Problems of modern children. Virtual club Two groups of modern childhood problems

ABOUT THE NATIONAL STRATEGY

In order to formulate state policy to improve the situation of children in the Russian Federation, guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, I decide:

1. Approve the attached National Strategy of Action for Children for 2012 - 2017.

2. The Head of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, within 2 months, submit for approval a draft regulation on the Coordination Council under the President of the Russian Federation for the implementation of the National Strategy of Action in the Interests of Children for 2012 - 2017 and proposals for its composition.

3. To the Government of the Russian Federation:

a) within 3 months, approve a plan of priority activities until 2014 to implement the most important provisions of the National Strategy of Action for Children for 2012 - 2017;

b) when forming the draft federal budget for the next financial year and for the planning period, provide for budgetary allocations for the implementation of the National Strategy of Action in the Interests of Children for 2012 - 2017.

5. This Decree comes into force from the date of its signing.

The president

Russian Federation

V. PUTIN

Moscow Kremlin

NATIONAL STRATEGY

ACTIONS IN THE INTERESTS OF CHILDREN FOR 2012 - 2017

I. INTRODUCTION

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, children have the right to special care and assistance. The Constitution of the Russian Federation guarantees state support for family, motherhood and childhood. By signing the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international acts in the field of ensuring children's rights, the Russian Federation expressed its commitment to participating in the efforts of the world community to create an environment that is comfortable and friendly for children to live in.

In the Russian Federation, the National Plan of Action for Children was adopted in 1995 and covers the period until the year 2000. As part of the next stage of the country's socio-economic development, it is relevant to develop and adopt a new document - the National Strategy for Action in the Interests of Children for 2012 - 2017 (hereinafter referred to as the National Strategy).

The main goal of the National Strategy is to determine the main directions and objectives of state policy in the interests of children and the key mechanisms for its implementation, based on generally recognized principles and norms of international law.

In the last decade, ensuring a prosperous and protected childhood has become one of the main national priorities of Russia. The messages of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation set tasks for developing a modern and effective state policy in the field of childhood. Problems of childhood and ways to solve them are reflected in the Concept of long-term socio-economic development of the Russian Federation for the period until 2020, the Concept of demographic policy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2025.

The implementation of priority national projects “Health” and “Education” and federal target programs has become a tool for practical solutions to many issues in the field of childhood. A number of important legislative acts have been adopted aimed at preventing the most serious threats to the implementation of children's rights. New state and public institutions have been created: the position of Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation has been established, the institution of Children's Rights Commissioner has been created in a number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and a Fund for Supporting Children in Difficult Life Situations has been established. The volume of financing of social expenditures from the federal budget and the budgets of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation has increased, and new measures of social support for families with children have been adopted. For the first time in Russia, a large-scale national information campaign to combat child abuse was carried out, and a single helpline number was introduced.

As a result of the measures taken, there have been positive trends in increasing the birth rate and reducing child mortality, improving the socio-economic situation of families with children, increasing the availability of education and medical care for children, and increasing the number of children left without parental care placed in families.

At the same time, the problems associated with creating a comfortable and friendly environment for children to live in remain acute and are far from a final solution. The decline in the child population continues; a significant proportion of preschool children and students in general education institutions are diagnosed with various diseases and functional abnormalities.

According to information from the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, the number of identified violations of children's rights is not decreasing. In 2011, more than 93 thousand children became victims of crime. The number of disabled children, orphans and children left without parental care is decreasing at a low rate. The problems of teenage alcoholism, drug addiction and substance abuse are acute: almost a quarter of crimes are committed by minors while intoxicated.

The development of high technologies and the country's openness to the world community have led to the vulnerability of children from illegal content on the Internet information and telecommunications network (hereinafter referred to as the Internet), and have aggravated problems associated with child trafficking, child pornography and prostitution. According to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of sites containing materials with child pornography has increased by almost a third, and the number of Internet materials themselves has increased by 25 times. A significant number of sites dedicated to suicide are available to teenagers at any time.

According to Rosstat, in 2010 the share of low-income children under 16 years of age exceeded the Russian average poverty level. The most vulnerable are children aged from one and a half to three years, children from large and single-parent families and children of unemployed parents.

The scale and severity of existing problems in the field of childhood, emerging new challenges, the interests of the future of the country and its security urgently require government bodies of the Russian Federation, local governments, and civil society to take urgent measures to improve the situation of children and their protection.

