When considering and characterizing the concept of a school lecture, it is advisable to start with its definition.

The lecture presentation is a detailed theoretical argument, scientific analysis and generalization, consistently carried out and based on specific historical material. In a lecture presentation, the material of narration and description serves the tasks of analysis and generalization, constituting the factual basis for conclusions and conclusions. At the same time, analysis and generalization in lecture presentation are carried out not in the form of a conversation, but in a monologue form.

In monologue form, systematization and reasoning do not act as an addition to the story, but constitute the most essential aspect of teaching. The lecture is characterized not by the length of the narrative, but by the importance and complexity of the problem being studied, the depth, consistency and argumentation of the analysis.

Since this chapter considers the lecture as one of the active forms of learning, attention should be paid to this definition. Active forms of education are those where the share and degree of independence of students is increased, an individual approach is provided and they develop Creative skills every student.

At first glance, it seems clear why the seminar is considered so effective. But can a lecture be put on a par with it? After all, often the words of the lecturer enter one ear of the listener and come out of the other, without touching a single string in his soul. But aren’t there seminar lessons where students recite someone else’s words on a piece of paper about a book the class hasn’t read?

The fact is that the activity or passivity of a lesson is determined not by the type of lesson, but by the ability to awaken thought, captivate with feeling, and encourage action. Activity does not arise by itself when turning to one form or another, but is created by the creative work of the teacher and students. And the lecture must be made an active form. There are rich possibilities for this.

A lecture can not only convey information, but, by building a system of knowledge, convincing, it can shape the worldview of listeners. The teacher’s word evokes an emotional and aesthetic attitude, awakens “good feelings,” and helps in the development of personality. Finally, the lecture provides guidance various types students' activities in and outside of class, a variety of skills are formed.

IN modern school Along with traditional combined lessons, such a specific lesson form as a lecture is also used. This helps to ensure continuity of forms and methods of teaching at school and university, preparing schoolchildren for a new stage of mastering knowledge.

It should be noted that a school lecture is significantly different from a lecture in a higher educational institution. First of all, usually lecture presentation in its pure form has almost no place in a history lesson, even in high school. Sometimes, as needed, a school lecture can cover two or three lessons, followed by a questioning lesson or a review lesson.

There are also other features of a school lecture.

The teacher guides the students’ notes, informs the topic, indicates the headings of the points of the lecture plan as they are presented, emphasizes with intonation important points for recording, suggests more concise and precise formulations, makes it possible to write down conclusions verbatim or almost verbatim. A teacher delivers a school lecture at a slower pace than a lecturer at a higher school.

A school lecture uses various kinds of visual aids; sometimes it takes on the character of a conversation between a teacher and the class.

The teacher is always faced with the question of the relationship between the presentation of the material and other sources of historical knowledge. The volume of content, the depth of assimilation of facts and concepts are determined by the program and textbook that the teacher and his students have chosen for work.

Teachers turn to the lecture form when they need to reveal the pattern of historical events, give them a scientific explanation, lead students to important ideological conclusions, give a holistic view of some problem, topic, section, present problematic material in which theoretical issues occupy a significant place .

Previously, the issue of the relationship between the content of the textbook and the teacher’s presentation was discussed. In particular, in the book by N.G. Dairi “How to prepare a history lesson” indicates that the amount of information that students receive, interest in the lesson and textbook, and the time spent on preparing homework depend on the correct relationship between the text of the textbook and the content of the teacher’s story.

Modern educational science puts forward a number of requirements for school lectures. Firstly, they must be scientifically impeccable, teach how to think, provide examples of analysis, analysis, and going beyond the textbook.

Secondly, the presentation of the material should be imaginative, accessible, but at the same time logical, systematic, and consistent. During such lessons, visual aids, diagrams, and handouts (for example, source text) can be used. However, a school lecture should not be a long monologue. Comprehension, consolidation, memorization, application should not be transferred to home.

Presentation educational material during a school lecture, it should be divided into logical links with consolidation first at the first level of knowledge, then at the second, etc. Each of the postulated provisions is supported by the necessary number of arguments and cemented with a brief conclusion. You cannot often resort to lectures as a form of lesson organization. It is appropriate when it is necessary to reveal historical patterns, show the logical relationships of events, processes and phenomena, complex cause-and-effect relationships. It is appropriate when preparing students for exams (review lectures).

You can start a lecture with a bright statement that creates a problematic situation. During the lesson, you should not abuse simple information with dictation of conclusions. The main method of presentation should be reasoning, reflection with rhetorical posing of questions. This helps to retain the attention of schoolchildren, to ensure that students deeply penetrate into the essence of the historical phenomena and processes being studied.

Since a lecture belongs to the methods of oral presentation of knowledge by a teacher, the question arises about its difference from story and explanation. One of the pedagogy textbooks writes: “A lecture differs from a story in that the presentation here is not interrupted by asking students questions.” Another book talks about another difference: “A school lecture, compared to a story and an explanation, is characterized by greater scientific rigor of presentation.”

One can hardly agree with the indications of these differences between a lecture and a story and an explanation. In fact, does a lecture cease to be a lecture because the teacher, in the course of presenting the material, turns to the students with a question? On the contrary, sometimes it is useful to pose a question to students, to force them to think in order to activate their attention and thinking. On the other hand, the statement that a lecture differs from a story in greater scientific rigor or accuracy cannot be considered correct, since scientific presentation is the most important requirement for all teaching methods.

So how, then, does a school lecture differ from a story and an explanation? The only difference is that the lecture is used to present more or less extensive educational material, and therefore it takes up almost the entire lesson. Naturally, this is associated not only with a certain complexity of the school lecture as a teaching method, but also with a number of its specific features.

The lecture is dominated by theoretical reasoning, scientific analysis, and generalizations. The basis, object of consideration, source for conclusions and generalizations in the lecture is specific historical material. Therefore, in most cases there is a narration, a description, and a characterization.

A lecture (like a teacher’s story) is a synthetic method of oral presentation of history. It may include all other oral presentation techniques: different types descriptions, characterization, explanation, reasoning, elements of conversation and combined with the use of various types of visualization.

So, in this chapter we examined the school lecture as an active form of learning. I consider it necessary to draw the following conclusions:

A lecture is one of the active forms of learning.

The lecture shapes the worldview of students.

One of the main differences between a lecture and a story and conversation is the greater degree of information content and volume.

A school lecture is significantly different from a lecture in a higher education institution.

The lecture must be scientifically impeccable and broader than the content of the textbook.

A school lecture prepares students for a new form of learning at a university

School lecture

See also:

AND pedagogy, and psychology originally existed in the bosom of philosophy, from which it first spun off pedagogy, and then psychology.

website/psihologia-1/2.htm

Siberian State University. communication routes. Psychology and pedagogy. Tutorial. Recommended.

website/psihologia-1/index.htm

So, Doctor Spock, it was emphasized in the press of past years, with whose name the humanistic pedagogy, came up with an article...

website/620/35.htm

Family education serves to improve the pedagogical culture of parents. pedagogy, which is the most important section of pedagogical science.

website/psihologia-1/53.htm

Family as a factor in developing a child’s personality. Family pedagogy is an integral part of the theory of communist education - purposeful...

website/enc-Semya/36.htm

This publication has been compiled in accordance with the State educational standard discipline "Psychology and pedagogy".

website/psihologia-1/1.htm

Freud A. Psychology and protective mechanisms: Trans. from English - M.: Pedagogy, 1993. To section II. Atkinson R. Human memory and the learning process.

website/psihologia-1/56.htm

Study of psychology and pedagogy has practical significance for future specialists: the knowledge gained during the training process is necessary in working with personnel and social...

website/psihologia-1/4.htm

Kantor I.M. Pomoigisho terminological system pedagogy: Logical and methodological problems. - M.: Pedagogy, 1980

website/nalogovaya-policiya/128.htm

Pedagogyhumanism, implemented by him and his many followers using the reference signal technique, is a true creative collaboration with students...

Topic: ________________________________ Class: ______________

Lesson number in the topic being studied: ___________________________________

Type of lecture (overview introductory, thematic, generalizing) ______

Goals: _____________________________________________________

Leading tasks: _____________________________________

Plan – summary of a laboratory lesson.

Topic: ___________________________________ Class _________

Textbook (source) _____________________________________________

Additional training aids _________________________

Objectives of the laboratory lesson: _______________________________

Forms of educational work (frontal, group, individual) _________________________________________

Characteristics of the source.

System of tasks according to the textbook (source)

Card instructions for students on working with a source (document)

Sample of written documentation of laboratory work or its individual tasks (table, diagram, plan, map, etc.)

Frontal generalizing conversation (plan for collective discussion of the results of laboratory work, order of presentations on individual issues, additional tasks).

Criteria for assessing written and oral answers.

WITHThe seminars are different:

a high degree of independence in preparing for the seminar, great activity of students when discussing the results of preparation, and mastery of skills in working with literature;

a change in the organization of learning stages (their sequence and content), for example, homework is of a proactive nature, and its checking coincides with studying new material;

changes in the functions performed by the teacher and students; students perform an informational function, and the teacher performs a regulatory and organizational function.

Sample questions for analyzing a seminar lesson:

the place of the seminar lesson among other lessons, topics, its relationship with them.

The type of seminar, depending on its goals, content, level of students’ preparation.

The relevance of the topic, its educational significance.

Methodology for preparing the seminar, its focus on attracting the active participation of the majority of students in the class:

timely informing students about the purpose, topic and plan of the seminar, thoughtfulness of the plan, making adjustments to it in accordance with the wishes of the students;

development of a system of differentiated tasks (preparation of reports, reviewing, opposing, tasks for collecting materials in museums, archives, institutions, interviewing, preparation of diagrams, tables, graphs, demonstrations, etc.).

Methodology of the seminar, its focus on revealing the creative potential of students:

Clarity in defining the topic and purpose of the seminar;

Psychological preparation of students to discuss issues;

Forms of stimulating their activity and cognitive interest;

The ratio of teacher and student activities; brevity and focus of the teacher’s introductory words, appropriateness and thoughtfulness of comments and corrections, organization of collective discussion and discussions.

Outline of a school seminar.

Topic: _______________________________ Class: _____________

Objectives of the seminar: _______________________________

Type of seminar: (thematic, generalization with elements of studying new material, generalization with systematization of historical knowledge): _________________________________________________

Seminar questions offered to schoolchildren for preliminary preparation(with recommendations for working with sources and formatting answers): _______________________

Literature on the topic of the lesson:

Main ______________________________________________

Additional __________________________________________

Individual tasks (advanced) ____________________

Introductory word (relevance of the topic, main problems, specificity of sources, originality of approaches to covering issues, cognitive tasks, forms of reporting on participation in the seminar, organization of work at the seminar, distribution of roles of speakers and co-speakers, analysts, experts, consultants, etc.) .

Final word (formulation of general conclusions, summing up).

Self-test questions

Goals of school history education.

Classification of types of lessons: according to the leading method, according to the nature of the students’ activities, according to the relationship between the structural links of learning.

Curriculum and structure of school history education. Multi-level training.

Linear and concentric system in teaching history.

School history curriculum. Structure and analysis.

A lesson in learning new material. Methodology and various forms of implementation.

Combined lesson and its structure.

Structure and features of a repetition-summarizing lesson.

Forms and types of testing students' knowledge. Content, nature and method of using questions.

Whole-class, group and individual forms of testing students' knowledge and skills.

“Condensed survey”, its positive and negative sides.

Forms of mutual testing, self-testing and self-assessment of knowledge.

Reviewing.

Preparing a teacher for a history lesson. Structural and functional analysis of educational material.

The purpose of the lesson and pedagogical intent as a set of educational and developmental tasks.

Lesson summary - as a model reflecting the joint activities of the teacher and students.

Scientific and methodological apparatus of the textbook. Methodological techniques for working with the textbook.

Teaching methods: classification and their features.

Types of cards. Methodology for using cartographic material in history lessons.

Methodology for preparing reports, abstracts and their defense.

A variety of forms of homework and consolidation of new material in history lessons.

Classification of troubles. Their meanings. Methodology for use in history lessons.

Block learning system and its features.

Types of visual teaching aids and their classification.

Analysis of a history lesson. Specifics of analysis of different types of lessons.

Forms of independent work in history lessons.

Techniques for working with documents and fiction.

Techniques for developing chronological knowledge and skills of students.

Lesson equipment. Notes on the board.

Group activities in history lessons. Methodology for its application.

Heuristic forms of classes.

Integrated lessons, competitions.

