The school where geniuses become

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Somehow the word "school" does not fit here. There is no that nervous bustle and menacing shouts of teachers, wild screams of mad fuss, running around - in a word, the whole aimless carousel of routine school days. There are not even piercing, frightening and saving calls to the lesson.

There is clear peace in the eyes of the teachers. And the children's views amaze with some kind of childish confidence. And everyone talks politely and at ease in an undertone … This is an ideal that will never be seen even in a nightmare by a retired teacher with forty years of teaching experience!

No, everything is real. You can touch the knob of a white paneled door, through which a slow, stumbling musical phrase can be heard. It repeats itself over and over again, with enviable persistence.

- All children are brilliant! - the director of the Presidential Children's Academy, professor Polina Abramovna Tsokurenko assures me.

Finally, I found a person who is as sure of this as the author of these lines. Long was the search …

Polina Abramovna conceived to create this school several decades ago. But there was no way to make every effort - experiments, especially in Soviet pedagogy, were not very encouraged. After all, Polina Abramovna set herself a rather intricate task: from the most ordinary children with "average" abilities, create geniuses.

Of course, anyone can be trained. Moreover, to force to perform brilliantly any number, to assemble a kind of "acrobatic" show, with which you can surprise and fool everyone for a couple of decades, both pedagogical specialists and parents. However, in this school everything is real, there is no window dressing and no desire to exaggerate its uniqueness.

The name Presidential Academy of Children appeared quite recently, thanks to the petition of the members of the jury of the international competition of musical art in Paris. Struck by the success of the children, world famous musicians-teachers sent a letter to the President of the republic with a request to pay attention to the school and its students. The status of the Academy was received, but this does not mean that the school has any special privileges compared to other educational institutions. Everything is more than modest - the school does not even have a concert grand piano.

Nevertheless, over the past four years, students have won the most prestigious music competitions. First they became diploma winners of the pianists' competition in Poland. Then they conquered Paris and Italy - they took the entire podium. They outstripped their peers from the USA, Germany, Israel, and, surprisingly, Russia. They made a splash, performing in Switzerland, at the UN Palais des Nations …

“When the performance of our children was announced for the first time at an international competition,” says Polina Abramovna, “many listeners, considering that Kyrgyzstan is something wild and distant for them, just left the auditorium. However, by the end of the competition, our children were already getting a full house. The audience did not want to let them go from the stage. Now the guys are well known abroad.

What is the secret of success? He is painfully banal - love for every child, no matter what he is - a bully, shy, liar or just plain ugly. Here children are not divided into "clever" and "dumb", do not hang labels.

Yes, this is the very love that children lack, even in prosperous and ultra-prosperous families. Eternally hurrying mothers and fathers simply have no time to pay attention to how their baby sings wonderfully under the TV, that they forgot to turn it off in time. Parents, at times, are not able to discern in the "scabbards" their tomboy, scattered on the floor, a wonderful world, vivid images, original colors.

“Recently we made another discovery,” says Polina Abramovna. - Found another genius. A new boy came to us - a deuce in mathematics, impudent, restless. What to do with him? All the teachers got together, thought carefully, talked, and it turned out that the child is a brilliant artist. Striking drawings, extraordinary creativity, interesting images. And the mathematics teacher will now have a completely different attitude to this student, work with him in a different way. He will try to find a common language, to interest him in his subject. How? The same can be clearly seen from the very pictures.

Twos are practically not played here. It's my pleasure. Every time a bad mark is an alarming signal, and not only for the subject teacher, but for all teachers at once: they did not take into account, they missed something, they did not work out. Comprehensive education and upbringing is perhaps not a new idea, but how to implement it is the problem.

This school has two blocks of programs - general education and original. There are subjects and techniques that have no analogues in the world yet. Each teacher necessarily has two higher educations at once, in specialty and psychology. And they are all like-minded people who have come together to fulfill their dream. The main stake is on individual lessons with children, a special attitude towards the child. "You need to mess around with literally everyone, put your heart into it," the teachers say.