Main problems in the field of childhood

Insufficient effectiveness of existing mechanisms for ensuring and protecting the rights and interests of children, failure to comply with international standards in the field of children's rights.

High risk of poverty when children are born, especially in large and single-parent families.

Prevalence of family dysfunction, child abuse and all forms of violence against children.

Low effectiveness of preventive work with dysfunctional families and children, prevalence of the practice of deprivation of parental rights and social orphanhood.

Inequality between the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in terms of the volume and quality of available services for children and their families.

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The problem of childhood in the modern world

Lutseva Irina Yurievna

Taganrog Institute named after A.P. Chekhov (branch) of the Rostov State Economic University (RINH)

annotation

childhood adult relationship gap

This article reveals the problem of childhood, shows the attitude towards childhood in different historical periods of time and at the present stage of development of society. The current stage of building new forms of relationships between children and adults is also considered, the main indicator of which is the gap between the lives of children and adults.

Key words: future, growing up., Childhood, innovation, childhood crisis, adult world, society

Childhood is one of the most important periods in a person’s life. During this period, the child goes through the greatest path in his individual development from a helpless being to a personality adapted to nature and society, capable of taking responsibility.

Today, there are many definitions of the concept of “childhood”, as well as delimitation of its time frame.

Thus, from the point of view of sociology, childhood is nothing more than a permanent and naturally changing part of society, which performs a number of specific functions, and also actively interacts with society and its individual elements. In physiology and psychology, childhood represents a stage of the life cycle, during which the body begins and continues to develop, forming its most important functions. And in social pedagogy, this period of life is considered as the initial stage of socialization of the individual, including the assimilation of a certain system of knowledge, norms and values, the development of social roles that allow the child to develop and function in society.

The problem of childhood and the patterns of mental and personal development of the child were studied by such scientists as L.S. Vygotsky P.P. Blonsky, S.L. Rubinstein, A.F. Lazursky, A.N. Leontyev, L.I. Bozovic et al.

The authors offer a large number of concepts and principles of the psychophysical development of a child during this period of life, however, today there is no consensus or answer to the question of what childhood should be like and how the younger generation should be raised.

The evolution of the status of childhood has come a long and difficult way. Even in the Middle Ages, receptivity to education was considered a positive feature of childhood. A prominent representative of that time, Philip of Navarre, noted that this period is the foundation for the rest of life, on which a good and strong future can be built. Later, a great contribution to the attitude towards childhood was made by the scientist Erasmus of Rotterdam, who determined that it is extremely important to take into account age and not allow anything that may exceed the child’s strength in any type of activity.

From the point of view of science, the understanding of childhood as a special and unique phenomenon began to take shape in the second half of the 19th century, but only in the 20th century did interest in childhood arise as a special social phenomenon thanks to the efforts of M. Montessori, N.F. Pestalozzi and other pedagogical reformers.

The rapid development of the modern world has a huge impact on childhood. Today, the child is recognized as an independent subject of law and has a special social status. However, active technologization and the introduction of innovations in all spheres of life put forward an urgent need to connect the world of children with the world of adults.

On the one hand, the world of adults and the world of children have become closer, which is due to the fact that the child has access to everything that was previously forbidden: he has almost unlimited access to information, more and more is becoming permissible, and from this a certain independence of children has appeared.

On the other hand, adults moved away from children, and not only because the former stopped caring for children. Recently, children have remained aloof from society's activities in discussing various adult problems.

Today people are increasingly talking about discrimination against children. The world of childhood is somehow deformed by the world of adults.

The current stage of building new forms of relationships between children and adults is designated by scientists as a crisis of childhood, the main indicator of which is the gap between the lives of children and adults.

Scientists identify a number of characteristic features for this crisis.

Firstly, the relationship between adults and children is changing, in which adults act as teachers and educators, where their efforts are aimed not at interacting with the child, but at influencing.

Secondly, previously formed ideas about the development of the world as growing up are destroyed, and a period of breaking the image of the adult world begins. If previously children could not wait to enter the world of adults, today there is a certain fear of growing up.

Thirdly, children found themselves completely outside of socially significant matters. Today, the tendency to distance the world of adults from the world of children is becoming more popular. However, there are several sides to considering this feature of the childhood crisis. On the one hand, children are provided with all the benefits, but at the same time adults do not let them into their world, as a result of which the former resort to extreme measures to defend their rights to stay in the world of adults - alcohol, smoking, drugs, etc. On the other hand, they are completely excluded from real socially significant activities, are more often pampered by their parents and remain under their care longer, but this all leads to no less unpleasant consequences. Children become unable to do anything, which in turn leads to prolonged infantilism.

