Research On Raising Tolerance Among Teenagers In Russia

The last century’s experience shows that society was so thrilled by technology development, that it neglected moral up-bringing, which led to two world wars. We have to learn our lesson and do everything in our powers to prevent that. As we know personality formation process starts in childhood; that is why the task of building a more tolerant society falls to schools. Teenage seems like the most optimal age for that, as adolescents are grown enough to reason with and they are just one step away from becoming citizens of our country with the all the consequences of it. Therefore, research on raising tolerance is timely and needed.The aim of the research is to point out possible ways to make our society more tolerant.This thesis has the following structure: introduction, three chapters and bibliography list. The first chapter concentrates on the notion of tolerance, gives its theoretical foundations. Tolerance as an active life stance is defined as a complex of symptoms that includes low level of aggression and hostility, moderate level of mental rigidness, emotional stability, high level of empathy and sociability, trust,and openness. Also within this chapter we give short history of the notion development and its types, giving more information on ethnic tolerance. For that we analyze ethnic intolerance and factors causing it.The second chapter is devoted to analysis of current situation in Russian schools. Russian situation is also influenced by all recent political and economic changes when the entire education system was neglected, so now we feel critical need to restore or rebuild it. We also point out major problems Russian schools face and factors that caused these problems. Among them we consider insufficientfunding, copying some ideas of western education while not taking into account Russian peculiarities, and also the problem of neglected moral education as the most urgent.The third chapter suggests how to solve the problem of raising tolerance among teenagers, points out peculiarities of teen age. We analyze new national education standards and what is suggested there as a solution. After that we consider main principles of educational strategy for raising tolerance. Finally we analyze and classify methods of raising tolerance, among them we suggest how to do that trough organizing students’ activities, through dialogue and discussion,learning languages, games and competitions.