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A great deal of scholarly monographs, articles, textbooks, and training manuals pontificate about the
upbringing of students at our universities. At the very same time, more often than not, the heads of these institutions,
just as their counterparts in other countries, refuse to acknowledge the aforementioned process as a
responsibility of academic establishments. Upbringing, however, is intrinsic to all levels of education – at
least, according to those learned works that diligently scrutinize the phenomenon in question along with its
impact, purpose, and logic. General glossaries and dictionaries of similar function side with them too. Given
such discord between theory and practice, it is quite hard to ignore the matter of one particular complementary dependency – that between education and “proper breeding.” The former may be regarded as
the reservoir for both upbringing and learning or, in equal measure, as the product of these two elements.
The imperial ideology of the Soviet Union claimed the unchallenged monopoly over all aspects of moral
mentoring. For that reason, it took some effort to dissociate the notions of universal human values from the
postulates of the Communist Party. While moving toward today’s economic system, our society audited its
previous worldview and aligned it with the nascent reality. Market economy and its interests brought about
the demand for what is called ‘individualism’, ‘competitiveness’, ‘leadership abilities’, and ‘success orientation’.
The most effective way to implant these very features into a person is, of course, to do it in his or her
youth – i. e. during the university years. That means that the higher school, apart from just ‘preparing professionals’,
is shaping the students’ ethical outlook and behavioral models which are to define the future application
of one’s knowledge, skills, or competency.
This article reviews a number of legislative acts which reflect the state’s expectations to see in its citizens
both relevant knowledge and very specific features of character. The attempts to meet such requirements have
transformed the realm of higher education into an arena for a peculiar clash between two distinct ideologies –
that of the bourgeois’ mindset and that of aristocratic mentality. |
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