There is also a collapse of specific types of children’s activities - “pseudo-school” forms of education are crowding out play from children’s lives. The spread of activities in adolescence that are specific to primary schoolchildren leads to an aggravation of the teenage crisis, its protracted and destructive nature. Play and children's parties have undergone enormous changes due to the active informatization and computerization of society, especially in recent decades.

All this is happening under the powerful onslaught of innovation in the modern world. The media, television and the uncontrolled flow of information from our computer monitors are replacing traditional forms of children’s activities and communication with adults, which leads to a distortion of children’s worldview and their life values, and cases of mental health problems in children are becoming common.

All this suggests that the child is joining adult life much faster than several years ago; even in preschool age, he begins to actively become acquainted with modern technology, and in school he becomes a confident user of it. Parents are increasingly demanding discipline and obedience from their children, limiting the right to choose and the opportunity to be themselves. All this entails irreversible consequences: weakened physical and mental health, loss of active communication skills, distortion of moral and ethical ideas, shallowing of the inner world.

As D.B. believed Elkonin, childhood arises precisely when a child cannot be included in the system of social production due to the fact that he is not able to fully master the tools of labor due to their complexity, as a result of which the natural inclusion of children in productive labor is postponed. However, this idea was relevant a couple of decades ago, and today we see a completely opposite picture.

Despite a lot of pedagogical research and statistical data indicating that in the modern world the growth of such children's problems as social orphanhood, deviance in the children's sphere, the problem of health, social adaptation and freedom of choice has increased, the activity of state policy in the field of childhood has increased.

Today, it is the child who is at the center of numerous discussions and debates; it is in relation to childhood that new laws and regulations are being developed on such a large scale. All this indicates that childhood is of great importance for the state, and therefore for the future.

Each of us was once a child, and today, having the opportunity to consider the problem of childhood through a scientific prism, we can realize how difficult it is to be a child and how great the task of pedagogy is in this difficult time in every person’s life. Today, the main task of each of us is to help the younger generation, because their future and the future of our country will depend on us. And if today a child is just a tiny birth of a new life in the womb, then tomorrow he will become a new maker of history, a person capable of opening new horizons.

Bibliography

Borovikova L.V. The world of adults and the world of childhood: trends in the development of relationships // Academic Bulletin of the Institute of Adult Education of the Russian Academy of Education // Man and Education No. 1 (26) 2011, St. Petersburg [Electronic resource] - Access mode: http://obrazovanie21.narod.ru/Files/2011-1_p069-073.pdf

Gaisina G.I. The world of childhood as a social and pedagogical problem //Psychological and pedagogical problems of education// Pedagogical education in Russia.2011.No.5 [Electronic resource] - Access mode: http://journals.uspu.ru/i/inst/ped/ped16/ped_17.pdf

Kodzhaspirova G.M. Pedagogical anthropology: textbook. aid for students universities - M.: Gardariki, 2005. - 287 p.

Mukhina V.S. Developmental psychology: phenomenology of development, childhood, adolescence: Textbook for students. universities - 7th edition, stereotype. - M.: Publishing Center "Academy", 2003. - 456 p.

Elkonin D. B. Child psychology: textbook. aid for students higher textbook institutions - 4th ed., erased. - M.: Publishing Center "Academy", 2007. - 384 p.

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  • Noteworthy is the underdevelopment of fine motor skills of the hands of older preschoolers and the lack of graphic skills, which indicates not only the lack of graphic motor skills, but also the immaturity of certain brain structures of the child responsible for the formation of general voluntariness. Deficit of voluntariness, both in the mental and motor spheres of preschool children, is one of the most alarming factors reliably established by scientists of the Russian Academy of Education.

  • The category of gifted children is increasing, which inspires optimism, among them are children with especially developed thinking, and children who are able to influence other people - leaders, and children with “golden hands”, and children who represent the world in images - artistically gifted children, and children with motor talent.

Dear colleagues, the child has become no worse and no better than his peer twenty years ago, he has simply become different!

