Some time ago, one of the active visitors of "VO" (Anton, a builder by profession) became interested in one specific topic, namely the participation of modern Russian business in the development and upbringing of children. The question of how our school does this is constantly raised on the site and most often in a negative way. They say the school should, but it doesn't. And it just so happened - it's even surprising that I, as it turned out, was associated with this topic almost all my life. And for a long time I was hatching the idea of how best to write about this in such a way that both Anton could answer and give comprehensive information to VO readers. And then it so happened that "all the stars converged" and the material was, let's say, "complex content." That is, it is about creativity, and about socially oriented private business, and about … helmets!
Since the article will also talk about helmets, albeit not in the first place, you cannot do without them, or rather their photos. And here is one of them. It shows children from the "knights' shift" of the Penza construction company "Rostum" after a lesson on the history of knightly weapons and practical work on the manufacture of helmets from the Wendel period. They are only grades 4-5, and you need to start with the simplest!
I'll start … with personal life experience, which, in my deep conviction, is the basis of everything. As a child, I watched the movie "The Exploits of Hercules" (1958) and I really liked the helmets and shields shown there. But then children in Soviet families were placed in such conditions that it was better not to ask adults to help you with making such "toys". And I had to do everything myself, and painted the helmet and armor made with black ink (my favorite paint at that time!) And red watercolors. I thought about the helmet for a long time and came up with … a typical Wendel helmet! Only I didn’t know that it was from Wendel. In those books that were at home on the history of the Middle Ages, this was not, and no one even dreamed about the Internet.
Well, this photo of the cover of an American magazine perfectly illustrates two themes at once. First, the correct design of the publication from the point of view of its advertising. The red color always catches the eye and attracts the attention of the buyer! Secondly, it depicts an electric tank with a Van de Graaff generator, which is supposed to burn the enemy with artificial lightning, directed by a stream of water. The propeller is auger and why and why is so unknown. But … as a stimulant of creativity, it works great!
Then, after many years, he graduated from the Penza Pedagogical Institute. V. G. Belinsky with a degree in history and English, I ended up in the Pokrovo-Berezovskaya rural school, where from 1977 to 1980 I had to work out my "free" Soviet diploma for three whole years. And I had to lead there, apart from history and English, also geography, and labor (!), And also … a circle of technical creativity. At my service was a room with workbenches, planes, jointers, saws, hammers and … EVERYTHING! Create, comrade, "based on local conditions"! And in the courtyard is the second half of the twentieth century, Soviet spaceships plow the expanses of the Universe, and children, sorry, go to the street toilet, in which in winter frozen feces stick out like icebergs from holes, and now, with the help of the above tools, they join active creative activity!
This cover is closer to the truth. Indeed, in 1929, such devices appeared in the United States on both police cars and motorcycles. But … just as an experiment!
And nevertheless, what I just did not do there … Models of throwing machines and ramming ram for my own cabinet of history. Knight's castle - there too. Rocket boat model. All-terrain vehicles-vibro-walkers from scrap materials - toothbrushes and soap dishes. African masks from Benin. Indian masks with turkey and duck feathers. Panel made of duck feathers. A boy named Morkovnenkov wished to make a present for his brother: "a hand squeezing a bottle without a bottom!" (ashtray) - made, and in order to get a mold for casting a hand from plaster, he poured melted paraffin on his hand! Fortunately, at home, not at school.
In 1929, Walter Christ's tank reached 119 km / h on highway trials! And already in 1932 the top secret project of the "flying Christie" appeared on the cover of the magazine! Why?
For which I praise myself, it is not only for self-control - because of her youth, she immanently belongs to the young, but for the fact that I wrote down every lesson - what, how, in how many minutes. So when my link ended and I returned to my hometown, the first thing I did was go to the local TV and offered to host programs for children there! "Have you ever worked on TV?" - asked me. “No,” I say, “but I worked for three years in a rural school, where one girl hacked her stepfather with an ax, stabbing him 15 times in the head! So after that TV is no problem for me. " "Well, okay, let's give you a try, and if you can handle it, we'll take it!" They gave it a try, I spent one 30 minute transmission, made exactly 25 minutes a vibrating walk from a soap dish, and he drove off! After that, I remained, or rather "got accustomed" to Penza TV from 1980 to 1991, where almost every month I broadcast the cycles "Let's Make Toys", "Studio UT", "The Stars are Calling" and "Guys - Inventing!" From 1985 to 1989, he conducted the same programs "Workshop of the School Country" in the city of Kuibyshev. It would not be an exaggeration to say that a whole generation of Penza residents grew up on them, so even now people of those years will recognize them right on the street.
As you can see, the idea of an electric gun was in the trend of the Popular Mechanics magazine in the 30s of the XX century!
