SCIENTIFIC AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF WRITERS’ BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUNDS IN LITERATURE CLASSES AT SPECIALIZED SCHOOLS

Abstract

In recent decades, the global changes occurring in our society have also brought about a number of transformations in the field of education. According to the concept of modernizing the education system in our Republic, the evolving society requires individuals equipped with contemporary knowledge, initiative, and the ability to make independent decisions in a healthy competitive environment, taking responsibility for those decisions. Such individuals should also be capable of collaboration, feel a sense of responsibility for the development of their country, and stand out with qualities such as dynamism and constructiveness. However, in cultivating individuals with these virtues, it is essential not to overlook their moral and ethical developmentIn every historical period, the task of “reforming hearts and purifying minds” (V. Ostrogorsky) has always belonged to literature. Literary education, along with forming a competent reader capable of perceiving and evaluating literary phenomena and the realities of life reflected in them, also fulfills an educational and moral function. As emphasized in the Concept, in a modernizing school education should not be viewed as a separate element of extracurricular pedagogical activity, but rather as an organic and integral component of pedagogical practice, integrated into the overall process of education and personal development. Within the literature curriculum, such an organic component is the study of writers’ biographies, whose educational function has traditionally been noted by many methodologists.The question of what place the writer’s biography should occupy in school literary education has long been a subject of serious attention and debate among literature teachers and methodologists. Even in the Jadid schools, a tradition was formed of studying writers’ biographies as a means of educating the individual and the citizen. In educational and methodological literature containing recommendations on the study of biographies, priority is given to highlighting the distinctive personal characteristics of the author, such as their name, identity, and creative activity. Such an approach to the study of writers’ biographies was developed and implemented by methodologists of the 1860s–1880s, including V. I. Vodovozov, V. P. Ostrogorsky, and V. Ya. Stoyunin.