Russian Community Education Development Centre
The decade since 1991 had shown that the path to a stable democratic society in the ex-Soviet region is a very difficult one. The negative factors common to all the NIS countries, unstable economic growth,traditions of state paternalism, low living standards, a hazardous investment climate, the "soviet mentality" and so on, to now are still determining the everyday lives of the majority of the population of this region. Nevertheless, in just a short time we can see changes as a significant part of the Russian people start to grasp the concepts people in democratic countries take for granted such as individualism, trust, respect, rule of law, etc. This process of changing the "soviet" popular mind set from subject to citizen sets up the conditions for them to develop their individuality. This unleashes individual initiative which in turn creates a middle class that will provide both political stability and a huge domestic and international market for goods and services. The main purpose of our work in the ex-Soviet region is to develop the conditions required for good domestic governance,democratic societies, free markets, and accountable public and private sectors in Russia and other emerging democratic nations. Starting in 2002 our organization created a large scale 5 year democracy training program in Republic of Karelia at the invitation of their government.
Since 2001 RCEDC has developing a wholly new type of program to teach democratic citizenship in newly democratic states. It is called "You the PEOPLE". Since citizens are the base of any democratic republic they must change their attitude and learn how to be a citizen not just how the government works.Initially, there are 29 schools and other education organizations participating in Karelia. Participating school teachers have created a number of variants of "You the PEOPLE" Program stretching from youth camps to handicapped facilities and from kindergarten to college including a complete methodologics course for the teachers college. These are currently being taught and will all be monitored and evaluated throughout the next school year. Then the best variants will be formalized and spread throughout the Karelian educational system. These collaborative plans have been approved by the Karelian Ministry of Education for the years 2002-2006. Our goal is to install the complete "You the PEOPLE" process into the Republic of Karelia and ensure its viability and sustainability. At the end of three years it will be fully functional and internally funded in the school system from kindergarten to college. In 2005-2006 we will prepare and set up a parallel adult education project. As the main result, the adult education system will be up and self sustaining in the five next years in Karelia. 2002:In the first year the emphasis will be on schools. 96 teachers will teach 65 approved variants of the program in 29 institutions from kindergarten to college including some NGOs and youth programs as well. These will be evaluated by our organization and the Karelian Government and specific ones will be chosen as standards with others as electives for their schools. 2003:In the second year the approved variants, both standard and elective will be disseminated throughout the Karelian School Systems. The teacher's institute and the teacher's university course will be set up to prepare future teachers to teach civic education. A complete review of teacher training courses will be conducted to ensure all teachers are trained in democratic methodologies of teaching. 2004:In the third year the program will be institutionalized in all Karelian Schools. The Karelian Teachers Institute and Petrozavodsk University will conduct the civic educator training as needed for all teachers. A "civic educator teachers" program will be instituted at the teaching institutes and University. We will also conduct the first full scale training in the Leningradskaya and Murmansk Regions and set up training bases in both Oblasts using teachers who have used the system in Karelia as advisors. All will be monitored by RCEDC personnel. 2005:The effort will now turn to adults in Karelia and full scale expansion of the program in the other two Russian regions (Oblasts) plus initial training bases in two other Oblasts and one or two exSoviet republics. The adult program will be developed and piloted in the same way as the school one was in year one. 2006:The adult program will be made fully operational in Karelia. To do this we will expand the successful experiments in the adult program combined with a train the trainers and administrators program to provide sufficient trainers and administrators to continue the program on their own. It will be standardized and documented to allow any other Russian regions and exSoviet republics to use it easily with initial help from the Karelian trainers. A generic train the trainer and administrators program will be developed and translated into Spanish,Arabic, French, Chinese and other languages for use in other newly democratic countries.
[ More ] |
