Social and Cultural in the Pedagogy of Sergey Gessen

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of philosophical ideas of Sergey Iosiphovich Hessen, that set the framework for his anthropological pedagogy and pedagogy of culture. According to Sergey I. Hessen, pedagogy cannot be reduced to a de­scription of teaching techniques and methods. It should be considered as an ap­plied science, the most important section of which is the typology of possible and necessary goals of educational activity. In turn, the definition of goals of pedagogical practice should be based on a complex of representations of hu­man, a certain philosophical and pedagogical anthropology. The being of a hu­man, according to Sergey I. Hessen, can be likened to the geological structure of the Earth’s crust: ontologically, “human” is not only natural (the first level) and social (the second level), but also a cultural being. The laws of cultural and intellectual existence of a human are fundamentally different from biological and social laws. Therefore, the main goal of pedagogical practice is the inclusion of an empirical individual into the processes of transmission and deployment of cultural values. At the same time, culture should be understood as an activity aimed at achieving ultimate, inexhaustible goals, objectives that stand before hu­manity in various fields of practice. In his book The Foundations of Pedagogy, published in 1923, Sergey I. Hessen identifies three types of cultural values: civ­ilization, citizenship, and education. Opposing the cultural level of human exis­tence to the biological and social ones, Sergey I. Hessen formulates a number of cultural tasks for the spheres of economy, politics and education.