Credit system of education.
Basic notes for history lessons. § 1. Educational and educational tasks of teaching history At the present stage of development of Soviet society, the tasks of equipping students with solid knowledge, forming their communist worldview and communist morality have acquired particular importance. And for this it is necessary to improve educational educational work. The Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On measures to further improve the work of secondary schools,” published on November 19, 1966, is a specific plan for implementing the directives of the XXIII Congress of the CPSU. The resolution states that the main tasks of the school are to give students a solid knowledge of the fundamentals of science, to form in them a high communist consciousness, and to prepare them for life. The school must equip students with an understanding of the laws of social development, educate students on the revolutionary and labor traditions of the Soviet people; develop in them a high sense of Soviet patriotism; cultivate readiness to defend the socialist Motherland; educate students in the spirit of solidarity with all peoples fighting for freedom and national independence; fight against the penetration of bourgeois ideology into the consciousness of students, with manifestations of alien morality.
By revealing to students the history of humanity's movement towards communism, the school history course occupies a leading place in the formation of a communist worldview among students. Education is inextricably linked with education. Keeping this in mind, we must, however, distinguish between the specific educational, cognitive tasks of teaching history in school and equally specific educational tasks. Without such a distinction, neither the theoretical justification nor the practical implementation of the unity of education and upbringing in the teaching of history is possible: every unity presupposes difference.
What are the educational objectives of a school history course, the solution of which is aimed at the main, most important goal of teaching history - the formation of a communist worldview based on historical material?
First of all, we must equip students with a solid knowledge of history. It means that:
1) while studying history, schoolchildren must firmly grasp the most important concrete historical facts that characterize the historical process as a whole and various aspects of social life at successive stages of historical development. It would be a mistake to believe that from a history course students should only learn conclusions and general ideas obtained as a result of analysis and generalization of historical facts. No, the basic historical facts must also be firmly grasped: they themselves have great educational significance.
V.I. Lenin emphasized that it is not enough “to assimilate communist slogans, the conclusions of communist science, without assimilating the sum of knowledge, the consequence of which is communism itself.” In a letter to M.N. Pokrovsky, V.I. Lenin indicated that students stories must know the facts so that there is no superficiality. Addressing young people, V.I. Lenin spoke of the need to enrich the mind with “knowledge of all the facts, without which there cannot be a modern educated person.” “We do not need rote learning, but we need to develop and improve the memory of each student with knowledge of basic facts, because communism will turn into emptiness, will turn into an empty sign, a communist will only be a simple braggart if all the knowledge acquired is not processed in his mind” 2.
Enriching and improving students' memory with knowledge of basic historical facts is one of the most important tasks of teaching history at school. The student must know how primitive people lived, where and how the most ancient slaveholding states arose, how courageous Greeks fought defending their native country from the invasion of the hordes of Xerxes, how a free community Slav and a free Frank were turned into serfs, what the Mongol-Tatar yoke is and how it fell. He must know what the Jacobins managed to do in 1793 and what the Paris Commune managed to accomplish; know the peasant wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, the heroes of December 14, 1825 and the tragic path of the Narodnaya Volya. He should be very familiar with the images of the first revolutionary workers and the biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He must know the course of the October Uprising and the victory of the Red Army over the combined forces of the White Guards and interventionists, because without knowledge of these and many other historical facts, the student’s ideas about his native country and the whole world will turn out to be poor, vague, the level of his social consciousness will be low, and his social emotions - undeveloped.
2) The assimilation of historical facts presupposes the creation in students of a system of concrete historical ideas (i.e., images and pictures of the past), reflecting the main phenomena of the historical past in their connection and development. Yes, aware of history ancient world in grade V, we strive to create in students a system of ideas about the work of slaves (slaves on the shadufs, in the construction of dams and pyramids, slaves in the mines of Attica, on the estate of a Roman slave owner), about the position of slaves and their oppression by slave owners, about the struggle of slaves (pictures of a slave revolt in Rome, the image of Spartacus), etc. The assimilation of this system of ideas is one of the most important educational results of studying ancient history and the basis for students’ understanding of the features of the slave system, its development and collapse.
3) Students’ assimilation of the most important historical concepts, their understanding of the laws of social development, mastery - with sufficient depth for their age - of a scientific, Marxist understanding of history, in particular an understanding of the role of the masses and prominent figures in the historical process, the role of the CPSU as a leading, guiding and guiding force Soviet society.
4) Students acquire the ability to apply knowledge of history, use it when studying new historical material, as well as in social work, in life, and the ability to understand events of the past and present.
5) Development of skills and abilities for independent work with historical material, the ability to work with text (textbook, historical document, popular science book, political brochure, newspaper), with maps and illustrations, the ability to draw up plans, notes, theses, record lectures, the ability to coherently and reasonably present historical material, make messages and reports on socio-historical topics.
Along with educational objectives and in inextricable unity with them in teaching history, educational tasks are carried out. The most important of them:
1) educating students in the spirit of Soviet patriotism, love and devotion to the native people, the Communist Party, the Soviet government, readiness to defend the socialist Motherland, military-patriotic education in teaching history;
2) educating schoolchildren in the spirit of fraternal unity of the peoples of the Soviet Union, in the spirit of friendship with the working people of socialist countries, in the spirit of solidarity with peoples fighting for their independence, in the spirit of proletarian internationalism;
3) educating schoolchildren on the revolutionary, military and labor traditions of the Soviet people;
4) the formation of strong convictions in the inevitable death of capitalism and the victory of communism, cultivating dedication to the cause of building communism;
5) the formation of high communist ideals and the education of the moral qualities of the Soviet man - the builder of communism, including, in particular, the communist attitude to work and deep respect for workers;
6) the formation of a communist attitude towards the phenomena of social life, a decisive struggle against the penetration of elements of bourgeois ideology into the consciousness of students, with manifestations of alien morality;
7) atheistic education of students and the formation of scientific and atheistic beliefs;
8) aesthetic education.
The named educational and educational tasks resolved in school history teaching are in inextricable unity. The basis of educational work carried out in teaching history is the transfer of knowledge. To love your native country and your people, you need to know their historical past. To sympathize with the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors, one must know the situation of the oppressed and the conditions of oppression. To have feelings of friendship and respect for other peoples, you need to be familiar with their history, their traditions and culture. To be convinced of the inevitable death of capitalism, of the justice and progressiveness of the cause of communism, it is necessary to understand the laws of human development and know the main stages of this development.
Studying the history of material production, revealing its significance in the life of society, getting acquainted with representatives of the working people, with the heroes of socialist production serves the task of instilling in students a communist attitude towards work and deep respect for workers. The study of the liberation struggle of the working masses, the history of the revolutionary movement and the heroic path traversed by the CPSU opens up wide opportunities for cultivating high moral qualities and social ideals of the Soviet person: courage and courage, honesty and truthfulness, high discipline and a sense of responsibility, revolutionary optimism, the ability to sacrifice personal interests for the sake of the team, the ability not to be afraid of difficulties. Atheistic education in teaching history is carried out by familiarizing students with the origin of religion, the role of the church as an instrument of class oppression, with the facts of the brutal struggle of religion against science and its best representatives, i.e., on scientific and educational material. In the same way, aesthetic education is carried out on the basis of students’ assimilation of knowledge from the history of culture. The basis of the communist worldview is scientific knowledge.
But communist education in teaching history is carried out not only on the basis of students’ assimilation of historical facts, concepts, patterns, and theoretical generalizations. The emotional and figurative side of the studied historical material is of great educational importance. During history lessons, students are presented with vivid pictures of the past, exciting scenes, images of fighters and heroes. Historical material affects all aspects of a student’s personality: the mind, the feeling, the will.
The unity of training and education in teaching history does not consist in establishing artificial connections between these aspects of the educational process. This unity lies in the very essence of the work of the Soviet history teacher and permeates all his daily work with students. Let us consider in more detail how this unity is manifested and how it is realized specifically.
1. In general pedagogical terms, the unity of teaching and upbringing lies primarily in the fact that the formation of the communist worldview of students is both an educational and educational task of the Soviet school in general and the teaching of history in particular. The communist worldview presupposes not only a system of knowledge about the world, views on the world around us, but also an effective, transformative attitude towards it, a certain system of behavior. The communist worldview determines the views, feelings, and behavior of Soviet people.
2. The unity of training and education in teaching history lies, further, in the fact that the program historical material to be mastered has not only cognitive, but also educational value. And above all, specific historical facts have educational and educational significance. They can delight and inspire, outrage and cause hatred, influence behavior and serve as an example, define ideals. This emotional and moral intensity of the historical image is of exceptional importance in school history teaching. But in order to realize this cognitive and educational significance of a historical fact, it is necessary, firstly, to make a correct, i.e., corresponding to the modern level of historical science and the tasks of the school history course, selection of factual material and, secondly, so that the facts themselves were presented to students in a lively, concrete form.
The educational and educational significance of a specific historical fact is not limited to the question of the formation of historical ideas. It has another side too. The teacher sometimes encounters the indifferent attitude of individual students to historical material. The presented historical facts do not touch their heartstrings; they are perceived only as educational material, as book information that has no connection with their life interests. This attitude is especially often established towards facts of the distant past. It is quite obvious that in these cases the educational and educational value of historical material is sharply reduced.
Experience shows that it is possible to arouse in students an active, personal attitude towards a historical fact only by revealing, in the course of studying this fact, such aspects of it that are to some extent connected with the interests, thoughts, aspirations and experiences of students. This can be achieved, in particular, by revealing the specific vital meaning of a historical fact, its practical influence on the life and fate of the people of the era being studied. Thus, the students’ understanding of the economic crises under capitalism will be purely verbal if the teacher, talking, for example, about the crisis of 1857 in England, limits himself to mentioning that unemployment has increased sevenfold since 1853: this will not say anything to the mind, nor the hearts of the students. No Let him open the first volume of Capital 1 and read in class an excerpt from a report by a correspondent of one of the bourgeois newspapers on the situation of the unemployed:
“...The door we knocked on was opened by a middle-aged woman who, without saying a word, led us into a small back room where her whole family sat silently, their eyes fixed on the quickly dying fire. Such desolation, such hopelessness was visible on the faces of these people and in their small room that I would not want to see such a scene again. “They have earned nothing, sir,” said the woman, pointing to her children, “nothing for 26 weeks, and all our money is gone”...
Let the teacher not consider those few minutes that he will spend on communicating this material to be lost for the implementation of the curriculum: Soviet schoolchildren should have an idea of ​​such Only on the basis of living, concrete ideas about the vital facts of the past is it possible to convincingly contrast our social system with the exploitative society, education pride for the socialist Motherland, hatred of the enemies of the working people. In other words, the way in which historical material is presented and the methods of its concretization are largely determined by the student’s attitude towards the historical past being studied. Thus, questions of methodology are inextricably intertwined with the question of the ideological and educational significance of educational material. A specific fact has a much greater emotional and moral impact than general provisions and abstract formulations. A general phrase about the cruel exploitation of slaves in ancient Rome will not cause strong feelings among students, while two or three details revealing the inhumanity of slavery will arouse in them indignation and deep sympathy for the oppressed. The special educational role of historical material is based on the fact that any historical fact in one way or another relates to the sphere of human activity, to their struggle, their relationships, aspirations, goals, hopes, views and destinies. But in order for a historical fact to teach and educate, it is necessary to present it in such a way that in the minds of schoolchildren this correlation of the historical fact with the concrete life and activities of people is reflected in at least some part or side. Impersonal, abstract, dried-out historical material, presented out of connection with the living activities of people, does not educate. And it teaches little...
This does not mean that we should abandon the generalized form of presentation, the conceptual side of presentation. But concepts, generalizations and conclusions in school history education must contain (both logically and psychologically) “the richness of the concrete” and ultimately be based on full-blooded historical facts. Concretization of a historical fact in teaching history is no less significant in achieving the unity of teaching and upbringing than leading students to certain scientific conclusions and generalizations; it serves as a necessary condition for the convincingness and naturalness of these conclusions.
3. The system of living historical ideas created on the basis of specific factual material also has not only cognitive, but also educational significance. Pictures and images of the past, perceived by students in history lessons in Soviet schools, have a certain ideological
direction. They are partisan. Let us remember how much attention is paid in school history courses to pictures of labor, the liberation struggle of the oppressed, images of people's leaders and heroes, revolutionaries, martyrs of science.
4. Historical concepts formed in students in the school course, as will be shown below1, also have not only cognitive, but also educational content and an ideological orientation. They are scientific and partisan.
5. Disclosure of historical connections and patterns of social development in a school course serves not only students’ scientific understanding historical process, i.e. educational tasks, but also the formation of beliefs, instilling confidence in the victory of communism, hatred of the exploitative system, love for the socialist Motherland, Soviet patriotism.
This is how the unity of teaching and upbringing is realized in the very content of the school history course.
The educational, ideological content of the history course is revealed and reaches the consciousness of the student through a system of methods, techniques, and teaching aids. As shown below2, the very methods and techniques of presenting historical material help to reveal the ideological and educational content of historical material, and to realize the educational and educational significance of a historical fact. Already in a simple teacher’s story, historical material is so selected and arranged in such a sequence that it is scientifically correct and at the same time most convincing to convey to students the essence and features of this event; in the story our assessments, our attitude to the fact are felt, supporting points are prepared for correct conclusions and generalizations. The story of a history teacher is ideologically oriented, educational in nature, the description and characteristics he gives to historical phenomena are partisan.
But the methods used by the history teacher represent only one side of the learning process - education. We are talking about cultivating the student’s feelings, the student’s views, and the moral foundations of his personality. And this cannot be achieved without the active work of the intellect and emotional sphere of the student’s personality.
The concept of educational teaching contains the concept of training that lays the foundations for independent thinking of students. The unity of teaching and upbringing is achieved only if the students themselves intensify their work at all levels of the learning and assimilation process.
Correct solution of educational and educational tasks of school history teaching is impossible without taking into account the age characteristics of students in grades IV-VI (children), grades VI-VII (adolescents) and grades VIII-X (young men).
Let us dwell on some of the features of communist education in teaching history to students of different ages.
A schoolchild in grades V-VI is characterized by an unquenchable thirst for factual information and a keen interest in historical fact as such. He listens with enthusiasm and enthusiastically asks the teacher about the structure of the shaduf and the treasures of the tomb of Tutankhamon, about the mechanism of the catapult and the weapons of the Roman legionnaire, about the victories of Hannibal and the fate of Richard Lion Heart etc.
Listening to the teacher's story, the younger schoolchild mentally participates in the events that the teacher narrates; together with the heroes of the past, he shows courage in campaigns and valor in battles. After lessons, he starts a game with his peers, reproducing the events with which he became acquainted in class: the battle at Thermopylae, the liberation of Orleans. This imaginary participation and these games have an important educational value: there is an exercise in the heroic. Biographical material for a schoolchild of this age is appealing mainly due to its effective side. He is attracted by the feat, and the historical figure becomes his concrete ideal. “I want to be like Spartak,” says a fifth-grader. These features of children's perception and imagination will be taken into account by the teacher. For example, when talking about the events of the military past, he will emphasize the heroic side, omitting naturalistic details that could traumatize the student’s imagination and contribute to the development of cruelty and other negative traits.
The senior schoolchild strives not so much to accumulate historical facts, but to comprehend and generalize them. In history lessons, he will be captivated not only by a vivid narration of events, but even more by establishing connections between historical facts, revealing patterns, and theoretical generalizations. In the story of the defeat of Denikin, he will be more interested in the general concept of the operation than in individual battle episodes; in studying the Decembrist movement, he will be attracted by questions of their ideology, an analysis of the reasons for their defeat, and not by the question of which guns were used to shoot the square on Senate Square.
Senior schoolchildren, Soviet boys and girls, cannot help but be interested in the inner world of the heroes of the past and present, especially the Komsomol heroes of the civil and Great Patriotic Wars and socialist construction who were close to them in age. For them, not only the fact of the feat is important, but also the path by which their favorite hero came to the feat. In high school, therefore, we need not only a story about a feat, but at least the briefest sketch of the internal development of the hero’s personality, in particular when it comes to young contemporary heroes. This approach of the hero to the schoolchild, showing his living face enhances the educational impact of the historical material being studied.
In grades VIII-X, the teacher deals with students whose knowledge is significantly greater than that of schoolchildren in grades V-VI. At an older age, both the proportion of knowledge acquired independently and the ability for independent mental work increase significantly. This is due to further development logical thinking older students. In adolescence (15-17 years), interest in those elements of school knowledge that are directly related to problems of worldview - to issues of politics, morality, art, and theoretical issues - increases sharply. It is in high school that the task of students mastering the Marxist understanding of history and the formation of a communist worldview arises in full force. At the same time, at an older age, the differentiation of schoolchildren's interests is much more noticeable: some students are passionate about physics and mathematics, others about literature and geography, and still others about the problems of Darwinism. One must be able to attract cognitively valuable historical material, supporting and developing the socio-political interests of older schoolchildren, satisfying their needs for analysis and generalization and helping to shape their worldview, in order to make history at school one of the favorite subjects for the majority of students.
The main goal of ideological and educational work in history lessons is the formation of a communist worldview. But it is a mistake to believe that communist education in school history teaching begins with children’s assimilation of the theoretical principles of Marxism, with the conscious assimilation of the theory of scientific communism.
It would be inappropriate to say that students in grades IV-VI, that is, children aged 10-12 years, have a system of Marxist views on social life and human history. We can talk about their assimilation of only some of the simplest elements of Marxist teaching, elementary ideas about various forms of the social system, about various classes, about the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors, about the role of state power, about just and unjust wars, about the importance of people’s labor activity, about the role of the masses, about the leading role of the Communist Party (based on the history of the USSR in IV grade and extracurricular activities in V-VI grades). But the assimilation of these ideas and concepts by no means exhausts communist education in teaching history in grades IV-VI. The fact is that as a result of consistent, systematic and ideologically oriented educational work in teaching history, students of this age develop a certain social position - the position of a Soviet schoolchild, a pioneer, a certain attitude towards the historical facts being studied is formed, certain moral ideals are formed, certain , stable complexes of emotions in relation to various phenomena of social life: love for the Motherland, sympathy for the oppressed workers, hatred of the oppressors, slave owners, feudal lords, enemies of the working people, etc.
This social position develops in children of this age not only as a result of the teacher’s explanations, i.e., the impact on the intellect, but often under the influence of the emotional coloring in which historical facts are presented, i.e., as a result of the impact on the student’s feelings and imagination.
This completely definite, albeit childishly realized, social position of the Soviet schoolchild, the totality of his ideals (to be like Spartak, like Giordano Bruno, etc.) and moral principles, brought up on historical material, represent the psychological basis of communist worldview that developed among teenage students by the time they entered grades VII-VIII.
The simplicity of the historical material and the associated contrasting definiteness of the class characteristics of the struggling groups and historical characters, the unlimited trust of children in the word of the teacher make this educational work in history lessons in grades IV-VI a relatively uncomplicated matter, and the student’s position itself is very stable, although it is often uncritically gets along with various remnants inspired by the street or family.
The matter of ideological education becomes much more complicated as students move to high school. The process of forming a worldview in adolescence and adolescence proceeds spasmodically, contradictorily and is often accompanied by hypertrophy of immature youthful criticism, which questions everything that comes along the way. During this critical period, many young men and women are impressionable, with excessive enthusiasm they tend to follow one-sided, straightforward conclusions, in some cases falling under the influence of views alien to us. Often the isolation characteristic of this age makes educational work extremely difficult. At the same time, it is at this age - some students from the 8th grade, others even from the 7th grade - that an interest in issues of politics and morality develops, a desire for self-education, for the formation of their views, their worldview.
The teacher-educator needs not only to rebuild the methodology of educational work in relation to older ages, but also to change the very approach to students, the level and nature of their relationship with the class, immediately freeing themselves from the usual ideas about their students as children. If this restructuring is not carried out in a timely manner, there may be a loss of contact with students, and sometimes a difficult conflict to overcome. The wrong line of behavior of the teacher, his attempts to act by the force of unquestioned teacher “authority”, his disregard for the personality of the older student, the infringement of youthful pride that he has allowed can lead to extremely undesirable distortions in the development of the student’s personality.
During this critical period, the personality of the teacher, especially those teaching socio-political and humanitarian subjects - literature, social studies, history - acquires an extremely important and decisive role in the moral and political development of the schoolchild.
And above all - the teacher’s knowledge, his broad outlook, erudition, awareness in a wide sphere of cultural and political life. Already in the 7th grade, schoolchildren are able to appreciate and extremely value a knowledgeable teacher, respect him, trust his assessments, his statements about events and phenomena of social life.
But knowledge alone does not determine the success of educating older schoolchildren. Of exceptional importance are the teacher’s conviction, sincerity, integrity, fairness, directness and truthfulness, and the partisanship of his views and actions. Finally - respect for the views, statements, doubts of students, a sincere desire to help them understand and find the right solution, the ability, without imposing one’s judgments, to guide them along the right path.
In these special conditions of educational work with older schoolchildren, the first task of the history teacher is to strengthen, justify, and reinforce the social position that we formed in the student at the previous stage of teaching history. The point is that this social position of a teenage pioneer, which is a set of ideals, moral guidelines, stable complexes of emotions, as a result of targeted ideological influence, is transformed into a harmonious communist worldview, the basis of which is a system of knowledge. The point is to develop, on the psychological basis created in early and middle age (as mentioned above), the theoretical basis of the communist worldview. In inextricable connection with the formation of the scientific foundations of the communist worldview, the system receives a deeper justification and development. moral concepts and principles, and aesthetic tastes and views.
Leading role in the formation theoretical foundations The study of history plays a role in the communist worldview.
The decisive and fundamental thing in the work of a history teacher in high school is to help students not only understand the main problems and patterns of modern historical development, but also realize their place, their moral duty in the struggle for the victory of communism over capitalism, for the cause of the working people against the world of exploiters.
The main program material on which these problems are solved is, first of all, the history of the struggle of the exploited against the exploiters. It is important to reveal the goals of this liberation struggle and show its justice. Of great importance in ideological education is the study of the dramatic moments of the class struggle - revolutions, uprisings. Using this material, if it is presented specifically, it is easy to show the heroism of the fighting masses, the bright figures of ordinary fighters and leaders of the people, the cruelty and treachery of the exploiters.
In the formation of the socio-political position of a senior school student, an important role is played by remarkable examples of the heroic exploits of communists and Komsomol members, workers and peasants in the struggle against the White Guards and interventionists during the Civil War, against the fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War.
Familiarizing students with various forms of exploitation of man by man is also of great educational importance. The teacher pays special attention to revealing the essence of capitalist exploitation.
In the formation of the political position of young people, one of the decisive issues is the question of war and peace. This program material is revealed to students in terms of the most pressing moral and political problems of the struggle for peace, democracy and socialism. At the same time, it is important that these questions are posed to students not only as material that must be learned for the next lesson, but also as generalizations, ideas, very interesting, very important, directly related to contemporary issues, to the practical activities of Soviet youth, young builders communism.
Finally, of serious importance is the skillful opposition of the world of socialism to the world of capitalism, a concrete demonstration of the advantages of socialism over capitalism in all areas of social life - economics, political system, culture.
It must be emphasized that at senior school age, the ideological and educational impact of this material on the formation of the socio-political position of schoolchildren, their deep conviction in the rightness of the cause of communism receives a solid basis only if the teacher systematically works on the development of students’ historical thinking, on the development of: they have a Marxist understanding of history.
In solving these problems, methods of teaching history are also important, which are also modified according to the characteristics of older people. Academic work in history is structured in high school in such a way as to provide greater opportunities for posing, analyzing and mastering theoretical issues of the course.
Of particular importance are generalizing lessons, lessons in the analysis of historical documents, lessons devoted to the study of the works of the founders of Marxism-Leninism that are accessible to students, the study and critical analysis of socio-political theories, for example, the views of the French Enlightenment, the political projects of the Decembrists, the teachings of the utopian socialists, and populists.
Much more attention is paid to developing in students the skills and abilities to independently work with a historical document, political article, brochure, newspaper, and most importantly - the ability to understand socio-political issues. In high school, such forms of independent work as student reports, theoretical conferences, and seminars are used. And most importantly, the formation of views, beliefs, and worldviews is possible only through independent thinking of students. Views and ideals cannot be learned from a textbook - they are developed in the process of independent thinking. The task of the history teacher is to provide material, food for this independent work and to guide it. Therefore, the problem of methods of teaching history is of paramount importance in high school, since it concerns the formation of the worldview, ideological and moral character of students, the tasks of communist education at that stage of school history education, when these tasks are decisive and leading in teaching history.

