Culture, Education And Upbringing Being Basis For Man And Society Improvement

Abstract

The article examines relevant problems of culture, education and upbringing as the most important foundations for the development and improvement of modern man and society. It is proved that these problems can be primarily solved via a key figure in education being a teacher who is the bearer and model of a certain culture, education and upbringing. The following concepts are specified: culture, education, upbringing as well as culture of communication, dialogue of cultures, and nobility, intelligence, charm, charisma of a teacher. It was revealed that today the rhetorical personality and rhetorical culture of a university teacher are in demand. It has been proven that a teacher’s personality has a huge influence on the audience by means of word (speech), disposition (character), image (appearance, verbal and non-verbal communication and behavior). The necessity of a harmonizing dialogue between the cultures of a teacher and students is argued. It is proved that the professional rhetorical personality of a teacher implying charm, charisma, nobility, intelligence and culture has a huge positive impact on the audience, ensures the most creative interaction in a classroom and improves a personality of each student. It is concluded that the culture of a country, the culture of a family, a certain system of education and upbringing, the personal and professional culture of a teacher are the most important basis for improving students’ personality and, therefore, society as a whole.

Keywords: Culture, education, upbringing, rhetorical personality, teacher

Introduction

Culture, education and upbringing are interrelated and interdependent phenomena of objective reality. However, culture is the primary one. The historical and genetic area of the concept of culture can today have a significant humanistic impact on modern research in the field of a person’s education and upbringing, and the society improvement.

The key figure in this area is a teacher being a real example of a cultured, educated, well-mannered person, who serves as a model for the others, preserves and enhances cultural, moral, and spiritual values in society. It is about university teachers who embody the best qualities of a teacher and will be discussed in our study. A teacher influences the inner world of students by personal behavior, attitude to work and audience as well as speech.

Spiritual values cannot be conveyed by memorization or command. They are formulated in the image and style of life, conscious life creation, moral behavior, compassion, empathy, a responsible attitude to a teacher’s mission. A teacher must prove by his or her life that he or she is a teacher. The profession of a schoolteacher and a university teacher is not an ordinary profession but a frame and a way of life. The well-being of student’s personality largely depends on the personal and professional qualities of a teacher. Therefore, the future well-being of our motherland is “Today’s Seed, Tomorrow’s Harvest”. The well-being and prosperity of Russia depends on the qualities of the people who live in our country, and on the system of values being family, moral, social, aesthetic and cultural ones, which they are guided by.

Problem Statement

Reflecting on the selected research problem indicated in the title of this article, it is of primary importance to clarify the concepts of culture, education and upbringing due to their polysemantic nature. There are more than six hundred definitions of culture. For our research, we have chosen the following: “Culture is upbringing, education, development”, “way of life” (Dvoretsky, 1976). The term “culture” goes back to the Latin, in its original meaning being cultivation, care. “First, it related to the earth, objects, and then to human souls. Gradually, concern for the formation of the moral image of an individual and society becomes the leading meaning of culture” (Todorov, 2003, p. 86). “Culture is the ecology of human society. Culture is how people communicate” (Lotman, 2009, p. 30). It is through the sphere of speech communication that a person can feel personal belonging to culture and at the same time understands his or her own cultural and historical uniqueness.

Culture always implies the choice of the best because culture is moral and aristocratic. Culture begins with prohibitions: “Don’t kill”, “Do not steal”, “Do not use foul language”, “Do not bear false witness”, etc. Communication is a big part of universal human culture. The culture of communication is communication of cultures, a dialogue of cultures, of “completely separate worlds being different ontologically, spiritually, mentally, bodily” (Bibler, 1992, p. 28). The culture of communication, education and upbringing at all times required and now requires the improvement of man and society. The very fact that the words and have the same root is a grammatical proof of the original sociality of a person.

Thus, the more cultured a society is, the more cultured its people are; and the more cultured, educated and well-brought-up people are, the more cultured the society is. It is widely known that it is impossible to live in society and be free from it, that a planet Earth is our common home, whose well-being depends on the interaction and communication of all its “co-inhabitants” being all peoples living in our world.

