Tickets to Titanic and an undermining under the non-existing building

A university should be post-classical and flexible, as while we will be building classical examples, new generation will turn to those, who promise success at employment market, believes the expert.

“EuroBelarus” continues publishing opinions of the academic community representatives, most of whom have spent whole days at the council of civil unions re the formation of the national university.

Today their thoughts share the members of the Belarusian Collegium – Iryna Dubianetskaja, Bible scholar, theologian, and philosopher and Maksim Zhbankou, culture scientist, film critic, candidate of philosophical science.

I. D.: - We are living in the era of the world crisis of universities and higher education. We already have one main university that I really performing some creative functions. Anyway, establishment of one more university – a national one – will be useful, though the projects will be absolutely different. If we think about the work done in this direction, Collegium has been working for 17 years already. For example, the main academic event of the year – the Congress of Researchers in Kaunas – gathers the biggest number of people that are speaking Belarusian: 400 people in one place at the same time. Such thing had never happened before, but was realized by the Belarusian Collegium alumni.

The Flying University has been discussing the issue of a national university for five years already. The main thing in these discussions is that the universities that existed before have already become obsolete. We see that by Bologna process that got completely reduced to marketization and is preparing its students for an employment market. But this task differs from the other one – to be those who are transforming the situation in the country. These are completely different tasks. In both cases university is not something that creates staff for someone or something, but, first of all, the community of thinkers that are working in it and are always transforming it. Students become the part of the process, not the goal in itself.

Let’s, for example, consider, what is the classical university occupied with: its lecturers give basic, significant, and very important information. Today any person from its audience can get his or her gadget and read the information. Educational conditions and tasks have changed completely. We don’t feel that yet since we have graduated from classical universities. And the smartest thing we can do is to understand that the world is different and education is different, too.

photo by “EuroBelarus” Information Service

If we want to make really nationally-created institutions than there is no particular sense to get to their establishment without some romantic concept. If we just want to make something good and Belarusian with what we have, it will be very good; but these are two different levels of thinking, organizations, demands, and responsibility.

M. Zh.: - How do you personally see it, which of the variants seems more realistic to you?

I. D.: - We cannot but agree with Uladzimir Matskevich – we don’t have a university, we don’t have nationally created, intellectual, and academic community; but, of course, we should do it. Collegium is very small and it is doing that; but its strength is very low. The Flying University is also doing what it can – we all do. And we have been discussing how much we can unite there. We are all complimentary there; we just do it from different angles. But we cannot simply copy something, since all sorbonnes, cambridges, and oxfords ended; all that ended in the way it used to exist since the Middle Ages.

They all are transforming today. The main transformation is moving towards shorter education, its marketization, and professionalization. If we go this way, it means that we are buying tickets to “Titanic”.

We need to adjust our perspective to the ideal, not to the existing possibilities. Everything depends on what we can, what we want, and what we have.

If we just establish one more university apart from the EHU, which used to be very good several years ago, it will also be a good and useful thing to do. But it will be one more area where we will be able to do something, since the things that we do in Belarus are happening with a great effort and against the authorities’ will.

M. Zh.: - I’m not an educational theorist, I’m more of an expert – I have been teaching for more than 20 years now. The new institutions shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the former ones, such as we see in EHU.

The general wording voiced by Aleh Trusau seems sensible to me: something that works for the country in order to unite really different education projects within one common goal should appear. And that suffice for now.

It’s a good thing that we look at it differently. The main thing is that everything we have been doing should work for the country. It might sound abstract, but practice will divide those who have sense and those who don’t. The most wrong thing we can do is to start what we did in the state system of education and what we then did in EHU: to build the vertical of power.

Vertical education translates “truth”; it is death. In reality it is a totalitarian system of education, thanks to which we have what we have in Belarus. The most inexcusable thing for me in EHU is that it is basically making pro-Western conformists, not citizens for a new free country.

So we need to understand that we are not dividing power now. We do not follow “the right” and “the wrong”. The most useful that we can do now is, firstly, to agree that we have a problem, and, secondly, the try and find the decision altogether. We shouldn’t fight with our own people!

photo by “EuroBelarus” Information Service

I was very confused when after the idea of a national university was voiced the “fighting” started immediately: why we shouldn’t do that, why it can’t happen, and why it will disturb the others. Let’s understand, whom are we working at: for the country or for ourselves?

Thus, I think that by using this strategy we start the war again. We haven’t done anything, but we already start undermining this virtual building. But let’s work together!

We need to understand why we aren’t disturbing each other. We are different, thanks God, with different understanding of patriotism, with different attitude towards the society, and so on. But we all love the country equally. I invite you to try and organize postclassical flexible national university of new generation, a national university 2.0, if you’d like. Since while we will be building up classical examples, new generation will turn to those, who promise success at the employment market.