§ 2. Structure and content of the history course
The guiding document in the work of a history teacher is the state program. It determines the content of the school history course, its problems, depth and system of presentation of the material. The teacher begins his preparation for teaching history by studying the program and an explanatory note for it.
The program provides not only the content of the history course and the time allocated for studying this or that section in accordance with the curriculum and the schedule of hours, but also the arrangement of the material by year of study, i.e. the structure of the school history course, the general plan for its construction.
In the development of historical education in our country and abroad in different time Various principles for constructing a school history course were put forward.
Most common at the beginning of the 20th century. There was a deon-centric way of arranging the historical material studied in school. With this method, the study of history in school is carried out in two or three successive stages, or concentrations, each of which covers the entire (or almost the entire) course, but at each subsequent stage - with greater detail and greater depth, according to the older age of the students. .
An example of complete and consistent concentrism is the structure of the history course in schools of the GDR until 1960, when eight-year education was universal and compulsory in the republic. In grades V-VIII of the eight-year basic school ("Grundschule"), elementary history was studied, and in grades IX-XII of the "advanced" school ("Oberschule") - a systematic course of history. They were built like this. In the 5th grade, schoolchildren were introduced to the most important phenomena from the life of primitive and slave society in the form of entertaining stories, complete pictures and popular essays, on such topics as, for example: “How they hunted a mammoth”, “The village of the ancient Germans”. “At the slave market”, “Rebellious slaves fight for freedom” (Spartacus), etc.1. In grade VI, the history of the Middle Ages was studied in a very accessible form, mainly the history of medieval Germany, with the inclusion of the most important events of world history (crusades, geographical discoveries). And in this course, with a more systematic presentation of the material, all conclusions and generalizations were made on the basis of specific pictures and descriptions. In the 7th grade they studied new history, including the most important facts from the history of Russia after 1861, and in the 8th grade - the latest history from the Great October Revolution and the revolution in Germany to the defeat of fascism and the formation of the GDR.
In the "oberschul" in the 9th grade a systematic, in-depth course of ancient history was studied, covering the complex phenomena of economics, class struggle and culture, in the 10th grade - an equally serious course in the history of the Middle Ages, in the 11th grade - modern history and in the 12th grade - modern history before 1947 and a special course “Modern Studies” (Gegenwartskunde).
The given example makes it possible to draw conclusions about the advantages of using the concentric principle in teaching history.
1) Young people who have received an incomplete secondary education carry into life, although elementary, a complete, integral idea of historical development humanity from ancient times to the present, including the historical path of the native country and its people.
2) Teaching history in each of the concentrations, both in terms of the selection of material and methods of teaching, can be tailored to the age characteristics and capabilities of the student, his interests, which ensures a significantly greater educational and educational result. Thus, the principle of concentrism is justified psychologically and pedagogically.
3) All sections of history, both its most ancient and its most recent periods, are assimilated in each of the concentrations with the same or almost the same degree of depth.
4) Students’ assimilation of historical material is greatly facilitated, since the degree of its complexity corresponds to age. The inevitable re-examination of some (most important) historical events helps to consolidate them more firmly.
The advantages of concentrism seemed so convincing, and the pedagogical requirement to build history teaching taking into account the age of students was so obvious that this principle received late XIX and the beginning of the 20th century. broad support for advanced teachers.
To a large extent, the influence of these concepts explains the introduction in the pre-revolutionary Russian school of the late 19th century. pr o-pedeutic, i.e., a preliminary, preparatory course of history in city schools and the first two classes of gymnasiums and real schools. And since it was necessary to begin familiarizing children with the historical past with something closer and more accessible to children, such a propaedeutic course could naturally be a course national history.
The development of such a course represented a step forward, since the Russian school until the middle of the 19th century. inclusively did not know the elementary, propaedeutic course. Textbooks for the first grades of gymnasiums and for district schools, the so-called “short outlines” or “guides for initial study,” did not differ in any specifics regarding the selection of content and method of presentation in relation to the age of the students. They were an abbreviated presentation of the material contained in “systematic” courses for high school: the same list of reigns, reigns, names and dates, only everything was shorter.
One of the best textbooks for the elementary course was the “Textbook of Russian History” by M. Ostrogorsky, which appeared in 1891, and went through 27 editions. True, it was difficult for students, but still it represented a fairly successful attempt to create an elementary course, paid great attention to the education of schoolchildren with specific ideas about the past, devoted a lot of space to everyday material, contained big number illustrations, questions and assignments for students’ independent work. In addition to the introduction of a propaedeutic course of Russian history in primary grades, the main history course in secondary educational institutions in Russia and in most foreign countries at the beginning of the 20th century. was built concentrically. However, the use of concentrism also encountered a number of difficulties. First of all, it was discovered that the advantages of a concentric structure of a school history course are realized only under the following indispensable conditions:
a) with a correct, justified determination of the volume, specific content and form of presentation of historical material in each of the concentrations in accordance with the age characteristics of students and the objectives of school history education at each age stage. The content of historical material for the junior concentration is in no way a reduced copy, a replica of the systematic course for senior classes; each center has its own specifics in selecting content and ways of presenting it;
b) provided that there is a sufficient time gap between the corresponding sections of the concentrically structured course - for example, at least three to four years pass between the study of the elementary course of ancient history and the study of the systematic course, as provided for by the curriculum described above in the schools of the GDR;
c) if there is sufficient time for the deployment of each of the concentrations - at least three to four years; therefore, even with 10-12 years of education, it is not advisable to introduce more than two concentrates;
d) in the presence of textbooks, the content and methodological aspects of which are in accordance with the characteristics of a given concentration, and there is complete continuity between textbooks intended for successive concentrations.
What should be guided by when determining the content and nature of the history course for each of the concentrations? Various concepts have been put forward on this issue at different times.
So, in the 19th century. German teachers and methodologists put forward the theory of “three stages”, according to which the study of history in school in three concentrations was considered as the structure that most corresponds to the patterns of student development (Dreistufengesetz). One of the early representatives of this teaching, based on the conclusions of Herbartian pedagogy, Kol-
1 See: M. Ostrogorsky. Textbook of Russian history. Elementary course, 1915.
Rausch, argued that, based on the characteristics of childhood, adolescence and youth, the history course in the first concentration should be biographical in nature, in the second - ethnographic, i.e., introduce the history of peoples, and in the third - reveal a picture of the development of mankind. Other, later representatives of this trend insisted on the need for a simple description of historical events to children, disclosure of the main cause-and-effect relationships between historical facts in the second concentration, and leading older students to philosophical sociological generalizations. The rational grain of these pedagogical theories lies in the requirement to take into account the age characteristics of students when teaching history and, accordingly, the specifics of the selection and coverage of program material. Their depravity lies in their absolutization, mechanical separation and opposition of the characteristics of successive age levels, in the oblivion of the dialectical unity of the development of the student’s personality, the unity of the cognitive and educational aspects of the educational process, the unity of living ideas and general historical concepts. The experience of teaching history in Soviet, and not only in Soviet, schools testifies that a student of younger age (grades IV-V) is able to assimilate not only the external course of events, but in an elementary form both causal connections and the essence of social relations (between the classes of oppressors and oppressed); on the other hand, teaching history in high school requires not only analysis, but also a colorful presentation of facts, not only deepening concepts, but also enriching the specific ideas that underlie them, not only revealing general patterns, but also becoming familiar with instructive biographies.
The theory of the “three stages” was often used to justify reactionary policies in the field of school history education. This was the program in effect at the beginning of the 20th century. in the pre-revolutionary Russian school, in particular the program introduced by the Ministry of Education in 1913. According to this program, Russian history was studied in three concentrations (elementary course - in grades I-II, systematic - in IV-VI and additional - in grades VII-VIII) , and general history is in two concentrations. This program is marked by a tendency to reduce the average concentration exclusively to a presentation of the external course of events and to biographical material, relegating the study of issues of socio-political life and culture to an older age; however, the content of the program of the third concentration was so overloaded that it did not leave any possibility for any serious study of these issues. The flaw in the structure of the school course according to the 1913 program was that the concentrations of the sections of the course with the same name were extremely close together. For example, the first concentration of the course new history was completed in the first half of the year in grade VI, and six months later, in grade VII, the re-study of the same new story began. The inadmissibility of such a convergence of concentrations was noted by advanced pre-revolutionary methods: a repeated course almost directly adjacent to what has already been studied is perceived by students as a rehash of the old, as a result of which interest in the subject is lost, its cognitive and educational value for adolescence, which is characterized by increased intellectual interests and searches, decreases. new horizons of science K Representatives of advanced pre-revolutionary methods in Russia spoke out against such concentrism in planning a school history course.
In contrast to the concentric principle, methodological thought put forward the so-called linear method of constructing a course. In the pre-revolutionary methodology, it was sometimes called the chronologically progressive method. In this case, successive stages of human history from antiquity to modern times are studied once throughout the entire school course. According to this principle, the school history course was built for 25 years on the basis of the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of May 16, 1934: in grades V-VI it was studied ancient history, in VI-VII - the Middle Ages and the Constitution of the USSR; in grades VIII-X - history of the USSR from ancient times to the present day and modern history (in the second half of the year in grades VIII and IX).
The advantages of linear construction were seen mainly in the fact that it corresponded to the structure of historical science, which consistently reveals the historical change of socio-economic formations. Psychological and pedagogical considerations did not play a leading role in substantiating this construction.
It must be emphasized that the arrangement of program material and its distribution by years of study, established in the Soviet school in 1934-1959, was extremely consistent, clear and fully consistent with scientific periodization. In grades V-VII, using material from antiquity and the Middle Ages, students became acquainted with the primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal systems and the emergence of capitalism. Having completed the general history of the 17th century, in the 8th grade they studied the primitive communal system, the most ancient slave states, the emergence and development of feudalism in the territory of our country until the end of the 17th century, having the opportunity to rely on the knowledge gained from the course of general history, deepening their knowledge and assimilating a more conscious understanding of the patterns of historical development in these eras. In the second half of the year in the 8th grade, schoolchildren, using material from the first period of modern history (1648-1870), became familiar with the main features of capitalism and the patterns of its development during the period of its victory and establishment. Thus, students of the 8th grade throughout the year consistently traced four socio-economic formations, replacing one another, studying in detail two of them: the formation and development of feudalism (based on the history of the USSR) and capitalism (based on modern history).
In grade IX, students (in the first half of the year) were presented with a picture of the decomposition of the feudal-serf system in Russia in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. and the development of capitalism until the end of the 19th century; here the material on the main features of pre-monopoly capitalism was summarized. In the second half of the year, in the course of the new history of the second period (1871 -1918), students became acquainted with the decline and decay of capitalism, with its last stage - imperialism. Thus, twice during the school year, students in class IX faced more than complex problem- decline, disintegration of the old social system.
In the 10th grade, the course began with the history of Russia in the era of imperialism, the history of three revolutions, the victory of socialism in the USSR, and ended with a course of modern history. The division of program material by years of study exactly coincided with scientific periodization, and the course of the history of the USSR in senior classes was both chronological and chronological. leading problems were coordinated with the course of general history, facilitating the disclosure of the general laws of the historical process and the features of the development of our country.
It can be concluded that, provided that historical material is correctly distributed across years of study, linear construction has a number of advantages. The following are usually indicated:
a) with a linear structure, the arrangement of the material is most natural and corresponds to general outline the actual course of the historical process;
b) moving from class to class, students completing a full school course receive a complete understanding of the historical development of mankind from ancient times to the present day;
1 Recent history in absence teaching aids in fact, it was not studied at school.
c) savings in teaching time are achieved, since the implementation of the linear principle allows one to avoid repetitions that are inevitable when constructing a course concentrically;
d) finally, studying new material in each subsequent grade maintains students’ interest in the subject.
However, along with the advantages of linear construction in methodological literature its shortcomings were also pointed out.
First of all, given the linear structure of the school course, the history of the ancient world and the history of the Middle Ages, studied in the lower grades, naturally cannot be mastered with the same depth and seriousness as the history of later eras, studied in the upper grades. History courses studied in grades V-VI and partly in VII, if we take into account the age capabilities of students, should, with such a structure, have an elementary character, and, therefore, a number of essential facts and problems of ancient and average history will drop out of the secondary education program. Unevenness in the degree of depth and detail of the study of various sections of the school history course is inevitable with a linear structure.
Attempts to fill this gap, to enrich and deepen the content of courses in ancient and middle history, bringing them closer in nature to systematic courses, inevitably lead to overloading younger schoolchildren with an overwhelming abundance of material and questions inaccessible to their understanding. Such overload marked the teaching of history, especially in grades V-VI of the Soviet school in the 30-50s. The second circumstance, which significantly reduces the advantages of a linear structure, is that the consistent study of the historical process as a whole, that is, from ancient times to the present, with a linear structure stretches for 6-7 years (in the Soviet school from V to X class), which constitutes a significant and qualitatively heterogeneous period in the mental, moral and psychophysiological development of a schoolchild, who over these years turns from a child into a young man. Under these conditions, it can hardly be argued that the unity and consistency of the historical process, ensured by the school curriculum in a linear structure, are adequately reflected in the consciousness of the student on the verge of leaving school. Experience and conversations with schoolchildren indicate that by grades IX-X, students retain very vague and fragmentary ideas about the history of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. In this regard, with the linear construction of the course, the problem of consolidating the most important historical facts becomes extremely acute, since their repeated, more in-depth study, carried out with a concentric structure, disappears with a one-time study of them.
Finally, a significant disadvantage of the linear structure is that students who have not completed the full course of secondary education
schools do not receive knowledge on the most important, final sections of the program, leading to an understanding of modernity. The latter shortcoming was especially felt in Soviet schools in the 40s and early 50s, when most young people completed their schooling in the seventh grade, that is, studying the history of the Middle Ages, without receiving any systematic knowledge of the history of their native country.
Serious shortcomings in the content and structure of the school course in these years include the absence of a special course in modern history, as well as the fact that the course of the Soviet Constitution, introduced in the 7th grade, was studied by schoolchildren who were not yet familiar with the history of the Soviet period of the history of the USSR, i.e. that is, out of connection with the course of history and without appropriate support for historical material.
The listed shortcomings and contradictions of the structure of the school history course adopted in the 30s: overload with educational material in grades V-VI, the absence of an elementary course in national history in a seven-year school, the isolation of the study of the USSR Constitution from the history course - especially affected during the Great Patriotic War, when The tasks of patriotic education of youth persistently demanded the introduction of a course of national history into the curriculum of incomplete secondary school.
And when, after the war, the age level of schoolchildren was lowered by one year, the overloaded and overly complicated content of ancient and middle history courses in grades V-VI clearly became unbearable for children of eleven and twelve years of age. Next in line was the question of the need to restructure the school history course.
This restructuring coincided with the approval of the Law on compulsory eight-year education and with the decision to implement schooling in two stages: a) in an eight-year school and
b) in grades IX-XI.
Adopted in 1959 according to the project of the Institute of Teaching Methods of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, the new structure of the school history course provided for: the study in grades V and VI of elementary courses in the history of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, in grades VII-VIII - an elementary course in the history of the USSR with the most important information from the modern and modern history, as well as the Constitution of the USSR (in the VIII grade), and in the senior, IX-XI grades - systematic courses in the history of the USSR, modern and contemporary history, and in the graduating class - a course in the fundamentals of political knowledge (social studies). In general, this structure, called “linear-stepped” by its authors, was a combination of the principle of concentrism in the construction of two courses in the history of the USSR - elementary and systematic - with a stepwise construction of the material of general history: systematic courses were built on top of the elementary courses in the history of the ancient world and the Middle Ages
courses in modern and contemporary history. This structure eliminated the main shortcomings of the previous linear structure insofar as it concerned the compulsory eight-year school.
The introduction of elementary courses in grades V-VIII and the publication of corresponding elementary textbooks for grades V-VIII eliminated the overload of students in these classes and opened up the possibility of wider use of active methods and organization of independent work in history lessons. Familiarizing students graduating from an eight-year school with the history of the Motherland up to the present day and with the most important facts of modern history (the formation of the socialist system, the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism, the struggle for peace in capitalist countries) gave students a picture of the world today and brought them to the most important problems of our time . During the eight-year school, students gained an understanding of the main stages of human history from ancient times to the present day, albeit in an elementary form. The study of the Constitution of the USSR in the 8th grade received a solid basis in the content of the course on the history of the USSR in the post-October period.
Less satisfactorily, within the framework of the specified “linear-stepped” structure, the ideological, educational and educational tasks of teaching history were solved in the most complex and most important area of ​​school history education - in high school.
To begin with, the well-known requirements for the concentric method of arranging historical material were violated:
a) a sufficiently thoughtful selection of the content and appropriate methods of presenting programmatic historical material in each of the concentrations was not carried out. This applies to courses on the history of the USSR, in particular on the 19th and 20th centuries, and to material on modern and especially recent history, some issues of which in textbooks for grades X-XI were presented more specifically, more excitingly, and more intelligibly than in a textbook for grades VIII
b) the two main concentrations in the study of Russian history - the elementary course, which ended in the 8th grade, and the systematic course, which began in the 9th grade - were unacceptably close to each other with all the undesirable consequences that resulted from this, described above;
c) even given the three-year period allotted in grades IX-XI for the study of systematic courses, they turned out to be so overloaded, and their completion was so intense that the possibilities for thoughtful analysis and generalization of historical facts, their durable and systematic
1 This refers to the textbook of Acad. I. I. Mints on the history of the USSR with elements of modern history.
repetition and the ideological and educational results of such a hasty and therefore inevitably superficial study decreased.
When the Soviet school returned to a ten-year period of study, there could be no talk of any special concentration within two years (grades IX-X). The decree of the party and government “On changing the order of teaching history at school” dated May 14, 1965 provided for “a consistent, one-time presentation of the historical process.” However, this does not mean a complete return to the previous linear structure of the school history course, which determined the order of studying historical material in 1934-1958.
First of all, in grades V and VI, the elementary nature of the history courses of the ancient world and the Middle Ages is preserved, and, therefore, the volume and content of history programs and textbooks for these classes are determined taking into account the age capabilities of students and generally do not suffer from overload.
A significant achievement compared to the structure of 1934-1958. is the introduction in grades IX-X of a systematic course of modern history in the amount of 70 hours. Its content has important ideological and educational significance and leads students to an understanding of the main problems of our time.
The completion and generalization of the material in the school history course is the study of a social studies course in the 10th grade (70 hours). It is designed, based on the knowledge gained from studying the humanities and natural and mathematical disciplines, to contribute to the formation of a dialectical-materialistic worldview among students.
Let's compare the number of hours allocated to studying various periods of history according to the 1934-1940 program. and according to the 1966 program