In this regard, currently, the desire for environmental well-being and interaction i.e. to the culture of community is acutely felt. This means that we all need to learn how to interact, culturally communicate with people of different nationalities, confessions and cultures. Modern education should take place in the context of modern life, culture of society, cultural and educational linguistic and speech situations inherent for a specific region, schools and universities, society as a whole. Today, the educational process is understood as self-development of a person in communication, i.e. spiritual connection between a teacher and a student, observance of the value and eternity of the spiritual hierarchy between a teacher and a student, otherwise there will be no point in teaching.

In this regard, a key figure in education being the personality of a teacher, their personal and professional qualities, personal and professional culture, what and how he or she presents to the audience, how he or she communicates. A teacher should be a knowledgeable and good person because willingly or unwillingly he or she broadcasts to the audience not only personal knowledge and experience but also emotions, feelings, worldview, attitude towards students, since “speech is a person in general” (Quintilian).

Therefore, the kind of culture a teacher transmits indicates the culture which people and society have in the present and will have in the future.

Research Questions

The subject of this study is the rhetorical personality of a university teacher in communication with students, specifically:

Academic intercultural communication between a teacher and audience as well as its features.

Means of communicative influence and interaction of a university teacher with audience.

Features of the perception and assessment of a teacher's image by various students.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this work is to identify the role of the Russian rhetorical personality of a university teacher in educating and upbringing students in the process of academic intercultural communication with a diverse student audience. A person is the center and goal of life, therefore, the development of individuality, personality as well as the formation of humanity, creative and social adaptation and realization of an individual is the highest goal of education, upbringing and culture of society.

Research Methods

To solve this goal, general scientific methods of observation, comparison, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, analogy, intuition and modelling as well as private linguistic methods being comparative analysis; stylistic and rhetorical analysis were applied.

Findings

In this study, there were obtained some results. Specifically, it was clarified and revealed that education and upbringing are possible only through practical and spiritual communication of people with each other, through the culture of their personalities. It is stipulated by the fact that “at the core, education is a meeting of the following cultures: the culture of a student including personal life experience, the culture of a teacher and his or her professional experience, and the “became” culture, i.e. the one fixed in the vocational education standard” (Senko, 2000, p. 20). Therefore, it is important for a teacher to comprehend his or her subject as a system, an integral picture of the world and, accordingly, to provide systemic teaching. The dialogue of cultures, which modern communication is based on, implies the necessary knowledge about the representatives of this or that culture and religion, for example, a Hindu is a person striving for joy, for what is due; Confucian is a man of action and duty; a Christian is an inquisitive and rigoric person (moral, ethical – L.N.); a Muslim is a loving and active person; a Jew strives for knowledge and wisdom; a Buddhist is self-absorbed and unselfish (Rozhdestvensky, 1996).

A modern teacher needs to have intercultural competence because among his or her students there may be people of different nationalities. Each person, possessing a personal and any professional culture or a subculture is at the same time a “product” of a certain national culture, time, epoch ”and a subject of a “dialogue of cultures”. This is a whole “world”:

“All the thrill of life of all ages and races

Lives in you. Is always. Now. Currently”

(Tolstaya, 1997)

Therefore, the basis of intercultural communication should be mutual respect and attention to an interlocutor, the ability to listen and understand him or her. People cannot think alike but they must understand each other. While communicating we can and should learn something from each other, mutually enrich and improve.

The educational process is a sphere of words and deeds “To speak means to do and create” (Plato), bring up the audience. Figuratively speaking, means bringing culture of feelings and thoughts, everything sublime and refined. Therefore, simultaneous emotional education and education of the mind is necessary, because knowledge without feelings does not give rise to a personality in itself, does not contribute to the development of a system of relationships and beliefs.

Additionally, in the ancient Russian book “The Bee” it is also said: “Teaching should be implemented not so much by word as by the personality of a teacher and the example of “good living”,”. Many of the aphorisms included in “The Bee” entered the Golden Fund of Russian Verbal Culture.

Ukhtomsky (2002) wrote that a person is, firstly, what he received in his upbringing from his ancestors, and secondly, what he makes of himself. The general philosophical premise is as follows: “Man is nature, what is done gives meaning to a person’s life, transforming their behavior into a set of creative acts, self-awareness on the scale of individual life. A person in the Russian tradition is not only a biosocial but also a spiritual being, spiritual in essence. It is necessary to educate the body, spirit, soul, i.e. to develop physically, morally, intellectually, aesthetically.