. This article uses materials from Rudkevich L.A. «

View document contents
"Problems of development of modern childhood"

Municipal budgetary preschool educational institution compensatory kindergarten

"STAR" Zernograd

“PROBLEMS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MODERN CHILD”

Volgina Margarita Viktorovna

educational psychologist of the highest qualification category

2015


« The children of the new world are already with us, in kindergartens and in primary and secondary schools, with diametrically different abilities and capabilities, and we have nowhere to hide... they are the fruit of our actions, conscious or unconscious, over the past 30 years...”

Feldshtein D.I.

On the problems of development of modern childhood since 2011. The outstanding psychologist, academician D.I. Feldshtein is trying in every possible way to attract the attention of scientists, teachers and parents.

On July 12, 2013, at the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, he presented a report on this topic: “The nature and degree of changes in modern childhood and the problems of organizing education at a historically new level of development of society.”

So, let’s try to figure out what has happened to modern children over the years.

    Psychophysical changes...

The psychophysical type of changes is associated with changes in the psychological and physical development of modern children.

Today's children later go through two growth spurts, or two developmental crisis periods. So, the first jump, called pre-growth spurt, these days, falls not on senior preschool age - 6-6.5 years, as thirty years ago, but on 7.5 - 8 years, that is, on junior school age.

It follows from this that in the first and, possibly, even in the second grades of school, educational material must be presented to students in a playful form.

There are also morphological changes among children, manifested in the so-called “secular trends” (epochal changes, transformations of the human species).

First "secular trend"- This asthenia physique of many guys, a lag in the growth of muscle strength. The process of asthenia is proceeding at an unusually fast pace. Among preschoolers and children of primary school age - about 50% are asthenic!

Another secular trend that is clearly manifested in the children's community is the increase in children right-brain dominant (left-handed) and ambidextrous - children in whom the dominance of one of the forebrain hemispheres is not clearly expressed and for work they, as a rule, use their right and left hands equally.

So, in the child population, the proportion of left-handed people has increased to 11%, and ambidextrous people - to 35-40%. And scientists have found that in this category of children, androgyny and gracilization.

Androgyny, it consists in partial smoothing out gender differences or sexual dimorphism, and gracilization is thinning of the skeleton and general weakening of the musculoskeletal system.

You say, so what, and how can this be connected with school? It turns out to be the most direct!

Asthenics, the share of which among primary school children is about 50%, as already mentioned above, almost without exception they are classified as night owls, Their peak daytime activity occurs in the afternoon and evening hours. Since the student’s school day is traditionally focused on the “early person” type, “night owls” do not get enough sleep, cannot concentrate in the first lessons, and quickly get tired at school. This means that if thirty or forty years ago the majority of schoolchildren belonged to the “early bird” type and the predominant orientation towards this type was justified, now it would be advisable to move the first lesson at school from eight or nine to ten or even eleven o’clock in the morning!

And guys with pronounced androgyny and gracefulness have relatively weak nervous system, higher intelligence, but an increased level of anxiety, independence of thinking, aggressiveness, as well as a shift in the dynamics of daily activity towards the “night owl”.

Having summarized the fundamental academic research of scientists in recent years, D.I. Feldshtein outlined the range of the following significant changes

in modern children and adolescents:

In a minimally short five-year period, the cognitive development of preschool children (learning ability) sharply decreased.

    The energy of children and their desire to be active have decreased. At the same time, emotional discomfort increased.

    There is a narrowing of the level of development of the role-playing game of preschoolers, which leads to underdevelopment of the child’s motivational-need sphere, as well as his will and arbitrariness.

    A survey of the cognitive sphere of older preschoolers revealed extremely low indicators in those children’s actions that require internal retention of rules and operating in terms of images. If in the 70s of the twentieth century. This was recognized as the age norm, but today no more than 10% of children cope with these actions. Children find themselves unable to do things that their peers could easily cope with three decades ago.

    Noteworthy is the underdevelopment of fine motor skills of the hands of older preschoolers and the lack of graphic skills, which indicates not only the lack of graphic motor skills, but also the immaturity of certain brain structures of the child responsible for the formation of general voluntariness. Deficit of voluntariness, both in the mental and motor spheres of preschool children, is one of the most alarming factors reliably established by scientists of the Russian Academy of Education.

    There is insufficient social competence in 25% of children of primary school age, their helplessness in relationships with peers, and their inability to resolve simple conflicts. At the same time, a dangerous trend can be observed when more than 30% of independent decisions proposed by children are clearly aggressive in nature.