If the program is 1934-1940. the bulk of study hours (64%) were devoted to studying more early periods history, then the current program devotes almost half of the time to the study of periods close to modern times. The time for studying the history of the ancient world, the Middle Ages (by more than 40%) and modern history (by more than a third) has been sharply reduced. But the share of Russian history has increased, the study of which begins in the 7th grade (from ancient times to the end of the 18th century). In grade VIII, the first period of modern history (1640-1870) and the history of the USSR in the 19th century are studied. Thus, within the framework of a compulsory eight-year school, students receive more or less systematic knowledge of the history of the Motherland before 1895 and the history of foreign countries before 1870.
A significant drawback of the modern structure of the school history course is that students graduate from eight-year school without having studied the most important stages in the history of the Motherland - the proletarian stage of the revolutionary movement in Russia, the glorious path of the Leninist party, the Great October Revolution and the civil war, the victory of socialism, the heroic epic of the Great Patriotic War. Experience has shown that conversations about our social and political system, introduced in the 8th grade, not related to the content of the history course (the conversation about the revolution of 1905 was conducted simultaneously with the study of the English revolution of the 17th century), did not in any way fill this gap . True, this lack of course structure apparently does not affect itself so acutely in our time, when a significant part of young people, having completed the VIII grade, enter the IX grade, and, obviously, will have less and less importance as we move to a universal ten-year education.
The currently accepted structure of the school history course also suffers from other shortcomings. The distribution of historical material by year of study does not always correspond to scientific periodization. Such an arbitrary dissection of material takes place in the study of the history of the USSR in the 7th grade, where the course was extended until 1801, as a result of which the study of the process of disintegration of the serfdom system and the development of capitalist relations in Russia is interrupted for more than six months, resuming in the second half of the year already in the 8th grade .
The very course of the history of Russia in the 18th century. is not coordinated with the course of modern history: a number of the most important issues (the ideas of Radishchev, the reactionary domestic and foreign policies of tsarism, Russia’s participation in coalitions against France) do not receive proper understanding, since students in grade VII are not yet aware of the relevant events of modern history.
1 Since 1966, conversations about the social and state system of the USSR have been excluded from the program.
An equally undesirable gap occurs in the course of modern history, a small part of which (17 hours) is classified in class IX, and the rest of the material is in class X. Almost the entire prehistory of the Second World War, in particular the internal and foreign policies of German fascism, the fascist rebellion of 1936 in Spain and the national revolutionary war of the Spanish people, the aggression of Japanese imperialism in China, the question of a united anti-fascist front, and the VII Congress of the Comintern are studied in the IX class, and the German-Italian intervention in Spain, the seizure of Ethiopia by Italy, the USSR’s struggle for collective security are included in the topic “Increasing military danger and the outbreak of the Second World War” and are studied in grade X. The placement of program material in the 9th-10th years of study is also extremely unfortunate. In grade IX, students twice during one academic year move from studying general (new) history to domestic history and again to general (modern) history. Such transitions, which are also associated with chronological “jumps,” create additional difficulties for mastering the overall picture of a complex historical process and ideas about chronological sequence events.

