Is the Mission of Teaching Authoritarian?

ABSTRACT

Modern dictionaries define “authoritarian” (which traces back to the French “autoritaire” meaning “imperious”) as something characterized by the unquestioning submission to power. Scholars in education borrowed this term from social psychology, where it was used to analyze types of leadership in terms of how they influence group dynamics. Kurt Lewin (1939) singled out three styles of social group leadership: authoritarian, democratic, and lax.¹ Subsequently, this classification was used in pedagogical textbooks to describe how principals interacted with school faculty. Since the early 1990s, it has for some reason come to characterize the relationships that teachers have with their students, while supplanting the previous (very substantial and natural) classification of styles of pedagogical communication. The purpose of the article is to understand the reasons why these terms evolved in such a strange way, to a situation where traditional pedagogy began to be conceived of as authoritarian and was contrasted to a hypothetical “pedagogy of support.”²

Notes

1. G.M. Andreyeva, Sotsial’naya psikhologiya. Uchebnik dlya vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniy, 5-e izd., ispr. i dop. (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2007).

2. G.B. Kornetov, “Pedagogika avtoriteta, manipulyatsii, podderzhki,” Pedagogicheskiy zhurnal Podmoskov’ya, 2015, no. 3, pp. 46–55.

3. Kan-Kalik, V.L. Uchitelyu o pedagogicheskom obshchenii (Moscow, 1987).

4. L.I. Ruvinsky, V.A. Kan-Kalik, D.M. Grishin, et al. (eds.), Vvedeniye v spetsial’nost’; Ucheb. posobiye dlya studentov ped. Institutov (Moscow: Prosveshcheniye, 1988).

5. Ibid., p. 126.

6. G.B. Kornetov, “Paradigmy bazovykh modeley obrazovatel’nogo protsessa,” Pedagogika, 1999, no. 3, p. 45.

7. G.B. Kornetov, “Paradigmy bazovykh modeley obrazovatel’nogo protsessa,” Pedagogika, 1999, no. 3, p. 43.

8. Ibid., p. 43.

9. Ibid., p. 46.

10. Ibid., p. 47.

11. Ibid., p. 47.

12. Ibid., p. 48.

13. S.N. Durylin, Ideal svobodnoy shkoly: Izbrannye pedagogicheskiye proizvedeniya, ed. and foreword by G.B. Kornetov (Moscow: Izd-vo U RAO, 2003).

14. Yu.I. Druzhnikov, “Yavnaya i skrytaya zhizn’ Konstantina Venttselya,” http://www.druzhnikov.com/text/rass/russmif/3.html.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. V.V. Zenkovsky, Pedagogika (Klin, 2002), p. 190.

18. K.N. Venttsel, Otdeleniye shkoly ot gosudarstva i deklaratsiya prav rebenka (Moscow, 1918), p. 13.

19. Yu.I. Druzhnikov, “Yavnaya i skrytaya zhizn’ Konstantina Venttselya.” http://www.druzhnikov.com/text/rass/russmif/3.html.

20. N.F. Fedorov, “Chto znachit ‘stat’ samim soboyu’?” http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/philos/fedorov/fedor091.htm.

21. N.F. Fedorov, “Bludnyy syn filosofii (Nitsshe),” http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/philos/feclorov/feclor092.htm.

22. “Gumanisticheskiy manifest 2000: Prizyv k novomu planetarnomu gumanizmu,” razdel VII, http://humanism.al.ru/ru/magazine.phtml?issue=1999.13-02

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., p. 25.

25. Yu.I. Druzhnikov, “Yavnaya i skrytaya zhizn’ Konstantina Venttselya.”

http://www.druzhnikov.com/text/rass/russmif/3.html.

26. V.V. Zenkovsky, Pedagogika (Klin. 2002), p. 181.

27. M.E. Steklov, “A.N. Tolstoy i K.N. Venttsel’: dva vzglyada na svobodnoye vospitaniye,” Pedagogika, 2003, no. 3, p. 85.

28. G.B. Kornetov, “Pedagogika avtoriteta,” Shkol’nye tekhnologii, 2005, no. 6, pp. 40–50.

29. Ibid., p. 47.

30. Ibid., p. 48.

31. V.V. Zenkovsky, Pedagogika (Klin, 2002), p. 62.

32. Ibid., p. 63.

33. Ibid., p. 63.

34. Ibid., p. 66.

35. V.V. Zenkovsky, Pedagogika (Klin, 2002), p. 67.

36. Ibid., p. 86.

37. Ibid., p. 87.

38. T.A. Khagurov and A.A. Ostapenko, “Pragmatizatsiya ili lyubov’?” Narodnoye obrazovaniye, 2017, nos. 6–7, p. 21.

39. Ibid., p. 49.

40. G.M. Kodzhaspirova, Pedagogika: uchebnik (Moscow: Gardariki, 2007), p. 379.

41. G.B. Kornetov, “Pedagogika avtoriteta,” Shkol’nye tekhnologii, 2005, no. 6, p. 49.

42. Ibid., p. 49.

43. Ya.L. Komensky [John Amos Comenius], “Vseobshchego soveta ob ispravlenii del chelovecheskikh. Chast’ IV. Pampediya,” In Elektronnyy resurs “pedagogic.ru — Biblioteka po pedagogike,” http://pedagogic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000054/st020.shtml, Ch. II, Para. 7.

44. Teodor Adorno [Theodor Adorno]. Issledovaniye avtoritarnoy lichnosti [Studien zum autoritären Charakter], ed. V.P. Kultygin (Moscow: Serebryanye niti, 2001).

45. A.P. Ogurtsov, “Antipedagogika: vyzov postmodernizma,” Vyssheye obrazovaniye v Rossii, 2002, no. 4, pp. 54–68 (beginning); 2002, no. 5, pp. 79–86 (conclusion).

46. Ibid., p. 58.

47. A.P. Ogurtsov, “Antipedagogika: vyzov postmodernizma,” Vyssheye obrazovaniye v Rossii, 2002, no. 4, p. 55.

48. Ibid., p. 55.

49. Ya.L. Komensky [John Amos Comenius], “Vseobshchego soveta ob ispravlenii del chelovecheskikh. Chast’ IV. Pampediya” [“De Rerum Humanarum Emendatione Consultatio Catholica”], in Elektronnyy resurs “pedagogic.ru — Biblioteka po pedagogike,”

http://pedagogic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000054/st020.shtml, Ch. IV, Para. 13.