Children here do not pass special tests upon admission. Everyone is accepted here, with any starting ability. The testing system itself has been fundamentally rejected. "No need for extra nervousness," - they say at school. Here they really try not to irritate the children and not overload them. The child does not need to do choreography if the soul does not lie for it. The wishes of the parents on the principle: "Make me Rostropovich out of my son" are not taken into account. There is an intensive search for "zest", "God's gift". And as soon as a spark of talent flickers under the load of husks, adhered in the form of small complexes, parental attitudes towards prohibitions, all the forces of teachers are directed here. And the mystery of the sculpting of the personality begins. As a result, then you can "upset" the parents: "Your child will never be a mediocre ballerina, but he will become a brilliant manager or producer", - Unfortunately, - says Polina Abramovna, - today all training is reduced only to memorizing a huge amount of information and establishing cause-and-effect relationships, which follows from what. Thus, the left hemisphere of the child's brain is loaded. Children are turned into robots who should know "from now and from now". In the new information age, the volume of knowledge will increase more and more. But remembering everything is impossible. But the ability to create, think in an original way, look for unconventional methods of solving problems - this is not taught in schools today. And we decided to catch up. Alternate subjects at school so as to simultaneously load both hemispheres of the child's brain - the left, responsible for logical thinking and the right, responsible for creativity. And besides, develop associative thinking through interdisciplinary connections. For example, our children can immediately tell you what the most important historical events took place at the time when Chopin worked, what scientific discoveries were then made, what was the painting and even the fashionable style of clothing. Our children can "grasp the whole thing" without dividing knowledge into artificially created components. And from here, the ability to analyze, draw conclusions, see the points of application of one's own strengths, and solve the problem in an original way is already developing. A child is a holistic, organic being. And he also perceives the world around him. We are trying to raise mentally healthy people. Combining emotional perception with knowledge through striving for the high. Both difficult and simple. And this can be done through musical education, choreography, visual arts, literature, theater …

By the way, about the theater. There is such a subject in this school - psycho-gymnastics, and a compulsory one. Do you know why? Here they help to get rid of fears and complexes, prepare for different, sometimes unpleasant life situations, so that the child can with dignity get out of any difficult situation. Maybe that's why this amazing confidence in the eyes of children, calmness, there is no usual distance between children and adults, the absence of nervous fuss? These children do not need to prove their originality to the world with wild antics. You can sometimes play pranks and shout, run and jump, if you do not thereby harm others and yourself.

- The establishment of strict discipline, blind obedience of children to the teacher is always accompanied by huge losses in the spiritual plan of personality development, - says Polina Abramovna. - We have abandoned the usual interpretation of this word - discipline. In our understanding, it is more about ethics of behavior. It is not for us to forcefully restrict the guys in something.

Such are the paradoxes. However, they also lead to surprising results.

Universal computerization has also affected this school. However, the teachers decided that the children should not be turned into a kind of "addition" to the machines, until a personal attitude to the world around them has been formed, the psyche is weak. Therefore, they sit at computer tables only in grades 7-8. At this age, it is already possible, according to the teachers, to build their relationship with the machine according to the principle of human supremacy. The computer should be just a means of knowing the world.

How to impress the kind readers? Until now, teachers in my article talked about commonplace commonplace things - about love for children, an individual approach, creative development … nothing new. And here is an original subject for you - eidetic, designed to develop creativity, learning about the world around you. Several lessons focus on smells, for example. The teacher opens a mysterious chest, brought from India, and distributes beautiful jars of exotic aromas to children. What does this smell look like? Draw, sing, dance, compose a poem … the color of the smell, the sound of the smell …

And here is another popular neuro-linguistic programming. The teachers interviewed all the children and established how each of them perceives the world - by touch, by sounds or visually. And now the teacher can communicate with any student in "his" language. For example, a child came to a music lesson who perceives the world by touch. Which instrument is closer to him - a piano or a guitar, the teacher has no doubts. Or, say, a child with "auditory" perception in an art lesson needs musical "feeding". Binary lessons combining music, painting, literature, history are common in this school.

However, you can endlessly talk about methods, lessons, interesting pedagogical delights …

- You should always look at a child with kind eyes, no matter what he has done, - says Polina Abramovna.

She is right. And the children simply do not want to go home after school, they stay until eight o'clock in the evening at school. They create on their own initiative new exhibitions of drawings, performances, concerts. They argue, philosophize, look for new, unbeaten paths in music, painting, choreography.

- We have awakened colossal energy in them, it is impossible to stop its eruption. - says Polina Abramovna. - If one of them suffers failure in life, is not lucky to achieve perfection on the chosen road, he will quickly be able to rebuild himself. He will step over to another path, where he will surely achieve success. They are easy-going, mobile, viable. They solve life problems well. This means that they will never remain in the backyards of life.

Visited the miracle school Elena Putalova