Traditions and experience of professional training of pedagogic personnel for the system of social upbringing of children and youth in the second half of the 20th century: experience of comprehension and interpretation

Abstract

The author of the article turns to the socio-pedagogic and psychological analysis of the process of formation and development of historical and pedagogic faculties in the system of higher professional pedagogic education in the USSR in the second half of the 20th century. In terms of the creation and life of the Faculty of History and Pedagogy at Kursk State Pedagogic Institute, the author shows the most characteristic tendencies repeated in the fate of such faculties in Kostroma, Voronezh, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk. The author shows the role of Lev Umanskiy and Anatoliy Lutoshkin, who formed a unique experience of professional education, laid the tradition of combining advanced science and professional psychological and pedagogic education, focused on training specialists for working with children's and youth public organisations. The author characterises the life activity of the faculties of history and education in the 1960s-90s, shows the complex and contradictory processes of the growing ideological crisis, as a result of which adolescent and youth organisations ceased their activities and announced their dissolution. The author believes that the need for training specialists in working with youth has not disappeared today; many of the ideas and experience on which the training of such specialists in the USSR was built are quite appropriate for reproduction today. The author draws attention to the traditions of the formation of a collectivist climate in the life of student communities, the need to combine the entire process of personal and professional development of specialists with the practical work of students with adolescents and youth. In this regard, the author focuses on the role of large scientific and methodological centres in replicating the advanced experience of social upbringing of children and youth, referring to such centres as ‟Artek”, ‟Orlyonok” (Eaglet), ‟Komsorg”. In the article, the author emphasises the uniqueness of the interface between history and pedagogy in training specialists for working with teenagers and youth public organisations and associations.