In social terms, an individual person, “I”, is unthinkable otherwise than in relation to “you”. “I” is, if there is “you”, “he”, “they” as other “I”. These “other”, many “I-s” are “we”. But “we” is not at all the plural of “I”. “I” as a separateness, originality, uniqueness cannot have a plurality. “We” is not a plural form of the first person “I” but the unity of “I” and many different “you”. There is no “we” as a material empirical reality in the philosophical sense. “We” is an idea, an ideal state that embraces “I” and everything in the world. This is the unity of various essences, the unity of individuals: “To be means to be for another.

In the Russian mentality, there has always been an idea of an ideal image of a teacher. It is known that without the past there is no present and future. The image of an “ideal professor” in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries was unthinkable without rhetorical skills. A huge role in the education and upbringing of the younger generation was played by the following “ideal professors”: T.N. Granovsky, F.I. Buslaev, V.O. Klyuchevsky, D.I. Mendeleev, D.S. Likhachev; today academician V.G. Kostomarov and others.

The study of the creative heritage of Russian academic eloquence is an excellent material for understanding the characteristics and originality of the Russian rhetorical personality of a professor or academician of past centuries and the rhetorical personality of a modern university teacher.

Today, the rhetorical personality of a teacher is in demand. is a linguistic personality, rhetorically educated, possessing a rhetorical culture, effectively influencing and interacting with the audience with word, character, image (Kolesnikova, 2007).

of the personality of a university teacher is the moral, aesthetic and intellectual culture of emotional and sensory thought-speech activity aimed at comprehending the truth and harmonious development of a student’s personality (Kolesnikova,2019). A modern teacher must know the rhetoric well, be able to competently communicate with the audience.

The culture of academic communication is formed on the basis of many well-known conditions including the ability to conduct a harmonizing dialogue with the audience, the ability to show their best qualities being calmness, amiability, intelligence, nobility, artistry, charm, the ability to be liked, and the ability to come to certain conclusions and decisions. The standard of strictness and inaccessibility does not imply a teacher’s professional culture. Shouting, aggressive speech behavior of a teacher is an evidence of professional impotence and anti-culture. Silence is also a kind of speech. The linguistics of silence is diverse. It is represented by a pause in speech, a silent and meaningful look, a gesture, a smile, a frozen posture and all this emotionally affects an interlocutor and speaks volumes.

Therefore, it is important for each teacher to have personal concept of the style of speech behavior and an individual image.

of Russian academic eloquence is the ideal image of a university teacher, combining the qualities of an orator, a scientist, a teacher, a good and creative person effectively influencing an audience and interacting with it at the same time, communicating harmoniously and educating, making a favorable impression on an audience.

As a result of written surveys conducted among students of different courses and universities, we found out that modern students like the harmonious image of a teacher, specifically, the combination of the following qualities: the external aesthetic, well-groomed, beautiful appearance, which raises their spirits and causes only positive emotions and the desire to please a teacher with personal knowledge. Let us quote students’ reviews: “When you enter the classroom, our mood immediately rises, we smile, we are glad to see you!”; “It’s always easy and interesting with you!”, “We love you!”, “Students adore you!”, “In your classes we learn to think and speak like adults, independent people!”, “I don’t want to leave your classes”, “After your classes, I spend a couple of days thinking about life and myself”.

Therefore, a professional lecture is the one after which students are inspired, renewed, reflective. A teacher develops the ability to think and speak, to express emotions, feelings and thoughts. Thinking is the unity of the emotional and the intellectual. Again, the Bible says that “only from an excess of feelings a word is born”.

In the course of our research, it was revealed and confirmed that modern academic communication is intercultural communication in the educational and scientific sphere of the university (as opposed to pedagogical communication at school). It is a kind of dialogue of cultures, specifically, the culture of a teacher and the culture of each student. We regard academic communication as interpersonal, democratic, subject-subject, i.e. equal, dialogical, harmonizing communication between teachers and students. When teaching foreign students, it is also necessary to take into account their culture, mentality, linguistic view of the world, etc.