    Factors associated with children's exposure to television, starting from infancy, are causing concern. Screen addiction leads to a child’s inability to concentrate on any activity, lack of interests, and increased absent-mindedness. Such children need constant external stimulation, which they are used to receiving from the screen; it is difficult for them to perceive information aurally and read: while understanding individual words and short sentences, they cannot connect them, and as a result do not understand the text as a whole. Children are not interested in communicating with each other. They prefer to press a button and wait for new ready-made entertainment. Due to the fact that the child, while watching TV, does not speak, but only listens, he has primitive, poor speech and a meager vocabulary. Such a child, basically, does not speak, but screams, like his on-screen cartoon characters, who are not always kind and positive.

    Computer games also contribute to the fact that children stop developing figurative and logical thinking. They stop fantasizing and inventing, and prefer to mindlessly press gadget buttons to get quick results.

    There are more and more children with emotional problems who are in a state of affective tension due to a constant feeling of insecurity, lack of support in their close environment and therefore helplessness. Such children are vulnerable, sensitive to perceived offense, and react acutely to the attitude of others towards them. All this, as well as the fact that they remember predominantly negative events, leads to the accumulation of negative emotional experience, which constantly increases according to the law of a “vicious psychological circle” and finds expression in a relatively stable experience of anxiety.

    In adolescent children, regressive changes occur in the brain support of cognitive activity, and the increased activity of subcortical structures caused by the hormonal process leads to a deterioration in the mechanisms of voluntary regulation.

    A fairly large group consists of children who are characterized by an unfavorable, problematic course of mental development in ontogenesis. This is a category of pupils that, according to neuropsychological indicators, should be considered “borderline between normal and pathological.” And when they come to school, they are children with special educational needs (SEN).

Children with special educational needs are the category of pupils who need workarounds for acquiring knowledge that is common for their normally developing peers.

I would like to dwell in more detail on the problems of school adaptation of children with special educational needs, who most often go on par with their peers in the most ordinary schools.

First of all, these are children with mental infantilism syndrome.

By the time of school, such a child has not developed the ability to voluntarily control his behavior and actions. Such children are careless, naive and spontaneous; they do not fully understand the educational situation and often do not fit into the framework of generally accepted school behavior. They may ignore the teacher’s assignment, ask questions unrelated to the task, cannot maintain the overall pace of work, and are constantly distracted. Children with "mental infantilism syndrome" are characterized by a communicative attitude to learning, for them the most important thing is to capture the attention of the teacher and peers for the purpose of communication, while educational goals fade into the background.

This category of children often has low performance at school. They are characterized by emotional disorders: short temper, irritability, as well as impulsive behavior when the action is ahead of the forecast. This behavior is unacceptable in the classroom and creates problems both at school and at home.

In fact, the reason for the above behavior is a lack of certain biologically active substances in certain parts of the brain.

When adapting to school, children with this syndrome develop negative self-esteem and a hostile attitude towards school and teachers. Therefore, a necessary condition for successful adaptation will be the kindness, attention and emotional support of those around the child, both adults and peers.

As a rule, they are very timid, fearful, shy, they have an excessive need for protection, encouragement, and emotional support from their mother. Guys with autism spectrum disorders are able to communicate, many of them have retained intellectual functions!

The clinical picture of autistic personality disorder is complex, diverse and unusual in comparison with other mental development disorders. In any case, one should be very careful when assessing the intellectual capabilities of an autistic child, since this is associated with the uneven development of individual intellectual functions.

For example, children's excellent computing abilities are combined with an inability to understand the meaning of a simple task, or, having good spatial orientation, a child is not able to correctly distribute text on a sheet of paper when writing.

When preparing such a child for school, it is necessary to give him a certain amount of knowledge and skills ahead of time in order to “save” his energy in the process of adaptation, the success of which depends on the degree of severity of autistic traits and the timeliness of psychological and pedagogical correction.

Along with the alarming statistics, Academician D.I. Feldshtein also points out optimistic observations:

    The category of gifted children is increasing, which inspires optimism, among them are children with especially developed thinking, and children who are able to influence other people - leaders, and children with “golden hands”, and children who represent the world in images - artistically gifted children, and children with motor talent.

    But “according to available data, from 50 to 55% of children of senior preschool and primary school age in large cities of Russia today have an IQ of 115 points or higher, which, by the way, raises the danger of a “skew”, a shift in emphasis to the intellectual development of the child to the detriment of their social -personal development"

The above problems of development of modern children, of course, should be taken into account by us, teachers, when developing approaches to education and training. And even the most modern pedagogical innovations do not take into account the indisputable fact that a person changes from generation to generation and that pedagogical and educational techniques developed, for example, in the 60-70s of the last century, cannot be successfully applied in our time .

