The educational reforms initiated by K. U. Chernenko in the USSR(Russia) in mid-1980s led to the various changes in the systems, contents, and objectives of teaching the subject of history in schools. The result of such changes was the new programs of...
The educational reforms initiated by K. U. Chernenko in the USSR(Russia) in mid-1980s led to the various changes in the systems, contents, and objectives of teaching the subject of history in schools. The result of such changes was the new programs of the re-organization of the curriculums for elementary and middle schools launched in the Russian Federation on September 1, 2005. This paper aims to review the significant alterations of history-teaching since mid-1980s and to examine the systems, contents and objectives of the renewed programs for teaching history. The subject of history is not only an independent one but also a major one. Every student are required to finish up in the curriculum. In Russia the objective of historyteaching lies not only in inculcating the younger generations with historical knowledge but also in promoting students’ character-building and developing their intelligent potentials and initiatives. In a nutshell, history is regarded as a subject necessary for familiarizing the students with the cultural heritages of both Russia and other civilizations, to bring up them to be the democratic citizens of the Russian Federation as a multi-national state, and to develop their abilities to adapt themselves to the contemporary informational society experiencing the speedy changes. With an aim to achieving the forgoing objectives, the contents of history-teaching are constituted on the principles of the “character-building approach” and the “realistic pragmatical approach”. By extension, a stress is put on the teaching of contemporary history. In terms of the number of lessons the ratio of the Russian history to the world history is 3:2 in the new programs. But such a ratio changed in favor of the world history in order to understand the Russian history in the context of the World history.