It is proved that a teacher has a huge communicative impact on students with his or her word (speech, communication), disposition (character) and image. The teacher’s image is an entity. It is a holistic simultaneous perception and assessment of a teacher’s appearance and speech behavior by the audience. Appearance (image) is always perceived in connection with the character of a person, with regards to his or her business and other social and moral qualities. For example, students from different faculties noted that the appearance and character of a teacher had a strong impact on them. In this regard, they recalled that they gave their “unloved” teachers such nicknames as: “Hippopotamus”, “Bald”, “Kolobok”, “Kubyshka”, “Rabbit”, “Rat”, “Herring”, “Slobber”, “Donut”.

Often nicknames are given to teachers by the name or specifics of the subject they teach, the nature and appearance of the person, for example, a teacher of literature was called “Pushkin”, teachers in physics, biology and chemistry were given such nicknames as “Molecule”, “Medusa”, “Infusoria”, “Lily of the Valley”, a teacher of German was called “Hitler” for his character, a teacher of geography was called a “Globe” for her appearance, a teacher of Handicraft was nicknamed “Emery” for the subject and character, and a teacher of university, who had an aristocratic appearance, excellent character, speech and taught students Russian language and culture of speech was called “Our Culture-Lady” with love and enthusiasm.

The inseparability, unity of the personal and professional principles in the interpretation of the teacher’s ideal was a postulate among the progressive figures of national education, but teach is just a preson. This is evidenced by the reviews of modern students, in particular, students of the Oryol State University named after I.S. Turgenev. Let us quote one of their reviews: “First of all, a teacher must be a good person” (Kolesnikova, 2019, p. 120).

We tried to form the ideal image of a modern teacher through the eyes of students. Here are the most frequently repeated student reviews of teachers:

“You always express your thought clearly. You have a very pleasant voice that perfectly affects our consciousness. You are beautiful, charming. You have rich facial expressions that attract attention. And maybe this is one of the key aspects of your success”;

“Communication at your classes creates a favorable atmosphere in the audience. Thanks to your classes I was able to feel liberated in front of the audience and my fear of performing in front of the audience practically disappeared. I really like it when in your classes we have free talks, criticize, learn to listen, take criticism ... You are a good interlocutor. It’s good that you deal with us on an equal basis”;

“Your classes allowed me to discover my creative abilities, or rather, to reveal them to the audience. They helped us all to get to know each other better, to learn something new. Each of us was able to relax, get rid of complexes. We felt that we were understood. Your teaching methodology does not confine the student to the subject. Everyone can try themselves in a new field. I wish there were more such teachers.”

Thus, the students noted the following important qualities of a teacher: the ability to create a favorable environment in the classroom, the ability to teach in an interesting and cognitive manner, the ability to be a friend and an interlocutor, to deal on an equal basis (i.e. to observe subject-subject relationships), clarity of thought, a pleasant voice, which perfectly affects the consciousness of students, rich facial expressions, beauty and charm.

We have been convinced that today in education there is a demand for cultural speech interaction between a teacher and a student, that is, normative, corresponding to the value orientations of culture, in which a modern teacher would fulfill the mission of an intermediary between culture and students, could be a role model, an example, an ideal.

The well-being of a student’s personality depends on the qualities of a teacher, therefore, the future well-being of our motherland: “Today’s Seed, Tomorrow’s Harvest”. Thus, the well-being and prosperity of Russia depends on the qualities of the people who live in it.

Modern students note, first of all, the moral character of teachers as well as their intellectual and aesthetic qualities. In their responses, they write the following: “We are happy to attend your class because you are kind, beautiful and charming.” Human, attentive, kind, tactful attitude and respect for people makes the basis of charm.

What is? The word “charm” has had different meanings over the centuries. Currently, the word “charm” is understood as “fascination, attractive force”, “strong, conquering influence” of a person, revealed in verbal and non-verbal communication.

A teacher (ideally) also needs to have charisma. is the unusually strong ability of a person to influence others. It is necessary to recognize the fact that everything in reality is based on the conflict of opposites, which is naturally reflected in language, speech, word. “The word can kill and resurrect.” Therefore, the phenomenon of charisma and charm can be both positive and negative. However, personality traits like charisma and charm (in a moral and emotional sense) always have a positive impact.

Consequently, a teacher and student need to be and/or become charming and charismatic for effective intercultural communication. For example, in the modern scientific world, modern academicians and professors with charisma and charm are well known (therefore, our characteristics are objective and reliable). These are V.G. Kostomarov, V.V. Vorobiev, A.S. Mamontov, I. G. Miloslavsky, I.A. Sternin, D.A. Shchukin and many others.