Dear colleagues, the child has become no worse and no better than his peer twenty years ago, he has simply become to others!

This article uses materials from Rudkevich L.A. « Epochal changes in man at the present stage and pedagogical innovations.”


General characteristics of the childhood period

Childhood is a period of paradoxes and contradictions, without which it is impossible to imagine the development process. V. Stern, J. Piaget, I.A. wrote about the paradoxes of child development. Sokolyansky and many others.

Childhood is a period that lasts from newbornhood to full social and, therefore, psychological maturity; This is the period of a child becoming a full-fledged member of human society.

The duration of childhood is directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.

L.S. Vygotsky noted that one cannot talk about childhood “in general.” The history of childhood as a cultural and historical phenomenon correlates with the history of society . Childhood is a complex sociocultural phenomenon that has historical origins and nature. The classic studies of the French historian F. Ariès show how the concept of childhood developed throughout the historical development of mankind and how it differed in different eras. He came to the conclusion that the development of social life and the emergence of new social institutions lead to a change in the periodization of human life. Thus, within the family, a period of early childhood arises, associated with the “pampering” and “tenderness” of the baby. Subsequently, the responsibility for regular preparation for adult life is assumed by another social institution—the school. Thus, F. Ariès showed the historical the tendency to lengthen childhood due to the addition of a new period over the existing one. The same scientist explored the solution to the problem of childhood in the fine arts and found that up to the 13th century. Art did not appeal to children, artists did not even try to depict them. Apparently no one believed that the child contained a personality. If children appeared in works of art, they were depicted like shrunk adults. The scientist writes that initially the concept of “childhood” was associated with the idea of ​​dependence: “Childhood ended when the dependence became less.” Childhood was considered a period of rapid passing and of little value. Indifference towards childhood may have been due to the demographic situation of the time, characterized by high birth rates and high infant mortality. However, S. Hall (2012), revealing the general cultural significance of the essence of human childhood, specifically emphasizes that “children are not small adults with all the developing abilities, but only on a reduced scale, but are one of a kind and very different from us creation."

Overcoming indifference to children occurs no earlier than the 17th century, when for the first time real children (their portrait images) began to appear on the canvases of artists. Thus, according to F. Aries, it began in the 13th century, but the evidence of this discovery is most fully manifested at the end of the 16th and throughout the 17th century.

In the 17th century A new concept of childhood emerges (the primary concept is the family concept). Now there is a psychological interest in their training and education, which is clearly reflected in the works of Ya.A. Comenius. In the 18th century In Western Europe, the concept of rational education based on strict discipline appears. At the same time, all aspects of children's life begin to attract the attention of parents. But the function of organized preparation for adult life is assumed not by the family, but by a special public institution - the school, designed to educate qualified workers and exemplary citizens. It was the school that brought childhood beyond the 2-4 years of maternal and parental upbringing in the family, and the concept of childhood and adolescence is already beginning to be associated with school as a social structure that was created by society to give it the necessary preparation for social life and professional activity .

According to L.S. Vygotsky, the course of a child’s mental development does not obey the eternal laws of nature, the laws of maturation of the organism. The course of child development in a class society, he believed, “has a completely definite class meaning.” He emphasized that there is no eternally childish, but only historically childish .

In the literature of the 19th century. There is numerous evidence of the absence of childhood among proletarian children. For example, in a study of the situation of the working class in England, F. Engels referred to the report of a commission created by the English Parliament in 1833 to examine working conditions in factories: children sometimes began to work from the age of five, often from the age of six, even more often from the age of seven, but almost all children of poor parents worked from the age of eight; Their working hours lasted 14–16 hours. It is generally accepted that the status of childhood of the proletarian child was formed only in the 19th and 20th centuries, when child labor began to be prohibited with the help of legislation on child protection.

The word “child” for a long time did not have the exact meaning that is given to it now. Thus, it is characteristic, for example, that in medieval Germany the word “child” was a synonym for the concept “fool”.

Childhood was considered a period that quickly passed and was of little value. Indifference towards childhood, according to F. Aries, was a direct consequence of the demographic situation of that time, characterized by high birth rates and high infant mortality.

In the 19th century It is beginning to emerge in the humanities the tendency to consider childhood not only as a stage of preparation for a person’s adult life, but as a period in a child’s life that has intrinsic value for him, a period of his self-realization in society and culture .