§ 3. The connection between the historical material of the school course and the present. The connection between teaching history and life
The connection between the historical past and the present in a school history course is one of the means of updating educational material, bringing it closer to the interests and life aspirations of schoolchildren, one of the ways connecting the teaching of history with life. A skillfully carried out connection between the past and the present helps to create in students more accurate and correct ideas about historical phenomena and modernity, the formation of historical and political concepts. Such a connection is necessary and justified to the extent that it serves to assimilate by students the Marxist understanding of history and educate them in the spirit of communism.
All kinds of superficial analogies between the phenomena of the past and the present, entailing a violation of the historical perspective, and an ahistorical approach to the facts being studied (for example, analogies between the Greco-Persian wars and the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the aggression of American imperialists, etc.) do not help, but interfere with understanding both the past and the present.
Avoiding such superficial analogies and arbitrary excursions into modernity, the teacher turns to it only in cases where such a connection is logical psychologically, naturally.
It definitely arises from the students’ interests in contemporary events, is justified methodologically, that is, it follows from the content of the historical material itself and is justified methodologically, that is, it helps a deeper knowledge of the past and the present, a more successful resolution of educational and educational problems.
The problem of the connection between the historical past and the present in the school history course was the subject of discussion in the pages of the magazine “Teaching History at School” in 1948-1949. It opened with an article by V. N. Vernadsky “Modernity in school history teaching” (1948, No. 1), which evoked a lively response from teachers and methodologists (see articles by A. I. Strazhev, V. G. Kartsov, M. I. Kruglyak and others in No. 2 and No. 4 for 1948). The results of the discussion were summarized in an editorial (see No. 2, 1949), the main provisions of which were further developed in the editorial “History and modernity in teaching history” (No. 5, 1956).
The discussion played a positive role, criticizing the simplistic tendencies in resolving this issue, the methods of arbitrary, mechanical linking of the past with the present. It should be noted, however, that during the discussion and in some provisions of the article summing up the discussion, there was a confusion of two issues: the general issue of partisanship and the ideological orientation of teaching history and the particular issue of the connection between history and modernity.
A general connection with modernity is established in one form or another when studying all the course material, since the teaching of history at school is based on the principle of partisanship of historical science. Coverage of all events of the past from the point of view of the progressive tasks of mankind at each historical stage, from the point of view of the struggle of the working people for their liberation, constitutes that internal connection with the ideas and tasks of our time, which permeates all teaching of history. Our teaching is partisan both when covering the uprising of Spartacus, and in the story about the events of the Great Patriotic War - equally in the V and X grades.
But when we talk about the connection between the historical material of a school course and modernity, we are not talking about this general ideological orientation of the course, but about specific cases and methods of directly addressing the facts of our time when studying events of the historical past. The solution to this problem cannot be unambiguous for all levels of school history education.
First of all, let us agree that modernity in pedagogical terms should be understood not as events of which the teacher was a contemporary, but as phenomena contemporary with the conscious life of the student. Therefore, when deciding whether in each specific case it is advisable to establish a connection between the past being studied and the present, it is essential that students have knowledge about the compared phenomena of our time. It is necessary to take into account that the content of this knowledge does not remain unchanged. Facts and events of our time, at one time well known from radio broadcasts and newspapers to schoolchildren who studied in grades IX-X in 1956-1957, may be unfamiliar to students of the same classes in 1967-1968. Comparisons with the events of the Great Patriotic War, easily and successfully carried out in lessons in 1941 -1945, would now require lengthy explanations from the teacher about facts unknown to students born after 1950, i.e. to a generation that did not know any war, nor post-war difficulties. The teacher often forgets this simple circumstance, surprised at the complete ignorance of schoolchildren about events that seem to him, the teacher, to be generally known. Therefore, examples of successful connections with modernity given in methodological articles and manuals should be used in practical work critically, taking into account the age data and socio-political experience of students.
However, modernity in the pedagogical understanding should not be reduced to current politics or to the events of the last four or five years. By modernity we mean everything that the student recognizes as contemporary, close and familiar events and phenomena of social life. For example, for a Soviet schoolchild of our days, modernity is not only the first man in space and not only the war in Vietnam, but also the socialist system of our country, and the existence of the socialist camp and the capitalist camp, and the aggressive policy of the imperialists, and the UN, and many others phenomena that arose long before the birth of our seventh and tenth graders.
When making connections with modernity using the material of history in grades V-VII, it is necessary to take into account that the social experience of schoolchildren aged 11-13 is still small, ideas about the historical past are very incomplete and inaccurate, and the content of the course in ancient, middle and national history (until the end of the 18th century .) far from modernity. On this basis, the methodological literature emphasized that “the younger the class, the more risky comparisons” with modernity are, “the less historical knowledge students have, the more inaccessible is the logical operation of comparing phenomena of different eras”1. In the manuals on methods of teaching history in grades V-VII by N.V. Andreevskaya and V.N. Vernadsky (1947) and N.V. Andreevskaya (1958), the question of the connection of the studied material with modernity is not covered. It would be a mistake to conclude from this that in grades V-VII this task is not faced by the teacher or that such a connection may be something accidental. 20 years ago this may have been true. But a lot has changed over the past decades. First of all, we cannot ignore the powerful flow of information that accompanies the development of the Soviet schoolchild from childhood. By the age of 10, he already knows a lot about modern events from radio and television programs, from pioneer magazines and newspapers, from conversations between adults, from messages and political information at school.
Hence his more persistent desire, when studying the distant past, to find out what is happening now in the country being studied. Getting acquainted with the emergence of parliament and the strengthening of royal power in England, students often ask questions: how is the English parliament structured now? Who is the king in England now? Thus, the spontaneous interests of students push the teacher to a kind of “exit into the present” in the form of a brief information about the modern fate of historical phenomena that arose in the distant past. And it happens that schoolchildren themselves supplement the textbook material about the country’s distant past with fresh reports about modern events. Thus, in connection with the study of medieval India and the conquest of its northern part by Muslim feudal lords, sixth-graders in 1965 vied with each other to talk about military actions between India and Pakistan and about the peaceful meeting of the two sides in Tashkent. In the fall of 1956, events related to the aggression of European imperialists against the young Egyptian state aroused even greater interest among fifth-graders studying the history of ancient Egypt. And although direct historical connections could not be established between these events and ancient Egypt, except for the common territory, nevertheless, current events, which the students were contemporaries of, significantly increased their interest in ancient Egypt. “Was there a Suez Canal at that time? Are the dams built in ancient times still preserved? Do Egyptians use shadoufs now?” - Dozens of similar questions greatly intensified the work in the lessons. Therefore, I. V. Gittis is absolutely right when she asserts that “the technique of linking history with modernity not only enlivens classes, but also deepens interest in history. Along with this, it prepares the ground for a better understanding of current life. In the past, students begin to feel real life, and in the present they begin to see “history,” or rather, what will go down in history.”
It is quite obvious from the above examples that the connection between historical material in grades V-VII and modernity is naturally determined, firstly, by the relevance of modern events, and secondly, by the degree of interest of schoolchildren in these events. But can we consider that the connection with modernity in history lessons, due to these circumstances, is of a random, spontaneous nature?
It seems to us that when solving this issue it is necessary to listen to the observations of one of the oldest Soviet methodologists, Prof. V. N. Vernadsky. “The student,” wrote V.N. Vernadsky, “perceiving historical material, in his consciousness relies largely on life impressions, on knowledge modern life" And if thoughtful work is not carried out to compare the phenomena of the past with the present, then “this process of introducing into knowledge about the past some elements of ideas about modernity will proceed without the control of the teacher,” and this can lead not only to the modernization of the past in the minds of the student, but also to chaotic temporal ideas of students. What is the “thought-out system” for establishing a connection between the historical material studied in grades V-VII and modernity? Without pretending to cover this issue completely and completely, we believe it is possible to outline the following directions for such work.
1. First of all, we should talk about the systematic work of the teacher to organize the abundant material related to both the past and the present, which students receive from the above-mentioned extracurricular sources of information, about correlating this material with certain, at least roughly outlined, chronological milestones . In relation to the examples given, we will talk about something like this. Yes, the teacher will say, and now in England there is a parliament, there is a House of Lords and a House of Commons. But over 700 years, the composition of parliament, the procedure for elections, and the role of parliament have changed. Or in the example of ancient Egypt and the Anglo-French intervention of 1956, the teacher must first of all prevent the possibility of confusing ideas about modern Egypt with ideas about ancient Egypt, emphasize the difference between ancient and modern Egypt (both the people are not the same, and the language is not the same, and a different writing, etc.), a huge gap in time - five thousand years have passed. In other words, connecting the past with the present, the teacher must, in this and in similar cases, take care primarily of identifying not the similarities, but the differences between phenomena of different eras , giving students a sense of variability, non-identity, and specificity of historical phenomena of a particular era.
1 V. N. Vernadsky. Modernity in school history teaching. “Teaching history at school”, 1948, No. 1, p. 48,
2. Working in grades V-VI, we often forget that students of this age are familiar with the most important facts of Russian history from stories on the history of the USSR, studied in grade IV, have an idea about the life of serfs and workers, about their oppression by landowners and capitalists, about what the October Revolution and Soviet power gave to the working people of our country, about our social system, about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, about the equality and friendship of peoples, about the fact that we do not have oppression of man by man. These ideas create a psychological background against which the Soviet schoolchild perceives all the material of ancient and medieval history, the basis for logical operations of comparison and contrast.
Analyzing the reasons for the defeat of the uprising of slaves and peasants in ancient Egypt, we, together with schoolchildren, come to the conclusion of the textbook: “The rebels did not destroy the slave system. They did not imagine any other system.” A. This formulation presupposes an unspoken part, which is to one degree or another contained in the students’ ideas: slaves and peasants did not yet know that there could be such a system in which all the land, draft animals and tools labor, canals and reservoirs belong jointly to the working people, in which there is no oppression and everyone works. The teacher will do the right thing if he helps students express these thoughts on their own and thereby realize and formulate conclusions based on their historical ideas.
Comparison and contrast of the modern socialist system of our country with the slave-owning and feudal orders, studied in the history course in grades V-VII, represent not only one of the ways to establish a connection between the past and the present, but also effective method formation of that social position of a junior schoolchild, which was mentioned above.
3. The connection of the material of the history of the ancient world and the Middle Ages with modernity is also carried out by showing the cultural heritage of antiquity and the Middle Ages and its significance for modern culture. The textbook on the history of the ancient world in some cases directly provides for such a connection, offering questions and tasks for comparison, juxtaposition, and to establish the facts of the continuity of ancient and modern culture: “How does the writing of ancient Egypt differ from our writing?” (to § 13), “Which of the things created by the Indian people in ancient times do we use to this day?” (to § 19), etc.
Such connections are established even more widely when studying the topics “The flourishing of culture ancient Greece in the V-IV centuries BC. e.”, “Life and culture of Rome at the beginning of the empire”. Olympic Games, theater, architecture and architectural orders, the Greek alphabet, Roman numerals, triumphal arches and many other elements of ancient culture continue to live in a modified form in modern culture. Clarification of the historical significance of the culture of ancient Greece and ancient Rome for modern culture it also provides an opportunity to establish diverse connections with modernity. Unfortunately, the program and textbook on the history of the Middle Ages do not guide teachers toward establishing such connections between medieval culture and modern culture, which would have serious educational and educational significance.
4. In a cognitive sense, an explanation of the origin of words, terms, expressions that arose in antiquity or the Middle Ages and continue to live in modern language(style, school, class, headlights, desk, director, democracy, university, red line, see below, red tape, shelve, ins and outs, etc.). If a student knows that the Roman word “therm” and the modern “thermometer” have a common root, and remembers the meaning of this root, he will easily understand the meaning of many modern scientific and technical terms and will easily explain why Republican France assigned the name “thermidor” to one from the summer months.
5. Establishing a connection with modernity by clarifying the origin of ancient and medieval beliefs, customs, elements of everyday life that have survived to this day (for example, some religious rituals or everyday traditions originating from the pagan or Christian beliefs of the ancient Slavs, etc.). This is of significant importance in terms of atheistic education.
6. Use of visual material depicting the current state of cultural monuments of the ancient world and the Middle Ages. Looking at a photograph depicting the ruins of the Acropolis against the backdrop of modern Athens or the ruins of the Forum among modern Roman buildings is also one of the methods of entering modernity. It would be a mistake to consider the questions often asked by students as idle curiosity: “Is the sphinx still preserved now? What about the Reims Cathedral now? The issue of the safety and fate of historical monuments has not only an educational, but also an educational side. The destruction of the Parthenon, the destruction and burning of the Library of Alexandria, the destruction of the Church of the Tithes - these facts provide an opportunity to show students what irreparable damage wars and religious fanaticism cause to the treasures of human culture.
7. Although the content of the history course in grades V-VII is far from modern times, many events and heroes of the past have been preserved in the memory of the people and serve as a source of pride and deep reverence for our contemporaries. So, when talking about the Hussite wars, the teacher will not forget to note that the Czech people remember and honor their heroes Jan Hus and Jan Zizka.
These are some of the ways to establish a connection between historical material and modernity in the course of grades V-VII. Significantly broader opportunities and a more insistent need to connect the historical past with the present take place in teaching history in high school, starting from the 8th grade, where modern history and the history of the USSR of the 19th century are studied.
Three circumstances determine the features of solving this problem in grades VIII-X.
Firstly, the very content of the history course in high school is closely related to pressing issues of our time. In grades VIII-IX, studying history, students enter into the circle of those phenomena that live in our time: some - as phenomena of capitalism doomed to death, others - as the forces of victorious communism. The material of the revolutionary movement in Russia and socialist construction in the USSR is directly related to modernity. It is completely natural to present the history of the capitalist countries of the era of imperialism in the light of modernity: we introduce students to the beginning of the decline and decay of capitalism, the final stage of which is happening before our eyes. Naturally, when presenting historical material, the teacher will also turn to contemporary facts in order to even more clearly reveal those trends and phenomena that, perhaps, were only emerging at the end of the 19th century. Thus, the content of a history course in high school requires a much broader connection with modernity.
Secondly, the historical knowledge of older students is much richer and deeper, their ideas about the historical perspective are much more accurate and meaningful than that of younger students. This allows the teacher to turn to comparisons with modern times much more often, in violation of the historical sequence.
Thirdly, older students are incomparably better informed about modern events than their younger counterparts. It would be a mistake to think that students in grades IX-X (and the most developed eighth graders) know about modern socio-political life only what is taught to them in class. They are interested in international events, listen to radio information, read newspapers and magazines, watch newsreels, study materials about current politics in extracurricular activities and as part of Komsomol studies. When comparing historical phenomena with modernity in high school, in some cases there is no need to give a detailed description of a modern phenomenon, which would distract from the main topic of the lesson, turning it into a parallel study of two historical phenomena from different eras, and would interfere with the assimilation of program material. The teacher only needs to refer to modern facts familiar to students.
In teaching practice, the following ways have emerged to connect historical material with modernity.
1. The simplest form of connection between history and modernity is a brief factual statement about modern phenomena, which the teacher gives to students when studying events of the past. This kind of connection with modernity is often accidental. But it inevitably follows from the students’ interests in modernity, from their questions to the teacher. So, in connection with the study of US history in the 9th grade at the end of the 19th century. The teacher may be asked questions: what parties exist in the USA at present? Which party is in power now? Who is the current leader of the American Federation of Labor? What is her attitude to issues of war and peace? Etc. It is unlikely that a teacher would be right in dismissing such questions on the grounds that they take them beyond the chronological framework of the time being studied. Obviously, to answer all such questions briefly, it is not necessary to outline the evolution of the American Federation of Labor over the past decades, in in this case It is quite acceptable to violate the chronological framework by providing a brief reference from the present.
2. One of the methods of establishing a connection with modernity is to compare, contrast and contrast historical and modern phenomena. It is justified in cases where students are at least generally familiar with modern events, otherwise the comparison will turn into a parallel study of two phenomena belonging to different eras, which can lead to a distortion of the historical perspective. In high school, where students have sufficient material for comparisons of this kind, comparisons and contrasts that reveal the advantages of the Soviet system have exceptional educational and educational significance.
3. A valuable form of connection between historical material and modernity from an educational and educational point of view is the disclosure of the significance of the historical fact being studied for modernity. The teacher reveals the world-historical significance of the Great October Revolution not only on the material of the past, but also on the facts of the
temporality: the growth of the forces of democracy and socialism throughout the world, the scope of the liberation movement in the colonies and the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism. When studying the Soviet period of our country’s history, it is very important to show students the significance of the experience of building socialism in the USSR for the countries of the socialist camp, for the activities of fraternal communist and workers’ parties.
4- One of the methods for convincingly comparing the studied historical material with modernity is to demonstrate the power of scientific foresight, which is provided by the theory of Marxism-Leninism.
Thus, studying in the eighth grade the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, in particular the end of the second chapter, where the program of activities of the proletariat that has risen to power is outlined, the teacher will pose the questions: what facts from the life of our country can be cited as confirmation of the foresight of K. Marx and F. Engels ? Are such measures available to capitalist states? Who owns our land? How are we planning to increase the number of state-owned enterprises? And so on.
5. The connection of educational material with modernity is also justified in the case when we are dealing with a phenomenon of the past, which has received further development in modern life and has acquired significant significance for us: often the true meaning of a historical phenomenon is revealed to students only when the teacher briefly draws before them is the prospect of its development, its role in our days.
Thus, speaking about the Soviets of Workers' Deputies in 1905, the teacher will note the further development of the Soviets as a political form of a socialist state. This method of “entering modernity” is justified pedagogically and justified by the objective development of the phenomenon being studied. But it is appropriate only if the modern facts referred to by the teacher are at least generally known to the students. Otherwise, a lengthy explanation of modern phenomena will be required, which will distract from the main topic of the lesson and interfere with its in-depth study.
6. One of the forms of connection between historical material and modernity is the assessment of a historical fact by our public in the light of modernity. This greatly updates the presentation. Talking about F. Ushakov, P. Nakhimov, A. Suvorov, M. Kutuzov, the teacher will prepare material about the establishment of military orders by the Soviet government and emphasize those wordings of the statute, from which it is clear which features of their military leadership are especially valued by us.
7. The most significant form of connection between educational material and modernity is the turn of all lesson material to pressing issues of our time.
This does not mean that the selection and presentation of lesson material should be biased, and that historical facts should be adapted to the needs of current policy. History should neither be improved nor made worse. Teaching historical material must be scientifically objective. The highest form of scientific objectivity in the approach to historical material is partisanship, that is, the teacher’s ability to scientifically correctly, in the light of Marxist-Leninist historical science and the tasks of the struggle for communism, reveal those historical trends that in the past only arose and received further development.
Thus, in the 10th grade, in a lesson devoted to the issue of socialist industrialization and the XIV Party Congress, the teacher in his presentation will reveal the significance of industrialization as a line that resolved the internal problems of building socialism in one country, and as a policy of enormous international significance. Recalling the facts of technical and economic assistance provided to students from newspapers Soviet Union in the industrialization of socialist countries and young independent countries of Asia and Africa that have escaped from colonial slavery, the teacher will reveal in the light of modern times the enormous historical significance of the decisions taken by the XIV Party Congress more than forty years ago. Thus, the organic connection of educational material with modernity will not be achieved through random excursions into modernity, but will flow from the content of the lesson topic itself, presented by the teacher in the light of historical decisions of the CPSU and modern data. This material, skillfully used by the teacher, will give the lesson an acute political resonance and special relevance.
In the article by A.I. Strazhev 1 and in editorials on this issue2, as one of the methods of connecting history with modernity, it is strongly recommended to extract “history lessons” from the past that help to understand modernity. We are talking about such comparisons when we turn from the present to the past, when the facts of the past and the “lessons” of the past should help students understand the issues of our time. As examples of this kind of connection, V. I. Lenin uses the lessons of the past when resolving the burning issues of our time: the lessons of the Paris Commune during the preparation of the October Revolution, lessons from the history of Prussia during the Peace of Tilsit when resolving the issue of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, etc.
The teacher, of course, will explain to the students the lessons of the revolution of 1848 and the Commune of 1871, and he will also tell how these lessons were used by V.I. Lenin in preparing the October armed uprising. But is this technique of drawing on material from previously covered sections of a history course for a deeper understanding of newly studied historical material a form of connection between history and modernity? For V.I. Lenin, the question of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty was a burning issue of our time. For Xth grade students, this is one of the instructive historical facts from half a century ago.
Let us dwell briefly on the connection between teaching history and life, with practice. At different stages of the development of the Soviet school, this connection was understood in different ways and implemented in different ways. Let us try, based on the modern practice of the Soviet school, to outline the main lines of connection between teaching history and life.
1. First of all, this connection must be ensured by the very content of school curricula and history textbooks. The course of history in the Soviet school is brought up to the present - to the most recent events in the USSR and abroad. The entire history course in senior classes, with its internal content, is, as it were, turned to the present. The red thread of the leading themes of new history, starting with the English and French bourgeois revolutions and ending with the Paris Commune and the era of imperialism, is the idea of ​​contrasting the bourgeois and socialist revolutions, the idea of ​​the decline and inevitable collapse of capitalism. The leading problems of the history of the USSR course in grades VIII-X are the history of three generations of Russian revolutionaries, the history of three revolutions, the victory and establishment of socialism, and the struggle for communism. Thus, the connection between learning and life in grades VIII-X is carried out primarily as a general focus of the course content and the content of our work with students in order to bring them to an understanding of the most important problems of modern life.
However, it should be emphasized that this orientation of the content of the history course in grades VIII-X to life is carried out not only in the fact that the material of the recent history of foreign countries and the history of our country over the past 50 years is directly related to modernity.
Of course, the study of the latest periods of human history and modernity is the center of gravity, the key and final point of the entire school history course in its present form. But shouldn’t the content of our work in ancient and middle history courses be connected with life? In solving this problem, two conditions are essential: a) selection of the material of these courses with a long-term view, that is, with a long-term consideration of its educational and educational value for Soviet youth entering life, taking into account the need for this material for understanding modernity, and b) the presence of continuity in the selection of material between the content of textbooks (and programs) for all successive sections of the school course. These two conditions seem to us to be the most important in solving the general problem of revising the content of school history education.
We illustrate with a small private example the need for such selection and continuity in order to connect history teaching with life. In the textbook on the history of the ancient world by F.P. Korovkin, a small material is given about castes in ancient India (§ 19). Scientifically, this is not entirely correct: the caste system is more typical of feudal, medieval India. But this is not the main thing: the textbook on the history of the Middle Ages by E.V. Agibalova and G.M. Donskoy does not even mention castes. In the textbook of modern history by A.V. Efimov, castes in India of the 16th century are mentioned. out of connection with the event of the 19th century. and with an explanation of the reasons for the defeat of the rebel sepoys. There is nothing about caste in the textbook on modern history. Isn’t the problem of overcoming caste remnants in modern India? Thus, as a result of the lack of continuity in this particular case, the material about castes in ancient India, which through its subsequent development in the course of middle and modern history could be addressed to modern life, remains throughout all further training in the minds of students as a single fact, “ a rarity,” a bizarre phenomenon of the distant past that has nothing to do with life.
2. The connection between teaching history and life is carried out by involving local history material in lessons and studying it in extracurricular activities. In recent years, in the practice of the Soviet school, such areas of local history work have been developed that directly introduce students to the sphere of our social relations. We are talking about students (mainly high school students) studying the history and activities of a local industrial enterprise, a local collective farm, the history of their school and school Komsomol organization, etc.1.
Studying the history of an industrial enterprise or collective farm in combination with the feasible participation of schoolchildren in the social life of the production team is one of effective means educating students in the spirit of the labor and revolutionary traditions of our working class, the collective farm peasantry, the Komsomol, in the spirit of devotion to the ideas of communism, our glorious Communist Party.
3. By connecting learning with life, the teacher will strive to ensure that, where possible, historical material serves the understanding of modern times and is addressed to the life practice of young people. The teacher will explain and talk about the emergence of many phenomena, traditions, institutions that surround the student and which he must now approach consciously. It seems to us absolutely necessary to introduce the younger generation to what inspired and worried the progressive youth of older generations.
4. We also understand the connection between teaching history and life as the connection between the content of a school course and the life of a schoolchild of pioneer or Komsomol age, with his interests and needs, with the range of his impressions, with the activities of his pioneer and Komsomol organizations. This is done, in particular, by including in the teacher’s presentation youth material, heroic material, biographies and images of remarkable people. The teacher will talk about the feat of young Barr, and about the young heroes of the Sevastopol defense, about the girl heroine of the Obukhov defense Marfa Yakovleva, about the participation of teenagers in the Moscow uprising of 1905, about working youth in the first detachments of the Red Army, about Komsomol members on the fronts of the civil war, on the construction sites of socialism, about the participation of youth and Komsomol members in the Great Patriotic War, about young heroes of the underground and partisan struggle behind enemy lines - about the Young Guards, underground schoolchildren of the “Partisan Spark” in the Nikolaev region, about the “Young Avengers” near Vitebsk, about the partisan detachment “Komsomolets of Karelia”, about the patronage of the Komsomol over the restoration of destroyed cities, about the heroic movement to the virgin lands, about the five orders of the Komsomol, about the role of youth in the construction of communism, in the exploration of outer space and scientific discoveries in our days.
The teacher would make a big mistake if he considered the above-mentioned material to be only an entertaining, additional element introduced “above the program.” No, it represents one of the most important links in the program of ideological and moral formation of a student in history lessons.
The heroic material of our modern times, the military and revolutionary past, the history of the Komsomol, the life and work of the old Bolsheviks can become the topic of pioneer gatherings and Komsomol meetings, the content of circle and other extracurricular activities, the subject of research by young pathfinders and young historians1.
5. The connection between teaching history and life, with practice is carried out through the participation of schoolchildren, mainly of Komsomol age, in such forms of social work where they can apply their knowledge and skills acquired in history and social studies lessons: a) work of high school students with pioneers and October students of their school, b) participation in ideological, political, cultural and educational work among parents and the population and c) participation in public work during election campaigns.
The political and educational work of high school students is one of the effective means of their communist education, the formation of communist beliefs and worldview. At the same time, in the course of this work, the skills and abilities acquired in teaching history and necessary for participation in the labor and socio-political life of Soviet society are improved and developed: the ability to work with a book, political brochure, newspaper, draw up a plan and outline, tables and diagrams , ability to prepare a message, give a report, conduct a conversation on a socio-political topic2.
Students from a number of schools conduct scientific and atheistic propaganda not only among younger schoolchildren, but also among the population, in local clubs3. Many graduates participate in election campaigns.
6. The connection between teaching history and life and practice is also carried out in terms of preparing students for practical participation in work. Taking into account the specifics of the subject, we can talk about the formation in history and social studies lessons of the student’s labor ideals, a communist attitude towards work, nurturing the need to work and introducing young people to the labor traditions of Soviet society, their hometown, and the plant.

