On April 12, Russia celebrates one of those holidays, which is a reminder of the outstanding technological successes of mankind. We are talking, of course, about the holiday, which is called the World Day of Aviation and Astronautics. April 12 is a truly international holiday, and outside the Russian Federation its official name is as follows: International Day of Human Space Flight (International Day of Human Space Flight).
If in the Soviet Union the date of celebration of the Day of Aviation and Cosmonautics was officially approved about a year after the flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, namely on April 9, 1962, then it took foreign countries half a century to decide to add April 12 to the calendar of international holidays. The initiator was the Russian Federation itself.
On April 7, 2011, during the plenary meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations on the occasion of the half-century anniversary of the first manned flight into space, Resolution No. A / RES / 65/271 was adopted. More than 60 states of the world took part in the development of this resolution.
From the statement of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on April 7, 2011:
I am confident that the celebration of the International Day of Human Space Flight will remind us of the community of humanity and the need to work together to successfully solve our common problems. I hope that it will also serve as a special incentive for young people to pursue their dreams and expand the boundaries of knowledge and understanding in the world.
I don’t want to talk about sad things on such a day, but at the moment when the UN Secretary General was thinking about the commonality of mankind, the third week of NATO bombing of Libya was going on … states to focus on their own interests and goals, even if these goals have nothing to do with peace on Earth.
If we talk about the United Nations, today - April 12, 2016, a set of events will be held at the UN headquarters to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the first manned flight into space.
What did April 12, 1961 mean for the USSR, and what does this date mean for modern Russia? For the Soviet Union, the first manned flight into space was not just an event with a plus sign. It was an episode of the transformation of society, a new, more than significant impetus for development - after the impulse received on May 9, 1945. April 12, 1961 is the birthday of an unambiguous understanding of technological superiority and the birthday of additional self-confidence. And this day has a symbol - a person whose smile is familiar without exaggeration to billions of representatives of modern civilization around the world: from the heart of Russia to the most remote corners of other countries and continents. For millions of foreign citizens, the name of Yuri Gagarin is often associated with the main historical name of Russia, which has been repeatedly demonstrated by various sociological polls.
April 12 for Russia today is not only an occasion to widely celebrate the 55th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space as the anniversary of a technological breakthrough, but also an occasion to think about the value system. And this system has undergone, to put it mildly, certain changes in the 55 years that have passed since the April triumph of 1961. It just so happened, but today a few representatives of Russians of "tender age" say that their dream in the future is to become astronauts and conquer the vastness of the Universe or to become developers of the latest spacecraft. Unfortunately, the times of “space” romanticism are in many ways behind us, and today most children declare far from “space” dreams in terms of choosing a future profession. Despite all the statements that legal and economic unfortunate specialists with two or three degrees we have a dime a dozen, young men and women still believe that striving for an exclusively economic or legal education in modern conditions is easier and more useful …, we will "see" space even in 3D-cinema.
In general, it is difficult to talk about the popularization of the space direction of domestic science if children from school are reminded of the existence of Cosmonautics Day no more than once a year. And it's good that they remind me at all, because at one time officials of the Ministry of Education and Science (Education and Science!..) decided to exclude such a subject as "Astronomy" from the school curriculum. It is interesting to know the name of the person who came up with such an idea at all, and how was the course of its implementation motivated? One gets the impression that officials from education decided to implement a program according to which our children do not need knowledge about the technological triumph of the USSR in 1961 … But this is actually another attempt to strike a crushing blow on the heroic history of the country and its people, another attempts to grow Ivanov who do not remember no kinship, no bright pages in the history of the state in which they were born.
Last year, the cosmonauts themselves raised the alarm about this, and today they cannot imagine how their professional fates would have developed if at the time they had done the same with astronomical science in schools as they had done several years ago. Russian cosmonauts have collectively advocated the return of this academic discipline to the school curriculum. During a press conference timed to the 46/47 flight of the expedition to the ISS (April 2015), pilot-cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko said important words:
Of course, such a subject should be introduced. Children are interested in space topics, they are interested in how our solar system works. Based on our work on the ISS, we have planned a number of events with the aim of attracting the interest of young people to space, so that in the future they will connect their lives with astronomy and related disciplines.
The cosmonauts, on their own, prepared a series of popular science films about the peculiarities of life on the International Space Station, created several video tutorials on the implementation of certain physical laws on board a spacecraft in zero gravity. This material is willingly demonstrated to their students by modern enthusiastic teachers who, in fact, "in secret" from the Ministry of Education and its educational standards, are trying to really sow among the younger generation both reasonable and eternal and good. And only thanks to such enthusiasts, for whom education is not only and so much Unified State Exam, most modern schoolchildren can still name the name of the first person in space, and the fact that this person is our compatriot, and not an American superhero … Low bow to the astronauts, and enthusiastic teachers! Thanks to your work, our society does not slide into the final consumer corps de ballet.
The Kremlin press service informs that today the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Rogozin and the head of the Federal Space Agency Igor Komarov will report to the President on the development of Russian cosmonautics. Hopefully, this report will also touch upon the issue of real popularization of science related to space exploration in the modern school. After all, if a person from childhood does not have the opportunity to receive information about what was generally the reason for the appearance of the Cosmonautics Day in the calendar, then it is somewhat strange to expect from him in the future a desire to work on the development of this industry, which is strategic for Russia and for the level of technological competitiveness.
Famous Gagarin's "Let's Go!" in this regard, even today it can come in handy!