A great contribution to the study of childhood was made by the Soviet scientist D.B. Elkonin. D. B. Elkonin said that paradoxes in child psychology are developmental mysteries that scientists have yet to solve.

When a person is born, he is endowed with only the most basic mechanisms for maintaining life. In terms of physical structure, organization of the nervous system, types of activity and methods of its regulation, man is the most perfect creature in nature. According to D.B. Elkonin, childhood arises when the child cannot be directly included in the system of social reproduction, since the child cannot yet master the tools of labor due to their complexity. As a result, the natural inclusion of children in productive labor is delayed.

However, based on the state at the time of birth, there is a noticeable drop in perfection in the evolutionary series - the child does not have any ready-made forms of behavior. As a rule, the higher a living creature stands in the ranks of animals, the longer its childhood lasts, the more helpless this creature is at birth.

Based on the scheme outlined by D.B. Elkonin, V.T. Kudryavtsev shows the historical development of ideas about childhood and highlights three historical types of childhood :

1. Quasi-childhood– in the early stages of human history, when the children's community is not isolated, but is directly included in joint work and ritual practice with adults (PRIMIMAL CHILDHOOD).

2. Undeveloped childhood– the world of childhood is highlighted, and children face a new social task – integration into adult society. The role-playing game takes on the function of bridging the intergenerational gap, acting as a way of modeling the semantic basis of the activities of adults. Socialization occurs as the child masters already existing patterns of adult activity at the level of reproduction. An example is childhood in the Middle Ages and in modern times.

3. Genuine or developed childhood– (according to V.V. Davydov’s terminology) develops when a child tries to comprehend the motives of adults’ activities, being critical of the world around him ( modern childhood). The image of adulthood that is offered to a teenager does not suit him. The ideal created in the child’s mind often differs from the existing models in society, which the child rejects. And he must freely and creatively “define himself in culture.” Modern developed childhood presupposes the creative development of culture as an open multidimensional system. The productive, creative nature of the mental development of the modern child is realized already at the early stages in the form of phenomena of the children's subculture, which becomes one of the mechanisms of the child's socialization.

Historical functions of childhood relevant
Child-adult communities Joint activity of a child and an adult Dominant genetic perspectives of the child, models and methods of cultural development in ontogenesis
Quasi-childhood Simple, undifferentiated self-identical Reproductive type of joint activity of a child and an adult A limited set of available socially assigned modes of action (activity patterns)
Undeveloped childhood Complex, organic, evolving type Type of compatibility with the basis of simulation modeling by adults and children of creative search for the internal form of a sample Symbolic replacement of available alternatives (objects and methods of action with them), which are given in a wide socially defined space of choice
Developed childhood Harmonic, self-sustaining type The developmental type of assistance is an equal joint search by a child and an adult for the internal form of a model, its problematization and redesign in an act of cooperation. Initiative overcoming existing situations of choice, framed in the structure of the tasks set by the adult community. Availability cultural activities acts as the leading criterion of modern developed childhood!!

The development of a child’s psyche is an increasingly deeper immersion into the historically developing problem field of culture. According to the logic of such “immersion,” any form of child activity can be designed. And the process of cultural assimilation - and the process of mental development of the child - with historical necessity acquires the features of a creative process! !

Historically, the concept of childhood is associated not with a biological state of immaturity, but with a certain social status, with a range of rights and responsibilities inherent in this period of life, with a set of types and forms of activity available to it.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by UNESCO in 1989 and aimed at ensuring the full development of the child’s personality in all countries of the world, states that every human being until he reaches the age of 18 years is called a child.

There are several periodizations of a child’s mental development (Erikson, J. Piaget, L.S. Vygotsky, etc.). Below we present the periodization of D.B. Elkonina:

An important contribution to the study of childhood problems was made by D.I. Feldstein: “As a special phenomenon of the social world, Childhood appears as an objectively necessary state of the process of maturation of the younger generation and therefore preparation for the reproduction of the future society. In its substantive definition, it is a process of constant physical growth, the accumulation of physical new formations, the development of social space, reflection on all relationships in this space, defining oneself in it, one’s own self-organization. which occurs in the constantly expanding and increasingly complex contacts of the child with adults and other people (younger, peers, elders), and the adult community as a whole. Essentially, childhood is a form of manifestation, a special state of social development, when biological patterns associated with age-related changes in the child largely manifest their effect, “submitting,” however, to an increasing degree to the regulating and determining action of the social” (Feldshtein D.I. . Childhood as a social and psychological phenomenon of society and a special state of development // I.D. Feldshtein. Psychology of growing up: structural and meaningful characteristics of the process of personality development, M.: 2004. P. 140).