Each scenario then turned into another article in the magazines School and Production, Family and School, Club and Amateur Art, Model Designer, Young Technician, and then became a chapter in one of three books. All this I mean that the technology of work was 100% perfected, and mistakes in working with children were simply excluded!
Another stillborn fantasy project: a high-speed submarine fighter operating near the coast!
I checked the effectiveness of these developments in practice, that is, on children. Firstly, from 1980 to 1982 at OblSYUT, where he did everything the same as in TV programs. Then at the school where my daughter went to study. Then at the school where the daughter of my good friend went to study - well, he asked "to raise her daughter in the class of authority." Then, in 1998, when the “uni” did not pay the salary for three months, again at the school where my daughter used to study and in which I myself once studied. Again he went to lead a circle there for "real money". And here's what is interesting: in all these elite schools (one "special school" with the study of English from the second grade, the second gymnasium), the children did everything that I gave them exactly as planned and in exactly the same time that assigned to one or another homemade product. This was usually a lesson. Lesson - and the rafts of the jangad are ready ("my breeze, my love and the raft, my old raft, trust me!" and so on. And 80% of the children did their job well and excellently, and 20% did it satisfactorily. And I thought - and people usually think of other people better than they should! - that this is a normal level of children's creativity. That is the way it should be … Then I learned that, yes, indeed, the level of creative activity in children is really prohibitive … up to 12 years old. And then they start to think about how to reproduce, what strikes them in the head, and with creativity it becomes bad. Its level is then restored only in 20%.
In reality, such a machine has never existed!
How did I know this? And it so happened that even when I was in graduate school, I published the first book for children "From everything at hand" (Belarus, "Polymya", 1987) and at the same time got acquainted with the book of Boris Pavlovich Nikitin - a well-known teacher at that time from the Moscow region, just engaged in the development of children's creativity. What was good in Soviet graduate school? You write a statement: "I ask you to send … to work in the archive …" So I did the same and went to Moscow, but, first of all, having noted the trip, I went to Nikitin. The meeting was very interesting. He said that he had just returned from Japan, where he was very well received and where his book will be published. He advised that there children in the 4th grade know 27 shades of green and make chrysanthemums out of paper. And then he offered me a test he had developed for the level of creative development. Something there had to be folded according to the pattern of colored squares, rhombuses, triangles, and for a while. It wasn't just that, but in the end I earned 98% from him. Which, of course, made me very happy. Nikitin told me that for the past several years he has been unsuccessfully trying to introduce this test in Moscow schools. And make it one of the indicators of the teacher's work !!!
And such a submarine in Italy too!
Ideally, it should have looked like this: children on September 1 come to school and take this test. The results are recorded and sent to the Rono, Gorono and Oblono. Then they pass it on May 31 and the results are compared. If there is growth, then the child learns well, actively learns the world, develops his creative abilities, and the teacher … the teacher works well! If the indicators do not grow, then this is a reason to think and send teachers to improve their qualifications. But if they fall, then the teacher is clearly not a teacher and he should look for a place in another specialty! Or, on the contrary, it will immediately be seen against the background of general indicators that this or that child is simply stupid from birth and must be sent to school for an educational institution. It is clear that with all the authority of Boris Pavlovich, he was denied this. Explaining this: then we will have to fire two-thirds of the teachers. Where can we find a replacement for them? And if you replace them with the rest, then how much will they have to pay ?! And they will have to work a lot, in two shifts. And the quality of their work will drop. More schools for EE will be needed immediately. Their teachers will have to pay more! And the capitalists in the West (wow, they are these capitalists !!!) will immediately say that you have so many mediocre people in your society? Is it because your hegemons are drinking black? And this cannot be allowed, because we are building a society … and so on. In general - "no way"! On this I left him. But, in general, I was not very upset, because I had data based on my own many years of experience that not everything is so bad. Yes, in the village I had just “such” children in abundance, but it’s like they drank there, and many children there were from cross-cousin marriages, so I was not at all surprised at their slight moronism.
And here on the cover is a completely trivial working moment. It seems to be nothing out of the ordinary. But the creative moment is also present here. Although somewhat hidden. After all, we are talking about how skyscrapers were built in the United States at that time!
Then I stopped studying the topic of children's technical creativity for a very long time. And then, in 2010, my granddaughter went to school, no longer an elite one (times had changed and it became meaningless to study there), but the most ordinary one, in the courtyard of my house. And … together with her, the two of us - my daughter and I - went to the same school to lead a circle on the development of creativity. Well, what to do if the primary school teacher (by the way, very good in everything else, they chose exactly this one according to reviews on the Internet), well, she simply did not know what we were able to do … And then it all started …