If you look at a teacher through the eyes of students, you can see that they like intelligent teachers. To prove this idea, let us study the following students’ reviews: “Our teachers always make a good impression because they are intelligent and charming”, “I wish there were more intelligent teachers!”

Consequently, modern students feel a spiritual need for intelligence, for spirituality. is the defining moral state of a person, expressing their essence and life purpose. Spirituality as a certain culture of feelings, thoughts, and speech actions resists lack of spirituality interpreted as the earthiness of interests.

Let us now consider such an important quality of a modern university teacher as. Intelligence is expressed by the concept of “life position”. The word “intelligence”, unfortunately, is not recorded even in modern explanatory dictionaries (this says a lot!). In intelligence being a moral quality of a person, important components of human life are organically merged. Specifically, they are freedom, internal culture, responsibility and spirituality. We think that intelligent people are both born with this quality and acquire it.

The personal nobility of a university teacher also plays a huge moral and communicative role. Unfortunately, the public consciousness of our time too rarely touches the problem of upper class and nobility in general. We think that nobility is both a natural phenomenon and the one given by appropriate education.

A noble personality is revealed by the specific features of friendly communication being manners, a soft smile, an attentive and kind look. Its core is an aristocratic mentality, specifically, a historically stable storage of autonomous attitudes, values that are directed from the outside towards both society and the natural environment. Personal aristocracy is the moral skills of mutual understanding, existence developed by mankind, i.e. objective reality.

Historically, nobility is associated with the cultural institution existing in any society and at all stages of culture. Nobility in the context of rhetorical theory means a demeanor and way of thinking. It is about doing something not according to the principle “if one’s luck changes” but in the best way, in accordance with the high ideals of the community. When thoughts and actions are evaluated as higher and lower, and the lower ones are excluded from the forms of communication, a cultural phenomenon of nobility arises.

Nobility manifests itself where individuality is marked, where there is a dominance of human dignity. The role of a noble person is to accumulate morality. The nobility of a teacher is a guarantee of a true quality of life and education.

We assume that a modern university teacher (ideally) has a personal and professional noble and moral mentality aimed to make a student better in all respects. Thus, for example, the students of the second year of the Faculty of Social and Cultural Services and Tourism of Oryol State University named after I.S. Turgenev after passing the pass/fail examination admitted to the teacher that under his influence many of them (we quote) “gave up smoking, drinking, began to respect female groupmates, and also learned how not to be afraid of performing in public, learned to express and defend their viewpoints, learned to communicate culturally and behave with dignity.”

The students felt the noble influence of the teacher’s aristocratic personality as evidenced by their responses (we quote): “With each new lesson, we more and more revealed our talents, inner potential, learned to properly behave in front of the audience and speak correctly. It turned out that there are a lot of gifted young people in our group”; “I will never forget the lessons when we read our poems and prose. You noted the best we tried to put into these words. You wanted us to believe in ourselves, get over embarrassment and express our thoughts and feelings. You helped us believe in ourselves and guided us. Perhaps, thanks to you, in a few years we will see books with poems by our friends on the shelves of bookstores, or we will read critical articles on contemporary literature”.

Thus, the feedback from the students confirms the fact that the noble, intelligent, charming, cultural, rhetorical personality of a teacher has an effective positive impact on the audience, provides creative interaction and improves the personality of each student.

Thus, for the first time in science, we have proved that today such moral and ethical qualities of a rhetorical personality of a university teacher, which were not even mentioned before in the teacher’s job profile diagram, as charm, charisma, intelligence and nobility (of course, together with responsibility and professionalism) are very important. The revealed personality traits of a university teacher are an effective influencing means of communication and successful interaction with the audience. These moral and ethical professional qualities of the personality of a university teacher stimulate the creative activity of students, help them to improve, harmonize intercultural communication, form a modern, socially adapted, cultural, educated and well-brought-up, multicultural personality of the 21st century.

Conclusion

Consequently, the mixture of culture of a country in general, the culture of a family, cultural, spiritual and moral values, a certain system of education and upbringing, the above personal and professional qualities of a teacher’s personality, the rhetorical culture of each teacher is the most important basis for improving the personality of students and the whole society, while people and their inner world make an epoch and a society.

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