles.
Most children go to school, a new stage in their social life begins - with new guidelines, authorities, requirements. Parents are faced with the question of how best to help their child adapt to school. Without systemic knowledge, parents and teachers act at random. It's good if the properties of parents and children coincide, then they understand each other through themselves. And if not? In this case, the child is faced with double stress, the sources of which are the school and the lack of understanding of the parents.
In the psychology of a child at the age of 8, as in child psychology at the age of 9, the development of the upper vectors, intellectual abilities is relevant.
In general, by puberty, the child must already go through the ranking according to the animal type, where the strong wins the weak, where the relationship is sorted out through fights, and learn in a socially acceptable form to gain authority in the team, to determine his niche in society.
Thus, the knowledge accumulated by pedagogy and psychology, social pedagogy, works selectively, from case to case, since they do not distinguish one person from another, do not have an effective method of working with a person.
Such a technique is Yuri Burlan's System-Vector Psychology. This is the microscope through which anyone who looks, sees the differences (vectors, their level of development and implementation) of people and is unlikely to teach the "fish" to fly, and this is the basis of any methods of education and training, the foundation for solving painful social problems through changing the consciousness of a particular member of society to a collective consciousness.