SECTION II.
METHODS OF TEACHING HISTORY IN SOVIET SCHOOL

We will attend the lesson “Discovery of America by Columbus” in the 6th grade. We will hear here a vivid description by the teacher of the country of the Incas and the capital of the Aztecs, a fascinating story about the voyage of Columbus's caravels, and a conversation about the significance of his discovery. We will see students working on a wall map, a painting, and illustrations in a textbook or other visual aids. Under the guidance of the teacher, the document and individual paragraphs of the textbook are read, and what is read and listened to in class is analyzed and summarized. The teacher explains difficult questions and provides excerpts from fiction. Schoolchildren write down new terms, names, dates in their history notebooks.
Let's move on to class IX. Here is a school lecture combined with a conversation. Under the guidance of the teacher, students keep a summary of its contents, read and parse the text of the document, excerpts from the works of V.I. Lenin, from the CPSU Program given in the textbook. On the wall there is a map, on the chalkboard there is a schematic plan and diagram on which the conversation unfolds.
During a history lesson in any class, the living word of the teacher is heard, visual aids are used, and work is done with the text of a textbook, historical document, works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism or other written sources.
These are the basic methods of teaching history at school. A particularly important place among them is occupied by methods of oral communication of historical material.

Chapter II. METHODS OF ORAL COMMUNICATION OF HISTORICAL MATERIAL

“The art of classroom storytelling is not often found among teachers, not because it is a rare gift of nature, but because even a gifted person needs to work hard to develop the ability to fully teach a story.”
K. D. Ushinsky

The teacher's spoken word plays a leading role in teaching history not only in primary but also in high school. It organizes, guides the perception and comprehension of visual, documentary and other educational material used in the lesson. We don’t just show a map or a picture, we lead a story around it and give explanations. We read, analyze, comment on the historical document, and formulate conclusions. Before you give independent work using a textbook, using a map, we first explain the material, pose a question, and formulate a cognitive task.
The spoken word in a history lesson primarily performs a narrative-descriptive function - to recreate the historical past in a holistic picture. The teacher's spoken word helps create vivid images of people and pictures of events. The living word is figurative.
But this does not exhaust its role: armed with a wealth of intonation, the power of logical stress, and lively argumentation, oral speech helps to more fully convey to students the evidentiary power of human thought. Presentation of historical material by a teacher is an excellent way to teach students to think. The spoken word leads students from pictures and images of the past to conclusions, concepts, to an understanding of the laws of the historical process, gives them examples of analysis and generalization of historical material. This is the logical function of oral presentation in teaching history. It is inextricably linked with its narrative-descriptive function. But the leading point is the logical point: the goal of teaching history is to equip students with a scientific understanding of historical phenomena.
Both the figurative and logical function of the living word in teaching history contains its educational value. Inextricably linked with the personality of the teacher, with his moral and political image, the living word serves as a means of creating images of the past, which are by no means neutral, not indifferent to students, but always ideologically oriented, distinguished by a high emotional and ethical mood: these are images of the heroic or difficult past, images of oppressors or fighters for freedom, pictures of forced labor or revolutionary uprisings. It is the living word of the teacher that is most capable of revealing and conveying to students the moral power of those ideas with which the school history course is so rich; the living word of a teacher in a history lesson is one of the strongest means of moral influence on a student’s personality.
Finally, we must not forget about the strength of the impression left by a living word in the mind of a schoolchild: students remember well the teacher’s vivid story; sometimes the sound of the teacher’s voice and the persuasiveness of his intonations remain in their memory for many years.
The ability to tell and explain is extremely important for a history teacher. Anyone can master this art. To do this, you need to know the basic requirements for the oral presentation of historical material and its basic methods, systematically work on improving your speech, developing a teacher’s language - accurate and clear, strong and imaginative.