In modern conditions, we are talking about a broad sociocultural approach that involves a transition in the relations of the Adult World to Childhood not as a set of children of different ages who need to be raised, educated, trained, but as a subject of interaction. The position of the adult in this case is the position of responsibility, the position of an intermediary in the child’s mastery of the social world.

Modern problems of childhood

In the real world of life, there are many childhood problems. These are problems of children with disabilities (about 30 thousand children are born in Russia every year with congenital hereditary diseases, among them 70–75% are disabled; in 60–80% of cases, childhood disability is caused by perinatal pathology); children without parents, refugee children; children with deviant behavior; gifted children.

All these groups are in need of social protection.

International and now Russian practice provides for the creation of special mechanisms for the protection of children's rights, which include the activities of ombudsmen for children's rights and the juvenile justice system (special justice for minors). In Russia, these mechanisms operate only in certain regions as an experiment. Other mechanisms include the activities of educational authorities, youth affairs authorities, health care, social protection, guardianship and trusteeship, commissions for minors, and the prosecutor’s office.

One of the problems of modern childhood is the socialization of the child in a multicultural educational space.

One of the serious social problems in the post-perestroika period was the family crisis. During the period from 1990 to 1999, the number of children whose parents were deprived of parental rights increased 1.5 times. The family crisis has led to an increase in child homelessness and neglect, child drug addiction and alcoholism, and child crime.

The number of street children has increased. Hundreds of thousands of Russian children are deprived of parental warmth and care, often being subjected to cruel treatment. A significant part of them became pupils of state institutions (orphanages and boarding schools). According to the General Prosecutor's Office as of June 2009, in Russia there were 678 thousand children left without parental care, and only 5% of them are truly orphans, the rest are “social orphans” with living parents. Of these, 173.4 thousand are pupils of state institutions.

The number of virtually neglected children cannot be counted statistically; about 440 thousand teenagers are registered with the authorities for the prevention of juvenile delinquency; at the end of 2009, more than 27 thousand children and teenagers were in pre-trial detention centers and colonies.

In Russia there are almost 30 thousand pupils of boarding schools for disabled children, 40% of them are officially recognized as “unteachable”. As a result of current, often formal, procedures for diagnosing a child’s mental retardation, thousands of Russian children, instead of the necessary social rehabilitation, find themselves forever isolated from society and deprived of the opportunity to develop normally. Children, as a rule, are placed in state boarding schools, where special development and social rehabilitation programs are not provided. As a result, they degrade even more, spending their entire lives in a confined space, without any opportunity to communicate with peers or lead an emotionally and socially rich life.

Meanwhile, the practice of work of public organizations with disabled children clearly demonstrates that it is possible to educate and develop mentally retarded children. For this purpose, there are a lot of methods and technologies, both Western and Russian. Children recognized as “unteachable”, as a result of these activities, are quite capable of learning to read, write, use a computer, and master any professional skills.

Every year, about 100 thousand children in need of care are identified in Russia. In terms of the number of orphans per every 10 thousand child population (and according to the Russian State Statistics Committee in 2000, almost 40 million children lived in the Russian Federation), Russia ranks first in the world.

One of the most serious problems in Russia is social orphanhood. However, the same as for many countries in Eastern Europe. Among children raised in orphanages and boarding schools, the number of social orphans (in fact, orphans with living parents) is, according to various estimates, from 85 to 95%.

A qualitatively new phenomenon is the so-called “hidden” social orphanhood, the result of which is neglected children. These children formally live in families, but their parents are not involved in raising them, the children are actually left to their own devices, while their rights are violated - to normal living conditions, to the protection of adults, to provision of education, medical care, etc. - are not calculable.

According to the existing legislation of the Russian Federation, graduates and pupils of orphanages have the right to receive free housing. However, this law is often not respected, and children themselves usually do not have sufficient knowledge to defend their rights. There are often cases when teenagers are deceived into fraud with apartments, as a result of which the child is left homeless. With the help of “Complicity in Fate” employees, hundreds of orphanage graduates were able to achieve restoration of their housing rights and obtain apartments.

Public organizations deal not only with the housing rights of orphans. They are active in almost all areas of helping children and families.