Technocratic and Humanistic Trends in Education: New Tunes

Abstract

Introduction. The fundamental difference between humanism and technocracy is the attitude toward a human: For a humanist, s/he is the goal, for a technocrat (of any professional affiliation), s/he is a means. For education, this became especially evident when it was labelled as a service sector. The technocratic projects of school and society in the twentieth century turned out to be unsustainable. Humanistic projects have always remained the examples of ‘abstract humanism’ in history. Humanistic concepts of education are based on the self-actualization of a person, technocratic ones (the second half of the twentieth century) are based on Skinner’s ideas that are still popular among practical people. The reason for their survivability is the simplicity and accessibility as well as the success of information technology that contributed to a new wave of technocracy. Humanistic concepts are not so obvious but they have no alternative. Materials and methods. Humanistically oriented teachers, theoretical modelling, surveys, the methods of Cattell, Rosenzweig, and Fidler, the descriptive statistics and discriminant analysis. Results. The situation is ambivalent. Humanists never shied away from advanced technologies and rational justification of their actions, while technocrats still do not always mask the anti-human nature of their position. Nevertheless, the problems of falsification and imitation of education noted by researchers as well as the charm of modern technologies are significant, and this veil hides (for many) the anti-humanity of technocracy. Our approach allows us to remain a humanist under the circumstances. Conclusion. Technology has always been and remains only a tool in the hands of people. The main thing is what kind of the world image exists in their minds, what they are ready to do to achieve their goals. Scientists offer a new humanistic project with the use of the twenty-first-century technologies. This work is a fragment of such a project. The authors would like to see the real action on turning education into a true priority area on the part of the country’s leadership.