MAKARENKO LIVES – IN MEXICO
Mакаренко
жив – в Mексике

I
first came across reports of Conductive Education around 1980. Given where these reports originated – within
the then Soviet Bloc – accounts of the centrality of the
group as an essential component to conductive upbringing prompted immediate
association with the practice and ideas of Anton Makarenko and his
successors.
Budapest
Going to Hungary I
was initially surprised to find Mária Hári's vehemently denying
any such link. Further experience suggested that
conductors have often had limited awareness of such
parallels. Indeed their explicit knowledge of A. S. Makarenko and
those who followed after him has appeared sketchy and even
erroneous.
As
far as I know there has been no explicit empirical analysis of these
two group pedagogies. Anyway, following the fall of the Soviet Union,
until recently Anton Makarenko's heritage has all but vanished from
the Russian education system. Meanwhile, with customary disdain,
liberal education in the West has for the most part carried on its
established way as if Makarenko had never been.
In
my memory, however, the haunting similarities remain...
Mexico
This
week Elena Ilalddinova sent this short video of the Colegio Makarenko
(Makarenko School), in Mexico:
The
Colegio Makarenko is a pre-university school:
¿Quién
fue Makarenko?
Who
was Makarenko?
His
full name was Anton Semenovich Makarenko (1888-1939), born in
Ukraine, son of a railway worker. An educator by vocation. Initially
a history teacher he dedicated his whole life to the education and
rehabilitation of adolescents.
The
goals that Makarenko assigns to education are based on two
fundamental pillars:
- faith in the possibilities of education and
- that all life must have order and discipline.
His
educational approach indicates that there can be no good discipline
without consciousness.
I
cannot judge from the video and online material referred to
here how closely this modern Mexican pedagogic practice might correspond to the work of
either Anton Makarenko or András
Pető, either to their historical essence or to that of their successors.
It
is a long way from the Gorkii Colony to the Colegio Makarenko. So it
goes. It's a long way too from
Stollár
Béla
u. to
Budakeszi út, from conductive therapy to inclusive practice. There is at least one common question that surely binds them, a vital one. How does practical educational theory maintain its integrity and identity within different and themselves developing social contexts?
Labels: Hári, History, Makarenko, Mexico, Russia, Soviet, Theory, Upbringing
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