Lai, William Augustus

Born July 30, 1862 in Bötschschgen in Breisgau , now Germany . He was a village teacher, then studied at the Higher Technical School in Karlsruhe and at the University of Freiburg . Since 1892, a teacher at the Teachers' Seminary in Karlsruhe , Ph.D. (1903). ^[2] Follower of the views of psychologist Ernst Meyman. He died on May 9, 1926 in Karlsruhe.

The author of the educational concept of the " school of action ." He represented the pedagogical process as follows. Impact on the child through perception : observational teaching - the life of nature, chemistry, physics, geography, natural history; human life, the doctrine of the national economy, civics, pedagogy, history, philosophy, morality. Influence on the child through expression : visual-formal teaching - verbal image (language), artistic image, experiments, physical image, mathematical image, animal care, creativity in the moral field, behavior in the classroom. Labor in the Lai system is not a subject, but the principle of teaching. Lai biologized pedagogy. ^[3] In pedagogical practice, he attached decisive importance to the organization of action in a concept, which included any practical and creative activity of students and their behavior.

V. Lai argued that children's interests are developed primarily on the basis of spontaneous reflexes. Accordingly, he shifted the center of the educational process to the sphere of activity of the child himself, whom Lai regarded as an active force in the social and natural environment, because his activity is a reaction to the outside world. This activity should be organized, taking into account the characteristics, reflexes, the needs of the physiology and psychology of children. Among children's reflexes, special importance was attached to the “instinct of struggle”, the presence of which, as A. Lai wrote, helped a person become the master of the world. A similar instinct, Lai believed, has positive and negative consequences. For example, the desire to be strong and deft dictated by him serves the pedagogical task of bringing the child into a state of harmony with nature. Evil in such instinct, in particular cruelty, should be suppressed in the process of education. The concept of A. Lai is an important step in the knowledge of the child and pedagogical theory. A. Lai rightly made educational results dependent on the psychological and biological factor. However, he markedly limited the subject of pedagogical science to the biology of the child, which impoverished the possibilities of studying the laws of upbringing. ^[four]

A. I. Piskunov writes about the educational concept of Lai: “ In 1903, the work of V. A. Lai“ Experimental Didactics ”was published, in which he set forth his requirements for a labor school. He regarded labor not as a subject, but as a principle of teaching all subjects. Manual labor, V.A. Lai believed, should be introduced into the public school, first of all, as a means of mental, physical and spiritual development of students.

The theory of V. A. Lai, which he called the "school of life," was closest to the concept of D. Dewey . Based on the data of various searches for ways to reform the school, V. A. Lai tried to create a new pedagogy - the pedagogy of action. The starting point and method of implementing the pedagogy of the action was not for him the books and explanations of the teacher, not only interest, will, labor or something like that, but, as he himself wrote, only the full life of the child with its harmonious variety of reactions. Learning should be based on a sequence of actions such as perception, mental processing of the perceived, external expression of the prevailing ideas with the help of description, drawing, experiments, dramatization and other means. That is why manual labor was presented by V.A. Lai as a teaching principle that promotes learning and upbringing.

Labor is a necessary final link in the natural process of interconnected reactions. A special role by V.A. Laem was assigned to the third component of his triad - expression, which was actually the action aimed at adapting the child to the surrounding environmental conditions, including social. This adaptation of the child was the main task of the school of action. In the book “School of Action. Reform of the school in accordance with the requirements of nature and culture “V. A. Lai wrote that his school of action aims to create space for the child, where he can live and fully respond to the environment; it should be a child’s community modeling the natural and social environment, forcing the student to coordinate his actions with the laws of nature and the will of the community of people around him. From this work, V. A. Lai clearly shows his proximity to the ideas of social pedagogy, which he supplemented with his own considerations for their specific implementation.

An important role in the school of life drawn by V.A. Lai was to be played by the curriculum and teaching methods based on the individual characteristics of each child. The practical and creative work of schoolchildren in laboratories, workshops, caring for plants and animals, theatrical performances, modeling, drawing, games and sports, recognized by all pedagogically useful in pedagogical terms, in the recommendations of V.A. Lai, following D. Dewey, gained predominant importance in relation to to systematic scientific education.

In 1910, at a meeting of teachers in Strasbourg, V. A. Lai made a presentation on new pedagogical trends, in which he drew attention to the significant confusion of concepts and terms in pedagogical concepts and proposed distinguishing between the concepts of “school of work” and “school of action”, showing that these concepts, although they have common features, do not coincide. By “school of labor” was meant productive labor, and by “school of action” - versatile activity, which is included as an integral part and productive labor. V. A. Lai also pointed out that the term “labor school” in the pedagogical world was often understood not the same thing. ” ^[5]

Lai believed that the “school of action” is capable of changing the social reality of Germany, and experimental pedagogy is able to synthesize all pedagogical searches of the early 20th century. In real life, the "School of Action" has remained only a theoretical model.

V. Lai was one of the teachers who recognized the natural abilities of students (including learning and work), their marked diversity and sought to somehow take this fact into account in the educational process. Since pedologists close to him in this regard, like all pedology , were declared illegal in the USSR by Decree of the CPSU (B.) On July 4, 1936, this could not but affect the perception of the works and personality of V. Lai himself in " Soviet "time after 1936

LAY (Lay), William Augustus (1862-1926), Germany. bourgeois teacher, one of the representatives of the bourgeois so-called. experimental pedagogy, the main provisions and methods of a cut in most cases are little different from the principles and methods exposed by the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks from 4 / VII 1936 pseudoscience of pedology
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However, the harmful side of Lai ’s pedagogy lies not only in this biologization of the pedagogical process, but also in L.'s deeply reactionary political precepts as a preacher of that reactionary “law” of anti-scientific bourgeois pedology , which seeks to prove “special giftedness and special rights to the existence of exploiting classes and “Higher races” and, on the other hand, “the physical and spiritual doom of the working classes and“ lower races ”” [On pedological perversions in the system of drug trafficking, Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 4, 1936 , see the newspaper Pravda of July 5, 1936, No. 183 (6789)]. Lai took these positions even before the widespread spread of the infamous fascist racist "theories" in Germany, and therefore he can rightfully be called one of the forerunners of fascist pedagogy and pedology . As a typical representative of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, L. infiltrates his pedagogy with priesthood. Thus, Laya’s reasoning about “reflexes,” about the “reflex act” as the basis of pedagogy is only a cover for frankly idealistic reactionary priest pedology and pedagogy . His reactionary views were particularly pronounced in works relating to the period of the first imperialist war (1914-18) and after it. ^[6]

• "Experimental didactics"
• “School of action. School reform in accordance with the requirements of nature and culture ”
• "Im goldenen Kinderland"
• "Fuehrer durch das erste Schuljahr"
• Die Lebensgemeinschaftsschule
• "Volkserziehung"
• Rechtschreibschule

• Kodzhaspirova G. M. The history of education and pedagogical thought: tables, charts, supporting abstracts .- M., 2003.- P.141.
• The history of pedagogy and education: From the birth of education in a primitive society until the end of the 20th century / Ed. A.I. Piskunova.- M., 2001.
• Pedagogical Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ed. By B. M. Bim-Bad.- M., 2003.

• Dewey, John [1859-1953] and his “school of experience”
• Kershensteiner, Georg [1854-1932] and his "school of work"
• Makarenko, Anton Semenovich [1888-1939]