Social Consequences of the Pandemic in the Context of Modern Education Problems

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the main trends of evolution of the educational sphere of society and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on it. There are four basic trends in the development of education. The first is the audiovisual turn in modern culture accompanied by a crisis of "book culture". New learning technologies, making the material extremely accessible, do not developing the basic cognitive abilities of the individual. The "will to know" is not formed», as well as the desire and willingness to overcome the inevitable difficulties that arise in its course. The next factor is the total commercialization and consumerization of educational activities. Education is increasingly understood not as a selfless transfer of the accumulated experience of civilization, but as the provision of paid services. This gives its consumer additional rights and it creates unreasonable expectations. The third circumstance is devaluation of the classical interpretation of education as a unity of teaching and upbringing. There was a clear bias towards the first one. Education, understood as the process of forming a harmonious personality, it was in the background. The final trend in the development of education is the spreading of postmodern theories and related practices into it («postmodernization»). The pandemic is proving to be the most important factor in accelerating it. Due to the distance learning format the educational space is fragmented, atomized – both physically and intellectually. Its universal principles, goals, and content are being eroded. The social experiment launched by the pandemic proved that mostly distance education is technically possible, economically profitable, increases the emphasis on the pragmatic component of education to the detriment of the axiological one and contributes to the progressive postmodernization of education. In conclusion, it is pointed out that Western philosophy in the works of its most prominent representatives repeatedly played with the metaphor of death of God (Nietzsche), subject (Foucault), author (Barthes). By analogy, the thesis is put forward (accelerated witch pandemic) about «the death of a Teacher», manifested primarily in loss by the pedagogical community and society as a whole a view of the importance of the Teacher's social mission.