§ 4. Question about methods of oral presentation in history lessons
In the methodology of teaching history, until recently, there was no convincing, scientific justification for the classification of methods of oral presentation, the necessary clarity and certainty in the delimitation of concepts related to this, in the use of relevant terms.
In the manual by N.V. Andreevskaya and V.N. Vernadsky “Methods of teaching history in a seven-year school” (Uchpedgiz, 1947, p. 133 et seq.), all types of oral presentation of historical material are united by the concept of “story.” The authors distinguish between descriptive, narrative and business stories; the explanation is characterized as a type of “business exposition.”
In “Essays on Methods of Teaching History” by M. A. Zinoviev (Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, 1955), the only method of oral presentation is indicated - the teacher’s story. The school lecture is considered as a type of story in high school. Essentially, the author reduces all methods of oral presentation to a story, and in high school to a lecture. A number of manuals do not reflect the variety of presentation methods that take place in the practice of teaching history in Soviet schools. It is not surprising that a novice teacher often believes that the question of how to present historical material is not of significant importance, and constructs his presentation in the form of a lecture. Meanwhile, what is called a school lecture is permissible only in high school, and even there it is far from being the predominant form of conducting lessons. In the same way, the story is only one of the methods of presentation in a history lesson. Therefore, neither the concept of “dis-
tale,” much less the concept of “lecture,” cannot be recognized as a concept that embraces all methods of oral presentation of historical material in school.
In a later edition of the methodology (“Essays on the Methodology of History. Grades V-VII,” 1958), N.V. Andreevskaya makes an attempt to substantiate a slightly different classification, putting forward two main methods of presenting historical material: story and lecture. The author still considers narration, description, and explanation to be constituent elements or varieties of a story, distinguishing between a narrative story, a descriptive story, and an explanatory story (?). N.V. Andreevskaya sees the difference between a story and a lecture in the fact that a lecture is a presentation of a system of knowledge, and a story, although it also presents the material, but this presentation “involves special attention and active intervention, direct guidance of the process of listening and assimilation,” the use of a number of techniques , “creating the ability to listen and acquire knowledge.” Among these techniques, the author names the combination of monologue presentation with conversation, the use of additional material illustrating the content of the story, graphic design of individual points of content, etc. (p. 115). The main feature of the story, according to N.V. Andreevskaya, is that when presenting any material, regardless of the preparedness of the class, “the story always aims not only to communicate, but also to organize the knowledge of the students” (ibid.).
But aren’t these same signs characteristic of a school lecture? Doesn't the lecture presentation of a knowledge system refer to the organization of knowledge? The school lecture also involves “direct guidance in the process of listening and learning” (and student note-taking); it includes elements of a conversation (opens with an introductory conversation and ends with a closing conversation). As for additional illustrative material and graphic design, firstly, they are also used during the lecture, and secondly, they do not relate to methods of oral presentation, but to methods of visual teaching and, therefore, cannot serve in a scientifically based classification signs characterizing one or another method of presentation. Graphic clarity may or may not accompany any method of presentation. The statement that “one of the most characteristic features of a story is the combination of a conversation with a monologue presentation by a teacher” is based on the same mixture of various didactic concepts: a story is one of the forms of storytelling, one of the methods of presenting historical material, and a conversation is not a method of presenting something new for students of the material, but in a way that stimulates mental processing (discussion, analysis, etc.) of material already known to students. In class, one method of presentation is often intertwined with another: description with explanation, story with description, lecture presentation also includes narration (this is exactly typical for a history lecture). The task of methodology as a science is not to mix all these methods of presentation and processing of historical material, but to isolate them in their pure form and study their nature. The classification of methods of oral presentation proposed by N.V. Andreevskaya seems to us unconvincing and not sufficiently substantiated scientifically.
The classification of oral presentation methods proposed by V. G. Karpov in “Essays on the methodology of teaching the history of the USSR in grades VIII-X” (Uchpedgiz, 1955) more reflects the diversity of educational work in the classroom. V.G. Kartsov distinguishes two main forms of oral communication of knowledge: story and conversation. “In high school,” writes V.G. Kartsov, “the teacher’s story is sometimes called a school lecture.” A school lecture has various forms depending on the content and nature of the material presented: narrative-descriptive, which has the task of figuratively reconstructing the past, a form of reasoning, the task of which is to explain complex historical concepts, and a concise, synoptic presentation (communication of secondary, although necessary, information). A narrative (most often narrative-descriptive) story is specific, dynamic, and has a stronger impact on feelings and imagination. The purpose of a narrative-descriptive story is to communicate the main historical events; the purpose of conversation and explanation is to analyze complex historical concepts. Conversation and explanation act chiefly on the mind. As a result, V. G. Kartsov distinguishes the following methods of oral communication of knowledge: narrative-descriptive story, explanation, conversation, summary presentation.
Nevertheless, V. G. Karpov does not clearly differentiate such concepts as story and lecture, narration and description, conversation and explanation, while each of the listed methods of oral presentation is qualitatively unique and has a special didactic nature. V. G. Kartsov limits the objectives of the story to reporting factual material, the course of historical events, and a figurative reconstruction of past phenomena. This reflects the certain separation of the formation process characteristic of V. G. Karpov’s concept figurative representations from the development of historical thinking. The story, in the understanding of V. G. Karpov, is devoid of logical functions.
We encounter a similar error in the interesting article by Dr. Bernhard Stohr, “Lecture or Teacher’s Story?” in the German monthly magazine “Geschichte in der Schule” (1955, no. 4). B. Shtohr distinguishes two main types of oral communication of knowledge: presentation and discussion (conversation, analysis, etc.). The first has three forms: lecture (Vortrag) with prevail
We eat rational elements, a message (Bericht) with a predominance of factual content and a story (Erzahlung) with an emotional overtones.
From these three basic methods of presentation two derivatives follow. Thus, a message about an event, phenomenon, or person can be turned into a visual description using appropriate concretization techniques. In the description, the rational and objective components prevail over the emotional. Strengthen the latter, and you will receive a living image of historical phenomena, which, according to B. Shtohr, has the greatest value from the point of view of the educational tasks of school history teaching. Of these general provisions, as well as from the examples given in the article, it is clear that the methods of oral presentation of historical material differ, according to B. Stohr, essentially in the quantitative predominance of one or another component. The difference between a description and a message, an image from a description, according to B. Shtohr, is mainly in more or less detail and the “pictures” of the presentation.
It should be noted that in the methodological literature of the German Democratic Republic we encounter a far-reaching differentiation of concepts characterizing various methods of oral presentation, with attempts to clearly distinguish them and harmoniously classify them. This is typical for B. Stor, F. Donat (see “Geschichte in der Schule”, 1956, No. 4) and others. However, the desire to connect rational and emotional aspects with certain methods of presentation seems to us unjustified: the unity of figurative-emotional and logically rational components characterizes all methods of educational presentation in history lessons. And it is not in the quantitative predominance of the first or second element that the basis for the difference between these methods lies.
It is a mistake to think that during the story only the creation of images of the past occurs in schoolchildren, and all work on the formation of historical concepts is carried out entirely only in the course of analysis, generalization, and explanation. As will be shown below, an educational story in history lessons is not only an “exciting” narrative; it serves not only the tasks of figuratively recreating events of the past. He leads students to explain historical phenomena, to isolate concepts, the contours of which are already outlined in the story. If this were not the case, then there would be a gap between the formation of living historical ideas and the formation of historical thinking.
The difficulty of classifying methods for oral presentation of historical material is explained by the fact that in reality in a history lesson these methods are often closely intertwined. Even in elementary grades, the teacher’s story often includes elements of description, explanation, analysis and generalization, conclusions and evaluation. It is not surprising that all these methods at first glance seem
as integral elements of the story, as its varieties: “descriptive story”, “business story turning into an explanation”, “lecture story”, etc.
But the methodology, since it is a science, is called upon to understand this complex complex phenomenon called “presentation” or “story”, highlighting and subjecting to consideration all its components in their pure form, to determine the place and meaning of each of them in educational work by subject. Without such a division, a scientific classification of methods of oral presentation of historical material is impossible. And this is of great practical importance for the teacher. The ability to present to a large extent depends on how clearly we distinguish between the main methods of presentation, understand their specificity and know how to apply them most appropriately.
The classification of oral presentation methods should be based on their educational nature, on their characteristics as educational tools that help solve certain educational and educational problems.
What methods of oral presentation does the teacher use in history lessons? The first thing to be noted is the predominance of narrative in the history teacher's presentation. This is determined by the nature of the historical program material and is the same feature of history lessons as the predominance of description - geography lessons, the predominance of reasoning - geometry lessons. A type of narration is also the most accessible method of presentation for schoolchildren - the story.

§ 5. Methods of oral presentation. Narrating and reporting historical events
A story is a narrative narrative about historical events or processes, about specific actions of the masses and historical figures, for example, a story about the storming of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, a story about the course of the June 1848 uprising in Paris, a story about the death of S. Lazo.
A story always has a certain plot, a plot, often characterized by drama. Colorfulness and fascination, liveliness and specificity make the story the most intelligible method of presentation.
Is every narrative a story? No. The text of the textbook and the teacher’s presentation of the material in a history lesson often take on the character of a condensed message.
In the methodological literature, therefore, two types of narration are distinguished: the so-called “artistic story” and “business presentation”. It’s better to drop the last term:
Any educational presentation serves business, not fun. They often try to justify the difference between these types of narration by contrasting the concretizing side of the narration with its logical side.
Meanwhile, in a good story about historical events, brightness and colorfulness are in unity with logic, passion is combined with richness and depth of thought. An example of such unity is for us the presentation of historical events in the works of the classics of Marxism.
What is the difference between a condensed narrative and a short story? Let's try to establish this difference using the example of the story of the Battle of Chesma in 1770.
Condensed message:
“In the summer of 1770, near the Chesme Bay (on the Asia Minor coast, opposite the island of Chios), the Russian squadron of Admiral Spiridov attacked the Turkish fleet, which was more than twice as numerous as it was in the number of ships and in the number of guns. After several hours of naval battle, the Turkish fleet could not stand it and hastened to take refuge in Chesme Bay. The next day the Turkish fleet was destroyed."
Story:
“On June 24, 1770, at dawn, the Russian squadron entered the strait near the island of Chios, and the united Turkish fleet found itself in front of it. It stood in a crescent in two lines along the shore near the small Turkish fortress of Chesma.
The Russians had only 13 ships and 17 small vessels, while the Turks had twice as many: 22 ships and 50 small vessels. The Turks were stronger with the power of their artillery. At the first moment, the commander of the Russian squadron was horrified.
But the Russian sailors were superior to the Turks in their fighting spirit and military skill. They dared to attack what seemed like the strongest enemy. Taking advantage of the fair wind, the Russians approached the Turkish squadron. The guns roared. The Russian ship "Eustathius" grappled with the Turkish admiral's ship. The Russians rushed to board, and desperate hand-to-hand combat began. Suddenly a Turkish ship catches fire. Its burning mast collapses onto the deck of the Eustathia. The hook chamber, where the shells and gunpowder were stored, was open. Burning brands are flying there. A deafening explosion is heard, and both ships - Russian and Turkish - fly into the air. The frightened Turks, in a panic, cut the anchor ropes and leave for Chesme Bay.
At the council of Russian admirals, it was decided: to break into the bay and destroy the Turkish fleet using fire ships. This was the name given to small ships loaded with flammable and explosive substances and intended to set fire to enemy ships. This technique was considered unreliable: the wind could easily blow the fire ships to the side. But in the Chesme harbor this means promised complete success: the Turkish fleet was in great cramped conditions.
A quiet southern night has arrived. At midnight, silhouettes of Russian ships appeared at the entrance to the bay. Suddenly they open fire with incendiary bombs. The guns of the entire Russian squadron thunder. At the height of the battle, three rockets soar into the sky. This is a signal to the firemen. But the current carries two of them to the side, the third grappled with an already burning enemy ship...
Only the commander of the fourth fire-ship, Lieutenant Ilyin, approached the Turkish ship, pressed his side against it, and set fire to his fire-ship in front of the Turks. Only then, at the risk of their lives, the crew of the fireship, without any haste, left their ship, already engulfed in fire, on boats.
A burning Turkish ship takes off. The fire spreads to other ships. Explosions follow one after another. Soon the entire Turkish fleet is burning like a huge bonfire. A bright glow illuminates a terrible picture: the water in the bay is covered with ash and shipwrecks. By morning the entire Turkish fleet was destroyed. The Russian admiral reported: “The Turkish fleet was attacked, defeated, broken, burned, sent into the sky, drowned and turned to ashes, and left in that place a terrible disgrace, and they themselves began to dominate the entire Archipelago” 1.
So, in the first case we have a condensed message, in the second, if we exclude the elements of explanation about the fire ships, it is a story.
At first glance, the difference between them is the degree of detail. However, an abundance of details, for example, including the names of all the ships that took part in the battle, indicating the number of guns, the number of crews, the names of the commanders, the details of individual maneuvers, will not turn a concise message into a story. It will remain a meager list of facts. The difference in the degree of emotionality is not decisive either. A dry statement of fact can shock listeners more than an “artistic” story designed to appeal to their feelings.
1 From a letter from Admiral Spiridov (see: S. M. Solovyov, History of Russia since ancient times, vol. 28, p. 663).
The difference between a condensed message and a story is not quantitative, not in the abundance of details or emotional moments, but qualitative. In the form of a condensed narrative - and this is its educational task - we only inform students about a historical event: “On July 6, 1415, Jan Hus was burned at the stake.” That is why, to denote this form of narration, we proposed 1 instead of the terms “business presentation”, “summary presentation”, the term “concise message”; it more accurately reflects the features and didactic nature of this method of oral presentation. In the story we give a picture of the event. A story, in contrast to a condensed message, has as its main didactic task the creation of specific ideas about an event in students.
The story doesn't have to be lengthy. It can be extremely short. Its liveliness and clarity are achieved not by the abundance of details, but by their brightness, not by the expansion of factual material, but by special methods of concretizing it2. There are few specific details in the teacher's story. But they must reveal the uniqueness of the historical phenomenon, its essence, and contain everything necessary for its understanding.
There is no need to saturate the story in a history lesson with hyperboles, “poetic” turns of phrase, like: “blood flowed like a river,” “damask swords rang, sharp spears broke, brave heads fell.” These kinds of “colorful passages,” while making the presentation pretentious and sugary, do not in the least specify the presentation and do not provide anything for understanding the specifics of the events being presented.
It is better if the mosaic of the educational story is large: a few facts, but the most striking, typical, essential ones. There are very few facts in the above story about the Battle of Chesma. The situation is given concisely: the surprise of the meeting of the squadrons, the balance of forces, the battle order of the Turkish flotilla. In the battle of June 24, one episode was noted: the fight and death of two ships. From the events of the night battle, the episode with Ilyin’s fireship and the picture of the death of the Turkish fleet are given. However, from this short story students gain an understanding of the features of naval battles of the 18th century, the uniqueness of this battle and specific material for drawing conclusions. Students will easily indicate the reasons for the victory at Chesma: the fearlessness of Russian sailors and officers (an example of the feat of Lieutenant Ilyin’s detachment), skillful command (the courage of the plan taking into account the situation, the use of technical means).
Thus, the educational story contains supporting points for subsequent analysis and generalization.
In the given example there is another distinctive feature of the story: historical events disclosed in it by showing the specific actions of its participants. These people are overwhelmed by certain feelings, strive for certain goals, overcome difficulties and dangers, die or win. Schoolchildren follow the unfolding of events with interest, rejoice at the victories and are upset at the failures of the heroes. This is the basis for the emotional impact of the story.
The story about the Battle of Chesma contains emotional moments: both the setting, the rapid development of events, and their denouement are dramatic. The Russians were horrified when they saw the powerful Turkish fleet, but decided to attack it; desperate boarding battle; the Turks retreat in panic; the fearless feat of Lieutenant Ilyin and his team; the death of the entire Turkish fleet. The ending of the story is also emotional - energetic lines from a letter from Admiral Spiridov.
The decisive factor in constructing a lively and visual narrative is the selection of vivid factual material. Where can I find such material? To do this, the teacher will turn to books to read on the history of the ancient East, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, modern times, memoirs, scientific monographs, popular science books, and journal articles. Thus, the teacher will find specific material for the story about the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people in 1648-1654, in particular about the victories at Zheltye Vody, near Korsun, and Pilyavka in N. I. Kostomarov’s monograph “Bogdan Khmelnytsky” (chapters 1, 3 and 4). Kostomarov is a wonderful storyteller. The monographs of the Soviet historian E.V. Tarle are distinguished by the wealth of vivid episodic material for use in the teacher’s story.
It is not always possible to build a story in a history lesson on the material of one, even very valuable, source. Often a teacher is forced to look for specific material in historical documents of a narrative nature, in works of fiction. The teacher builds the story about the Battle of Poltava on the basis of one of the monographs about the Northern War, but he will include in his narrative excerpts from the report about the Battle of Poltava and, of course, the wonderful lines of A. S. Pushkin (“Poltava”).
The works of the classics of Marxism are guiding for the teacher in covering and analyzing program material. But, in addition, the teacher directly uses in his story that vivid narrative material with which the historical works of K. Marx, F. Engels and V. I. Lenin are so rich: after all, these works set out the most significant, most typical facts that reveal the essence of the historical phenomena. Thus, in the story about the Moscow armed uprising in 1905, the teacher will cite factual material from V.I. Lenin’s article “Lessons of the Moscow Uprising” (Works, vol. 11), in particular, episodes characterizing the beginning of the uprising, attempts to fight for the wavering army and etc.
The story gives a picture of events. But the degree of picturesqueness varies. The special clarity and brightness of the image make the story artistic. Any good story teachers in a history lesson to a certain extent have clarity and picturesqueness. Therefore, the term “fictional story” does not mean a special type of story, but only a higher degree of its picturesqueness. In the above story about the Chesma battle there are elements of a fictional story. But sometimes the concreteness and imagery of the teacher’s narration intensify so much that the artistic story approaches, to a greater or lesser extent, a living depiction of the historical past. In a live image, an artistic story is combined with a pictorial description of the historical setting in which the event took place, the appearance, clothing, and weapons of the life of the people of that time. A living image, as it were, recreates a picture of the past, being, in the words of V. G. Kartsov, a figurative reconstruction of the past.
A special vividness in the depiction of historical events is inherent in works of fiction - historical stories, novels, etc. That is why the teacher most often borrows material and colors for a vivid depiction of the past from works of historical fiction and literary monuments of the era being studied. For example, for a vivid depiction of the events of 1905, we will turn to the essays of contemporary writers - M. Gorky, A. Serafimovich1, Skitalets and others.
Let us give an example of a living image of Smolny in the October days of 1917. Our material will be the memories of contemporaries and participants in the armed uprising in Petrograd from the book “Memories of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” (vol. 1, Gos-politizdat, 1956, pp. 540-555). In addition, we use material from “The History of the Civil War in the USSR” (vol. II, pp. 223-280), from the notes of John Reed “Ten Days That Shook the World” 2.
We group the material according to the following plan: 1) the area in front of Smolny; 2) corridors of Smolny; 3) in the Military Revolutionary Committee.
“The center of the uprising, Smolny, is buzzing like a huge hive. Its entire facade sparkles with lights. Through the darkness and darkness of deserted streets, detachments of armed workers approach here from all parts of the city. Among them are both young and old. Many people picked up a rifle for the first time today. In the forefront are the Bolshevik workers.
Bonfires are burning in the square in front of the building. Groups of Red Guards and soldiers are talking anxiously. Saddled horses stand ready, motorcycles, cars, and several armored cars are located in rows; their engines are started and running. The guns are being brought up with a heavy roar. Here, howling a siren, a huge gray armored car crawled out of the gate, with a red flag above its turret. From somewhere above the rooftops the sounds of rapid rifle fire can be heard. At the entrance to Smolny there are machine guns covered with tarpaulin; cartridge belts hang down like snakes. Patrols check passes.
In the echoing vaulted corridors of Smolny there is the clatter of feet and the clang of weapons. Machine guns are being carried with a roar, people are walking in a continuous stream. Workers in black jackets, fur hats, caps, hats. Sailors hung with grenades, Mausers, machine gun belts, soldiers in gray greatcoats and hats. Let's go up to the third floor. Here, in three rooms where the classy ladies of the aristocratic Smolny Institute so recently lived, the Military Revolutionary Committee is feverishly working.
The rooms of the Military Revolutionary Committee are crowded and noisy. Doors slam every minute. Soldiers appear with news of the mood in the regiments. Connected Red Guards run in and out with urgent errands. They demand clarifications and instructions from all sides. Dozens of hands are reaching out for mandates and directives.
And in the very back room, in clouds of tobacco smoke, under the lampshade of an electric light bulb, several people were bending over a map. Here, a thin, bearded Podvoisky develops the details of the plan for the uprising, brilliantly outlined by Lenin. Unshaven, pale from sleepless nights, Antonov-Ovseyenko. All the threads of the armed uprising converge in this room, reports arrive: such and such a plant sent out so many armed workers, such and such a regiment refused to support Kerensky... Field telephones are constantly buzzing, typewriters are crackling incessantly. This is dictated by orders of enormous importance. They are immediately signed in pencil as they go, and the young worker or sailor is already rushing into the dark night to the outskirts of the city.
With the arrival of Lenin, this work assumed an extraordinary pace and scope. Vladimir Ilyich summons the Red Guards, representatives of factories, and military units. Gives precise, comprehensive instructions and demands their immediate implementation.
...Soon after Lenin’s arrival, a group of motorcycles rushed from the gates of Smolny: the messengers of the uprising rushed to the districts of the capital.”
Fiction and vivid depictions in history lessons play an important role in creating concrete images of the past in students. But it would be inappropriate to present all historical material in the form of an artistic story, and even more so in the form of a living image of the past. Firstly, using these presentation methods takes time, and class time is limited. And most importantly, to solve a number of important educational, ideological and educational tasks of the lesson, we need not only a story or a living image, but also other methods of presentation: a concise message, description, explanation. Presenting the entire content of the lesson in an artistic form would create a one-sidedness of the educational process, appealing only to the feelings and imagination of the student and not requiring serious rough work from him. The opinion sometimes expressed that a teacher should present material in a history lesson primarily in the form of an exciting story that supposedly has a special educational value seems to us erroneous. The educational value of a history lesson lies primarily in the ideological content of the material presented, and to reveal it, the teacher requires not only an exciting story, but also a clear description of the facts, a concise message, analysis and explanation. Presenting historical material primarily in the form of an exciting story would inevitably give the presentation a touch of artificiality and stiltedness. And this would sharply reduce the educational effect of the lesson.
In what cases is a story (including a live image) necessary as a method of presenting historical material?
Firstly, when presenting major historical events, the study of which has important educational and educational significance and should leave a deep and vivid imprint in the minds of students. This is a story about the Battle of Salamis, the uprising of Spartacus, Magellan's circumnavigation of the world, the fall of the Bastille, the Decembrist uprising, the June days of 1848 in Paris, "Bloody Sunday", the defense of Presnya, the storming of the Winter Palace, the death of V. I. Lenin, the heroic defense of Stalingrad and etc.
Secondly, the story is used in cases where it is necessary to create in students meaningful and accurate ideas about a historical phenomenon that is new to them. For example, there is no need to give a colorful account of all the major battles during the Punic Wars. We will talk about the Battle of Cannes to create? Schoolchildren have a specific idea of ​​the wars of that time. This will allow us to confine ourselves to a condensed account of the battle of Zama and other military actions of the Romans. In the same way, there is no need to colorfully depict (all the peasant unrest of the second half of the 19th century in Russia, which the textbook mentions. We will talk about the events in the village
Abyss. To create in students an idea of ​​the peculiarities of the class struggle of the Western European proletariat at various stages of the labor movement, it is enough to give a few but vivid pictures of the uprising of Silesian weavers, the meeting and demonstration of the Chartists, the June uprising of Parisian workers in 1848, the strike of London dockers in 1889, etc. d. In relation to other strikes or rallies, the teacher will limit himself to a concise message and a brief mention of the most important individual features of the event: students already have ideas about a strike, rally, demonstration.
Thirdly, we need a story not only to create in students a vivid understanding of historical events, but also to lead to certain conclusions and generalizations. The practice of school teaching of history and the data of a pedagogical experiment show that the possibilities of organizing and the success of active mental work of students of primary and secondary school age are largely determined not only by the content, but also by the nature of the material offered to students and the method of its presentation. Historical material presented in a plot-specific form, even in high school, is the subject of more active discussion than the same material presented in an abstract, schematic form.
A narrative narrative about events and people activates the independent thinking of students, especially in grades V-VII, giving them simple and specific factual material in the most accessible form as food for analysis, reflection and conclusions.
Fourthly, in teaching practice, the story is used not only as a method of presenting narrative, event material, but also as a way of explaining complex historical phenomena, revealing their essence and patterns, characterizing social relations, as a technique that facilitates the formation of concepts and provides material for active mental student activities. In practice, there have been two ways to use the story to solve these problems.
The first method is that, when analyzing a complex historical phenomenon, the teacher explains it with the help of an example, an episode, which is presented in plot form. Explaining, for example, the essence of American foreign policy“bayonet and dollar”, it is useful to briefly tell the story of the enslavement of one of the countries of Central America as a specific example.
But another technique is also possible: replacing the description of a faceless historical process with a plot narrative, an artistic story built on specific facts in which the essence of this process is embodied. Thus, the question of the seizure of land by noble Franks and the explanation of the formula “there is no land without a lord” can be presented in the form of a plot story. Our proposed version of such a story 1 was accepted with some changes by the authors of the textbook on the history of the Middle Ages2.
Instead of a dry explanation by the teacher himself or reading from a textbook the paragraph “What hindered the development of trade in the Middle Ages” (§ 19), it is more advisable to construct an entertaining story about the trip of a medieval merchant by sea to Venice, from there through Lombardy to the Alpine passes in the Rhine Valley, and talk about the attack of sea pirates , robber knights, about the difficulties of the road, about numerous duties and invite students themselves to formulate what interfered with medieval trade.
In the same form one can show (using the fate of one farmer) the transformation of a stinker into a purchase, a purchase into a serf. In high school, using a short story about the emergence of joint stock company, the activities of the founding group, the issue of shares, the first meeting of shareholders and the election of the board, it is possible to reveal and explain the most complex questions about the characteristics of joint-stock companies, the sale and purchase of shares, the fusion of monopoly banking and industrial capital. In the same way, material about the three stages of development of capitalism in Russian industry can be presented to students not in an abstract form, but in the form of a living story about one of the centers of the Russian textile industry.
“Not far from Moscow, in the Vladimir province, are the estates of Count Sheremetev: the village of Ivanovo and others. Here, for a long time, back in the 17th century, peasants wove linens. At the end of the 18th century. Cotton production is also developing. In the fortress village of Ivanovo, in small huts, peasants set up handlooms, bought paper yarn, and wove calico. Many such lights appeared in the villages of Sheremetev. There are three or four camps in the small room, the whole family is at work. And Sheremetev takes from such “industrial” peasants not 5-6, but 15-20 rubles per tax. What kind of form is this? Peasant handicrafts. By the end of the 18th century. From the artisanal peasants, very rich people emerged, those who are more crafty, who strive to squeeze their peasant brother and know how to deceive anyone in trade. These people no longer have three or four camps, but thirty or forty, and some have hundreds of camps. And behind the camps are their fellow villagers from the village of Ivanovo, from the neighboring merchant settlement of Voznesenskoye. They work on a freelance basis. And the village of Ivanovo grew: the huts were brick, the barns were strong, the machines were no longer in small rooms, but in long barns. What is this? - Kulak, capitalist manufactory, which grew out of peasant handicrafts
In such manufactories in the village of Ivanovo, by 1825, the “peasant” Gracheva had nine hundred mills working, the “peasant” Gorelin had a thousand. And Count Sheremetev collected 10 thousand rubles of quitrent from such “peasants”, and later the count’s office began to take a certain percentage from every transaction.
Thus, new, capitalist relations matured within the serf fiefdom - the capitalist owner and the hired worker grew up, although both, by their social and legal status, remained serfs of the count. But over the brick buildings of kulak manufactories in the 60s of the 19th century. Black pipes rose high, a steam engine began to puff, mechanical spinning wheels and looms began to work. A Russian capitalist factory was born. The village grew, became a city, the center of the Russian paper and weaving industry - on the land of Count Sheremetev.”
In this case, Lenin’s formula, revealed on living material, was for students a meaningful generalization of concrete reality.
The teacher's story in high school, in addition to the greater complexity of the content, differs from the story in history lessons in grades V-VII. Its duration increases noticeably: instead of 10-15 minutes, it often takes up a significant part of the lesson (up to 30 minutes). The story as a plot narrative is often combined with other, more complex forms of presentation: with analysis, characterization, theoretical generalizations, sometimes approaching a lecture presentation; In high school, the story in many cases serves to explain complex theoretical issues and lead students to serious conclusions and generalizations.

§ 6. Description and characterization, explanation and reasoning in history lessons. School lecture
Along with the narration of events in a history lesson, there is a description of historical phenomena. Description we mean a consistent presentation of the signs or characteristics of a historical phenomenon, its essential features, its structure, its condition, and finally, its appearance. Unlike a story, a description does not have a plot, but there is a specific object, the signs of which we tell students. Thus, the teacher gives a description of the geographical situation where historical events took place (the Nile Valley, the nature of Greece, the Kulikovo Field), economic complexes (fortress estates, manufactories), architectural structures (Acropolis of Athens, feudal castle, Moscow Kremlin under Ivan III), government bodies (devices of the Moscow orders), tools, weapons (weapons of the Mongols, Neolithic weapons), appearance and clothing of the people of the era being studied.
There are two types of descriptions used in history lessons. You can give a description of the external appearance of Moscow in the 17th century. with its narrow streets, wooden towers, estates of boyars, strong huts of merchants, Red Square, where the Big Market was located, with the battlements of the Kremlin, with the gilded domes of churches. Such a description aims to give a picture of Moscow. This is a picture description.
But, describing Moscow in the 17th century, the teacher can focus students’ attention on its concentric location and characteristics of its main parts - the Kremlin, Kitay-Gorod, Zemlyanoy Gorod, craft settlements, on the structure of its fortifications (Kremlin walls, towers with three tiers of cannons of the lower, middle and upper battle), in the defensive role of the ring of monasteries surrounding it. Such a description does not proceed by recreating a complete picture, but by analyzing the object being studied and can be called analytical.
The study of a number of objects requires predominantly a pictorial description, for example: Rus' after the Mongol invasion, Russian and Mongol troops in the morning on the Kulikovo Field2, the streets of Paris in the July days of 1830, etc. A pictorial description in combination with a vivid artistic story, as we know, gives a vivid image of the past.
On the other hand, the study of items of technology, weapons (the design of a ram, a siege tower) or the state system, the organization of command, troops, etc. requires a predominantly analytical description. In some cases, analytical description internal structure the phenomenon being studied (social system, management, structure of a technical object) is approaching an explanation.
Very often, the same descriptive material, depending on the methods of its presentation, can in one case lie
1 This is the picture of Rus' painted by N. M. Karamzin (“History of the Russian State”, ed. 5, book 1, p. 1G8): “Where cities and villages bloomed, the only things left were heaps of ashes and corpses, tormented by wild beasts and birds... Only occasionally did people appear who had managed to hide in the forests and came out to mourn the death of their fatherland.”
2 “At six o’clock in the afternoon the Russians saw Mamaev’s horde descending from the hill. It moved like a cloud in steps; those in the rear placed spears on the shoulders of those in front. Their clothes were dark in color. Russian troops, on the contrary, marched smartly. Many banners swayed from the quiet wind, like clouds: the armor of the warriors glowed, like the morning dawn in a clear time, and the elovites on their helmets glowed with fire.” “The army showed off in countless numbers: the Russians had strong and fast horses, they were armed with short swords and long sabers: the sun played on the tips of the spears, in the shields painted with red paint.” (See: N. Kostomarov. Battle of Kulikovo.)
in the basis of an analytical, in another - a pictorial description. For example, based on images decorating artistic monuments of Scythian mounds1, the teacher gives an idea of appearance, clothing and weapons of the Scythians, either in the form of an analytical or in the form of a pictorial description, even in the form of a short story full of diyamics2.
In high school, pictorial description in its pure form rarely takes place in history lessons. Students of this age have a fairly significant range of figurative ideas about the past, drawn from fiction, films, works of historical painting, museum exhibitions, and illustrated publications. A pictorial description here is most often combined with an analytical one.
Both the pictorial and analytical description must first of all be scientifically correct. This means that in the description that we give to students, the essential features of the phenomenon being described, its essential connections with other phenomena are highlighted and emphasized; this means, further, that the description correctly reflects the objective contradictions of historical reality. In most cases, the description reveals an assessment based on a scientific analysis of socio-historical phenomena.
Of course, the picture description must be specific, colorful, and to some extent emotional. But this is not what determines the main educational meaning of the description, but its ideological orientation. Let's illustrate this with an example.
In the pre-revolutionary school, colorful descriptions of historical phenomena either had an objectivist character, obscuring the contradictions of historical reality, or served to admire the past and its idealization. Let us give such a description of the medieval castle in one of the pre-revolutionary textbooks by K. A. Ivanov (ed. 1908) and compare it with the description in the Soviet textbook by E. V. Agibalova and G. M. Donskoy for grade VI (ed. 1967). ).